4

My face is hot and flushed. He reaches out and swipes his thumb over my cheek. "Am I making you nervous again?"

"You can't just talk to people like that!"

"Like what?"

"Being so… honest." I realize how ridiculous it sounds as soon as the words are out of my mouth. "I mean, like, asking people these kinds of questions. I don't even know your name."

"Nikolai."

I shift in the sink, desperately aware that he is still standing between my thighs. "Oh. Um. Hi, Nikolai."

The mysterious Handsome Stranger has a mysterious, handsome name. I probably shouldn't be surprised.

He lowers his hand from my cheek and drops it on my thigh. His fingers burn my flesh through my jeans. "And yours?"

"Belle."

His eyebrows dance with a subtle smirk. "Then you should be used to people calling you beautiful. It's your name."

My heart is thundering again, panic rising up in me. I press my palms to my eyes.

"You don't have to stay with me. I'll be fine on my own," I mumble. "I know you only came in here because you feel responsible for me. Since I accidentally fell on your lap. But I absolve you of your chivalrous responsibilities." I wave him away without opening my eyes. "You can go on. I won't bother you anymore."

He doesn’t say anything.

I crack an eye open. "Well?"

"I told you you were a bad judge of character,” he drawls.

I frown, but before I can ask what he means, Nikolai slides his hand between our bodies, cupping my heat.

"I'm not fucking nice. And I’m definitely not fucking chivalrous," he growls.

Unable to stop myself, I roll my hips against the heel of his palm. I chase the pleasure that has been building low in my belly since the moment I looked into his eyes.

He slides his hand up and starts unbuttoning my jeans.

"Tell me to stop," he says. "Tell me you don't want this."

I do the exact opposite: I lift my hips and help him peel my jeans down my legs, my body moving like it's in a trance.

"Why?" I squeak.

Why on earth would I do that? Why would anyone feel this man’s hands on their skin and tell him to stop? I can’t imagine a straight woman alive who’s foolish enough to turn this down.

He grips my panties and yanks them down, leaving me naked from the waist down on the small counter. But I'm so fixated watching him unzip his pants and pull out his gloriously thick cock that I can't find the energy to be embarrassed.

"Because if you don't," he says, gripping his length and pressing himself against my entrance, "I'm going to fuck you until you scream so loud that everyone on this plane can hear you."

I can’t help gasping and sputtering like a fish on dry land. “I… I… I…”

Distantly, I can feel the plane still trembling. I know that all my problems will still exist when we're back on the ground.

But right now, I'm flying high.

And I want to make the most of it before I land.

I wrap my arms around his neck. "I want this."

In one thrust, Nikolai pushes inside of me. I tip my head back against the mirror and moan.

“I knew you’d be tight,” Nikolai grits out.

“I knew you’d be big.”

Nikolai pulls back and smiles down at me. “Maybe you do know all the right things to say, after all.”

I smile, but then he slides out and thrusts back into me, and just like that, I can’t smile anymore. Or talk. Or think.

His massive hands palm my thighs, hooking my legs around his waist as he fills me with one savage thrust after another. Then he slides his hand between us again, his thumb circling over my clit, and a jolt of electricity courses through me.

“Oh my God,” I moan.

“You like that?” he asks, his voice rough.

I don’t say anything. I’m too busy falling to pieces in his hand. So he asks again.

“Do you like that, Belle?”

The way he says my name, his tongue languishing over the double L… It’s the sexiest thing I’ve ever heard.

“Tell me,” he commands. “Tell me what you like. What you want.”

“Yes,” I gasp. “I like… all of it. You. I like it.”

His thumb is moving over me faster now, flicking and massaging until I’m seeing stars.

“That’s not good enough. You need to tell me exactly what you want.”

The pressure is ratcheting up higher and higher, and all I want is… is…

“I want to come,” I gasp.

He thrusts into me to the hilt. “Then do it. Come for me like a good girl.”

Oh, for the love of God.

I break.

