Taking Flight (A Devereux Novel) (24 page)

All the questions that had
burned Sara up and Derek couldn’t answer poured out of her now she had access
to his brother. After so long in their reality, Derek and his younger brothers
hadn’t bothered to examine the things they’d been told. Hearing the passion for
truth in his love’s voice ignited his own curiosity and wonder at the
situation.

He hadn’t stopped to think
about how wrong some things about the company felt.
What had Father been up to?

Evan looked shocked at her
questions as though he hadn’t considered them before. “The secrecy is for the
good of the country. It lets the company develop advanced technologies without
being targeted by our enemies.”

“So do the other
contractors,” she pointed out. “What keeps Onyx accountable and from getting
out of control? And how the hell does nothing ever leak about such a large and
powerful corporation?”

“Most of Onyx’s employees
don’t even know they work for Onyx and have never heard the name. There are
layers of shell companies that work on specific pieces of projects and never
see the full picture. Often the CEO’s don’t even know the whole truth. As for
accountability, the Pentagon has full responsibility for oversight and ensuring
Onyx remains hidden from government scrutiny. The board of directors meets with
the top officials regularly.”

The full scale of the
deception was hard to grasp. Billions of dollars flowed secretly through the
country’s economy all because of his father.

“I don’t like it,” Sara
said. “So much power, and almost no way to rein it in. It’s ripe for abuse. Now
there’s a director looking to claim all that power and influence for himself,
and we stand in his way.”

They talked into the early hours of the morning.
When the sky outside the massive wall of windows lightened and Liberty fell
asleep for the fourth time, Derek called an end to the session. “The company
will still be there tomorrow, and unfortunately our problems won’t go away
either. We might as well regroup later—we’ve been talking ourselves into
circles for hours now.”

There were no objections.
Frustrations had run high as they tried to figure out their best path forward.

“Do you think we can solve
this problem?” Sara asked Derek as they climbed to the top of the staircase.
The height no longer bothered her. After being exposed to true altitude and
surviving with nothing beneath her feet, standing on a solid floor two stories
up was mundane.

Derek led the way to his
bedroom and opened the door for her. She didn’t think twice about following him
inside, even though they’d only slept together once so far. It seemed natural,
as though this was always the place she had been meant to end up.

“We don’t have a choice,”
Derek said. “It’s not something we can afford to ignore. We either figure it
out,
or else give up and wait for this Knight fellow to
catch up with us.”

It was a sad state of
affairs.
A perversion of their nation’s capitalist ideals.
When the owners had to fear their own company, it was obvious the machine had
grown too deadly and was too dangerous. Something out of control like that
should be put down.

“I’m sick of talking about
it,” Sara said. She crawled onto the bed and struck as demurely sexy a pose as
she could
considering
the cast wrapped around her arm.
“Come to bed?”

“Only if you promise to lie
back and let me take care of you,” he said. “And don’t complain—that arm
of yours can’t take any strain. You can make it all up to me later.”

Sara pouted but the
ever-present dull ache in her arm reinforced the wisdom of his words, so she
stretched out on her back. “I can still do things,” she muttered. “I’d blow
your mind, if you’d let me.”

Derek grinned. “Later. For
now, let me spoil you.”

He helped her out of her
clothes. The dress and bra were a pain to remove over the stiff cast, but he
kissed her deeply to soothe away her frustration. With a light touch, he
stroked the skin over her ribs with the back of his fingernails, making her
squirm and moan into his mouth.

Circling her breasts, he
skimmed along while refusing to touch her nipples,
spiraling
in until almost the bulls-eye before retreating once more. Derek switched
breasts, giving each equal treatment and extending the teasing until Sara
bucked and growled underneath him, demanding more.

His mouth followed in his
delightful fingers’ wake, leaving her lips to lick and kiss down her neck and
latch onto the flesh of her upper breast. Strong hands squeezed and lifted
gently, giving as much stimulation possible without going where she wanted.

Her nipples were on fire
without even being touched, so desperate for attention she had trouble thinking
about anything else.

