“Not ever? What about on vacation or a weekend away?”
“I haven’t taken a vacation in five years, and my previous relationship arrangements didn’t include spending much time together outside of the bedroom.”
A surge of jealousy twisted in my gut. It was stupid—I knew that. But I couldn’t stop it from happening.
Jagger smiled. “I’m damn lucky you were a virgin, or I’d want to strangle every man who’d had you before me, too.”
“How do you know what I’m thinking?”
“You wear your feelings on your face, Sutton.” He pointed to my breakfast with his fork. “Now eat, and then get your ass to the back bedroom and strip naked.”
***
An hour later, I was buckling my seatbelt when my eyes met the flight attendant’s, who was in the front of the cabin. I quickly looked away and whispered to Jagger. “I feel like Renee knows what we did back there.”
“So?” Jagger shrugged. “Are you embarrassed? I’d fuck you anywhere and not care who knows it.”
“There’s a double standard for women. If we sleep around, we’re promiscuous, but if men do it, they’re studs.”
“I get it.” He reached over and took my hand, bringing it to his lips for a kiss. “But we’re also not sleeping around. We’re sleeping with each other.”
“Are we…exclusive now?”
Jagger had started to lower our joined hands but froze midway to the armrest. “Do you want to sleep with other men?”
“No, but I wasn’t sure if you did exclusive.”
“I wouldn’t expect anything from you that I wasn’t willing to give. And the thought of another man touching you? There aren’t enough showers in the world for that.”
I smiled. “Okay.”
The pilot came on overhead and announced that we were beginning our initial descent into Cleveland Airport. A few minutes later, Renee came to collect our drinks. I looked out the window as we lowered through clouds and the land beneath came into view.
“Do you have family in Ohio? Is that why your sister is here?”
He shook his head. “Catherine spent a week here in the summer when she was thirteen. NASA has a research center in Cleveland. My sister used to compete in these science competitions, and one year she won a week of Space Camp. She got to spend a week shadowing astronauts andlearning about everything NASA was doing. Cat’s four years older than me, but I still remember my mom bringing us here that week. I was so pissed that they gave her all these logoed NASA clothes, and I didn’t get any.”
I laughed, and Jagger continued. “While she was here, Catherine found out that Ohio has more astronauts per capita than any other state, and she decided she wanted to be an astronaut and live here when she grew up. Things didn’t turn out exactly as she’d planned. She’s bounced around to a lot of cities, but she always finds her way back here.”
“Where does your mom live?”
I knew before he answered that he was about to say something bad.
“My mother died a few years ago.”
“Oh. I didn’t know. I’m sorry.”
He nodded and looked out the window. I thought that was going to be the end of the conversation, but a minute later, he surprised me when he turned back. “She accidentally overdosed on her prescription meds. At least that’s what the death report said. But I’ve always assumed it might not have been an accident. Doctors always underestimated my mother because of her condition. The only time they saw her was at her worst, but at her best, she was an extremely intelligent woman. It was difficult for her to hold down jobs long term, but even working at the grocery store, she’d memorize the codes to key in for all the different fruits and vegetables the first day.” He smiled. “She graduated high school two years early like some other smarty pants I know.”
“Yeah, I’m so smart, you had to let me win when we did the algorithm calculation face-off.”
“You’re young and haven’t spent years working through those like I have. Trust me, you blow the doors off my abilities at your age.”
I didn’t think that was true, but rather than say so, I squeezed his hand. “I really am sorry about your mother. I know from experience that it’s difficult to move past things when there are still unknowns in your mind.”
When Jagger and I first met, I’d thought we were complete opposites. I was a young, inexperienced, virgin intern, and he was the older, billionaire CEO who met women on kinky dating apps. But the more time I spent with him, the more I realized we had a lot in common—and not just the way we both seemed to like things in the bedroom. It gave me hope that maybe there could be more to us than just what Jagger was adamant we were.
CHAPTER 29
