Kinked

He stared at her mouth. The anger that had been simmering all day had to come out somehow. He switched to telepathy. So what did you see earlier this morning when you spied on me at my bedroom window?

Her eyebrows shot up, her amusement vaporizing. That’s what set you off this morning, isn’t it?

He turned to look at her full on, his expression burning. What did you see?

Something complicated flashed across her angular, upswept features. Funny, he wouldn’t have tagged her as complex. Then there it was again, a hint of arousal in her scent. It was invasive, filling his lungs as he involuntarily took a deep breath. Unwanted. Delicious. A muscle in her narrow jaw flexed, and she looked furious.

Comprehension dawned. He laughed, low and angrily. He said, It’s not you and Grym at all, is it? You into chicks?

Once he’d said it, he couldn’t strip the image from his imagination. Aryal, bending over another woman, perhaps a petite one like the brunette hooker, one of her long, lean hands palming a breast while they kissed.

Fury at his own unruly imagination battled with his body’s reaction. His unruly cock began to stiffen.

Aryal’s gaze flashed. She said very softly between her teeth, “I’ve had a few chicks in my time. They’re tasty little morsels, like soft, pink hors d’oeuvres. You got a problem with that, asshole?”

FUCK. The shock of her words bolted through him, and a new image blazed in his mind. Aryal, crouched between a woman’s thighs, her dark head nestled at the woman’s pelvis.

His stirring cock turned into a raging hard-on. His entire body stiffened, rebelling against it, as his own scent filled the air. The ridiculousness of it didn’t escape him. There they sat, hazardously trapped and betraying themselves by reeking of their own cravings, while the passengers around them napped, oblivious to it all.

Then that internal whip that constantly drove him pushed him to whisper, “You and me. We’re going to have this out when we get to Prague.”

Aryal gave him a slow, dangerous smile. “You know we will.”

FIVE

Aryal couldn’t sleep but she pretended to, hunched in her corner again as far away from Quentin as she could get, eyes closed and face turned to the shuttered window.

She was deeply disturbed by their exchange.

Oh, not the verbal part. The pheromone part.

What exactly had caused Quentin’s electric blue eyes to dilate, and his own arousal to scent the air? Was it the idea of a little girl-on-girl action? If so, he was in the company of millions of other males across the planet.

But something about his own reaction made his whole body tighten in protest. He didn’t like whatever had turned him on, and Aryal didn’t think he was the kind of guy to be bothered by the thought of two women making love.

Had it been her own traitorous response to remembering his admittedly fantastic body? Yeah, that might have pissed him off. It kinda pissed her off. And there was nowhere to go to get away from each other, except to the lavatory.

After their exchange, Quentin eased out of his seat and disappeared.

At first she thought that was where he had gone. Maybe he had decided to give himself a hand, so to speak, and ease off some of that tension. She pictured him in the tiny cubicle, looking at himself in the lavatory mirror, his jeans unzipped while he palmed his erect penis just as he had earlier that morning in his bedroom. Her whole body clenched tight.

Goddammit.

But her mind didn’t stop there. Oh no. She had to put herself in the scene too.

Standing right behind him, unzipping his jeans. Reaching in the opening to pull out his cock. His skin would be hot silk over that hard, engorged muscle, the broad tip damp.

There was no denying that he was a beautiful, beautiful man.

Where would his hands be while she was doing all this to him? What was he doing?

She thought of the handcuffs on the brunette, and the leather strip he had given the woman to bite. He would want to take control. He was that kind of guy. Huh-uh, this was her fantasy. She took control. So his hands were pulled overhead, and he was handcuffed to a railing.

He was furious with her, because he was always furious with her, and she couldn’t really imagine him any other way. And his penis was stiff as a board.

She could do anything she wanted to him.

She massaged that heavy, thick work of art in her hands, watching him in the mirror over his shoulder as his long, rippling abdominal muscles tightened. If he tasted anywhere near as good as he looked, she could feast on him for days.

Her breath shortened, and her hands fisted. Part of her was horrified at what she was imagining.

Oh, not the sex fantasy part. The Quentin part.

She jerked her thoughts away from the image and cast about to focus on something else, anything else. Something excruciatingly boring. She thought of the paperwork piled up on her desk. She was already behind, and spending two weeks to a month away was only going to make it worse. Nobody was going to write those reports for her. It would all be waiting for her when she got back.

She wondered if there was anyone she could coax, coerce or blackmail into doing them while she was gone. Off the top of her head, she couldn’t think of anyone. With her and Quentin out of the picture, none of the sentinels back in New York would have the time, nor, after this morning’s little stunt, would any of them have the inclination to help her out. Those reports were her karma.

Her sharp hearing picked up muted laughter from the nearby galley. A couple of the people laughing were feminine, and one was unmistakably Quentin. He wasn’t doing anything interesting in the lavatory. He was flirting with the flight attendants.

The last of her lingering arousal soured into irritation. She twitched a shoulder, more annoyed with herself than with anything else. The longer he flirted with them, the longer he stayed away. They could have him.

Eventually Quentin came back and eased into his seat. Aryal kept her eyes closed. She sensed that he was looking at her. The touch of his gaze was almost physical, and the skin along her cheek tingled.

He shifted, a slight creak of leather boots and the brush of denim. She knew without looking that he was bending closer. She could feel the heat of his body, and her muscles tightened, twitching with the desire to smash her fist into his face.

Back off. Back off.

He whispered, “I know you’re not sleeping.”

The warm, moist breath from his words licked along her cheek in an invisible caress. It was intimate and sensual. It felt good.

Her body was a gun, and the desire for violence vibrated like a finger on the trigger. Just one good punch. One well-placed punch with the full weight of her body behind it would do a lot of damage to that sexy, treacherous face of his.

But it wouldn’t be just one good punch. It would be a match to dry kindling, and there were too many innocent, vulnerable people surrounding them in quarters that were much too tight. She was going to have to wait.

She held still, not breathing. He hesitated then eased back into his seat. Then the hours scrolled by slowly, flowing over the plane’s wings into the past, and they didn’t speak again for the rest of the interminable flight.

Eight o’clock in the morning in Prague was as bleak as New York had been, the temperatures hovering just above freezing. The skies were overcast, gray streaked with pale light, and as the plane dropped in altitude and prepared to land, Aryal could see a light snow sprinkled on terra-cotta-colored rooftops and in fields surrounded by dense hedges and stone walls.