Flying Read online

  “Do you like it?”

  “The hours were good for part-time, which is all I could manage at first. And now I have the option of working four tens and having a Friday or a Monday off, so I basically get three-day weekends all the time. It’s great. Not what I imagined myself doing, I guess.” She paused. “But it pays the bills. There are a lot of advantages.”

  “What did you imagine yourself doing?”

  She had no good answer for that either. “I went to college for... You’ll never believe it. Chemistry.”

  “You were a chemistry major?” Matthew hooted soft laughter. “I didn’t think anyone was a chemistry major.”

  “Well, I was. Don’t ask me what I wanted to do with that. Work in a lab, I guess. I never worked in my field.”

  Matthew cleared his throat. “Why not?”

  “I got married.” Stella thought about that for a few seconds. “My husband was a few years older. Met him at my first job out of college, which was first flight crew, then office work for Pegasus Airlines.”

  There was silence. Then, “Is he a pilot?”

  She laughed. “Oh. God, no. Thank God. He’s the CEO. I’d never date a pilot.”

  “No?” Matthew paused. “Would you be too worried?”

  “Pilots are so arrogant. Kind of like surgeons,” Stella told him. “All that responsibility. You’d think it would make them humble, but it doesn’t.”

  “So you married a CEO. Because they’re never arrogant, huh?”

  Stella laughed again. “You got me on that one. What about you? Have you always been a teacher?”

  “No. But like you said, it pays the bills. I like making a difference. I was an English lit major,” Matthew said abruptly, as if his own words had surprised him. “What the hell I thought I could ever do with that, I don’t know.”

  “So you like to read?”

  “Yeah. Do you?”

  “Love it. What’s your favorite book?” Stella looked at the overflowing bookcase next to her bed. With Jeff gone, she’d taken over what had been his nightstand, as well. A stack of favorites towered there, scraps of paper and bookmarks keeping her place in novels she’d read several times each. Sometimes she just liked to pull out an old favorite and skim the best bits.

  “How can you ask me such a thing? That’s like asking me which is my favorite hand!”

  They laughed together.

  “What were you going to do before I called you?” Matthew asked. “What would you be doing right now if I hadn’t?”

  “Hmm. I’d probably be in the tub with a book.” Stella looked at the clock. It was getting close to bedtime. She got up and went to the door, but Tristan’s door was still firmly shut, and she hadn’t heard so much as the creak of hinges since he’d disappeared inside. “Maybe some soft music. Couple candles. You know. Romantic.”

  “So, what’s stopping you?” His voice dipped low.

  “You.” Hers did too.

  “You can talk and take a bath at the same time.”

  Stella closed her bedroom door and locked it. Cradling the phone to her ear, she went into the bathroom. “Yeah?”

  “I’ll take a bath too, how’s that? We can take a bath together.”

  Her heart skipped. Her mouth remembered the taste of him, her body his shape and length. An answering pull centered between her legs. “That sounds like trouble.”

  Matthew’s low chuckle tiptoed over her every nerve ending. “It will be fun. Good, clean fun.”

  Stella turned on the taps and toyed with the button of her blouse. “What if we drop our phones in the water?”

  “Put it in a sealed plastic baggie,” Matthew said.

  “Have you done this before?” She tucked the phone against her shoulder and slipped the rest of her buttons free, then shrugged out of the blouse and tossed it in the hamper.

  “No. But it makes sense, huh?”

  She had a plastic bag in her drawer. She always kept a few there for packing her carry-on supplies. She wouldn’t trust it to fully submerge her phone, but for protecting it from stray splashes... “Sure. Okay. Let’s do it. Gotta put you down for a couple seconds while I get ready.”

  “Me too. Meet you back here in ten.”

  Laughing, giddy, feeling ridiculous, Stella quickly stripped and added a couple caps of bath oil to the water. She lit her scented candles—lavender, which she always found so soothing. She pulled her hair up in a messy bun and dimmed the lights before slipping into the heated water with a sigh.

  Pressing the plastic-protected phone to her ear, she listened for Matthew. “You there?”

  “I’m here. It’s been so long since I took a bath, I had to clean out the tub first.”

  She heard splashing. “Not a bath fan?”

  “I usually take showers. Faster that way. But this...” He hissed and sighed. “This could be good.”

  Stella leaned back against her bath pillow. “I take a bath most every night, if I can. It’s relaxing. If I try to read in bed, I usually fall asleep. So if I get a few chapters in while I’m in the tub, that’s good.”

  “I do a lot of reading in the bathroom too. But not in the tub.” Matthew splashed.

  Stella giggled. “Nice.”

  “So I’m keeping you from your reading. I’d say I’m sorry, but...”

  “It’s okay. I’m glad you called. I didn’t think you would.”

  “No? How come?” Matthew splashed a little more, then seemed to settle.

  Stella rubbed the top of her foot along the back of her opposite calf, enjoying the way the oil had made her skin so slippery. “Just a feeling.”

  “But you left your number. You wanted me to call you.”

  She’d regretted it almost as soon as she was out his front door, so much that if it hadn’t locked behind her she might’ve gone back in and stolen the note so he never found it. “Took you long enough.”

  Matthew didn’t take offense. “You ducked out of my apartment without saying goodbye. I was surprised you left a note at all, to be honest. I was afraid maybe you’d be having second thoughts. I didn’t want to call and make an ass of myself. But then I realized you didn’t have my number and couldn’t call me, so if I ever wanted to talk to you again, I’d better call.”

  That was so close to the truth, the part about second thoughts, that it gave her pause. “You must’ve really wanted to talk to me.”

  “So much,” Matthew said at once, voice rasping. Lower.

  Sexy. God, he was sexy. Stella closed her eyes again, letting her free hand travel along her oil-slick skin. Collarbones. Breasts. Her nipples tightened under her fingertips. Down lower, over her belly, to dip between her legs and stroke her clit gently, just a few times.

  Her voice, when she answered him, rasped too. “I’m glad you did.”

  “Stella...would it make me a creep if I were imagining you naked right now?”

  “I am naked, Matthew.”

  “And wet,” he whispered.

  “Oh, yes,” she said. “All over.”

  He made a sex noise, half a growl from the back of his throat. It sent a shiver through her; her nipples had already been teased erect, but at that noise, they tightened even more. The sensation echoed in her cunt, almost as if a chain connected the two places on her body. Stella’s rolling hips made waves, and she held her phone up to keep it away from the sudden splash.

  “Stella...”

  “Yes, Matthew.”

  “Do you think I could see you again?”

  It wasn’t exactly what she thought he’d ask her, but it did put a smile on her face. She slipped a little lower in the water. “Do you want to?”

  “I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t.”

  “I think...that could be arranged.” She mentally ran through her s