“Derek, please,” she
whimpered.

A low growl was his only
response. Instead of caving to her pleas, he left her breasts to travel a long
and languid route down her side and lick along the top edge of her panties.
Sara brought her good hand to her chest to caress herself, but he caught it and
pinned it to her side. The erotic torture was enough to have her beside herself
in need.

Nibbling at the insides of
her thighs, still outside the region covered by her underwear, Derek slipped
his tongue underneath the fabric for a moment, just catching the edge of her
most erogenous zone but not enough for any sustained pleasure.

“God, you’re killing me!”
Sara said. “Please, Derek. I need to feel you.”

At her request, he took the
top edge of her panties between his teeth and pulled them down. She lifted her
hips so the back of the underwear could slide away.

Now bare in front of him,
Sara thrust herself up to get him to lick her.

He wouldn’t make it that
easy. His
skillful
lips once more made the journey to
her breasts, his body covering her but not in a way that gave her any relief.

Hot breath lingered over her
nipple, moist and so close.

“Please, Derek. I need it. I
need you.”

The moment his lips dropped
the last inch and closed around her sensitive skin blew her away, the extreme
pleasure completely unexpected. Sara had felt nothing like it—but then,
she’d never been teased and wound up the way she was.

“Fuck yes,” she breathed as
he moved to her other breast. His hands cupped and squeezed and caressed, an
intricate dance she could barely follow but stoked her passions higher than
anything she’d ever known.

The sensation was exquisite,
almost painfully pleasurable as Derek worked his magic. The soft warmth of his
mouth sometimes led to a careful pull of his teeth, the squeeze bringing forth
a pain that melded with pleasure to create something more, something higher.

Locked in a trance, Sara
paid no attention to the rest of Derek until the unmistakable feeling of his
cock against her pussy, his head sliding through the soaking wet folds as she
welcomed him in.

He sank fully into her in no
time, her body more than warmed up for him. The movement sparked a loud moan as
she struggled to deal with the way her body felt—her skin was alive and
on fire, and every small touch of his was an electric jolt that wove through
the whole of the experience.

“Yes,” Sara said. “Yes, yes,
yes, yes. Like that. Right there. That feels amazing.”

Derek’s mouth left her
nipple to reclaim her mouth. Their kiss was deep and passionate, yet gentle.

He moved within her for a
long time. True to his word, he was easy on her, taking care not to rock her so
hard that her arm hurt her. The entire time she danced on a
knife
edge
, certain that all it would take for her to fall into a catastrophic
climax would be his command.

Instead they built together,
ever higher, each stroke melding them deeper and pushing them into new heights
of pleasure. Time lost all meaning—all that mattered were their mouths,
their hands, the way they joined to form a perfect union.

Finally, Derek’s hips sped,
crashing into her own as she egged him on until her mouth could no longer form
words. Then she held him with her good hand as he pushed even deeper inside of
her and they climaxed together.

They stayed like that for a
few minutes until shifting to a more comfortable position and drifting off to
sleep.

Four Months Later

“Are you sure you’re ready?” Derek asked one more
time. He felt like a broken record, but he didn’t want to rush his love if she
wasn’t up to the task. This was a big step for her, and while she’d responded
well to the idea, he didn’t know how she would react now the time had come.

“For heaven’s sake, Derek,
just fire it up! Seriously, you’re worse than my mother!” Her tone made light
of her words, and he grinned as she tore into him.

The flow of words stopped as
he started the engine and the propeller turned in a characteristic high-pitched
whine.

“Oh!”

They each wore a headset so
they could hear each other over the noise, and his grin widened at her response
to the sudden change. He wished he could see her face, but she sat in front of
him in the tandem trainer plane. Each seat had a yoke and the ability to take
over the aircraft although Derek’s was the teacher’s console and retained
master control.

“Ready for
takeoff
?” he asked.

“Um… I guess so. You did all
your pre-flight checks?” Her voice trembled, but her core of strength steadied
her. It drew him like a moth to a flame.

