He covers my body with his own, sliding into me inch by careful inch, so slow that it feels like we might never be fully joined together.
“My little California girl,” he whispers against my mouth, moving inside of me until I’m coming again, and then using the shudders of my body to find his own climax.
Afterward, Church unties me, leaving the loose tie around my wrist, and kissing me until the sun sinks low in the sky.
“We just defiled your mother’s wedding dress,” I whisper against his mouth.
“Yes,” he says, our foreheads pressed close together. “Yes, we did.”When Church told me that riding in his family’s jet would make first class look like a joke, he wasn’t kidding. The plane that we end up boarding is at a private airport, just outside of Nutmeg, and it’s so tricked out on the inside, it makes my father’s house at Adamson look like a dump.
“Fucking rich people,” I murmur as Tobias pokes me in the back and encourages me to actually set foot inside what’s essentially a fancy little dining area. There are four seats—similar to regular airplane seats but decked out in leather—around a dining table, and just across from a long counter with a wall-mounted TV above it.
“That’s right—sometimes I forget you’re a peasant,” Tobias teases as I pause to elbow him in the side. My father, as terrifying as he can be, is no match for the Montagues. I’m going to London, even if he doesn’t want me to. “Poor people don’t do much travelling, do they?”
My eye twitches as I give the tall, lean form of Tobias McCarthy a scathing look.
“Travel takes money, and billionaires horde it all and don’t pay fair wages, so what do you think the answer to that question is?”
“Take a seat, Chuck, and relax,” Micah says, scooting around behind me and flopping into one of the spots around the dining table. I grab the one across from him and Spencer slides in next to me. Ranger, Tobias, and Church, on the other hand, take up the sofas in the narrow ‘living room’.
I’m still recovering from the embarrassment of the other day, you know, when the others found me and Church cuddled up with a wrinkled wedding dress. I’d just as soon stay over here. Five for five, right, Spence? I think, buckling my seatbelt and tapping my fingers on the surface of the table. We’re sort of waiting for Elizabeth and David who got caught up making out outside. That happens, a lot, apparently, the Montagues getting lost in each other.
“Champagne?” a flight attendant asks, and I glance Church’s way. He gives a slight shrug of his shoulder.
“My parents will likely be on their laptops or gazing into one another’s eyes for most of the flight; they don’t care if you drink.”
I accept some champagne then, and clink glasses with Micah and Spencer.
“On our way out of the country, and goodbye crazy cult,” I mumble under my breath, leaning my head back and taking a long drink. I promised Dad that I wouldn’t go to Eric Warren’s house, and I intend to respect that.
But Ranger’s going.
The others are going to stay behind and watch over me.
It’s a crapshoot, but it’s worth a shot, right?
At the very least, I get a trip to London.
“Do poor people always wear dirty, mismatched socks with sandals on multi-million-dollar private jets?” Micah asks as Spencer grins. They love teaming up to pick on me. I kick his shin under the table and he makes a face at me.
“They’re not dirty! They’re just … discolored from lots of use, okay? God. Give me some credit.”
“Uh, are sandals with mismatched socks cool to wear to London in winter?” Spencer asks, and I give him a look. “Please don’t tell me you’re wearing those dirty boy’s underwear you like so much.”
“They were never dirty,” I grumble, poking him in the arm as the Montagues finally board the plane. Elizabeth blows through like a hurricane force wind, a presence to be reckoned with. I look down at the ring and then back up at her, a weight lifted from my chest.
This is never how I saw my life going, but … I like the direction it’s taking.
I like being engaged to Church, and baking naked with Ranger, watching gay porn with Spencer (we totally did once), drag racing with Micah, practicing martial arts with Tobias.
“Shall we?” Elizabeth asks, giving Church another kiss on the forehead before settling into her seat.
The flight attendants sit down, fasten their seatbelts, and we prepare for takeoff.“You look so West Coast,” Ranger whispers to me, Tobias, and Micah. I might be wearing sandals with socks, but they’re rocking big, poofy sleeveless vests with fur around the necklines, and shorts. “Cold as hell, foggy, drizzling. You guys are ridiculous.”
