Page 75 of Promise of Destruction

“I could think of a few ways to pass the time.” I shrug, waiting for her to catch the innuendo. “I promise, the last thing you’d be thinking about is how small and confining this plane is.”

I almost feel bad when she whimpers, but the blood that rushes to my cock keeps me from feeling too guilty. It’s such a sweet sound, not one of pain, but of defeat. Defeat is all I want from her—all I’ve wanted from the start. I want this crazy woman with all of her chaos to admit that she jumped into the ocean without knowing how to swim. I want her to confess that she’s in over her head, to declare me the winner in a war I’m not sure she realizes we’re fighting.

“There you go again.” She says, like she was simply picking up from an earlier point of conversation.

“What?” I prompt, genuinely unsure what she’s talking about.

“With your… sexual advances.”

“Sexual advances?” I laugh.

It sounds so clinical… soemotionless. What I feel for her is many things, not the least of which is complicated.

Apathy is nowhere on my list.

“Yes,” she nods soberly. “You keep making sexual innuendos despite telling me you won’t actually act on them.”

That takes me by surprise enough that I laugh and lift an eyebrow at her. “I didn’t say I’d never act on them.”

I think she sounds like she’s in awe of me when she chuckles. “Your HR department must hate you.”

“No,” I shrug. “In fact, they’ve all loved me.”

She prepares to argue that point but sighs instead.

“You meant that literally, didn’t you?” I don’t bother asking her to elaborate, and I don’t bother trying to hide the smirk. It’s enough of a confirmation for her. To my surprise, she actually laughs and I see her hands unclench, the subtle release of tension from her shoulder. “You slept with them all?”

“To be fair, I started hiring men for that department when I recognized the pattern.”

“Oh,” she laughs. “Well, we love a self-aware king.” The tone of her voice emphasizes her mockery of me, just in case I didn’t detect the sarcasm. “So did you sleep with all ofthemtoo?”

“I’m not interested in other men.” I tell her calmly. “And for the record…”

She glances up at me and when her eyes catch mine, there’s something there—under all the stress and mental pain, under the chaos and the ever-changing landscape of her feelings for me, there’s a glimmer of something I can’t quite put a name to.

“I’m not interested in every woman I meet, either.”

Soren looks like she means to say something, but she bites her lip instead and looks out at the ground still, for now, under our wheels. Focusing on something beyond the window seems to ease her nerves, but when she blinks, it’s as if a spell is broken and her panic comes back in spades.

“So?” I venture. “What do you say? Let me take your mind off flying?”

fifty

Soren

Cardgames.

He told me he had much more interesting ways than sleep to pass the time, and like the hussy I’m starting to think I am, I had jumped straight to thoughts of what we could do in the bed besides sleep. And whether he intended it to be innocent or have a double meaning, doesn’t matter. I know I’m blushing when he reaches inside his bag and pulls out a deck of cards.

“You want to play strip poker?” I assume, crossing my arms over my chest. It would explain why he told me not to wear a bra— a demand I really should have listened to.

“I was thinking more along the lines of go fish, you naughty girl.”

His deep voice calling me a naughty girldoesn’treconcile with the idea of playing go fish. And I can’t even admit what it does to me, other than to say that I have to squeeze my thighs together.

I suck in a sharp breath. The air hits the back of my throat, and my gasp turns into a cough. There’s no hiding that sound; I just draw more attention to myself.

The heat doesn’t leave my cheeks even once I get myself steadied and take a sip from the bottle that the stewardess hands me.