The agent clapped a hand on Zane’s shoulder. They were best friends now apparently. Weren’t customs agents supposed to be stoic and mean? Did any of the rules apply to famous people?
“And last question,” he said. “Where are you staying?”
“The Langham,” Zane said.
The man looked between Kelly and me like he was just realizing someone besides Zane was on board. “All of you?”
“All of us,” Zane said definitively before I could open my mouth.
The customs agent handed our passports back and left without any further questions.
“Let’s go,” Zane said, pulling me up from the seat. He took his coat out of a closet and draped it around my shoulders, drowning me in fabric. At least I wouldn’t be deplaning in a T-shirt and heels.
As he finished buttoning it, I snapped. “I’m not fucking you again, so if that’s why you’re insisting on us going to the hotel together you can dream on.”
Kelly looked out the window, like he was pretending he wasn’t there.
Zane wrapped his giant hand around the back of my neck and kissed me, a brief, deep claiming of my lips that made me instinctively want to surrender to him.
He pulled back, hand still on my neck. “Just for that, you’re going to get on your knees and beg before I’ll fuck you again. But we both know you’re going to do it.”
Just as he turned to get off the plane, I reminded him of his own song lyric. “Didn’t you hear?I’ll never do that again.”
28
ZANE
Now
* * *
Iwoke up with terror clawing through me, sitting bolt upright in the dark trying to figure out where I was, where the fuck anything in this room was. My chest felt tight and I couldn’t get enough air into my lungs. I reached across the bed, confirming I was alone, consciousness starting to kick into gear, remembering I was in London.
And of course I was alone.
Maia was in another bedroom of the suite, having insisted upon sleeping separately from me.
The glowing clock told me I’d only been asleep for four hours, but now I was wide awake, pulse still pounding as my nervous system caught up with the fact we weren’t in danger.
I’d barely slept on the plane, and the battle of wills to get Maia to come back here had taken the last of it out of me. And yet. Tossing and turning alone, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t already craving that battle again, eager to see the bratty tilt of her chin when she was being defiant for the sake of it.
I made it ten more minutes of lying there wondering if she’d managed to sleep with her supposed insomnia before I got up to check. If I focused on her problems, I didn’t have to think about mine.
I crept silently across the suite that was roughly the size of the house I grew up in, and approached her door like an absolute creep.
I was just checking on her, making sure she hadn’t gotten some kind of wild idea to “escape” in the middle of the night. I wasn’t pathetically hoping she’d somehow sense me outside her door and beg me to fuck her like I told her she’d have to.
I stood there listening for a rustle of movement or the sound of her breathing, but what I heard instead was the telltale rhythmic sound of quiet sobbing.
My indestructible girl was crying and I knew I should walk away and leave her in peace, but my feet were rooted to the ground, paralyzed by indecision. She didn’t want my comfort any more than I wanted to offer it. But I couldn’t physically stand there and ignore the sound of her misery.
I knocked softly.
She cleared her throat. “Go fuck yourself…”
She may as well have invited me in.
I opened the door and could see well enough in the dim light to figure out which side of the bed she was on, so I climbed onto the mattress on the other side. She scooted away, but I followed and pulled her back against my body, wrapping my arms around her. It was like trying to cuddle an angry alley cat.
