by Taryn Belle
But it was still better than the alternative, which was setting both of them up for the lifetime of misery her infertility was sure to inflict. Things may be fine between them for a few years, but she knew how this kind of thing rotted a relationship from the inside out until it was a decayed mess. She’d experienced it firsthand. No—she would keep this burden to herself, even if losing Dev was killing her as slowly and surely as arsenic poisoning. She’d barely slept a wink last night, shedding silent tears in her bunk until her entire being was sucked dry. A shell of the passionate, vibrant woman she’d been just a day ago when she’d allowed her life to be filled with the most incredible thing that had ever happened to her. Her eyes had been so puffy this morning she’d scared herself when she looked in the mirror. Cucumber slices, eye-drops and carefully applied makeup masked her painful truth as she’d climbed into the limo.
The hell of it was she still had a job to do, and that job involved close proximity to the man she adored. After Dev had left the plane, she’d noticed that he’d forgotten his guitar, so she’d taken a cab to the hospital. But now she was losing her nerve. He was in there doing something few people had the strength or stamina to, and she admired him deeply for it. She didn’t want to interrupt such a personal moment, but she also wanted him to have what he needed to do it properly.
She walked through the door. Maybe the moment wasn’t so personal after all, because it was easy to spot where Dev was from the small crowd of nurses and staff gathered in the hallway. As Kiki approached, she saw that the wall to the child’s room was made of glass, and that the curtain had been pulled aside to allow viewing from the hallway. She peered inside and saw Dev seated beside the bed. He was smiling down at a hairless boy, whose thin body was swallowed by his hospital gown. His mother stood nearby, recording the interaction on her phone.
Kiki stepped back. Even though the moment was being witnessed by many, the intimacy of it still made her feel like a voyeur. She clutched the handle to Dev’s guitar case tightly, wondering what to do. Maybe Dev didn’t need it. Maybe he’d even left it behind on purpose.
“You saved my butt,” Dev said.
Kiki looked over to see him standing in the doorway with a guarded expression. The crowd gave an appreciative laugh. She stepped forward and handed the case over to him, being careful not to let their fingers brush. He went back into the room. Kiki stood rooted to the spot as Dev started tuning his guitar, asking the boy for his request.
“‘Destroyer’?” she heard him tease, strumming the familiar opening chords. “Or ‘Up All Night’?” He switched chords again. “Wait—did you say ‘Desert Heart’?” He transitioned into the new song, continuing until he was playing a full medley of his greatest hits. The boy grinned ear to ear. But his mother...in Kiki’s emotional state, the sight of her was almost too much to bear. She was smiling as she watched the scene unfold, stroking her son’s arm with her free hand. Kiki may have experienced the death of her motherhood dream, but she couldn’t imagine the pain of losing a child she’d raised and loved. She felt a sudden flare of anger toward her own mother. The unfairness of it all—that this woman’s child was being taken from her when Kiki’s mom hadn’t even loved her enough to stick around—hit her full force. An ugly needle of envy pricked at her gut. Why couldn’t she have had a mother who stayed with her through thick and thin?
Dev moved to the end of the bed, as if he were onstage, and held up a pretend microphone. “Ladies and gentlemen, this one’s going out to a very special boy. Put your hands together for Konrad!”
Caught up in the moment, Kiki found herself clapping along with the rest of the crowd. Dev finally launched into the boy’s request, “Make Me Care,” putting as much energy into it as he did for any show. During the chorus he came closer to the child so he could join in singing with him. The whole world focused down to that one room, where the power of music could make even the most heartbreaking situations wondrous, where sorrow and joy entwined inseparably.
This is who Dev is, Kiki thought as tears came to her eyes. More human and compassionate than any person she’d known, and he was doing it all with a huge spotlight on him under an ocean’s worth of pressure. In that moment, her yearning for him filled her heart with a pain so palpable it took her breath away.