My orgasm is like the sun coming through the clouds after a rainstorm. It happens suddenly and there’s no stopping it, no dimming it.

I moan, my muscles contracting and releasing. Cries of pleasure climb up my throat.

Nikolai clamps his hand over my mouth, swallowing my shouts until I’m limp against him. My body is spent, but when I look down, he’s still hard.

I frown. “It… it didn’t happen for you?”

“Don’t worry.” He brushes his thumb—the same thumb that sent me over the edge—across my lower lip. “It will.”

Then he tears me off the counter and spins me around so I’m facing the mirror, Nikolai floating like a golden angel over my shoulder. He grips my hips and slides into me again.

The angle is different and my mouth falls open. I lean forward, taking him deeper, wanting more and more and all of him.

Distantly, I’m aware of the plane’s vibrations, of the fact that dozens of passengers are sitting mere feet away with just a rickety plastic door between us. But the world has narrowed to encompass only this. Only this room. Only us.

My anxiety and fear are gone, pounded out of me by the man with the silver eyes.

“They’ll hear us,” I whimper.

“Let them.” Nikolai drives into me harder. “I want this whole plane to hear you come again.”

“It’s never happened for me twice.” I’m almost embarrassed to admit it. Then again, I’m bent over a sink in front of a stranger. Maybe nothing is embarrassing anymore.

Nikolai smirks in the mirror. “First time for everything.”

He wraps his hand around my leg and lifts my knee up to the corner of the sink. I’m still trying to get situated when he slides all the way out of me and then slams into the hilt.

“Oh my God,” I moan. “It’s so—”

“Deep,” he breathes.

With every thrust, he’s touching places inside of me that have never been touched. My thighs start to quiver and before I can properly prepare myself, another orgasm is rocketing through me.

This one is even more powerful than the last. My muscles contract, my body clamping down around Nikolai’s length.

And then I feel the handsome stranger pulsing into me.

He grunts as he drives all the way in. His sounds and his thrusts fade little by little until there’s just the white noise of the roaring engines and my own panting breath.

When we’re done, I hurry to put my leg down and stand up. Warning bells are going off in my head.

What have I done? Who have I done?

He could be married. Or a murderer. He could be a married murderer. Nikolai might not even be his real name!

The same panic that was just sexed out of me starts to creep back in, but I swallow it down.

I feel warmth flowing down the inside of my legs, the evidence of what we’ve done painted between my thighs.

Nikolai zips his pants and reaches for the door handle. “Get dressed and we’ll leave together.”

He stares at me while I wipe off my legs and tug on my jeans. Whatever boldness had briefly possessed me, it’s gone now. I’m a walking, talking blush.

“Okay,” I say softly once I’ve fixed my lipstick in the mirror and smoothed down my hair. “I’m ready.”

Nikolai opens the door without looking at me. The flight attendants are moving about the cabin now. At some point while we were in there, the seatbelt light turned off. An older woman with curly gray hair is waiting outside the bathroom door. If she overheard anything that happened inside, she doesn’t make it known.

I follow Nikolai down the center aisle. When he reaches his seat, I nearly follow him, before I remember where I’m supposed to sit.

I hesitate for a second, waiting to see if he’ll look up at me and offer a smile or a wave. Some kind of recognition for what we just did together in the bathroom.

But he doesn’t look up.

And as pathetic as I may be sometimes, I’m not desperate enough to embarrass myself by begging for his attention.

So I keep walking to my seat.

Before I sit, I glance at the row behind me where Elise is sitting. She has her legs curled up underneath her and her head resting on her folded-up sweatshirt. She’s fast asleep. Looks like she has been for a while.

“Figures,” I mumble. I shake my head and drop down into my chair.

I can still see Nikolai’s squared jaw from back here, but he looks farther away than ever. If it wasn’t for the ache between my legs, I could believe it was all a dream.

Maybe it would be better that way. For the Handsome Stranger to fade away like a dream you can barely remember after waking.

Maybe then everything that happened next wouldn’t have hurt so bad.