“I love you.” I slide my fingers in and out of her with long, sensual strokes, summoning more heat from her body, letting me know my touch still affects her the way it always has.
We haven’t lost this.
We’re still us, and we’re going to find our way back to each other, the way we always have.
My pulse picks up and my cock swells beneath Sam’s increasingly firm grip, but I ignore the pressure building in my balls and focus on pleasuring her. I shift my hand until the heel of my palm rubs against her clit as my fingers drive deeper inside her, ignoring the cramp in my wrist and the faint stirring from across the aisle. At this point, I don’t care if someone’s watching. I need Sam to come on my hand, I need her release as much as I need my own.
More. I live for her touch, but I would die for the chance to watch her features twist as I bring her over, to know I’m the one responsible for unraveling her so completely.
“Yes,” she whispers, chest rising and falling more swiftly as her breath comes faster. “So close.”
There is just enough pale blue light in the cabin for me to see her nipples hard beneath her tee shirt and it’s all I can do not to reach up and cup her breast in my free hand. I’m dying to pinch and tease her nipples between my fingers, to take her in my mouth and suck her pebbled skin. But that will have to wait until we have something more than a tiny blanket to hide behind.
Fuck…we can’t get to that hotel fast enough.
I can’t wait to get Sam naked beneath me, above me, or in any other position she’s up for.
The past couple of years, our lovemaking has been veering toward the kinkier side of the spectrum. It started with having sex in every waterfall on Maui two summers ago, and ended with a paddle last December.
Sam is one of the strongest people I know, but she also has…unexpected fantasies. When she’d first mentioned wanting to be spanked and to play with toys—bringing it up in a sexy whisper when we were already half naked—I wasn’t sure I’d be into it. But by the time I had Sam tipped over my knee, her bare bottom in the air, and her pussy dripping down her thighs as I reddened her ass, I’d changed my mind.
After that experience, I’d been sold on kink, and looking forward to all the new ways we would find to get each other off.
But then Sam’s emails and texts grew shorter and further apart, and when we talked on the phone on Saturday mornings she sounded distant. She said it was because of her new roommate—her old roomie was studying abroad for a semester, and the new girl, Tate, was an eavesdropper and a gossip. Sam blamed Tate for our shorter, less intimate phone conversations, and I didn’t have the courage to call bullshit when she was acting so weird.
Sure, a nosey roommate meant we couldn’t have phone sex, but it didn’t mean we couldn’t talk. Sam could have gone to the park or one of the hiking trails near her apartment for the privacy we needed to catch up on our usual news. For her to tell me about her classes, and me to tell her how fast the business was growing, and how weird it felt to have employees for the first time in my life. Instead, our catch up sessions grew microscopic, and I started to worry our last encounter was to blame.
Maybe Sam regretted what we’d done.
Maybe I’d screwed up seven years of loving each other with one night of raunchy sex.
No matter how much I’d enjoyed it, losing Sam wasn’t worth the novelty. I’d rather have normal, amazing sex with her than all the kinky shit in the world.
But when I’d finally worked up the nerve to mention my concerns, Sam had refused to talk about it. She’d said she wasn’t in a safe place to have that kind of conversation and made an excuse to get off the phone as fast as she could. That time, she hadn’t returned my calls, texts, or emails for four days. When she finally picked up the phone again, I was too grateful to hear her voice to do anything to spook her again.
The sex conversation had been tabled, but the fear that our easy physical relationship was damaged lingered, driving me crazy as winter turned to spring and Sam still sounded weird every time she answered the phone.
I wasn’t sure I’d ever touch her like this again. I wasn’t sure I’d ever hear her breath hitch the way it does right before she gets off. I’m so grateful to be with her I’m pretty sure I could have lost it just from hearing her whimper and feeling her hips buck into my palm as she goes over.
The combination of her pussy pulsing around my fingers, and her hand working my cock is enough to make me come so hard I see stars.
The bliss coursing through me lasts for what feels like forever. I bite my lip to keep from making noise, but as soon as I’m sure I can keep quiet, I lean into Sam and kiss her with all the emotion making my chest feel like it’s about to explode. I slip my tongue between her lips, exploring every inch of her sweet mouth. She tastes the way she always does, like sea air, clean sweat, and summer time. Like the best parts of being a kid, the freest parts of being an adult, and everything I’ve wanted since the moment Sam agreed to be my girl.
She tastes exactly the same, but the way she ends the kiss after only a few moments and tugs at my wrist is different.
Strange.
“It’s okay,” I whisper, glancing across the aisle to find the other passengers still dead to the world. “No one’s watching.”
“The stewardess could be by any minute,” she whispers, her tugs at my wrist growing more insistent. “Come on, Danny. I need to get zipped up.”
“Let me help.” I slip my fingers from between her legs and reach for her zipper only for her to bat my hand away with a sharp slap.
“Sorry,” she says with a breathy laugh that makes me think the slap startled her as much as it did me. “I’m just afraid we’re going to get caught. I’ll run to the restroom for some tissues for you. Be right back.”
Before I can tell her to stay, that I have napkins left over from dinner shoved into the seat pocket in front of me, she’s slipped out into the aisle and is hauling ass toward the bathrooms at the back of coach. She’s the one who started this, and I know she enjoyed it as much I did, but it feels like she’s running away from me.
No matter how physically close we were a moment ago, that emotional distance is still there, and I don’t know how to make it go away. Even when she gets back and asks in a sexy whisper if this means we’ve joined the mile high club, it’s hard to play along. I say the right words, insisting we deserve all bragging rights, but there’s nothing lighthearted about the way I’m feeling. I’ve known Sam too long and too well to be fooled by her attempts to muscle through the strained moment before she bolted for the bathroom.
Something is wrong. Something’s been wrong since January and if it’s not her and me, or that last night before she left the island in December, then it has to be something else.
Something or someone has rattled Sam so badly that she’s let our relationship—the one thing she promised she would fight to protect, no matter how busy our lives, or how great the physical distance between us—suffer.
And I’m going to find out what or who that is.
And then I’m going to kick their fucking ass.
No one hurts Sam and gets away with it. No one.
Chapter Three