"Garcia, I swear to god—"
"What? You'll fire me? Write me up? You grabbed my wrist because some guy smiled at me and now you're pretending it was about work?" I'm keeping my voice low but my blood is up and I can feel my alpha instincts doing something stupid, something possessive and hot, because Miles is flushed and angry and the ice is cracking and I'm the one doing it. "Just say it. Say you didn't want him flirting with me."
"You are unbelievable." He's almost whispering now, his voice tight and furious. "You are the most unprofessional, reckless, infuriating—"
"Say it."
"—person I have ever had the misfortune of—"
"Miles."
"Don't call me that."
"Then stop lying to me and I'll call you whatever you want."
His eyes are burning. I've never seen him like this. His breathing is fast. Mine is faster. We're close, too close, our faces turned toward each other in the dim cabin. I can feel the heat coming off him.
The cabin lights dim. Around us, people are settling in, pulling blankets over their laps, adjusting eye masks. The plane getsdarker and quieter and it's just us, the two of us, surrounded by sleeping strangers.
"This conversation is over," Miles says. But he doesn't turn away.
"Okay," I say. I don't turn away either.
We sit there. The anger is there but it's shifted into something else, something heavier, and my cock jerks again. His breathing hasn't slowed down, and neither of us is pretending to read or sleep or do anything except sit in this unbearable space between us.
I pull the thin airline blanket over my lap because I need to, and I see Miles's eyes track the movement. He looks at the blanket. He looks at my lap. He looks away, fast, but not fast enough.
"You're hard," he says, and his voice is barely a whisper, and I can't tell if it's an accusation or a question.
"Yeah," I say. "I am."
He closes his eyes. His fingers are white-knuckled on the armrests.
I put my hand under the blanket. Not on myself. On the armrest between us. My fingers are an inch from his, under the blanket where nobody can see.
"Tell me to stop," I say quietly.
Miles
Ray's palm moves from the armrest to my thigh, slow and deliberate, fingers spreading over the fabric just above my knee. The blanket covers both of us from the waist down, and the cabin is dim, and everyone around us is asleep or pretending to be, and Ray Garcia is touching my leg and I'm not pushing him off.
I should push him off. I should tell him to move and then I should go to the bathroom and splash water on my face and come back and pretend this never happened. That's what a smart person would do. That's what Miles Covington, senior associate, partner-track, would do.
His thumb moves. Just a small stroke against the inside of my thigh, back and forth, and my entire body lights up. I press my head back against the headrest and close my eyes and try to remember why this is a bad idea. It's a bad idea because he's my assistant. Because we're on a work trip. Because Richard Aldridge is expecting me to give the most importantpresentation of my career and I'm sitting here getting stiff because a twenty-three-year-old in a wrinkled shirt is touching my leg.
"Breathe," Ray murmurs, barely audible. His lips are close to my ear. When did he get this close?
"I am breathing."
"You're not. You're holding your breath."
He's right. I force air into my lungs and it comes out shaky, and I hear him make a low sound in his throat.
His fingers slide higher. Still over the jeans, still innocent enough to be deniable if someone looked over, but we both know what's happening. He presses into the muscle of my inner thigh, and I have to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from making a sound.
"You're tense," he says quietly, like we're having a normal conversation. Like his thumb isn't six inches from my dick. "You've been tense since we left the airport."
"I'm always tense. It's a personality trait."