Grounded (Up in the Air #3)(83)

He stood, driving hard into me even as he straightened. I whimpered, waves of pleasure still rocking through me deliciously. I was a little sore, but conditioned as I was, that sore only added to the pleasure.

He kissed me hard, driving his tongue into my mouth as he drove his rampant c**k into my core. I tasted myself on him—and him, all mixed with the taste of copper. It was different, but not unpleasant.

“See,” he said, driving into me, pounding me into the wall, my thigh slung over his arm and pushed high. “You can still come when you’re bleeding. It doesn’t magically turn off your orgasm button.”

I tried to give him an exasperated look, but it was hard to manage when he was f**king the sense right out of me. “I-I didn’t…mmm…think…that’s…”

“Your body belongs to me, Bianca, no matter the f**king time of the month,” he growled against me. Only he could find a way to use my period as a way to show his possession. It was my last thought before he pounded them all right out of me, and I came again, gasping into his mouth. He kept thrusting, finally arching up high, pushing me up with the motion as he bottomed out hard. He grunted and shuddered against me, his hand sliding up into my hair as he let me see what his pleasure did to him through those turquoise depths. I loved every second of it.

We were dried off and getting dressed before he spoke again, his back to me.

“I guess I earned my red wings.” There was a smile in his voice.

I blushed down to my toes.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Mr. Domesticated

The issue of the sex tape still ran rampant through the headlines, but as far as James and I were concerned, it was old news. We had moved on. I took that as an encouraging sign. We were good together. We hashed things out and they were settled, instead of coming up again and again, like they seemed to in so many toxic relationships that I’d observed.

That Friday marked our last New York layover. The crew wanted to go out, of course, but James wanted to have a late lunch with his friends Parker and Sophia. I didn’t see why we couldn’t do both.

Sophia met us at the door to their luxury apartment, a wriggling child in her arms. I thought it was a boy, though his hair was kind of long, and his face was so pretty that it was hard to tell at a glance.

James swung the child from her arms and up onto his shoulders without a word. “This is Elliot,” he told me with his most charming smile. “Elliot, this is Bianca. Say nice to meet you, Bianca.”

I smiled up at the pretty boy. He had raven black hair like his father, but with his mother’s adorable curls, and slate gray eyes that studied me intently. “Nishe to meet you, Banca,” he said with a nod. He hugged the top of James’s head, rubbing his cheek against that dark golden hair. “I mish’d you, Jamesh.”

James reached up and tickled the little boy’s knee. Elliot curled tighter against him, dissolving into helpless giggles.

Parker cooked for us all, which I found charming. I knew he was important in the business world, the heir to his family’s lucrative business empire, but you wouldn’t know it by the way he cooked for and served us all.

He and Sophia were clearly madly in love. It was something you could tell just from the way that they looked at each other. They acted like newlyweds, though they’d been married for years.

We stayed for hours, talking and playing with Elliot. James was wonderful with him, rolling around with him on the carpet like he was a child himself.

It wasn’t that I didn’t like kids. I thought little Elliot was to die for cute. I just didn’t think that I was suited to have them myself. I had too many dark thoughts and fears about life that I didn’t think normal people dealt with, and I didn’t want to pass my own twisted baggage onto another generation.

I really liked Parker and Sophia. They seemed genuinely nice, and they really seemed to care about James. I also found it particularly encouraging that the decent people in his life were now outnumbering the crazy bitches.

I was troubled as we left, though. Seeing James interact with Elliot had only made it clearer that he wanted his own children.

“James, I’m not sure that being a mother is something I’m suited fo—“

He pulled me against him, covering my mouth with his hand. He softened the gesture by kissing the top of my head. He murmured into my ear just before the elevator door opened. “It doesn’t matter, Love. We have all the time in the world to decide, and I’ll let the decision be yours alone. I can’t live without you. That’s all there is to say about it.”

I wished it was so simple, but he obviously wanted children. The thought of being the only thing that kept him from being a father filled me with guilt. I didn’t know if I could be that selfish.

The crazy celebration at Red later that night was just what I needed to snap me out of that kind of thinking. Everyone was in good spirits. Our crew, sans Melissa, was there to see Stephan and I off, since we were the only ones taking the furlough right away, and they all toasted us and wished us well, and made us feel good in general, but sad to be leaving such a fun group of people. Still, none of it gave me second thoughts. I knew that what I was doing just made the most sense for me, all things considered.

The end of my career as a flight attendant was strangely anti-climactic. I worked my last turn on Sunday, and then on Monday, I went from being a full-time flight attendant to being a full-time aspiring painter. It was daunting, but exhilarating.