I take a breath, and to my surprise, my eyes start to burn with tears. Damn hormones… or maybe I’m just glad to know that she made it. “Good,” I say as I choke back a sob. “That’s good news.”
“Good news all around. I can’t talk long, so let me talk to Alexei really quick.”
I hand the phone over to him. “Hey, Anya,” he says, then he listens. “Yeah. Yeah, no, I get it. Wish I could join you. You know, you’re welcome to join us. When you can, I mean.” He pauses and his face drops a little with sadness. “I understand. It’s an open invitation. Anytime you’re ready, come find us.”
He listens a little longer, and I can feel an immense sadness coming off him. I take his hand and he squeezes it. “All right,” he tells Anya. Then he says his goodbyes in Russian and hands the phone back to me to hang up.
“She’s going to find the one who killed Dmitri,” he tells me. “Someone has to avenge him since I can’t.”
I bite my lip thoughtfully. “Are you worried for her?”
“Anya? No. If I’m honest, I’m more worried about anyone who decides to stand in her way. I’ve never seen anyone as good with wet work as she is. She’ll find the one who shot Dmitri.”
I nod, then I lean over and kiss him on the cheek and lean my head on his shoulder. I hope Anya takes him up on his offer to find us. I hope I get to see her again.
I listen to his heart beating for a few minutes before he says, “You know, you haven’t seen the entire plane.”
“This isn’t it?”
“No,” he says with a chuckle. “Not remotely. Behind that curtain” —he points ahead of us— “there’s a full bar. That’s where the staff are. And there, behind us, are bunks where the staff will be sleeping, and beyond that, there’s a staircase?—”
“Wait,” I say looking up at him. “You’re fucking with me, now.”
He laughs. “I’m not. This is a luxury plane, Isabella. It’s designed to fly for long distances in comfort. We’ll be in the air for eight hours.”
I stare at him, trying to discern whether he’s full of shit or not. Finally, he laughs and says, “You really don’t believe me? Want me to prove it?”
“Yes,” she says. “As a matter of fact, that’s exactly what I want.”
He stands and puts his hand out to me. I take it and he leads me to the back of the plane. We walk through the curtain and immediately, there are several bunks on either side of us. All with their own little curtains for privacy. At the end of this walkway, just as he said, is a small spiral staircase leading up.
“Come on,” he says, leading me up the stairs. It’s a little disorienting moving upward on a plane, but here I am, gripping the railing for dear life.
We get to the top floor where there’s a single hallway and a door. He opens the door for me, and I’m standing in a bedroom. A real bedroom with a large bed on the far end of the room, complete with a nightstand with a lamp on it. Beside the bed is a large window with the curtain drawn, and all I can think is how wonderful it will be to wake up and see the sky in the morning.
I notice a compartment next to the door with a door, so I open it. Inside is a shower with one of those nozzles in the ceiling that rains down on you behind a glass enclosure. There’s a toilet on the other end with a sink and a mirror with lightbulbs all around it.
“Holy shit,” I whisper. “This… this is unbelievable.”
“It’s pretty nice, yes.”
I turn to him and say, “Let’s just live here. Up in the sky for the rest of our lives. Surely, it can’t cost more than buying a house somewhere in England.”
He shakes his head as he laughs. The sound is so wonderful. It rumbles through the room and off the walls, hitting my body like a massage. “Maybe when we’re old and gray, I’ll consider it.”
I wrap my arms around his neck, stand on my tiptoes, and kiss him. Immediately, the ache inside me that longs for him blooms as his hands slide around my waist and bring me closer to him. Our lips part and I lean my head into him. “You know,” he says, “a shower would be really,reallynice right now.”
He’s not wrong. We’ve been through the wringer in the last bunch of hours and for the first time since we were attacked—hell, maybe before then—I feel safe enough to lose myself under a warm shower.
“It definitely would. And there’s a feature with this shower that I want to try out, if you’re game.”
An excited shiver runs through my body. “For you? I’m always game.”
A slow smile as he says, “Good.” He takes me in his arms again and kisses me with such a desperate passion. Of all the kisses we’ve had since that first time on his couch, this feels like he’d been waiting decades to taste my lips and eons just to breathe me in.
I start undoing the buttons of his shirt as he pulls the hem of my blouse up and over my head. Shirts off, bra undone, pants unbuckled and falling to the floor as we back into the bathroom, we kiss a little longer with my bare feet on the cold tile and his hands squeezing my ass.
When our lips part, he says breathlessly, “We got so dirty last time. I’m going to enjoy cleaning it all up.”
