“Forever,” I groaned, moving my hips and grinding against him to momentarily satisfy the tension in my body, “and no use of my right hand.”
“Fucking hell.” His eyes went black and he kissed me roughly. Aggressively. It tasted like desire and lust, and I drank him in?—
Abruptly, he pulled back...allthe way back so he was in the chair across from me, his head in his hands and breathing heavy.
I straightened in my seat, suddenly cold in his absence. “What’s wrong?”
“We’re not the only people on this plane, and I can’t do any of the stuff I’d like to right now.”
I wanted to give him a winning smile, but the ache for him was getting unbearable. It had nothing to do with him throwing the wordlovearound.
Yeah, keep telling yourself that.
Under his intense gaze, I worried that he was seeing what I could not.
His phone chimed, and when he glanced at the screen, he looked thrilled.
“What?” I asked.
He passed it to me. It was a series of pictures from Shawn and Kara’s wedding. The last image was me and Ethan on the dance floor, his head bent to mine, his lips delivering that nuclear kiss.
I swallowed thickly. We looked very much in love. And like the moment I’d seen the giraffe in Africa, the words spilled from my mouth without thought. “God, that’s beautiful.”
His head tilted, his smile deepening. “You think so? I agree.”
When we landed, I peered out the window and realized I had no idea where in Kentucky we were. The airport was much too small to be Louisville. “Where are we?”
“Owensboro.” I skewed my lips to the side to let him know that didn’t help, so he added, “Western Kentucky.”
The cabin door was opened, we slipped on our coats, then descended the stairs to the tarmac. It was warmer than I’d expected, but it was also a bright, sunny day. Ethan pulled our bags from the cargo hold, and I let him because I only had one good hand and it’d be faster that way.
I pressed my cast to my forehead, using it to shield my eyes from the sun, and spied a woman waving to us from the parking lot just beyond the fence.
“Someone you know?” I teased.
He glanced over. “My sister,” he said. “Natalie.”
I grabbed the handle of my bag and followed him as he began to move toward the gate. “You’re related to that tiny woman?”
“I can hear you,” she said, grinning. “I’m normal-sized. He’s the giant.”
Once we were past the fence, she threw her arms around her big brother in a hug that was so energetic, it nearly knocked him sideways.
Natalie was two and half years younger than Ethan, so she was either thirty-two or thirty-three. Pretty. Fit. She had warm honey highlights in her hair and lighter brown eyes than his, more like the color of maple syrup.
When the hug ended, she turned her focus to me, and her eyes lit with an emotion I struggled to place. Excitement? Disbelief? She looked at me like I might not be real. How many women had he brought home to the family before?
His sister made it seem like none.
When I extended my hand for a handshake, she flashed a look that said I was silly and pulled me in for a tight hug.
“Bless your heart.” She motioned to the cast on my wrist. “What happened?”
“It’s a long story, and one I don’t want to repeat,” he said, “so I’ll tell it when we get to Mom and Dad’s.”
We loaded our luggage and piled into her mini-van. He sat up front, pushing the passenger seat back as far as it would go so there was room for his legs. I tucked into the back seat beside a child’s booster seat, my feet resting on the floor littered with fruit snack wrappers. The CIA operative’s sister was a high school math teacher and mother of two.
We’d just begun the drive when she asked Ethan something in a language that sounded vaguely Italian, but I knew it wasn’t.
