by Jo Leigh
“I’ve got a car waiting for us,” he said.
“You’re still not going to tell me where we’re going?”
“Nope.”
She bit her lower lip and gripped the seat arms as they approached the runway. After the jolt of the landing, she could breathe again. “You know,” she said as they were rolling to the gate, “Midtown is going to be extra busy. New York Comic Con is happening this week.”
“No kidding?” He shrugged. “The city is always crowded.”
The seat-belt sign went off, causing half the passengers around them to spring up and get their luggage before the door was open. Matt among them. First class wasn’t too bad, though. They’d deplane first.
“Come on, slowpoke,” Matt urged. He had both their carry-on bags and was hogging the aisle.
She got in back of him and followed him off the plane and into the mellow chaos of the terminal. As soon as they stepped past the security point, a driver was there to greet them. He took the bags from Matt. The young man wasn’t wearing a uniform, but his suit was impeccable. “I’ve gone over my instructions with your assistant, Mr. Wilkinson. So if you’d follow me, please?”
His name was Diego, and he whisked them out of the airport like a champ. The car was a luxury black sedan, something stately that she’d never buy in a million years, even if she liked to drive.
“So what now?” she asked, settling in the backseat. “A blindfold? A bag over my head?”
“How about we make out until we get there?”
She looked in the rearview and met Diego’s dark brown gaze, which he shifted immediately. “I’d have to be a little drunk to do that.”
“Are you sure?” Matt leaned in, smiling. “Then how about a kiss? Just one,” he said. “Then we renegotiate.”
She was here, he looked happy, and she’d missed him so very much over two horrible days. Her hand went to one of her favorite places—his nape—and she brushed her fingers over his soft dark hair. “I missed you.”
He nodded. “I think my incessant phone messages were an indication of how much I missed you. I’m so sorry our conversation got hijacked, but even sorrier that I didn’t tell you about what was going on with London in the first place.”
“I forgive you. For both things,” she said, not that she thought it changed anything. But he already knew how she felt. No need to hit him over the head with it.
In the front seat, Diego cleared his throat. “We’ve arrived.”
Sam, who hadn’t been paying attention to anything but Matt, said, “How are we here? We were hardly in the car.”
“JFK isn’t that far from the Javits Center,” Matt said.
“But that’s—” She inhaled a gasp. “Comic Con? That’s where you’re taking me?”
“Yep.”
“Okay, now I really need to know what the heck is going on.”
“We’re going to Comic Con,” Matt said patiently. “What more explanation do you need?”
As much as Sam couldn’t believe that she was in New York at one of her favorite conventions, she was more confused than ever. He couldn’t have had this planned for long. “Matt, you have to have tickets for this. I think even the day passes have sold out.”
“I know.” He kissed her. A quick press of familiar lips, gone in a moment. Then her door was opened for her.
She got out, followed by Matt. While he spoke to Diego, Sam stared at the posters outside the venue. No wonder he’d insisted on her wearing her comfy shoes and worn jeans. If she’d known, though, she might have worn her Black Widow cosplay costume. She loved the character and didn’t have to dye her hair. Then again, maybe she wouldn’t have worn it. Not under the circumstances.
Matt’s arm went around her shoulders. “You ready? We’re meeting the liaison at the main entrance.”
It was a quick walk filled with a lot of civilians and cosplayers. Phones were already in use, taking selfies for Instagram. A short slim woman who looked all business must have recognized Matt as they approached the doors.
“Mr. Wilkinson, I’m Grace Potter. Nice to meet you.”
He shook her hand. “Thanks for going to so much trouble.”
“It’s our pleasure.”
“May I introduce—”
“Oh, I know who you are,” Grace said, turning to Sam. “It’s a privilege to meet you, Ms. O’Connel. I play ‘Tree Town’ all the time. It’s one of my favorite games. And the work you did on ‘Red Velvet’? I just— I’m such an admirer. These passes are all access, including backstage at all our official venues. But I don’t think you’ll have trouble getting into any of our Super Week partner showcases. And here’s my card. Anything you need, you call me. That’s my personal number.”
“Thank you.” Sam blushed. “I’m really honored to get these passes. I promise we won’t lose them.” She put her lanyard over her neck and watched Matt do the same. He didn’t seem upset that she was the center of attention, but then, he hadn’t been like that ever. All she saw was his pride and respect for her.
“Shall we?” He held out his hand.
She took it, and it was like walking into Oz. It was only day one, so it didn’t smell too much like spandex sweat yet. “You really are insane for bringing me here, but thank you,” she said. “Have you ever been?”
“Nope.” The noise, the hugeness of the place, made them both slow to a stop. “How do we navigate this?”
“We go up,” she said. “That’s the real treat in having passes like these. We can look out over the floor and plan our attack from there.”
