I was also thinking about the increased frequency and vividness of my sex dreams as well as the resultant saliva on my pillow. I’d had to change the pillowcase four times in a week.

Four times!

Add to his apparent apathy—at least for all things me—was the fact that I didn’t know how to bring up the subject of his family without feeling like a conniving charlatan, and I felt a little overwrought, sexually stunted, and nauseous.

Make that a little nauseous and a lot stressed out.

“Hi,” he said.

I blinked at him several times in rapid succession, bringing his face into focus. I’d been staring at him. But I wasn’t really looking at him. Looking at him these days hurt a little. Therefore, I’d begun the practice of starting at one thing on him—like the scar above his eyebrow, or the top button of his shirt, or a single red stripe on his tie.

“Hey.” I shifted in my seat, realized I’d been gripping my iPad too tightly, and loosened my fingers.

“Are you alright?” He asked this question as if he already knew the answer, as if he knew I was starving and he’d just asked me if I wanted to lick the frosting off his cupcake. It was a little irritating.

Therefore, I didn’t answer his question.

Instead, I said, “I think I need a pet name.”

“Pardon?”

“I think you need to give me a pet name—a term of endearment.”

His face was its typical impassive mask, but I could tell that I’d surprised him.

Finally, he said, “Like…babe?”

“No—that feels awkward and wrong and has undertones of pedophilia. I’m thinking of something more age appropriate, yet affectionate.”

He considered me, my request. I was pleased to find that he appeared to be taking it seriously. “Cupcake?” he asked.

“No food.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m not edible.”

“I disagree.”

My eyes widened before I could control my body’s response to his bluntly spoken statement, mostly because I didn’t want to delve too deep into the matter for fear that I would haul him back to the lavatory to prove that I was edible. Instead, I said, “Okay…I’ll take food under advisement, but I think we should continue the search.”

“Dove?”

“Dove? No.”

“Why not dove?”

“Too close to ostrich, and falcons eat doves for lunch.”

“So?”

“So, I think of you as a falcon. And, although we’ve established that you consider me edible, I don’t like the mental image of you killing me for a meal, my feathers strewn about in a bloody mass of….”

“Alright, not dove. What about sweet pea or lamb?”

“Meh.”

“Meh?”

“They don’t feel right.”

He placed his report on the chair next to him, rested his elbows on the armrests, and tented his fingers. “You suggest something then.”

“Okay…what about Medusa?”

He grimaced. “Medusa?”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s not giving me a good mental image.”

“What? Why? Poseidon thought she was lovely.”

He sighed, frowned, and shook his head. “How about kitten?”

Kitten? “Kitten?” I thought and said the word at the same time.

“Yeah. Try this on—” Quinn paused, his eyes moved from mine to my mouth, neck, chest, then up again; the return pass left his gaze half lidded and lazy. All of this effected a leisurely inspection that might have been lewd if attempted by anyone else. But, as Quinn was my fiancé and the man I was head over heels in love with, the perusal made me a lot agitated (in the best and most frustrating way possible).

Then, low and intimate, he said, “Hey, Kitten.”

“Guh,” was my automatic response. Actually, it was barely a sound, more just an inadvertent rumble of lady-feels. My stomach flipped and heat blossomed in my chest. I think I’d like anything he said using that voice.

His eyes danced between mine then landed on my lips. His mouth curved slowly into one of his slow, sexy grins. “I like this. This was a good idea.”

I had to swallow twice before I could speak. “Why?”

“Because you just purred like a kitten,” he responded, using the same low, sexy voice.

I wondered for a brief moment what the hell was wrong with me. I could be married to this man, right now—right this minute. Instead, I was sitting across from him, not touching him, and nearing volcanic levels of sexual frustration just because he’d called me kitten.

“I need a drink.” I choked. I was desperate, and self-medication with alcohol seemed like a pretty good idea. As well, I was sweating. My neck was damp and my stomach and chest were hot.

