Flight 69: The Mile High Club (Hot Sex with a Handsome Stranger)

All rights reserved
Chloë
Thurlow
2012

More information about me and my other books are at the end.

Flight 69: The Mile High Club

There's nothing like flying business class. It's just so...sexy. You feel…reckless. You feel, like, this is where I belong. You read in
self help
books you are what you think you are, what you believe yourself to be. And it's true. I hadn't yet left but I felt like I'd arrived.

It's the little things you notice. Everyone in business class is real polite. There's more space.
Champagne in a crystal glasses.
Food on plates, not plastic dishes.
They bring you little presents, like slippers and an eye mask. Then there's the chocolates wrapped in gold foil.

As to what happens when the lights go out and you're a mile high over the mid-west, that's another story…

But first thing first.

A company driver drops me at the airport. It's coming up to 7.00
i
n
the
evening when I step through the sliding doors and enter the departure lounge with its blaring messages and
people rushing by with luggage carts
.
There's
a million people lining up looking lost and ill-tempered. Kids are running around. Women are hunting through overstuffed bags. Men stand there with gritted teeth and weary expressions that seem to say: what have I done – or, rather, what have I failed to do that's left me hanging about watching that business class babe not a day over twenty-six as she wriggles by in her tight dress, cinched-in coral jacket and black
Monolo
Blahnik's
with a single strap and silver toes.

That's me, heels clip clopping like a pony, pink lipstick to match my jacket and Ray Bans resting on my brow to hold my wayward nut brown hair in place. Below the dress, I'm wearing black, lace-front
itzy-bitzy
briefs and a gorgeous matching bra with plenty of thrust and lift – stupid, I know, for a flight, I mean, no one was going to see them, but that business class ticket made me do it.

A skycap follows – his name, he's told me, is Ivan, and he looks terrible, with bloodshot vodka eyes and a long scar down his left cheek. He's pushing a trolley with a suitcase full of folded business suits and two giant duffels crammed with clothes, cosmetics, a couple of new bikinis from the end of summer sale at Bergdorf Goodman – it's still hot, hot, hot in Houston, and, of course, my shoes. It's my one fetish, my only extravagance. I love shoes and I was taking them all, an echo of all the footsteps that had brought me to
where I was today: in
business class.

With the eyes following my stately progress, I glide into the "Business Class Only" line and sigh with a strange sense of something. The girl behind the counter at Business is the prettiest member of the staff, they always are; check it out. Anyway, she smiles warmly like we're sisters in the same club.

'Ticket, please?' she says in a sort of apologetic voice as if you're not really the sort of person who should have to bother with such things.

Ivan dumps the luggage and vanishes with his insanely generous tip – what goes round comes round, as my dad always says. I reach for the suitcase, but the man who has come up behind to join the line heaves it up on to the scales. That's the sort of thing that happens in business class.
Everyone's so...classy, so courteous.

And he's also fantastically good looking with the bluest blue eyes I've ever seen.

'Can I?' he says.

'No, that's okay...'
Too late.
He's done it. 'Thanks, that's great, thanks...'

Remember, Kelly, you're in business class. Toss your dark hair, turn your head to one side and smile like this is the sort of thing that happens every day. 

Of course, it isn't.

I'd been working in the PR department for a 'big name' soft drinks company in the New York office for three years and had finally been promoted to head up the team in Houston. Texas sales had gone down 'exponentially,' as my boss
p
ut it. My job was to drive them up again.

I'm not exactly sure why he had put me into business, especially as there had been massive cut backs since the crisis, and had reached the conclusion that it was a sort of carrot and stick thing, a taste of extravagance on the Friday night flight, the weekend to settle into the apartment owned by the company, then straight downtown Monday to the Skyline District and the company HQ.

'Thank you, that's so kind,' I say again, and he smiles, those blue eyes assessing me coolly like people look at paintings in a museum trying to work out what the hell they mean.

'You're more than welcome,' he says, and the way he looks back into my eyes sends a little shiver up my spine, not a cold one, a warm one.

Security is a nightmare, even for business class passengers. First you have to take your
shoes off, which is
kind of disgusting, and the whole area smells of dirty feet. A woman as big as an air balloon runs her hands down my sides and, like, really far up the insides of my legs, and then the metal machine buzzes because I've forgotten to take off the St. Christopher necklace
Nanna
gave me for my twenty-first. My fingers go all twitchy opening the tiny
catch,
my Ray Bans fall to the floor and my hair falls over my face.