* * *
The drone of the engine filled the cabin as Dev sat across from Kiki, who had her phone in both hands as she furiously typed out the day’s social media posts. He sipped his club soda listlessly. For the first time since the tour had started, he truly wished he could just drown his sorrows in binge drinking. Performing for the boy had been uplifting, but also depressing as hell. And the frustration of sitting next to the woman he was so close to just yesterday, who now treated him like a practical stranger, had his gut twisted into knots. There was no cure for any of it; there was only temporary numbness and forgetting, and even that wasn’t an option for him.
Pulling his eyes away from Kiki, he stared out the window at the blank whiteness. In an hour they would be back in Munich, and tomorrow they would fly to Sydney. Twelve days after that the tour would be over. He and Kiki would return to their separate lives on the same tiny island. This was the worst part of it all—that he would have to coexist with her, and that the home he’d so carefully built there would be spoiled for him. He would run into her, hear about her, even see her with other men. The thought was agonizing enough to make Dev’s toes curl in his shoes. He may have to move back to London, he realized, or even LA. Anything but face the excruciating reminders of what he’d once had.
In his peripheral vision, Dev saw Kiki put her phone down and look over at him. He stared stubbornly outside. “You’re amazing with kids.”
“Thanks,” Dev said flatly. His dejection was making him feel reckless; what did he have to lose now? “The only audience that doesn’t make me nervous.”
He expected her to laugh—as if—but instead she looked at him sharply. “Really?”
But she no longer deserved to hear his secrets. “No,” he said.
Her eyes were still on him. “Three kids, huh?”
“What?”
“You want three kids. You said it on In the Studio.”
“I thought you didn’t pay any attention to that shit.”
“I don’t. But I happened to see that one.” She picked her phone up from the table and started turning it end over end. Occupying her hands, Dev thought. This conversation is hard for her. “I always wanted one child. Just one.”
One child. But not with him, obviously. He stayed silent.
“I guess because they say we all subconsciously try to replicate our family of origin,” she continued as if he’d asked. “Maybe I thought having one would allow me to be the mother I never had. Or that giving my own kid the childhood I’d missed out on would restore my faith in the family unit.”
“So you don’t believe in the family unit?”
She shrugged. “My father did an amazing job raising me without my mother. Maybe it would have been worse if she’d stayed, I don’t know. But I’ve also realized it’s a lot to ask from one kid. Having them change my worldview, fix my childhood, prove that I’ll never be my own mother. Maybe I need to do all of that on my own.”
Dev shook his head at her. She was so damned mature and insightful, and yet she wouldn’t do the one thing he was certain would actually heal her. Why couldn’t she see that what they had could have changed her entire fucking world? “Is that why you don’t want me?”
Her eyes widened. “Don’t say it like—”
“Why not? It’s the truth. We were in a relationship, Kiki, even if it was short. You hide behind generalizations and vague explanations. I know you don’t want to hear this, but this is how much I care about you. I want you to actually learn something from this so you might be able to be happy with someone one day.”
She was shaking her head. “No. God, Dev, I don’t want anyo
ne else. I—you’ve ruined me for anyone else. Things are just...complicated for me.”
He couldn’t keep the fury out of his voice. “Then enlighten me, Kiki. We have forty-five minutes of air time ahead of us, and I am all ears.”
He saw a blush rise to her cheeks as he pinned his eyes on her face. She shifted uncomfortably. The pause stretched into a silence. He tamped down his boiling frustration. What the hell was she so afraid to tell him?
That she has a prescription drug dependency, maybe? the monster whispered.
Dev crammed it back into its dungeon.
“I’ve found a woman who might be my mother.” Kiki brought her hand up to her mouth after she said it, as if the sentence had fallen out against her will. Then she dropped it again. “I’m, uh, going to look her up. I was afraid to tell you, because I’m so scared she’ll reject me again.”
“Kiki. God.” He shook his head. “You were afraid of that?”