“Three times. I’m never
making the mistake of rushing through those ever again.” His shoulders still
twinged
when he thought of the ordeal at the air race, even
though it was months earlier and the injuries had healed otherwise.

“Then let’s do it.”

He taxied the plane out to
the runway and waited for the tower’s permission to take off. Their speed built
quickly until the wheels lifted off the tarmac. It was a smooth
operation—routine, even. His passenger didn’t think so.

“Oh, holy crap!” Sara
shouted, the volume making Derek wince. “This is ridiculous!”

“It’s okay,” he soothed.
“You’ve gone way faster in my cars.”

Sara quieted down, and he
turned his attention to ensuring as pleasant a climb as possible. Once they got
to altitude, he
leveled
out and tilted gently so the
ground was more visible.

“What do you think?” he
asked. The lack of screams was encouraging.

Awe filled her voice. “It’s
beautiful. Everything’s so small up here. I mean, I saw this before from the
helicopter, but that was such a different situation. This feels so… safe.”

They had kept working away
at her fear of heights. It had taken a mighty blow after her ordeal but
remnants remained, and new fears had layered themselves in after the traumatic
helicopter flight.

“How would you like to take
control?” Derek asked.

“What? Derek! I told you
that wouldn’t happen!”

He had told her he would
take her up in the school’s instructional aircraft because it was the only one
with two seats that had easy communication between passengers. It wasn’t a
complete lie, but it wasn’t the total truth, either. He could have made do with
a few of the other planes at the airfield. A few months into the opening of his
piloting school, he had grown rather fond of the old plane.

“Just put your hands on the
control column,” he coached, his voice pitched even and low to help calm her.
“You won’t even notice a difference.”

One thing he loved about her
was her willingness to step outside her comfort zone and confront things that
made her squirm. It was something they had in
common,
he was just further on this journey than she was.

“Fine. What do I do?”

Her arm was finally out of a
brace and able to move on its own without damaging itself. It had been a long
and painful road to recovery, and there was still more work to do, but she
could finally do things like drive a car or now fly a plane without a
mechanical nightmare hindering her every movement.

He coached her as they made
lazy circles above the ground,
zig-zagging
back and forth around the air field’s airspace. Just as he had expected, she
picked it up with ease, although he was ready to take back control in case
something went wrong.

It the moment he had waited
for. He hadn’t been sure if this was the best time to do it, but it would be
the most memorable.

“Okay, for the next
maneuver
, I’ll need you to open the compartment on the dash
to your left.”

Silence.
For
a few seconds.
And then: “Oh, my God! Derek, it’s so beautiful!”

He smiled. Gary had helped
him pick out the ring. It was unique and gorgeous, just like his love. “Sara
Flight, will you make me a complete man and marry me?”

“Of course, yes! I love you
so much!” Her voice took on the special quality it did when she
teared
up not out of fear, fright or sadness, but because
something had made her extraordinarily happy.

“I love you too, Sara.
Forever.”

He couldn’t say no to her.
Not now—not ever. From the moment she hung out the helicopter door
clinging to nothing but his hands, he could never let go of her again.

She tried shifting to look
at him, but was confounded by the harness that strapped her into her seat.

“Damn it, Derek! Why the
hell did you have to propose in the air like this so I can’t kiss your face
off? You better land this plane quicker than any move you’ve ever pulled in a
race!”

That was the one downside of
his master plan. “Yes, ma’am! One landing, coming right up!”

The nose of the plane tilted
toward the ground until it was vertical and their speed increased threefold.
The solid earth rushed up at them.

“Derek Devereux! What the
hell!”

He chuckled, unable to help
himself. “I won’t apologize for that, you asked for it.”

Sara sputtered, and by the
time she had regained her equilibrium, the wheels of the plane kissed the
runway.

Derek popped the hatch at
the earliest opportunity and helped his fiancée out of the aircraft.

She looked up into his eyes.
“You’ll infuriate me for the rest of my life, won’t you?”

“It will be my pleasure,” he
said before giving his future wife a deep and rousing kiss.