Page 174 of Foreplay on Words

“Our time or LA time?”

She shook her head and groaned. “I don’t even know what time zone we’re in.”

“You’ve been asleep for about three hours, so sometime around 1:00 pm Eastern,” I told her quietly.

“How much longer do we have?” she whispered and then let out an impressive yawn.

I pulled up the flight on the interactive screen on the back of the seat, and it said 2 hours, 49 minutes left in the flight time.

“We’ll get there around 4:00,” I responded.

“Have you been awake this whole time?” she asked, sounding a fraction more alert but still exhausted.

“Yeah. I got an idea, and it wouldn’t go away until I got it written out,” I nodded. And the quiet mixed with Chase’s warm presence at my side was the perfect environment to let out all the ideas in my head.

“You gonna let me see it?” she asked as she peeked around the corner of the laptop screen.

“Let me finish this bit, and then you can let me know what you think,” I nodded as I flexed my fingers over the keyboard of my laptop.

“Is this for our project or something else?” she whispered, her curiosity getting the better of her. I closed the laptop to foil her attempts to sneak a peek.

As I glanced behind us, I noticed that Kristine and Sam were both passed out cold, her nose pressed into his neck and his arm behind her back as she snuggled against his chest.

“We’re not in New York yet. Does that mean I won?” I jerked my head behind us, and Chase peeked through the seats, then leaned back with a smile on her face.

“Close enough,” she laughed quietly, a bright smile pulled across her lips.

My arm slipped around her shoulders, and I kissed the top of her head. “I promise it’s good.”

“You know I’m impatient when I have to wait for surprises,” she smiled up at me from under my arm. I knew she wanted to know, but she could wait a bit.

“I promise you’ll like what’s in store for us in New York.”

She settled her head back into my shoulder, and I opened the laptop back up when she dozed off again. This was a new genre, but I felt confident I could tell our story.

I was jolted out of a deep sleep when the wheels met the runway at the airport in New York. Hopefully, Chase would agree to be my wife one more day and a few hours later.

I wasn’t nervous about her answer anymore, but I wanted this to be special. Maybe all her romantic notions had rubbed off on me. I never thought I’d want to go to these lengths for anyone, but she deserved a little bit of a grand gesture for showing me that the world was something I could handle.

“Are we here?” Chase stirred against my shoulder and blinked up at me sleepily.

I’d finished the outline about an hour before we were supposed to land, put away my laptop, and dozed off with her for a little while.

I could hear laughing coming from behind us, so obviously, Kristine and Sam hadn’t decided to kill each other again.

“Yeah. We just landed, baby.”

“I’m still so tired. Please say we don’t have to do anything tonight,” she whined with a little pout on her lips.

“We can get to the hotel and relax. Adrian and Diana have us booked for a press event in the morning and then a reading,” I told her. I was glad that today was only for travel. The time away from home was starting to add up, making us all a little weary.

“Is that all we have tomorrow?”

I shook my head, trying not to give anything away. “Not exactly.”

“As long as it doesn’t involve a sex shop, I’m in,” I laughed because Adrian had mentioned us doing a reading at a BDSM sex shop in Brooklyn, but Diana shut it down quickly.

We were so close to being done with this tour. I was fine with the erotic gallery reading, but we didn’t need to delve too deeply into the scene because we already had some positive press.

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