He grabs my waist and slams our bodies together. My still-sensitive center clenches hard, and I cry out. I can’t even hear the engines over the sound of our bodies slapping together.
Aleks angles my body ever so slightly, and suddenly, he’s hitting me in a new way, touching something inside of me I didn’t even know existed. I gasp, but before I can even exhale, a second orgasm is washing over me.
I’m so wrapped up in my own pleasure that I don’t even realize he’s finished until he pulls out of me. I feel him dripping down the insides of my thighs.
Aleks steps away and puts his clothes on, but I stay bent over the sink, too stunned to move. All I can do is stand on trembling Bambi legs and watch him dress again in the mirror.
When he’s done, he glances at me with a smirk. “You alive?”
More alive than ever, I want to say. Instead, I just nod meekly.
“I’ll meet you out there,” he says.
He slips out of the bathroom. The moment the door clicks shut, I exhale deeply. “Oh God… oh God…”
With the absence of his intoxicating presence, I can breathe a little easier. I can think a little more clearly. Although his musk lingers in this cramped space like a foreign spice.
Weirdly, all I want to do right now is call my sister and tell her what just happened. “You’d be so proud of me, Mia. I stopped thinking and followed my instincts for the first time in my life!”
“Atta girl, Livvy!” she’d say.
I smile at the imagined conversation in my head. But I’m jolted out of the fantasy when someone knocks hard against the door.
“Occupied,” I cry back, grabbing my clothes in a hurry. “Give me a minute.”
I dress in record time, shrug into my discarded sweater, and wrench open the bathroom door. The woman with the fur coat who was scowling at me earlier is now standing in front of me. The moment she sees me, her lips turn up in a knowing smile.
“I’m sorry for the, uh, delay,” I say in what is quite possibly history’s worst lie.
“Oh, honey,” she croons, her eyes flitting towards Aleks. “I don’t blame you. If I were twenty years younger…”
Welp, that escalated quickly. I have precisely nothing to say back. Flushing with embarrassment, I lower my eyes and head towards my seat next to Aleks.
“I poured you a drink,” he says as I sit, pushing a fresh glass of wine towards me.
“Thanks,” I say, reaching for it immediately. I knock back one sip that tastes good, so numbers two and three go down just as quick. A few more of those and I’m feeling drowsy enough to conk out.
Wine always makes me sleepy. But it doesn’t help that my body feels so sated already. Every muscle has the kind of comforting ache that accompanies a really good workout.
“You look tired,” Aleks observes.
“Maybe a little bit.”
He leans over, voice low, and rumbles, “Two orgasms will do that to a girl.”
My entire body floods with heat again. I drop my face in my hands. “Lord have mercy.”
“Careful,” he warns me. “You blush anymore and you might stay that color forever.”
My only response is to groan in shame again.
Aleks smirks. “Why don’t you sleep?” he suggests. “There’s a couple more hours until we land.”
No part of me actually wants to waste an hour next to him by drooling in La La Land. But in the end, that’s exactly what I do. I succumb to a dream-filled sleep.
Every dream is of him.
*
I wake up with a start when someone touches my arm.
“Pardon, ma’am—”
I squint up at the woman bending towards me. Her face looks familiar, but it takes me another few seconds to recognize her as the flight attendant who showed me to first class.
“We’ve landed,” she explains. “It’s time to disembark.”
“Oh." I jerk upright and discover that the plane is empty. I’m the last one aboard.
I turn to find Aleks, but he's gone. I do a double-take, but sure enough, he’s nowhere to be found. Men like him can’t exactly hide in an airplane.
Which means he just… got up and left? Without so much as a goodbye?
“Did you, uh… did you happen to see the gentleman who was sitting next to me?” I ask.
“Yes, ma’am,” she confirms. “He was the first one off the plane.”
“Oh. Right.”
She raises her eyebrows, clearly wondering why I’m still buckled into my seat. I unlock the clasp, step into the aisle, and get ready to go—but I can’t let it end like that. Not with a bang but with a whimper.
Biting my lip, I turn to her again. I hate myself for asking the question even before I say it aloud.
“By any chance, did he leave a message for me?”
She smiles again. This one is laced with pure pity. “No, ma’am. He didn’t."
And just like that, I’m a realist again.
6
OLIVIA
“Excuse you!” someone bleats at me.
I veer to the left as the woman I’ve just walked into throws me a dirty look. “I’m really sorry,” I say, dragging my suitcase out of the woman’s way.
She’s the second person I’ve now accidentally assaulted at baggage claim. For some reason, I can’t get my head on straight.
Logic tells me it’s rejection. Plain and simple. But I’ve been rejected before. And this feels different.
The woman doesn’t seem appeased by the apology. Instead, she flicks her hair over her shoulder, huffs, and stomps off in the opposite direction.
I wheel my luggage to the side of the baggage claim lobby and try to get myself together. If I walk out of here now, Mia is going to immediately know something is wrong. I’m a bad liar under normal circumstances, and this isn’t exactly the kind of thing I know how to sweep under the rug.
I don’t want to taint this trip with my sad story. Especially when it was just supposed to be an interesting airport fling.
Why the hell did I get my hopes up? What made me foolish enough to think there was something more there? Aleks certainly didn’t think that.
If that was even his name.
“Goddammit,” I mutter to myself. “Here comes the ‘conspiracy theory’ stage of grief.”
I stand there for another ten minutes before it dawns on me that I’m not going to start to feel better anytime soon. I might as well bite the bullet and head outside.
If Mia notices something, I’ll just tell her the truth. After all, her shoulder has always been my go-to crying place whenever something goes wrong in my life. I’ve used it plenty before.
I pull off my sweater and throw it over the handle of my luggage. Then I carefully tug my suitcase through the sliding doors, doing my best not to hit anyone else.
I expect to see Mia immediately. She’s usually center stage, waving like a maniac and screaming my name.
But today, she’s nowhere in sight.
Frowning, I turn to the left. Nothing. Then the right. Nothing.
The crowd is thin enough that I can pick out each individual person easily. Mia is definitely not here.
I move to the side and pull out my phone. No missed calls and no messages.
I find a bench to sit on and dial Mia’s number. It rings forever—ten, twelve, fifteen, twenty times—before I give up and cut the line.