The Mile High Club (3 page)

I had decided long before what appealed to me in a woman:
soft, feminine curves, blonde hair, blue eyes, perfume, impeccable makeup. To get that perfect woman I’d gone to the ends of the earth in a clichéd but literal sense. To keep that perfection, I’d suffered infidelity, and forced Friederike to divorce me. My German love’s passion was restrained, soft, ladylike, rationed. It was what I wanted.

It was!

The burrowing depth of Max’s eyes insisted. I tried to resist, but just as my hand had explored her face on its own, my body seemed to switch to autopilot. I rose urgently and stood behind my seat. Max nodded, then followed suit. We collided, and her hand went straight down the front of my pants and gripped my rod.

I slid into her pants and split the front of her blouse, then descended into her soaked cotton panties. Our free arms, my left and her right, encircled each other like mating snakes and we shoved into each other like sumo wrestlers jockeying for control, neither yielding. We were both as silent as the reverent in an Orthodox church, the wet sound of our kisses lost in the din of the aircraft.

“We shouldn’t do this, should we?” she whispered between kisses.

“I can’t stop,” I whispered back and kissed her ear.

“Thank god.” She opened her pants and shoved them down, releasing the delicious scent of her pussy. Immediately, my pants and boxers were on the floor and we both stepped free. She turned toward the pilot’s seat.

I told myself over and over that I could control this, that I could back away from her spreading thighs as she hugged the back of the seat to brace herself. The Atlantic Ocean glimmered and danced, peeking through strips of clouds below the steady nose of the 767 as my hips eased in behind her. I bent my knees
to perfect my entry like the eastern approach into Lindbergh Field, just atop the rooftops in San Diego. I pushed under the tail of her shirt, Instrument Flight Rules, without the aid of guiding hands or visual confirmation. I dipped inside her perfectly. She choked on a gasp, and we moved with the rhythm of a seasoned flight team.

I gripped her shoulders like a harness. We kissed over her shoulder. Her tongue split my teeth and timed with my thrusts in her.

Ice-cold water, threat or act of dismissal, Friederike begging me to stop with the words “
Ich liebe dich”
spoken tenderly could not have parted Max and me. Desperate though I was, both in need and in fear of discovery, I lingered and fought back my swelling orgasm, knowing I might never see Max again once we had touched down and gone our separate ways.

The sun kissed the sea before us. Time seemed suspended as I released with powerful final thrusts into Max, and our silence was broken with orgasmic shouts that were both nasal and guttural.

I wondered, if the 767 had suddenly gone down, and they fished out the black box, how they would have interpreted what they heard.

I held tight to Max’s back as we draped over the back of the seat and gasped for breath, but only for a moment. We recovered quickly, dressed and got back into our seats. Max produced a handkerchief and wiped her glossy brow. Our only conversations after that were in familiar flight terms.

We concluded our journey, she taking me in her peripheral vision, me fighting against fresh erections.

The approach was perfect, the landing butter smooth.

You can’t get much farther from the big, wet Atlantic Ocean than the contrastingly named Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix. I listened to the fading echoes of forward thrust to lift off. The muffled screech of tires—first contact and then second—then reverse thrust of landing. The sun descended all too fast over the desert sky; it turned the turquoise of a tropical lagoon into a sharpening strip of orange, then was gone.

The singular credentials, my enrollment in the Mile High Club, was something I’d never experience again. It was a wild ride, and an even wilder risk. But through it, I’d learned that there were risks worth taking in this life.

I had let go of Friederike some time before; in this moment, I released myself. I stirred the ice in my glass. It rang like wind chimes.

I took the last sip and let Max’s tilted-head smile fill my mind. Max and I flew together twice after that sunset lingered in suspended animation. Both flights were over dry land, in the middle of the day. Both west to east, compressing the day instead of elongating it. We talked, listened and laughed, but never said a word about what had happened between us. Shortly after that, she made captain; we’d never fly together again.

The waitress looked at the scant strip of brown liquid at the bottom of my glass. “Ready for another, Cap’n?”

I was going to be in Phoenix for two days. I was in no rush to seek out the courtesy van to the hotel. I wouldn’t be able to sleep anyway. “What the hell. Why not?”

“Make it two.” The voice was soft and smoky, with a hint of a soft English accent. I took in deeply tanned skin and big freckles, her hair released from its usual ponytail. She looked out at an Airbus A300 taxiing out to the runway, the strip of passenger windows glistening like a zipper by candlelight. Max’s
wide pupils formed an ellipse. I could tell she was locked on me in her periphery. She turned her head and looked deep into my eyes. “Mind a little company? I’ll be in town for a few days, and I don’t fancy drinking alone.”

I waved toward an open seat. “Only if we can make it more than a couple of days.”

She sat down.

 

 

 

 

 

I
really didn’t want to go but I didn’t have the heart to tell him.

He looked so excited, his greenish eyes sparkling.

Our relationship wasn’t working. I’d known it for some time and I believe way deep down he knew it, too, even though he seemed content in his state of denial. I guess I was mildly in denial, too. It’s never easy to hurt someone.

I was nervous about spending a week at his parents’ house. I was excited to see Chicago. I just hoped that I wouldn’t want to throw myself out of a window before it was all over.

We were boarding the plane. I’d been very quiet and, surprisingly, he was letting me be. We’d always had trouble in this area and I was glad for the respite from his whining, no matter how brief it would be. Part of me hoped Drew would decide to stay in Chicago and not come back to New York, but I knew that wouldn’t happen. The plane was tiny and that made me nervous. It kind of reminded me of that episode of “The Twilight Zone” where that ape-like gremlin was on the wing of the plane.

Before I knew it, we were seated and I felt like a death row inmate on his last walk.

