Flying Read online

  “You should stay.”

  “If you want me to.”

  “You have a better offer?”

  She laughed. “No. No way.”

  “Good.” He kissed her, yawning in the middle of it. “Shit, I’m wiped out. I’m going to jump in the shower. You want to shower?”

  “Um...sure.”

  “You want to go first?”

  Considerate, she thought with something that tried to be nonchalant but was as squeeful as a giddy fangirl seeing her favorite crush up close. He was considerate. “No, you can go ahead. I’ll get my bag. I have some things I need.”

  He nodded and turned on the water while Stella went to the front entry to get the bag she’d flung there while Matthew had been kissing her. She had pajamas—a pretty cotton babydoll set that wasn’t exactly a merry widow corset, but was comfortable and cute, if a little lightweight for January in Chicago. In the bathroom, she brushed her teeth while he showered.

  He sang in the shower, she discovered. Or rather hummed. A mishmash of classic rock and show tunes that somehow worked together. She washed her face while staring at her own reflection and sometimes at Matthew’s shadow in the shower, and couldn’t stop herself from being charmed.

  Her stomach turned.

  She should leave right now.

  Find her dress, find her panties, get her coat. She should take her bag and get out right now, because this was not a one-night stand. This, she thought, was dangerous.

  “All yours.” Matthew pulled a towel from the rack and wrapped it around his waist before heading for the sink. He caught her looking at him. “What?”

  “Nothing. Just... You sure you’re okay with this?”

  Matthew wiped at the water droplets trickling down his face. “Stella, I just went down on you on my couch and then fucked you hard enough to almost break my bed. What kind of asshole would I be if I didn’t let you stay overnight? And besides...don’t I owe you pancakes from the last time?”

  She nodded, another burst of prickly emotion trying to choke her. She focused on brushing her teeth, watching him from the corner of her eye as he went about his bedtime routine as though they were longtime lovers instead of nearly strangers. Then she helped herself to his shower while he left her alone.

  She knew the taste of him. How he kissed. How his face twisted when he came. She knew the length and girth of his cock. She knew the scent of his skin and now of his soap, that he used an electric razor and not a blade. She knew his brand of toothpaste.

  But sleeping next to him on purpose, that was going to be something else altogether.

  The lights were out when she came out of the bathroom, but there was enough of a glow coming in through the cracks in the curtains that she didn’t worry about tripping on her way to the bed. Matthew had left her the side closest to the bathroom, whether out of courtesy or because his usual side was the other one, it didn’t really matter. She slipped under the heavy comforter, grateful for its weight.

  The pillow was soft. The sheets were luxurious. She waited to fall asleep, but though she turned on her side and curled into her normal sleeping position, though she counted backward three times from one hundred, Stella could not sleep.

  “Are you sleeping?” Matthew’s drowsy, almost silent whisper drifted to her in the dark.

  “No.”

  He moved to her, spooning. His body fit hers as naturally as though it had been made to fit her. His mint-scented breath warmed the back of her neck, and his fingers curved to her belly.

  It was what her body had been waiting for. That embrace, as unexpected as the one at the sink, but as needed. Stella relaxed into him. Her breathing slowed. Her eyes closed. She began to drift.

  “I kept waiting for you to come back,” she heard him say, and his words ought to have startled her into wakefulness, but instead they eased Stella into dreams.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The scent of coffee and bacon woke her in the morning, and for some long moments Stella luxuriated in the big, warm bed without opening her eyes. Then, remembering where she was, her eyes shot open and she sat up. Scrubbing at her face, she looked around the room, still disoriented, looking for a clock. How long had she slept?

  Swinging her legs out of bed, she fumbled in her bag for her phone, which she usually didn’t let out of her sight. Funny what an exemplary round of fucking could make you forget. No messages, thank God.

  She took a few minutes in the bathroom to run her fingers through her hair, brush her teeth. She didn’t go so far as to put on makeup, but she did at least try to make it look as though she hadn’t...well...rolled right out of bed. She found an elastic in her bag and pulled her hair on top of her head, as well as a cardigan to keep herself warm, along with a pair of socks. His apartment was still so freaking chilly.

  With her hand on the doorknob to the hall, Stella stopped. She heard voices. The distinct rise and fall of a woman’s voice, and then a few seconds later, of two childish voices. Also female. She did not go out into the hall, but she did keep the door cracked.

  There was the clatter of silverware on porcelain. The scrape of the chairs on the tile floor. Domestic sounds, so normal and unremarkable, except that Stella was lurking in the bedroom like a dirty secret.

  Maybe that’s what she was.

  She listened hard at the door, too aware of what her mother had always said—if you don’t want to hear things you don’t like, don’t listen at doors. But she had no choice, really. She couldn’t exactly saunter out into the kitchen wearing her pj’s and help herself to a mug of coffee if Matthew had houseguests. And, she had to be honest, at ten o’clock on a Saturday morning, who were those guests likely to be?

  Oh. Fuck. Ex-wife. Kids.

  What sort of man invited a woman back to his apartment and then insisted she stay the night when he expected his ex-wife to drop off his kids in the morning?

  The kind who wasn’t expecting a visit from his ex-wife and kids, Matthew told her forty minutes later when the front door finally closed and he opened the bedroom door. “Louisa—she’s my oldest. She wanted to stop by and get something she left here. So Caroline brought them by.”

  And had stayed for breakfast.

  “They saw me making pancakes,” Matthew said after an awkward silence had grown between them. Stella didn’t say anything. What could she have said? “Beatrice, my little one, she wanted to stay. I didn’t know what to tell them.”

  “Not that you had company, apparently.” She understood, of course, on the surface. She was still essentially a stranger, and she wouldn’t have liked to be paraded out in front of his ex-wife and kids anyway. She respected the fact that he didn’t just shove strangers in front of his children. But that was the surface. Underneath, it still felt kind of shitty to be stuck in the bedroom for forty minutes while he entertained.

  “I’m sorry,” he said after another awkward pause. “I should’ve at least come back to let you know, but she kept talking to me and she has a habit of following me if I walk away before she’s finished.”

  Stella softened. It had taken her a while after her divorce to consider dating again, and in the brief time when she’d actually gone on actual dates before deciding it wasn’t worth the effort, she’d been careful about exposing Tristan to her new “friends.” Of course, she flew hundreds of miles from home to fuck men. That might’ve had something to do with how much easier it had been for her to keep them from meeting her son.

  She smiled at him. “It’s okay. It’s hard to juggle an ex and kids and dating.... Not that we... Well.”

  Matthew smiled slowly. “Yeah. Still, I should’ve checked on you.”

  “So long as there are some pancakes left,” she began, half teasing, but stopped at his expression. “Are you kidding me?”

  “I’m sorry, they ate...”