I can feel it. I know her body too well.
“Oh god,” she gasps. “Oh—please—I need?—”
“I know what you need,” I say.
I bring her to the edge with my fingers and hold her there—right there, hovering, her whole body a tightrope—and her eyes find mine and they are desperate and dark and entirely completely mine.
Then I stand.
I free myself and pull her forward to the edge of the seat—her dress bunched at her waist, her underwear pulled aside, her legs wrapping around me—and I drive into her.
This time when she muffles her groans I don’t stop her.
I drive deeper. I grip her hips and fuck her right there in the cream leather chair, deep and deliberate and thorough, my eyes on her face, watching every flicker and flush and helpless expression cross her features. She grips my forearms. Her head tips back. The light catches her throat, her collarbone, the cross I gave her on our wedding day swaying with every stroke.
Mine,I think.This woman is mine.
“Oh fuck,” she breathes. “Oh—don't stop—please?—”
I thrust deeper. Her nails dig into my forearms. Behind the curtain something shifts—a sound, a movement—and I feel Ivy clench hard around my cock and I know she is right there.
I reach between us and press my thumb to her clit.
She comes immediately—sudden and total, her whole body shuddering, my name on her lips—and I follow her over the edge seconds later, my grip on her hips tightening as I pulse inside her.
I drop my forehead to hers.
The jet engine hums.
For a long moment neither of us speaks or moves.
I press my lips to her forehead and hold her there. The fear in my chest has eased.
Later, settled back in our seats with luxurious blankets, the stewardess delivers tea with a cool nonchalance. Ivy's head on my shoulder, England somewhere below us in the dark, she says quietly: “She definitely heard that.”
“Probably,” I say.
We’re quiet for a while.
Then: “Elena’s not going to stop,” Ivy murmurs into my shoulder.
“No,” I reply. “She's not.”
A beat.
“So what do we do?”
I look out at the dark beyond the window. At England waiting on the other side of it.
“We go home,” I say. “We find her. And we end it.”
CHAPTER 10
This is Personal
IVY
There is something deeply, almost comically British about the fact that we have landed back in England under the shadow of a Russian death threat and Brumilde’s first instinct is to make a roast.
