"Soph. Sorry I was in the front with the pilots." Teddy's hand came to rest on my lower back in greeting.
"Hey." I turned to face him and instinctively leaned for a hug, as if I craved familiarity after stepping into such an unfamiliar environment.
Teddy's arms wrapped around me, squeezing, and I relaxed into the hard contours of his body, inhaling the recognisable spicy cologne. Same guy I'd known for the last month; he just happened to own a private jet.
"You alright?" he asked, leaning back with his hands still gripping my waist. "You seem worried. Nervous flyer?"
I'd joked many times before about the excessiveness of Teddy's life. Personal bodyguards. Dedicated driver. Hotel suite. Maybe he'd seemed relatively normal before, and that's why I'd felt able to poke fun at the parts of his life that weren't so normal. But a private plane took his wealth—his lifestyle—to a whole new level.
"Just worried about your carbon footprint." I forced a smile.
Tension drained Teddy's shoulders, and his hands dropped from my waist. "I'm carbon neutral. How was your family lunch?"
As I told him about the awkward meal, he led me through the cabin and explained that we needed to sit in the armchairs for take-off but could move around once airborne. He seemed so at ease in the plane, like we were in his own home. With the amount of travelling his career involved, perhaps it did represent a second home to him.
"You sure you're not a nervous flyer?" Teddy asked as we settled into two armchairs opposite each other.
"I'd struggle with travel blogging if I hated flying."
"You asked about my carbon footprint. Perhaps you use more environmentally friendly methods of travel." He shrugged.
I buckled my belt with a chuckle. "I'd love to but flying is always the cheapest option."
"So why do you look so nervous? Don't you like the plane?"
"No, I much prefer travelling in a cabin with hundreds of other people, cramped in a tiny seat with minimal legroom."
Laughing, Teddy glanced over his shoulder towards the front of the plane and nodded at Mark. Mark then nodded at someone else, and the door to the cabin shut. So much communication with so few words, as if they'd created their own silent language through years of working together.
"Just checking," Teddy said, twisting back to look at me again. "In case you'd changed your mind. I'm still ecstatic you agreed to come."
"Like you said, great opportunity for my blog."
His lips twitched, like he suspected that wasn't the only reason I'd agreed. Remembering my conversation with Becca, it wasn't necessarily a bad thing if Teddy thought I was here under false pretences.
"There aren't many people," I said, noting the sparse cabin.
Mark and three other men sat at the front, but Teddy and I had the rear of the plane to ourselves.
"My manager is meeting us there," he replied. "She always likes to fly out first, check there won't be any nasty surprises."
"Like what?"
"Just with the venues and questions."
"You approve the questions before they're asked?"
A chuckle rumbled from his chest as he shook his head. "I wish. There are certain topics I can't legally discuss, so she makes sure they aren't part of their conversation points."
That piqued my interest. Before I could ask him to expand, he powered on.
"That doesn't mean they won't ask me those questions—some like to try their luck—but I can't answer them if they do, so it's a waste of a question and a waste of their time."
"What kind of topics?"
Crossing one ankle over the other, Teddy scraped a hand over his chin. The plane began to taxi towards the runway, and I had a fleeting moment of panic as I tried to recall if I'd packed everything.
"It's a well-known fact that I dabbled with drugs when I was younger," he said. "It helped with anxiety before performing. I then got therapy, cut out the drugs... I was very open about it at the time, but journalists are never satisfied knowing the disclosed facts. They want the scoop. They want to know where I got them, who else in the industry is using, if I'd ever go back..."
"I'd guess it's pretty rife."
"You'd guess correctly," he said with a small smile. "But my management invested a lot of time helping me get clean, and they made me promise I'd never use it as a talking point again. I've told my story, and that should be it as far as the media is concerned."
"It hardly plays into your family-friendly brand."
"Hardly." He winked. "Anyway. There's that. I'm not allowed to talk about Lacey, either. That's part of an agreement with her management."
Interesting. If Teddy couldn't talk about Lacey, then he couldn't set straight any stories that came out about them. And there were a lot of stories.
"Lacey spoke about it," I said. "On Twitter."
Teddy wrinkled his nose. "Not really. She made a joke about an article. She didn't explicitly confirm or deny it. But that's why my manager lost her mind about our behaviour in the club. We can't confirm or deny anything, yet we're causing further stories to get published."
"And why can't you talk about her? Surely it'd be easier to release a statement and move on?"
We paused the discussion as the plane's engines roared and propelled us down the runway, into the sky. I'd half-expected Teddy to use the distraction as a way to change the subject, but he didn't. Not that his answer pacified me, either.
"Soph." He leaned forwards, elbows resting on his knees, an eyebrow lifting. "You can't even call me by my real name. I think we should wait until we know each other well enough for you to do that before discussing something like this."
"Shit." I mirrored his raised eyebrow, my mouth twitching. "Is it that bad?"
"Can't say. Legally bound." Teddy made a motion of zipping his lips, but his eyes twinkled.
"I just find it weird calling you Ed. I know you as Teddy."
"You don't really know me as Teddy. You didn't know me at all."
"Fine. I knew of you as Teddy. Better?"
He nodded, just as Mark approached to grant us permission to roam about the cabin if we wished. Teddy unclipped his belt and twisted to sit sideways in his seat, legs dangling over the armrest.
"It's two hours to Rome," I said. "Plenty of time to get to know each other."
"I agree. Are you a member of the Mile High Club yet?"
Rolling my eyes, I loosened my belt but didn't release it. "I obviously didn't mean it in that way."