I pulled my sleep mask over my eyes not because I was sleepy but to avoid any conversation with my boyfriend. I had closed my eyes for all of thirty seconds when I felt a brush against my arm. I was instantly annoyed, thinking it was Drew trying to get my attention.

“Excuse me,” said a deep voice. “Are you okay?”

I started to nod, but I wanted to see who the voice belonged to so I pulled the mask off of my eyes. I almost gasped as I stared up into a pair of piercing blue eyes accompanied by a warm smile.

He was dressed head to toe in various shades of blue—a flight attendant. I was getting ready to write him off as gay but something in the way his hand lingered on my shoulder told me not to be so hasty to generalize.

“I’m fine.”

The smooth caramel of his cheeks folded into two dimples as he smiled warmly and went back down the aisle. Dimples were a weakness of mine. And a brown man with blue eyes was indeed a beautiful rarity.

At least it would make for something nice to think about during the flight, I told myself. I sure as hell wouldn’t be thinking of Drew unless it involved ways to break free of him.

Henry: that was the flight attendant’s name. I paid extra-close attention when he demonstrated the safety procedures. I imagined that if I was drowning, his strong arms would save me. I watched him demonstrate the proper use of the seat belt and I imagined him securing my wrists with the belt as he had his way with me. When he placed the oxygen mask over his lips, I imagined that he had covered my lips with his. And when he used his fingers to motion to the emergency exits, I almost
shuddered in my seat thinking of how those fingers might feel pressing into me.

I was getting wet thinking of Henry the flight attendant. So much so that I forgot I was sitting next to Drew. As Henry walked up and down the cabin, his thigh lightly grazed my arm.

We were taking off soon and Drew, in his usual gregarious manner, started to make conversation with Henry. I was annoyed. This was my piece. Drew asked him if the color of his eyes was real. I rolled mine.

“It’s real,” he replied, showing no sign that he’d taken offense at Drew’s tacky question. I could tell the color of his eyes was genuine because I had been staring, and colored contact lenses have a decidedly fake look to them, especially in person. Henry the flight attendant looked back and forth between me and Drew. “So you’re headed to Chicago,” he said. “You live there?”

“My parents live there,” Drew answered. “We live in New York. We’re just visiting.”

Henry looked amused. “So you two are a couple?”

Drew smiled widely and I almost felt bad. “Yes.”

“Aww,” answered Henry, looking straight at me.

It wasn’t an “Oh, how cute, you two are adorable together” kind of aww. It was an “I feel badly for you. Come, let me show you what a real man is like” kind of aww.

I frowned. He didn’t need to rub it in. I pulled the mask over my eyes and tried to get some sleep for real. But I wasn’t sleepy. You know how you can’t sleep when you’re incredibly horny? My thoughts kept drifting to Henry the flight attendant: his smooth caramel skin, his deep silky voice; his wonderfully strong-looking hands. And his ass because yes, I looked. The blue uniform pants complemented his behind in a lovely way.

I looked over at Drew. I would have sucked my teeth out loud if I hadn’t caught myself. Later, Henry came walking down
the cabin with his beverage cart. “And what can I get for you, miss?” he cooed.

“I’ll have a ginger ale.”

When he handed me the cup, his fingers accidentally brushed mine. Now he was certainly flirting with me. This had to stop because it was only aggravating my condition. I gulped down my soda, hoping that the cool rush would help to curb the tingling between my legs. It didn’t. We were in the first row so I could see Henry in his quarters. He was eating. He must have felt me staring at him because he looked up from his plate, put down his utensils and leaned back in his chair, eyes on me the entire time. He smiled a disarming smile and held my gaze until my eyes traveled lower and stopped on his lips just as he was bringing the lower one between his teeth. The smile widened. It was a look that said plainly, “We both know I could make you feel more pleasure than he ever could.” My breath caught. I glanced over at Drew, who was in his own world, happily listening to his iPod.

I decided I needed to go to the bathroom, with the intention of getting myself off. Maybe after the release I could sleep and maybe I’d stop salivating every time I looked at Henry. I hurried to the back of the plane. The bathroom was occupied.
Shit,
I thought. It was only a few minutes, however, until the passenger came out. I went in and closed the door behind me. I undid my fly and slid my jeans down around my ankles. I dipped a finger into my pussy. I was soaking wet. I brought my finger to my nose and inhaled. I was intoxicated by the scent. I licked my finger and then circled it around my clit, letting out what I hoped was a barely audible moan. My hand was Henry’s hand and he stroked my clit up and down, back and forth and in tiny circles, making my breath quicken and my nipples stand erect. I reached into my shirt and pulled out one breast, bringing the darkened bud of the
nipple to my lips. I stuck my tongue out and flicked at it. My tongue was Henry’s tongue, warm, hungry. I kept working at my clit with my other hand and I was shuddering, seconds away from orgasm, when there came a knock on the door.

“Are you okay?”

It was Henry’s voice.

“I’m fine,” I said and straightened up quickly.” I’ll be out in a few.”

I was excited to hear his voice and at the same time annoyed at my thwarted orgasm. I felt myself blush and wondered if he knew what I was doing. The thought excited me and I quickly went back to work. I imagined opening the door and seeing him standing there. I’d make a move as if to push past him and then he’d catch my wrist in his hand and bring it to his nose. I’d feel his dick move in his pants, that’s how closely to me he’d be standing and then before I knew it he’d push me back inside the bathroom.

He’d lock the door and wouldn’t say a word. He’d turn me to face the wall as he reached around and unbuttoned my jeans. They’d be back around my ankles a second later. His strong hand would reach into my folds as the other cupped a breast. I’d gasp, reveling in his manly scent, his manly strength. He’d be nothing like the whiny bitch boy I was currently stuck with.