Stroke of Midnight by Bonnie Edwards Read Free Book Online Page B

time. But she needed her rest more than he needed sex. His need would soon build to the breaking point and he’d have her again before they reached French airspace.
    For now, she lay on his bed, covers to her chin with her face buried in his pillow. While he toweled off after his shower, he watched her. Her hair spread across the pillow like a huge red flower, her shoulders, white and smooth, peeked out of the top of the duvet.
    Something in him stirred, something nearly forgotten. He ignored the feeling and brusquely finished drying off. He checked his face in the mirror for stubble, ran a hand along his jaw. He wanted his face in her pussy again, wanted to taste her and lick her and she’d never allow it if his whiskers burned her.
    He shaved. And caught himself whistling a tune he hadn’t thought of in years.
    When he checked and found her asleep, he pulled the duvet higher on her shoulders and left her to her nap. He quietly slipped out and headed for the cockpit.
    He took the co-pilot’s seat. “How are we doing for time?”
    The other man’s gaze took in Alex’s still damp hair and grinned. “Why? Want another round?”
    Alex frowned. “Maybe.”
    Carl faced forward, checked the gauges. “We’ve got three more hours, at least. Even you could get it up again in that time.” The jibe failed to hit the mark.
    “Droll. Nothing you can say can get me riled. Not today.” He had everything he wanted. The redhead in his bed, worn out from hot, hard sex, and two more weeks of the same stretching out before him. Golden.
    He stretched and yawned.
    “Take a nap,” Carl said.
    “No. I want to enjoy the moment.”
    Carl nodded. His uncle wasn’t a man with a lot to say, but when he chose to speak, he was dead honest. And he was the only family Alex had left.
    “It’s perfect. Right now. My life’s perfect. I have everything I want, and everything I want wants me back. There haven’t been many moments like this in my life and I want to savor it.”
    Savor her.
    Carl set the controls to autopilot and turned toward him. “I hear you. I once had a woman in Frisco who did this thing with her tongue—”
    “Fuck off.”
    “Oh.” Carl frowned. “It’s not like that.”
    “No, I don’t think it is.” The something near his heart that had awakened in the shower, stretched some more, shook off slumber and rolled.
    Damn.
    “Thing is,” he said, “she’s asleep and I don’t want her to be. I want to wake her, talk to her, learn about her.”
    “Oh shit.”
    “Yeah. Oh shit.”
    “Let her sleep then. She’ll appreciate it.” Carl looked off into the distance as if measuring what he’d say next. “Your parents felt that way within minutes of meeting. They met and married in a week.”
    “Yes, I know. My mother loved to tell that story.”
    “Your father said it was like a punch to the gut.”
    He nodded, recognizing the truth to the description. “Anything like that ever happen to you?”
    “No.” He chuckled, ran his fingers through his salt and pepper hair. “I’m too old now, I guess. That kind of thing passed me by.”
    Alex scrubbed his scalp. His hair was half dry. “The sky’s stretched out forever up here.”
    “Yep. Like a damn fine future. Blue, clear, unbroken. No obstacles, no traffic jams, no pedestrians, no stoplights. Yep, you think you’re flying along with nothing to stop you and bam, you’re in the shadow of some big fucking jumbo jet and feel the size of a flea.”
    “Life can be full of shadows.”
    “You should know.”
    Alex patted Carl’s shoulder, gripped it as a familiar sadness cross his mind. “I’ll go heat up some of Aretha’s soup. She make chicken noodle for me?”
    “Doesn’t she always?”
    Alex headed back toward the tight galley. He heard a stirring from the bedroom and peeked in at Jaye. “Hi,” he said when she lifted her tousled head from the pillow.
    “Hi, yourself.” The greeting came with the warmest grin he’d ever seen.
    “You look