Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 80834 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 404(@200wpm)___ 323(@250wpm)___ 269(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 80834 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 404(@200wpm)___ 323(@250wpm)___ 269(@300wpm)
She looks up at me, and there’s a calculation in her eyes. “You like living on the edge, don’t you, Jack?”
I shrug, but she’s already smiling, like she knows the answer.
The museum is technically a single building, but the interior is maze-like—there are a multitude of catwalks, ladders, little nooks with half-dissembled helicopters or engine blocks. I take her hand to steer her through a tight spot, and she doesn’t let go, even when the path widens. Her palm is smaller than mine, skin so soft that I have an urge to caress her. I remember the last time a woman held my hand in public, and the memory is so faint it might as well be fiction.
We pause at a display with a table covered in Vietnam-era radios. Eliza eyes the battered headsets and picks one up, turning it over in her hands.
“What’s this one do?”
I take the set from her and fit it over her ears, then flip the PTT switch. “This is a field com. You’d use it to call in an airstrike, or beg for backup, or, if you’re like most pilots, complain about lunch.”
She giggles and bites her lip. “Did you ever call for help?”
“Once. Didn’t like it.”
She cocks her head. “And now you never ask for help?”
I meet her gaze. “Not unless I’m out of options.”
Something in her expression flickers—sympathy, maybe, or the understanding of someone who’s had to claw her way up from nothing. She smiles, but there’s empathy in her eyes. “It must be hard to be a soldier,” she whispers, then sets the headset down.
We drift through the rest of the exhibits, and I tell her stories, some true, some a little warped by time. Eliza laughs at all the right moments, asks intelligent questions about how to steer, how to evade, what it’s like to land a bird that’s leaking fuel and on fire. She’s a good audience, but more than that—she wants to know, wants to feel it through me.
I show her the cockpit of an old fighter, the seat barely wide enough for my ass, let alone her curves.
“Want to sit?” I ask, half-joking.
Eliza smiles and climbs up, hoisting herself into the cradle with more grace than I expected. The skirt rides up her thigh, showing off ivory flesh and my fingers itch to grab her to me. But I resist as Eliza pretends to fly the plane, curving the steering wheel right and left.
“Pew-pew!” she cries, pretending to fire machine guns.
“Very realistic,” I deadpan.
She giggles. “I bet you made way more embarrassing sounds in the cockpit.”
“Not unless you count praying.”
She lets the yoke rest and turns to me, her face close enough that I can see every detail— the little flecks in her iris, the pink at the tip of her nose.
“Show me how to fly it,” she says.
I wedge in behind her curvy form, hands on her shoulders, and lean down so my lips brush her ear. “The trick is, you never really control the aircraft” I say. “You just nudge it in the direction you want to go, and hope the wind doesn’t fuck you up.”
She shivers when I say it, and for a second, I’m not sure if it’s arousal, excitement, or both. She glances back at me, mouth parted.
“Sounds familiar,” she says, voice a little breathless.
I want to kiss her, right here, with her legs splayed and her hands on the throttle. But instead, I help her out of the seat, gripping her waist a little tighter than necessary.
We end up at the last display: a battered simulator, the kind that costs more than a luxury car and runs on software older than either of us. I dig the key out of my pocket and flip the switch; the thing powers up with a whine and a flicker of ancient LEDs.
Eliza perches on the edge of the seat, eyeing the console. “Are you going to teach me to fly for real?”
“If you want.”
She smiles sweetly. “Yes, definitely. Strap me in, Commander.”
There’s something naughty about the way she says those words, or is it just my imagination? Nonetheless, I take her hand, wrap the webbed harness around her torso, and buckle her in. The belt cinches under her chest, compressing those big tits until I have to look away or do something criminal. My fingers brush the bare skin of her collarbone, and she catches my wrist, holding it in place.
“Jack,” she says in a flirtatious tone, “am I making you nervous?”
I growl in my throat. “No, not at all, sweetheart. Just trying to do this right.”
“But is there a right way to what we’re doing?” She looks up at me, and in the low glow of the monitor, her skin glows gold.
“I’m not sure,” I admit. “But if there is, I’ll find it.”
For a second, neither of us moves. The silence is heavy, but not uncomfortable. I rest my hands on her shoulders, then slide them down her arms, feeling the tension in her muscles. She lets me, her body soft, open, ready.