Grounded (Up in the Air, #3)(89)

James leaned forward, undeterred. “Because I care about Lana, and because I know she’ll never come to you herself. It’s time to man up, Akira. If you love her, it is your job to show her.”

Akira tapped a giant fist to the table. The table bounced a little, because a tap from a man his size was like a full on punch from another man. “How do you propose I do that? I doubt she’d take my calls, and she hasn’t been back to the island even once since she left.”

“Call her dad. She’s a workaholic. Get him to send her here on business. If you can’t get her to stay, that’s your own fault.”

Akira took this better than I would have expected, just setting his mouth into a hard line and nodding thoughtfully. “You swear you never touched her?”

James threw his hands up. “I never even tried. I swear it! It’s probably the reason we’ve stayed such close friends.”

We had lunch and took our leave of Akira. He was severe but polite as we parted. He was an unreadable sort of guy, but I thought that he had warmed to James at least a little by the time we left. With me, he was perfectly polite, though of course I’d never been romantically connected to Lana in the media, as James had.

The next leg of the flight was longer, though sharing a spacious private jet with James for eight more hours was no hardship.

The private jet wasn’t designed with a normal galley, or a normal anything, really. The flight attendant and our security had their own enclosed space between us and the flight deck, where they could both have privacy, and give us some. James took advantage of this to the fullest.

The plane had barely reached ten thousand feet when he was kneeling in front of my seat, bending down to kiss my thighs, nuzzling his way between, spreading them wider as buried his face against my sex. I was still wearing my shorts as he teased my clit with his nose.

He had gone from buckled up and innocently sitting next to me to making me pant for him in seconds flat. He stripped my shorts and panties off and I gripped his hair into my fists as he set to work on me bare.

“You’re insatiable,” I gasped as he licked at me like he would never stop.

“Yes,” he murmured against my skin. “I’ll never have my fill of you, and I’ll never let you forget it, but you’re hardly one to talk, Love.”





[page]CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Mr. Indulgent





The Cavendish property was located in the Ginza district in Tokyo. I had gotten every tourist booklet that I could get my hands on about the city, but James had a wealth of information, as well, since he had apparently spent plenty of time in Tokyo himself. According to my tourist booklet, and James, Ginza was one of the main shopping districts in the city.

We were given the royal treatment from the moment we walked in the door. I was growing accustomed to it, though the Japanese took the royal treatment to a whole new level. I was still growing accustomed to the Japanese way of bowing in deference to one another. I found their manners charming, and tried to emulate them quickly, wanting to blend into the culture as much as possible, though of course it was impossible for me to blend in there. Still, I badly wanted to avoid standing out as a rude foreigner.

James had his manners down perfectly, as though he visited often. For all I knew, he did. He even spoke a convenient amount of the language. I had studied it, but I was hopelessly outclassed. One sentence of Japanese out of his mouth and I was lost, just watching him in awe and not understanding a word of it. The locals seemed to have no trouble, though.

We’d been discussing for weeks just what kind of a trip I had envisioned when I thought about visiting Tokyo. James seemed to find it charming that I’d only been thinking of a tourist type tour of the city. I wanted to use the subway, visit every temple, shrine and park, and all of the popular attractions. Basically, I wanted to see as much of the quirky city as humanly possible. The plan was for nine days around the city, then another four in the areas surrounding Mount Fuji, and then one day on top of the mountain itself. I had even talked James into camping out on top for a night. He had been easy to convince, considering that he’d never actually been camping before. I wasn’t an expert on camping myself, but I was an expert on roughing it, and a night in a tent on top of a famous mountain just sounded like fun to me. I got the idea in my head, and James didn’t even try to dissuade me.

“Of course, I’ll arrange for supplies,” was all he’d said, giving me his indulgent smile.

We started our first sightseeing day in Tokyo at the crack of dawn. We wore shorts, T-shirts, and comfortable shoes like the tourists we were, and set off on foot for our first destination. Kyokyo, the Imperial Palace, was only twenty minutes from our hotel, so we went there first. Our security trailed us at a somewhat discreet distance, and I almost forgot they were there for most of the day. The palace grounds alone took up most of our morning.

We encountered the scenic jogging trail that surrounded the palace grounds first. I had been reading aloud about the trail from a tour guidebook the night before, so James grinned as he pointed it out to me. “Wanna go for a jog?” he asked me.

I nodded and smiled. I wasn’t a big jogger. Even when I did work out, it was usually lower impact cardio than an actual run, but it sounded perfect just then.

We jogged for maybe ten minutes, James keeping pace beside me, before I slowed to a brisk walk.