'
Here.
'

I peer up through my hair and he's there again, holding my sunglasses.

'Thank you,' I gasp. I'm all sweaty ad panicky. 'I keep saying thank you all the time.'

I'm grasping the St. Christopher in my palm. He glances down, then up again into my eyes.

'Can I help you with that?'

There's an amused smile on his lips and then there's those eyes, cool blue, impenetrable.

I shake my head as if to say no and what come out of my mouth is, 'Yes, Yes, thank you.'

His fingers are cool and his has no problem opening the clasp and attaching my necklace.

'I'm sure I'll see you later,' he says and
collects his bag

I pull myself together. I
feel like a shipwreck and the business class waiting area is a desert island with sandy gold carpets and Mozart piped from hidden speakers. There's complimentary coffee and snacks, and just about every newspaper printed in the world. I
gulp down a
bottle of Evian,
and take a second bottle to sip.
There are big wing chairs that are so comfy it's nice to sit back, gaze out at the night and just keep reminding yourself: I've made it. I've arrived. I'm in business class.

The sky is grey – 'fifty shades of grey,' I say to myself and the thought makes me smile. I was excited
about my new job, but
nervous
, too
. For the first time in my life I was going to have responsibility, not just for myself,
but
for the whole team. I was moving to a new city where I didn't know anyone in a state famous for tornadoes galloping over the Gulf of Mexico, spring thunderstorms and summer temperatures that regularly pass 100°. I was at heart a cold weather girl. I had always lived on the East Coast. I'd gone to school in New Jersey, worked my way through college and spent summers holding down double shifts waitressing in Southampton. My studio apartment on 94
th
and
2
nd
was
hardly big enough for my shoes, but it was my home, my oyster shell, and when I gave the key back to the landlord it was like giving away a piece of me, a chunk of my past.

The glossy magazines show this sexy, glamorous, beautiful people life, ski slopes and casinos, tennis clubs and sunsets over the Caribbean. They are the images I use to promote our soft drinks: cool and refreshing with ice beside the pool, the perfect accompaniment to gin and vodka on summer cruises. It is the life people dream of and I am one of those people.
I had never been anywhere or done anything. It was all work, work,
work
. I'd started dressing in a more stylish way, acting the part to go with the promotion, but it was only an act.

Until today.

I am in business class. I am going to be everything I can be, cool, classy, composed.

My daydreams are interrupted by the announcement:

'Flight 69 to
Houston is
now
ready
for
board
ing
.
This call is for b
usiness class passengers and
women with children.'

I finish the second bottle of water and have to stop myself leaping up and rushing to get in line. I brush down the nonexistent creases from my dress and toss my hair in the way actresses in movies always do as a sign that they don't want to be bothered by anything.

The man who had helped me with my bags leisurely refolds the newspaper he's been reading before returning it to the table. He is wearing blue jeans, a dark grey jacket, white polo
shirt and
loafers, smart-casual and breezily self-confident. I had thought under the bright lights of the departures area that his hair was pale blond, but it's grey with dark flecks and sweeps back in a
faintly-curling
wave. His hair gives him a 'sophisticated' look, but he has a young face with wide
cheek bones
, a strong nose and those eyes, deep blue like a lake.

He smiles, nodding his head slightly, and I feel the color rise up my neck. I'd been caught staring at him and bite my lips in embarrassment.

I make my way behind the women with children and show my boarding card to the flight attendant. He's a young guy with a bushy moustache.

'I'm Craig,' he says, and points at his
name tag
. 'If there's anything you want, you just have to ask. Okay?'

'Okay.'

As he leads me up the aisle, he tells me there is fresh sea bass for dinner, a new white wine that's totally gorgeous and the flight is scheduled to leave on time.

'We've got a 96% record,' he adds proudly.

There are eight rows in business class, four in a row. I am in seat 32, the last one. The seat is dark blue leather – and big, like an armchair, with wide arms and a pocket in the seat in front containing safety instructions and the in-flight magazine. I put some gloss on my lips and slide my Kindle into the pocket. I don't have much time for reading, but I had devoured Fifty Shades of Grey and wondered what
pleasures awaited
Anastasia Steele in Fifty Shades Darker.

Business is about half full when he appears, making his way past the empty seats until he reaches the last row. He looks at his ticket and, when he looks
back
at me, I wonder for a moment if I am in the wrong place.