“Not a cigarette?” he asked and, damn him, he grinned.

“No. Not a cigarette.” The words may have emerged a bit grumpily—mostly because he was just sitting there, cold as an icicle, and I was melting.

I set my iPad on the seat next to me and peeled off my jacket, then unbuttoned the top two buttons of my blouse. I didn’t care if he knew he made me hot. He did make me hot. That was truth. We were getting married, and I might as well own the fact that, when he wanted to and sometimes when he didn’t want to, he affected my internal temperature, heart rate, blood pressure, and endorphin levels.

“Are you warm?” he asked, looking only mildly interested.

“No, Quinn. I’m hot. In fact, I’m burning up, in case you didn’t already know.” Throwing caution to the wind, I stood and released a third button, pulled my shirttails from my skirt, and fanned the fabric, trying to encourage air flow. “You have an incendiary effect on me, and I’m quite uncomfortably aroused right now. Your biometrics might be completely unaffected by my presence, but all you have to do is call me Kitten and I experience vasomotor symptoms.”

“Vasomotor symptoms?”

“A hot flash,” I said simply. “But it’s not a real hot flash, not like the kind brought on by menopause. If it were then I’d have to go get my pituitary gland inspected. Hot flashes are typically associated with the hormone changes that occur during menopause, but…in some women….”

Quinn cut me off by sliding his hands to the back of my legs and up my skirt, and pulling me to his lap. I basically crashed into him, and he took advantage of my stunned flailing to caress me, cup me through my panties.

“Guh,” I said and paired it with a gasp, every nerve ending abruptly on fire. Quinn grabbed a fistful of my hair with the hand that was not pressing against my center, and—quite roughly—tugged my head back to expose my throat.

He sucked on my neck. Then, he bit me. Like, bit me. It was painful and fantastic, and tangentially my mind told me that it would leave a mark. At once, I was aware of a few things.

First, he was hard—in a way that I imagined was quite painful—beneath my bottom. Even through the clothes that separated us, I felt how markedly his biometrics were affected.

Second, his fingers were pushing my underwear out of the way and entering my body. I was so ready for his invasion—I was beyond ready. If ready were the Illinois-Iowa state line, I was doing circles around the moon.

Third, we were no longer alone.

“Mr. Sullivan, the pilot wants to know—oh my God! Sorry!” I heard Donna’s voice over my shoulder. I stiffened.

Quinn removed his mouth from my neck just long enough to issue the command, “Go away.”

The next sound I heard—other than my own frenetic breathing—was Donna’s shoes scurrying down the aisle back to the galley.

His kisses felt both frantic and methodical, as did his fingers between my legs, which were beginning to shake. I shifted on his lap, my h*ps bucking, my hands searching for purchase, and bursts of light rimmed my vision. It didn’t take long before I was ready to explode.

Then, I did explode. At least, it felt like an explosion, and this time he didn’t capture my mouth with a kiss to deafen the sound. Instead, he just let my moans turn into screams—because I was a screamer—until my throat was sore and I was completely spent.

I collapsed against him, curling into his body, gripping whatever part of him I could.

Quinn released his hold on my hair and wrapped me in his arms, though he made no attempt to put either of us to rights. My skirt was around my waist, my underwear halfway down my hips; and at some point, my shirt had been pulled open and several buttons were missing.

I swallowed, my throat a tad sore from my expressive appreciation, and I placed several kisses on his neck and jaw.

It occurred to me that the bet was over, that we would be getting married within the next twenty-four hours, that I could say goodbye to all the manufactured stress. It was an amazing feeling. I smiled and nipped at his chin.

“So…I guess the wedding’s off,” I said, my voice raspy.

Quinn nuzzled my ear, licked it, made me shiver. “Why would you say that?”

I pulled away so I could look into his eyes. “Because I lost the bet. I couldn’t last.”

“You didn’t lose the bet.”

I frowned. “I didn’t?”