“I also happen to have an ex-husband who left me.” Her chin was trembling. “Rejection has been a bit of a running theme in my life. It took me so long to—to accept that you saw something special in me. And I didn’t want anything to change your mind.”
Dev’s hands gripped his armrests. Kiki was dabbing at her eyes, but he didn’t dare move. “I could never change my mind about you,” he said slowly. “The way you kept me at arm’s length for so long, I’d be a fool to at least not try to. But I couldn’t. I can’t.”
Kiki nodded, her eyelashes wet. “She’s in Sydney. It’s why I took the assistant job—partly, anyway.” She wiped a tear away with the back of her hand. “The other part was because of you. I tried so hard, Dev, but I couldn’t deny how much I wanted to be with you. And—I don’t know, it’s still not simple for me, but I want you so badly. I can’t let you go. This...you...” She waved a hand at him. “I need you.” Her voice caught with emotion.
I need you. Dev felt a warmth spread throughout his body, like ice melting. He unbuckled his seat belt and walked over to her. He crouched down beside her chair and cupped her cheek, wiping a tear away with his thumb. “You have me, Kiki. Jesus, you so fucking have me. And I will not abandon you. Ever. Do you understand me?”
“Yeah,” she whispered, bringing a hand up to cover his. “Okay.” She reminded him of a child, tiny and vulnerable. But inside, she was so incredibly strong. Stronger than he’d ever had to be in his life.
Kiki leaned toward him and paused, as if asking for permission, and then she landed a light kiss on his mouth. Dev’s lips stayed soft but closed, still afraid to trust this was real. She pulled back again and looked into his eyes. “Dev, I...”
He read her mind. Everything he felt, too, but it wasn’t the right time. That perfect sentence, uttered for the first time, deserved the perfect moment. He knew she felt that, too.
“I know,” he said quietly, bringing a finger to her lips. “Let me show you.” He slid his hand into her hair to cup the back of her head. He tipped her face back so he was above her, and drank her in with his eyes. That fringe of reddish hair above long lashes. That slightly pointed chin. Those freckles and that beautiful mouth. Her lips parted as her eyes searched his face. Dev felt his chest fill, his heart reconnecting to hers. His need for her filled him bigger than ever. Bigger than anything tangible and more potent than the most precious elixir.
When his lips came down on her, they were already open.
Kiki yielded to him immediately, her tongue sliding against his as their mouths communicated everything unsaid between them, bringing them further and further into each other. His arms slipped around her waist, pressing her to him tightly enough to crush the breath from his own lungs. An unintelligible sound escaped her throat, something accepting and yearning and tortured all at once. Something that revealed the depth of the moment to both of them, completely unhinging them.
Kiki slammed her hand down on her armrest and arched backward, exposing her throat to him. Dev attacked the hollow beneath her jaw, pressing his tongue into it and trailing his stubbled face down to her chest hard enough to make her cry out again. “Dev. Oh, God—”
Her hands came up to fist his T-shirt, and then they were everywhere. Yanking it up to touch his skin, sinking down the back of his jeans to grab his bare ass. As he moved over her, her leg came up onto the small table and swept it clear, knocking her phone and their drinks off in a tumble of spilling water and fluttering napkins. But they didn’t even pause. Her legs wrapped around his hips to pull his pelvis closer. The raw strength of her passion sent a delicious shock wave up Dev’s spine. Every thought that entered his head came out of his mouth in a breathless, guttural voice he barely recognized as his own. “Jesus Christ, my sweet little strawberry, I need you so much. So perfect...never stop...give me that beautiful fucking mouth, it’s all mine.” Her boots were digging into his back so hard it hurt, her nails clawing at his back. Dev ripped her jeans open so forcefully the button snapped off. He yanked her black thong down far enough to give his fingers access, and then he sunk them into her wetness, grinding the heel of his hand against her clit. Her hips rolled into him, and she threw her head back and let out a long, ecstatic string of words. “Yesyesyes—”
Through his fervor, a blurry thought took shape in Dev’s head: he needed to get them out of there. Somewhere private. And if he didn’t do it right this second it would be too late because he would fuck her right here and now, flight crew be damned—and it would not be quiet.
