enticing for my fractured sanity. I'd thought I'd learned this lesson from a young age: not to crave beauty. It had always been a character flaw from wanting the prettiest of flowers, the shiniest of jewelry, and the sparkliest of gems.
And men … I always, always, had the worst taste in those.
Forcing myself not to look at him any longer, I stepped away from all the temptation he offered and walked out the door. I had no idea where the president wanted us to meet him, but thankfully before I looked like an even bigger idiot, we found him marching down the hall, half a dozen of his men trailing behind.
"The car is waiting," he said when he reached us, and I felt Jacob's warmth at my back as he stepped closer. The fey didn't used to feel so warm to me, but I'd surmised that the more time he spent with his dragon, the warmer his energy was getting.
"We're ready," he said shortly, and the president nodded.
We followed him through the building in silence, walking the many halls, past countless doors. The silence was not what I'd call comfortable, but it was still infinitely better than small talk.
When we reached what looked like a secret side exit, we emerged into a parking garage, where a few cars were waiting. The president directed us to a black SUV with darkly tinted windows. It looked nothing like any vehicle I'd seen before.
"Bulletproof," Jacob murmured in my ear, no doubt noticing my wide-eyed stare. Bulletproof certainly explained the thick paneling on the sides and across the door.
I wasn’t as breakable as a human, so this was cool but kind of useless to us.
"We're heading to my private airfield," President Caine said when we were all situated in the car.
He had two bodyguards on either side of him, neither of whom I’d seen before. It seemed that most of the guards with him today hadn’t been in the normal roster. That made me uneasy, since I still wasn’t sure what his end game was.
Something told me we were going to find out soon though.
The other car with the rest of his guard drove out first and we followed. It was a smooth, silent ride, and within thirty minutes we were on the very impressive Air Force One aircraft, gliding into the blue skies.
I had no idea how long the flight was going to be, but I assumed a while, so I closed my eyes and attempted to doze off. I trusted my instincts to wake me if anything went wrong. Not to mention, Jacob was across the aisle from my chair, and as astonishing as it was, I trusted him to have my back.
A huge step forward for me.
A few hours into the flight, I fell into a proper sleep, only waking as they started to serve dinner. The food was good and I managed to finish everything on my plate. For some reason, up here, in the air where I couldn't change or influence anything, my anxiety was taking a rest. I even asked for a second serving of the quiche.
Who knew that eggs, tomato, bacon and some herbs could be so delicious?
"I need this recipe," I mumbled around a mouthful. "I mean, for whenever I learn to cook."
Jacob laughed, his head resting back on the headrest as he watched me closely. "I'm a rather good cook. I could teach you if you'd like? Quiche isn’t difficult, depending if you want to make your own base or not."
I blinked at him. "I … I really don’t see you as Mr. Domesticated. Are you telling me that you do the cooking in your family?"
He shrugged. "Yeah, a lot of the time I’m the cook. It's something I kind of enjoy. Everything except baking.”
I lifted my eyebrows, hoping he’d tell me more. Men talking about cooking was kind of my soft spot. Yeah, my relationship with the male sex was complicated.
At one point in time I had detested them all, refusing to even be in the same room as a man. Over the years, though, I’d learned to separate the individual from the whole. Some men could be bad, but it wasn’t all of them. I knew that now, even if, on occasion, I still hated them en masse.
And while my emotions around Jacob held a whole lot of confusion, hate was not part of it.
“Baking is precise, almost to the point of scientific,” he explained. “Like a formula I have to get right,