“No one’s ever tickled you.”
“I’m aseriousperson. People don’ttickleserious people.”
“Okay, the safe word isbananas.If you actually want me to stop, you saybananas.”
He dropped one eyebrow. “I am well aware of how safe words work. How doyouknow about them?”
“I read books, and you told me aboutredlast night.Here I come!”
I jumped at him with my hands out, going for his ribs again.
“No, no, no!Oh,don’t.For the love of God, stop tickling me!”
I smashed him up against the cabinets in the galley kitchen, poking and grabbing his ribs and his back. “That’s not the safe word. You know how to use a safe word, don’t you?”
“I know how a safe word works! What I don’t know is whetheryou are also ticklish.”
Oh, shit.
Nicolai stopped protecting himself and dug his fingers into my ribs, where I was absolutely so ticklish that I shrieked, flipped around, and tried to get away.
He grabbed me around my waist and hauled me back against his chest, wrapping one arm around my middle to pin my butt against his hips and using the otherto tickle me.
Waves of tickle rolled up my body, cramping my lungs until I couldn’t breathe, I was giggling so hard. I was laughing, slapping him, and telling him to stop, but I didn’t say “bananas” or “red.”
Just, “No-no-no,Jesus,Nicolai! Please,no.Please-no-please-nooh my God stop!”
I tried to tickle him back, but he was just so much bigger and stronger, with a longer reach, that I was completely ineffective until I grabbed his knee in a horse bite, and he staggered backward.
Luckily for me, the plane jerked under our feet and started rolling.
We crashed to the thin carpeting on the floor of the plane, missing anything that could’ve hurt us except that we landed tangled up in each other’s arms, and legs, and hair.
But I went to an American public school, and falling over didn’t even slow me down from spiraling in his arms like an enraged cat and tickle-attacking him again.
The pilots are listening.
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CHAPTER 24
tickle fight
LEXI
As the airplane’s floor moved under our feet and we fell, Nicolai’s arms encased the back of my head, pressing my cheek against his shoulder as we rolled.
My hair was mostly down around my shoulders, and it floated everywhere as we tumbled, the chestnut curls snarling on my bare shoulders, sticky from the Las Vegas desert heat and snagging in my mouth and catching on Nicolai’s collar and white bow tie and ears and lips.
It still seemed weird to look down at my hair and see strands of that deep shade of brown instead of the yellowish-white it had been dyed for the last three years. The lustrous dark strands looked like someone else’s hair was spreading over us.