He got his arms around her waist again and lifted her out of her seat. Kiki’s legs and arms wrapped around him as her mouth crashed to his. He considered his choices. There was the bathroom, but it was cramped. The sleeping quarters were more comfortable, but less soundproof. He headed there because as much as he needed to fuck her, he also needed to feel her body close to him. He walked them to the back of the plane, ripped the privacy curtain open and lowered Kiki onto the narrow bed.
* * *
Kiki was feverish, delirious with desire, barely cognizant of where they were in time and space. In a plane, on a bed made up with a duvet traced with the airline’s logo. Nothing but a thin curtain separating their intense greed for each other from the airline crew. Kiki didn’t care what they might think. She didn’t care that she’d let down her carefully constructed guard to allow the man she desperately needed back into her life. She didn’t care about the conversation that would have to come tomorrow as a result. All she cared about was feeling Dev deep inside her again, and hearing the rasping breath of his desire for her as they moved together as one. That first kiss had opened something in her she didn’t even know existed, a chasm of need so deep that only one person on earth could ever fill it. Dev.
She still had the pink top on she’d carefully chosen that morning: feminine but not too sexy, because she hadn’t wanted to flaunt what Dev couldn’t have in front of him. Her jeans and thong were around her ankles, and Dev, still fully dressed, was reaching for her boots. They were tight, requiring effort to remove, especially in these cramped quarters. “Forget them,” she panted as she writhed on the mattress, desperate to feel the pressure of his body, his hand, his mouth—any part of him at all—on her aching clit. “Just fuck me, Dev. Please.”
He practically dove on top of her, crushing her beneath him as his mouth came down on hers again. Their teeth knocked together. She could sense it for both of them—that control was a long-ago-deserted notion buried by their mutual fervor. Pointless, and completely unnecessary.
Kiki got her hands between their torsos and opened Dev’s belt buckle. He lifted off of her long enough for her to get his pants open and pushed down his hips along with his boxers. Dev shoved her thighs apart mercilessly, causing her ankles to strain against the binding force of her jeans. She grabbed his rock-hard cock greedily and positioned it at the part of her that could never lie to him. She could push Dev away as much as she wanted to, but here, her lush wetness revealed her true feelings
for him.
Dev drew up on his hands to look down at her. “Now,” she said urgently, and then bucked her hips up to envelop his cock in one swift movement. Dev gasped, pulled out—and then began to fuck her in a way she’d never experienced. It was brutal, so urgent and unrelenting that it made their bodies slick with sweat, and yet restrained at the same time in a hopeless attempt at discretion. Dev’s eyes locked on hers as he drove into her, taking her straight to heaven, and his scent was the most arousing thing she’d ever known. His belt buckle banged against her thigh again and again, and she relished the idea of being marked by him. She could feel it in every rapturous thrust—Dev’s need to possess her, meeting her need to be his.
Kiki’s climax was woven into every sensation of her body so that she was barely aware of where it began and ended. She heard herself saying Dev’s name over and over again, and it was only when she felt his mouth on her shoulder, pressed hard against her skin to muffle his release, that she knew he was coming with her.
When she returned to her body there were a hundred things she wanted to say, but the words jumbled in her head so that all she could do was listen to the sound of their breathing. Dev shifted her sideways with her back against the padded wall of the plane, and then he wrapped his arms around her head and pulled her into his chest. He caged his legs around hers so that she was immobilized against him, their bodies and breaths melding together. There wasn’t a sentence in the world that could describe what had just happened between them. And as she felt her heartbeat in every part of her body, she was exactly where she wanted to be, her entire world shrunken down to a three-by-six-foot space floating over Germany.