“You have some favorite things to do?”
“Oh, yes. If Diego’s the one picking us up, I hope he brings a bigger car. I tend to spend a lot.”
“No,” he said, mocking her terribly.
“Well, most of the things I’ve collected are worth a lot of money now.”
“Oh, so you plan on selling them?”
“Are you crazy?” she said and realized when he grinned how she’d really walked into that one.
He squeezed her hand. “It doesn’t matter. As long as you get pleasure from it.”
“Coming here with a virgin is pretty pleasurable.”
“What? Oh. Yes. Is there an initiation or something?”
She wiggled her eyebrows, prepared to love every second of this. Of them. “We’ll get to that later.”
* * *
HIS ARM WAS getting sore. They’d made a bet that whoever saw a lemon in their travels got to hit the other in the arm. It was more of a token hit, but he’d spotted exactly two, whereas Sam had found eleven. He didn’t even understand why they were looking for lemons. It had to do with some radio show, and very definitely something to do with geek culture.
They spent some quality time with actors and writers whose names even he recognized. Sam was a celebrity in her own right and handled those conversations like a pro. When they finally left the heady altitude of the all-access-pass realm, they walked the floor, arguing over which superhero from the Avengers was the best. He was squarely on the side of Captain America, but Sam was convinced it was Iron Man. It got pretty heated. It ended only when they got to her favorite shopping mall, Artist Alley.
The plan was to buy whatever took their fancy. And he was surprised to actually feel somewhat at home there. He’d become a minor collector of some of the comics Sam had turned him on to way back.
All the major franchises were represented in art, books and merchandise. Star Wars, Doctor Who, S
tar Trek, Firefly, Marvel, DC, The Walking Dead, Game of Thrones. The list was never ending.
But so was the fascination he felt watching Sam in this world. Lots of people knew who she was. At first he’d thought all the skeezy-looking guys were checking her out, but then he realized that they had probably seen her picture and were just trying to figure out if it was really her.
She’d been especially welcomed in the booths of the game companies she’d worked with. It was really something. They were so surprised to see her, and all those brilliant men and women treated her like royalty.
She’d stopped at a lot of booths, and the two very large tote bags he held were already filled. But now she was at a vendor’s booth scoping out something that definitely wouldn’t fit in a car.
“How much, including delivery?” she asked. “And what do I do? Just send you the dimensions and it replaces a regular door?”
The man nodded and Matt grinned. The guy made doors that looked like the phone box from Doctor Who. Of course she would want one. It was perfect. If he’d seen it for sale somewhere, he’d have bought it for her himself.
The amount was a lot, as was the time needed to custom-make one and the cost to ship it to her. But the seller knew who Sam was and said he’d give her a discount if she’d let him have some pictures of her with the door after it had been installed.
She was glowing. Watching her have such a good time touched him deeply. She kept telling him who was dressed up like whom, stopping a lot of the women cosplayers to compliment them on their looks. It was charming as hell, especially when she got excited about questionable homemade costumes made with lots of love but little talent.
Sam was even more captivating here than she had been at the gala, and she’d impressed him beyond words there.
But the best part of the experience was when they were on the main exhibition floor, trying out games together. It didn’t matter who was around or what anybody thought—they went all out. Or as Sam liked to say, “balls to the walls.” He tried to argue that she was lacking in that department, but she just laughed and said, “Sweet Matthew, mine are big and brass and you’d better be careful because there’s an ET who’s about to eat your head.”
By the time they left, he was exhausted. Hard-core fandom was something he could appreciate, but he was more than ready to have Sam all to himself. They got to his place just after 10:00 p.m. It felt great to be home. To share it with Sam. He ordered a pizza, and they took showers—separately, to his chagrin—but it didn’t really matter. Because when he came out of the steamy bathroom, there she was in a nightshirt sitting on his bed, a big smile on her face. She looked so beautiful it made his heart stutter.
And she was his. At least for now. And he was pretty sure his odds of convincing her they could make it together had shot up.
* * *
SAM PUT HER chin on her fist and had herself a good old-fashioned ogle. “You’re so hot when you just come out of the shower wearing a teeny towel around your waist.”
“Thanks. I like your outfit, too.”
“Ah, you’re just saying that ’cause you’re horny.”
“Not true.” He tossed the towel in the corner. He wasn’t exactly hard as a rock, but he was getting there. “‘Horny’ indicates something vague, as if any woman could satisfy me, when I only want you.”
She smiled as he crawled into bed beside her. His hair still damp, he laid his head on his pillow, his eyes already darkened by desire. His minty breath brushed across her lips and slipped into her mouth.
“Tell me something,” she said. “How did you come up with this plan?”
His hand reached her before his words, and he slid his palm all the way from her neck down past her bottom and then made the return journey. “I promise to tell you, but later.”
