Chapter 119: 119. Jericho
Maisie
The flight attendant bent over, her breasts in Jericho’s face. She had a sweet smile, plump red lips coated in red, her blonde hair strapped tightly to her scalp and her buttons were opened lower than they’d been five minutes ago.
Her Russian was smooth. Her fingers laid on Jericho shoulder as she posed him a question.
"Nyet," he responded.
And then, she moved over to Soren, whose eyes had been glued to his tablet ever since we got into the plane. "Would you like anything else, sir?"
Her ass was in Quinlan’s and Mercer’s face, and Quinlan had the funniest expression as he stared at it. He looked like he was trying to hold back a laugh.
Our eyes met over the arch of her butt and he winked at me. I glanced sharply out the window, ignoring them.
I was still mad about yesterday. Not mad. Ashamed. Shamed had wrapped around me like a freaking blanket and I couldn’t look at Mercer without turning red because all I could hear was my pleas in that changing room.
All I could see was the looks on the faces of the women in the store. A woman had her jaw dropped and her hands clamped over the ears of her daughter who looked about the same age as me. I had now become the girl mothers told their daughters to stay away from.
And Mercer, the bastard had walked around the whole day with my juices on his mouth and chin. I’d been so wet, his collar had been soaked.
I remembered rather clearly how we pulled into the driveway yesterday and told me he was never going to wash that shirt.
Clearly, I wasn’t the only one in need of therapy.
The flight attendant didn’t smile at me. Neither did she bend over to give me a view of her breasts. I thought it was unfair. Weren’t women and men all equal? If they could get a flash, why couldn’t I?
"Do you vant anything?"
The question came out in a nasal, condescending manner, like she was talking to a stupid preschooler.
The Lycans glanced up at the tone. Jericho opened his mouth to speak, but I thought I could handle one catty woman myself.
I smiled sweetly at her. "Yes, actually. I’ll have whatever they’re having."
She frowned. "They didn’t—"
"Lean over," I blinked innocently. "Touch my shoulder. Or my thigh. Maybe my crotch. Either would make me feel warmer. Ask about my day. Tell me I have pretty eyes and ask me to join you in the bathroom in thirty minutes."
The woman flushed. "I get you some more tea," she said before disappearing down the aisle.
Quinlan leaned back in his chair, spreading his thighs comfortably. "You’re sexy when you get territorial like this."
I wasn’t being territorial. Right?
My gaze traveled outside the window at the clouds. "We’ve been flying for sometime. It didn’t take this long to get to the castle the last time."
They exchanged unreadable glances.
Jericho who sat across from me, all six foot seven inches of him and bulky mass hidden well behind a red polo t-shirt and tailored dark pants, glanced over at me. "We’re taking a detour."
It was the first time he’d spoken to me since I found out about his relationship with the Queen. I couldn’t look at him, out of fear that I would start to feel complicated things that I had no business feeling in the first place.
"And where exactly is this detour?"
Quinlan’s lips kicked up. "Île de Ré." At my blank, confused stare, he added, "Somewhere in coast of France."
"France?!" I echoed. "Isn’t that like fifteen hours away?"
Soren’s violet eyes crinkled. "Quinlan’s mother has promised us murder by strangling if we do not bring you by for dinner." He nodded to the door in the back. "I suggest you get comfortable. It’s be a long flight."
I would come to realize in exactly thirteen hours that I had been tricked.
Asking me to pack up and Mercer buying the swim suit hadn’t been a coincidence. I had no idea I was being tricked into going on a freaking honeymoon.
****
The air was thick with pheromones.
I was restless.
Perhaps it was because it was the first time I’d ever flown. Or maybe it was the rumble of laughter coming from the other side of the thin door. Or maybe it was just the heat burrowing under my skin.
I couldn’t sleep. I was bored out of my mind. And the shirt I wore chaffed against my skin like fire.
This way why I demanded space. They were too close, it was messing with my mental health. My subconscious was being tugged outside, to the other side of the door. Every time I closed my eyes and managed to drift off into sleep, I was awoken by images of bent over on Soren’s bed and filled up through every hole in my body.
It was too much and groaned, yanking up the covers over my face.
I was stuck on a plane with four men I despised who oozed sex, a waitress who was trying to stick her hands down their pants, and a really questionable libido.
And time was flying by much too slowly for my liking. We still had, at least, ten hours.
Goddess, I was going crazy.
I reached for my cellphone. The service was dead. I saw a few messages from Regina and Jenny from a couple of hours ago. They were with Juliette, and they seemed to be having fun.
There was a tiny knock on the door and I glanced up in time to see Jericho standing in the doorway. "Lunch?"
I shook my head. "Not hungry."
"You’ve been avoiding me."
"I’ve been ignoring all four of you. You’re nothing special," I said, twisting to lie on my side.
"Are you mad at me?"
"I’m mad at all four of you," I quipped.
"You know what I mean, malyshka."
This was about his relationship with the Queen. I really wasn’t in the mood to talk about Jericho’s sex life. "I don’t."
There was a tiny pause. "It was a long time ago," he said.
"I don’t care."
He came inside anyway, shutting the door behind him. The master bedroom wasn’t very large, and having Jericho in here swallowed up all of the space and the air in the room, and I was suddenly attacked by lust-infused claustrophobia.
I scrambled back towards the headboard, but Jericho’s wrist snapped out, grabbing my ankle, and I shrieked as he yanked me back to the cot’s edge, until we were inches apart and I couldn’t smell his lemony aftershave. He crouched in front of me and even lowering himself to my eye level, he still towered over me. "We’re going to have a conversation."
"Not interested," I hissed.
"Then listen," he said. His hands wrested on my hip to keep me in place, like he knew I was seconds away from bolting, and my legs dangled on the outside of his thighs.
"I was six years old when I lost everything," he said to me, amber eyes hard on mine as his hot breath tickled my lips.
My breath caught. Jericho rarely ever talked about himself.
"We lived in Sochi, close to the humans who believed anything out of the ordinary to be sorcery. They called us demons for years, even if we lived by ourselves. Some kid died in the woods close to our home in a wild boar attack, and so they assumed we had an appetite for human flesh. We were asleep when the humans came."
My skin turned to ice.
His voice was flat. Too flat.
"The first thing I remember is waking up because I couldn’t breathe." He paused. Drew in a long breath. Continued. "The house was burning. The roof had already collapsed over part of it."
His jaw tightened. "My mother was trying to drag me outside. She was screaming for my brothers. They’d barred the doors from the outside. Nailed them shut."
