He doesn’t look up from his phone. Doesn’t even twitch. Just leaves it there, pinning me in place like gravity itself.
And then—slow. Deliberate. He leans closer.
The cabin’s dim, most of the guys already dozing or pretending to. Mats has one eye open across the aisle, Tyler’s muttering into his hoodie, Cole’s humming something under his breath behind me. None of them are watching close enough. None of them see it.
But I do.
Damian’s hair falls forward, shadowing his scarred mouth, and suddenly he’s too close, his voice low enough that it scrapes against the shell of my ear like a blade.
“Open your mouth again,” he murmurs, quiet, lethal, “and I’ll give you something to keep it busy.”
Every cell in me detonates.
My breath catches, my whole body jerks like I’ve been shocked, and holy fuck, I nearly moan. Right here. On a plane full of teammates. With Cole one row back and Mats literally watching me through his lashes.
I snap my jaw shut so hard my teeth clack. My lips part anyway, like they’re begging without my permission. My brain’s a white blur of yes, sir, yes, sir, yes, sir.
The worst part? He doesn’t even move after that. He just leans back, calm as ever, scrolling through whatever the hell’s on his phone like he didn’t just nuke me thirty thousand feet in the air.
His hand’s still on my knee. Fingers flex once, lazy, like a reminder. Like punctuation. Like proof he owns the silence now.
And me?
I’m gone.
My chest is heaving, my thighs trembling, my skin burning, and every single time I think about opening my mouth again, I remember his voice—low, promising—and I swallow the words back down whole.
The hum of the engines is steady, the team is quiet, the flight stretches endless ahead of us.
Two hours I’ve sat like this—frozen solid, not daring to move a muscle. Damian’s hand heavy on my knee the entire time, like stone welded into place, veins carved under skin,warm and absolutely unshakable. My thighs ache from holding still. My chest burns from holding breath I never let out. My brain hasn’t shut up once—replaying last night, replaying his whisper, replaying everyyes, sirthat crawled out of me.
And then the seatbelt sign dings on.
The captain’s voice crackles overhead, steady. “Ladies and gentlemen, please take your seats and fasten your seatbelts. We’re expecting some turbulence.”
The cabin stirs. Mats yawns across the aisle and clicks his buckle. Cole groans behind me like he’s starring in a soap opera, muttering something about “death in the skies.” Viktor just grunts and tightens his belt like it’s a punishment. Tyler’s two rows up whispering what sounds like the Lord’s Prayer into his hoodie.
Damian pockets his phone.
He lifts his hand from my knee. My skin feels hollow without it, like gravity itself just gave up on me. He scans the row, the aisle, the team. Making sure they’re all strapped in, sitting down, secure. Captain mode. The kind of authority no one questions, not even Cole with his mouth running 24/7.
And then the first jolt hits.
The plane shudders hard, bouncing under us like a puck off the crossbar. My stomach drops to my shoes, the tray table rattling, overhead bins creaking loud enough to make the hair on my arms stand up. Someone curses three rows back. The lights flicker once, dim, steady again.
My pulse spikes.
“Normal,” Damian says, low, calm, not even glancing at me. Just a simple word, thrown even into the air like it can anchor the whole fucking plane.
But then the second hit comes. Harder.
The whole aircraft bucks sideways, bodies jerking in their seats, a bottle clattering off a tray table behind me. The overhead lights flash, the engines groan. The air pressure itself feels like it’s closing in on my ribs.
I can’t breathe.
It’s not the hit—it’s the memories. The way the walls rattle, the way my lungs burn, the way the ceiling feels too close, too heavy. I’m twelve again in a shitty car that skidded off black ice on a back road, my brother screaming, my head smacking glass, the world spinning. I’m fifteen again, trapped in a broken elevator at school, chest heaving until I puked on my shoes. I’m—
“Mercer.”