Sam held on to a smile. She had no doubt the sex would be good. Off the charts. But she wondered if it was wrong to lead him on. She wasn’t sure what he’d been trying to prove by bringing her to New York or Comic Con, because it still changed nothing about their situation.
No, it wasn’t wrong for them to enjoy each other. That was the main reason she’d come. To be with Matt.
“What are you waiting for?” she asked with a teasing smile.
He moved the last few inches until his lips were so close to hers they breathed the same breath. From deep in his throat came a husky masculine sound that did something wicked to her insides. After removing her nightshirt, he ran his hands across every inch of her, as if he wanted to memorize every part of her body. She found herself doing the same thing—rubbing his hard muscles under his smooth, clean skin, reveling in the brush of his soft chest hair. Somewhere along the way, her leg had moved over his hip and she could feel the press of his very hard erection against her thigh.
“Condom,” he said. “Don’t move.”
She nodded, but then he knocked her leg down as he rolled to open his side-table drawer. She laughed, but he was back in a flash. As soon as he’d put on the damn thing, he lifted her leg back to his hip.
Then he kissed the stuffing out of her.
When she caught her breath again, he cupped her chin with his hand. “Hey. We can do something fancy next time, okay? This time, let’s just—”
She nodded eagerly and he was suddenly over her, making himself comfortable between her thighs. She felt him tremble. This strong, singular man was literally shaking with desire.
She lifted her hips, and he didn’t waste a second, quickly sliding a pillow under her.
“I hated being away from you,” he said, his voice three steps up from a growl. “I’m so goddamn glad you’re here.”
He entered her in one smooth glide, making her moan. No one else had ever made her feel this way. He seemed to be the key that unlocked all of her passion.
For a moment, the reality of their inevitable end made her gasp, but she shoved the thoughts away.
He didn’t even try to slow his pace once he looked at her. His face was right above hers, his back arched, sturdy arms holding him up. He found their connection, the one that had never been severed, and together, they moved as if they were made for this. For each other. The sex wasn’t all that fast, but it grew more intense by the minute. His thumb brought her off right before he lost his control and came inside her. There was a long note of tension, stretching so thin it had to break. When it did, he flopped beside her. Her insides twitched a few times, as did his legs, but the electricity between them continued to spark as they tried to get their breathing under control.
Finally, he ran his free hand over her cheek, his fingers tunneling into her hair, holding her steady. “Did you have fun today?”
A lump rose in her throat. God, she hoped this wasn’t his big plan. “You know I did.”
“I had fun, too.”
“Not as much as I did.”
He laughed. “Probably not.”
“Thank you, Matthew. I know you must have gone through a lot of trouble. I don’t even know how you managed to get tickets at the last minute. I’m assuming this was a spur-of-the-moment plan?”
He nodded. “But it wasn’t any trouble at all.” His eyes bored into hers. “Explain something to me. You love this stuff so much, why didn’t you book tickets?”
It amazed her that Matt, of all people, just couldn’t seem to understand her schedule. She sighed and pulled away. “I’m serious,” he said. “And puzzled. How long has it been since you’ve come to one of these?”
“Matt, please.
I shouldn’t have to explain this. I could barely eke out time for you. You know how busy I am.”
“I do,” he said, nodding. “And yet here you are. For three whole days.”
She started to say something but closed her mouth and stared at him instead.
“When I said it wasn’t any trouble getting into the convention, I wasn’t kidding.”
“Well, yeah.” She gave a casual shrug, but the unease in her chest hadn’t diminished. “I realized after I said it, with your name and resources, you could probably get anything you—”
“I had little to do with it. I just used your name and—” He snapped his fingers.
“What?” Sam let out a nervous laugh. “My name?”
“Yes, your name, Ms. O’Connel. They were very happy to accommodate the genius behind ‘Tree Town’ and all the security programs you’ve designed.” Matt smiled and moved closer to her. “Look, Sam, anything that happened today, starting with the first-class plane ride, the car picking us up, tickets to the convention... You have the resources to get all those things for yourself. But apparently, you needed me to do it for you.” He leaned closer and kissed her gently. “Just like I need you to remind me life isn’t only about work.”
He ran the backs of his fingers down her cheek. “I don’t remember having a better time than I did with you over this past week. I felt like a kid again. And I know you did, too. God, watching you today... What’s wrong with making time for fun? For each other? Life is brimming with possibilities, my beautiful Sammy. Are we going to ignore them? I’m not saying our careers aren’t important. I love what I do, and I’m going to continue to do it for as long as possible. But I’m very clear that I love you more. And years from now I don’t want to look back at my life and see that I missed out on the most important things. We balance each other out, Sam. We do. You can’t deny that.”
Right now she couldn’t do much of anything. Except blink back tears. “Damn you, Matt.”
