“I…that was…” Hallie can’t string a sentence together, and my chest swells.
“It was.” I agree with a small smile, not quite having the right words myself.
A delicate cough breaks the moment, but Hallie doesn’t spring away from me the way I would’ve expected. Instead, she steps in toward me again, and I curl my arm back around her waist, even as the flight attendant raises an exasperated brow.
“Sir, ma’am, unless you’re headed to the restroom, would you please return to your seats?”
I smile as charmingly as possible. “Of course, we’ll be on our way right now. Hal, you need to use the restroom, right?”
“Uh. Sure,” Hallie replies, still in a daze as I direct her the few steps it takes to get us to the toilets.
“Do you actually need the restroom?” she asks, rubbing her hands over her face as I move farther away.
“Nah, but it’d be terribly inappropriate for me to go sit next to my brother with you still coating my fingers,” I say. “Would you mind taking these for me? I already have them in my emails.” I pass her the rolled-up papers I’d shoved in my back pocket.
Hallie’s cheeks flame, her eyes narrowing on me when she takes them.
I can’t tell what she’s feeling more intensely right now: turned on or frustrated.
On her, both emotions look like she wants to do me physical harm, so I continue. “You’ll have to forgive me if I take a minute. There’s something I need to attend to.”
I wink at her before glancing down to where I’m painfully hard and pressing up against the denim of my jeans.
“You’re going to jerk off? Right now?” Hallie whispers.
I open the restroom door.
“Sure am. You’re still all over my fingers, and knowing that you’ll be just outside the door trying not to listen intently to the sounds of me getting off? Hallie, it’s what dreams are made of.”
I push another folded piece of paper into her hand—the one confirming a reservation for another hotel room. One that we won’t have to share with either the bride or the groom. One just for us.
“You have some messed-up dreams.”
“Don’t I know it.” I push to close the door, but before I can say another word, her hand flies in. I stop moving abruptly, not wanting to hurt her.
Black-painted nails grip the front of my shirt, and Hallie pulls herself in close. I wonder briefly if she’s about to make me a member of the mile-high club.
Her lips touch my ear as she whispers, “One of those dreams better be getting me off more times than I can count in the next forty-eight hours.”
Her lips brush mine in the most delicate and contradictory of kisses before she steps back.
My eyes lock with hers, moving to look at where she still holds me. I don’t miss the slight tremble of her hands as she pulls away.
My girl is terrified, nervous, and brave.
Currently, I’m only two out of the three.
When I finally head back to my seat, Julian’s holding the paperwork I’d passed to Hallie, sans my single-folded sheet. Once I’m sitting, he passes it back to me with an amused look.
“Hallie said you were full of shit and needed to use the restroom.”
I bite my tongue, enjoying this game of keeping up appearances less and less. “Well, that’s one of the reasons one has to use a restroom.”
Jules just shakes his head with a laugh. “I thought ‘full of shit’ was a perfect description for you.”
I don’t bother with a response, not when I know he’s far from wrong.
Strategic thinking had led to Julian and me sharing a room and Hallie and Erica sharing one in a separate hotel. I’d also booked rooms in each location for the rest of the bridal party members. It’d been easy to do, too easy. I hadn’t counted on Hallie and me wanting to sneak around, let alone needing to. Because that’s what it is now. Time with her is something I need. And so last week, I’d snapped up a final room in the hotel she and Erica are staying in, a room I can’t wait to get her into.
