Where the Wild Things Bite(85)

Make it through security OK? --Jane, she’d written.

I wrote back, Yep, Burt says to tell you hi.

I could practically hear her snickering through the screen. Small town.

What are you even doing awake right now? Isn’t this super early in the vamp morning?

Not going to rest easy until I know you’re home safe.

Sweet but unnecessary, I wrote.

She sent me a picture of a huge stack of papers on her desk. Tell that to the incident reports I gotta fill out after your “hike.”

Fair enough. But as a warning, I’m thinking of doing some more traveling.

If it’s not in my region, not my paperwork. Where are you thinking?

Canada? Alaska, maybe? Somewhere cooler, I typed.

Andrea knows some people in Alaska. I’ll check with her.

Thanks. I’ll text when I land.

Do that. Talk soon.

I smiled when I switched my phone off. It would be nice to have a friend like Jane, someone who loved books as much as I did and seemed to understand my neuroses. And she had such a nice large group of friends, who all seemed to care about the people she cared about. What would it be like to have that sort of network of people who knew you so well? Maybe I would take her up on her offer to come visit sometime.

I felt the seat sink under the weight of another passenger sitting beside me. I didn’t look up. I was amazed that I didn’t need to scan whoever it was, assess the threat. But honestly, after fighting off a crazy pilot, badly behaved wildlife, and shapeshifters, what was a small-town airline passenger going to do to me?

“Fear of flying?”

My eyes popped open. I knew that voice, capable of packing so much smug sarcasm into just a few syllables. I looked up and smirked when I saw Finn sitting in the seat next to me, wearing some very large sunglasses and a baseball cap slung low over his face. “Fear of awkward conversations before crashing,” I told him, echoing my first words to him.

I reached over to the window shade and pulled it down. I gently took off his sunglasses and leaned in to kiss him. It went on and on, until someone in the row behind us made an uncomfortable ahem noise. I pulled back, licking away what tasted like sunscreen on my lips.

“How?” I asked.

“Very high SPF and a lot of caffeine,” he told me. “Please don’t walk away from me. I can’t promise that I’ll suddenly become a model citizen, but I can promise that I won’t lie to you. I won’t ever hurt you intentionally. Just give us a chance to figure out what we are when we’re not on a survival death march through the Kentucky marshlands?”

I kissed him again, people in row eleven be damned.

“You haven’t said anything,” he noted. “What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking of our next adventure,” I told him. “I’m thinking travel but in style this time. Room service. Beds with actual mattresses and sheets. No marsupials allowed.”

“I know this great hotel in St. Thomas.”

“I was thinking of somewhere cooler,” I told him. “Somewhere with fewer daylight hours. Andrea knows some people in Alaska. I was thinking that sounded interesting.”

“That does sound interesting,” he agreed, twining our hands together as the flight attendant started the safety instructions. “But I have one request first.”

“What’s that?”

“We stop at the first library we find and have sex in it.”

I burst out laughing and buried my face in his shoulder. “You’re not going to let that go, are you?”

“Never. And I’m never letting you go, either,” he told me, pressing his mouth against my temple. “Are you sure you don’t want to stay home for a little bit before striking out again?”

I grinned and shrugged. “What’s the worst that could happen?”