Devotion [Book 1]

Good At Goodbyes

Chapter 7

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"Welcome back, Agent Romanoff." Maria Hill greeted as Natasha stormed up the ramp of the quinjet, her boots echoing loudly off the metal grates beneath her feet.

Instead of answering, Natasha shelved her bag into the cargo area above the back seats of the jet and then swiveled sharply and dropped down into a seat. If the redhead was surprised that Maria had greeted her in the quinjet instead of Fury's plane, she didn't show any signs of concern as she proceeded to pull out her phone and began to type furiously at the keypad.

Maria, unbothered and accustomed to the other woman's lack of acknowledgment, took her seat by the pilot and gave him the order to seal the ramp back up and prepare for take-off.

After a few minutes of ignoring the hyper-focused tension emanating off the spy in the back of the jet, Maria radioed in confirmation of retrieval back to the plane's co-pilot and patiently awaited further instructions.

As she waited, she cast a side-eyed glance towards the redhead behind her. It didn't take an idiot to deduce that there was something off with the normally passive spy. But as it was neither her place nor her job to act as a nurse maid to the wayward agents she had to retrieve, Maria continued to work through her checklist as they prepared to return to Fury's plane.

The pilot beside her, who was normally exceptionally focused and well trained in ignoring the going on's of the payload they retrieved, cast her a sudden puzzled glance as an irritated huff echoed from their passenger. Maria narrowed her eyes in disapproval, and he was quick to return his eyes back to the main controls in front of him.

She didn't need this kind of disruption today, not when she was running a tight schedule that allowed for little to no error. Sparing a calculating glance over her shoulder at the sullen Romanoff, Maria made a quick visual assessment of the spy's physical welfare.

Despite the fact that the redheads normally pale cheeks and throat were flushed, Maria found no real cause for concern and was satisfied she needn't report anything out of order to Fury.

Returning her attention to the view in front of them, Maria settled in for their long flight back to their airborne base.

Meanwhile, in the seat furthest from the cockpit, Natasha agonised over how to construct a text message that would adequately justify her sudden disappearance from the house. She repeatedly typed, deleted and retyped message after message before giving up with a huff. There was nothing she could say that properly communicated all that she was feeling in that moment. But she knew that the longer she left it, the harder it would be to explain later.

The minutes ticked by painfully and she eventually grew tired of worrying at her lip and picked up her phone again, struggling to come up with the right thing to say.

What she wanted to say was that she was sorry she had lied to him. It was natural instinct for her to pretend she was unbothered and indifferent to matters of the heart. When in truth the kiss has surprised her by its intensity and had left her wanting nothing more than to screw the blonde's brains out right there and then on the sparing mats. In that moment the world could have been about to end and she would have spent her last second riding her Captain to oblivion.

Her Captain. When had she started thinking about him as hers?

She shook her head and tried to clear the fog from her brain. This was wrong. She couldn't think like this. She couldn't be detached and aloof and then in the next second daydream about a man's lips on places other than that sweet spot he'd found on her neck. черт возьми!, just thinking about it made her thighs clench.