"Shame. That was the only reason to take the private jet." His sparkling eyes danced down to my mouth as his lips tipped up. "There's a bedroom in the back if you change your mind."
As his explicit suggestion settled in the thickening air between us, I shifted in my seat, crossing one leg over the other to suppress the liquid heat that pooled between my thighs.
"I won't change my mind," I said, thinking of my promise to Becca. Then I remembered I was still supposed to be leading him on, regardless of my genuine intentions. "Not today, anyway."
Smouldering blue eyes burned into my own, and I fought to hold his powerful stare rather than shudder under the intensity of it. We said nothing, but I still felt like he could read my mind, like he could see every inappropriate thought that flowed through it. But it was either my imagination or he took pity on me because his gaze lightened, and he let the subject drop.
"Want to play a game to expedite the getting-to-know-each-other process, then?" he suggested. "We ask each other questions, and the same questions can't be repeated by the other person, so choose carefully."
"Okay, sure—"
"I'll go first. How many people have you hooked up with?"
Bastard. He clearly wanted to take that question out of play. Would I even want to hear his answer, though? Becca was already an insignificant fuck to him—knowing how insignificant wouldn't improve matters.
Sighing, I folded my arms. "Kissing or sex? They're very different numbers."
Amused, Teddy drummed his fingers against his thigh. "How different?"
"Is that your second question?"
He seemed to consider it, then shook his head. "No. Sex only."
"Nine."
I waited for his reaction, but he gave little away. No judgement, shock or approval swam in his eyes. Nothing.
"My go," I said. "Craziest place you've had sex."
Groaning, Teddy peered over the top of his chair towards our fellow passengers. His team. They were too far away to hear, but his caution intrigued me—was this something he did without their knowledge?
"I don't know, Soph. It's not like I can have sex in public."
"Come on, I won't judge. What about from before you were famous?"
Teddy shrugged. "I didn't lose my virginity until—" He cut himself off, eyes flickering over me. "Never mind. Not volunteering that information."
Fine, that would be my next question, then.
"So, my original question?" I prompted.
"Okay, craziest place is probably in my dressing room. Boring, I know."
Boring and totally predictable. I wondered just how many fans had had the pleasure of a dirty dressing room sofa beneath their back.
Casting his eyes upwards, Teddy pondered his next question for me—or at least pretended to.
"How old were you when you lost your virginity?"
"Oh, come on. You've only asked me that so I can't use it as one of my questions."
His lips quirked as he shrugged. "That's the game. If you want to discuss sex outside the game, all you have to do is ask."
Maybe he had been able to tell how much his offer of plane sex had rattled me. The subtle smirk ghosting his lips suggested so, anyway.
With a huff, I trudged through memories of great sex until I could recall my first time. Was it supposed to be special? Because the only thing I remembered was it being completely unremarkable. A lot of fumbling with the condom, a bit of pain, and then an overriding feeling of, is this it?
"I think I was seventeen."
"You think?"
"If I'm honest, Ed, it isn't something I think about often. It was with a college boyfriend who I dated on and off, and it didn't exactly blow my mind."
"Shame."
"Yours was better, was it?" I arched an eyebrow.
"Mine was great."
"Are you sure the girl felt the same way?"
He gave me a playful nudge to the knee with the side of his foot. "She came back for more, so I assume so."
I rolled my eyes and leaned back in my chair, gazing out towards the clouds. Even the windows seemed bigger in this plane.
"Favourite sex position," I said, returning my attention onto him to gauge his reaction.
"Do all your questions have to be about sex?" he asked with an exaggerated sigh.
"You started it."
"Only because I was trying to rule out potential questions you could ask me."
Knew it. Perhaps he could read my body language, but I was holding my own when it came to reading his mind.
Grinning, I replicated his earlier playfulness by nudging his dangling foot with my calf. "Likewise. Besides, if you want me to get to know you better, knowing the most intimate parts of you is a great way to do that."
Teddy swung his legs around to the front of his seat and shifted forwards until only a tiny slither of air separated our faces. A faint aroma of mint drifted from between his lips, our mouths so close that I could almost taste it.
"My offer still stands. We can get to know each other much better in the plane's bedroom if sex is the route you want to take."
His fingers curled around my knee, squeezing with gentle purpose. The warmth of his touch fluttered along the inside of my leg, settling between the apex of my thighs and re-igniting the earlier heat that had simmered there. Although Teddy's eyes sparkled with mischief, an unmistakeable tension hummed in the space between us.
"I'm good with the questions," I said before I could make a bad decision. "Would rather find out what I'm letting myself in for first. So... Favourite sex position?"
Retracting his hand from my leg, Teddy leaned back in his chair. The heat lingered as his eyes bore into mine.
"You're probably going to say this is a cop-out answer, but it depends on the vibe," he said. "Slow and romantic is very different to fast and spontaneous."
I considered this, wondering which category fucking fans would fit into. Neither romantic nor spontaneous. Definitely fast, though—especially when it came to kicking them out afterwards. I tried to focus on that rather than imagining what the vibe would be between us.
"You know," he said, "this is actually great practice for my interviews."
"Wonderful. So I'm getting the public-facing answers rather than the real ones, am I?"
Smiling, Teddy propped an ankle on his knee. "Nah. You're getting the real ones. But it still helps me to think about what they might ask."
"Are they really going to ask you about your sex life, Teddy? Ed?"
His previous answer was indeed a cop-out, but it looked like he wasn't prepared to divulge more, and I couldn't pry without risking another tense deviation.
"They'll try. And one wrong answer from me could be a PR nightmare. Anyway, I've got another question for you."
"Go on..."
"Biggest regret?"
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Thank you for reading :) xx
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