“Semantics.” I wave off his earlier comments. “You want to fly me around?” I ask, and I feel…hopeful. I’m not ready to fly, but I also know I trust Kyle with my life. I trust him with anything and everything, so if he can fly… then maybe I can have a little piece of me back. I want to cry, because he’s giving me back the fragments of myself that were ripped away from me in that cell.
“Yeah, honey,” he says gently. “But why are you crying? Maybe this was a bad idea. It’s too soon. Let’s just go home.”
“No!” I shout. “I’m not upset. I’m crying because I was so afraid you wouldn’t want me if I couldn’t be the badass pilot, if I was just… me. But you not only want me—you’re giving me back the pieces of me that were stolen. It means so much to me that the emotions of it all just caught me off guard and now I’m all jumbled and making a mess of things.”
“You’re not making a mess of things,” he says, taking me into his arms again. “I’ll never hold you back, but I want to walk forward with you.”
“I want that too,” I admit with hope filling up my soul. Maybe he was right all along. Icanhave everything I ever wanted if I just reach for it.
“I keep trying to tell you that we’re better together,” he says.
“I see that now.”
“So you want to go up?” he asks like a child asking for an extra scoop of ice cream or for Santa to come early and bring extra presents.
“In general?” I answer. “No. But with you? Yes. Absolutely, yes.”
“Then your chariot awaits,” Kyle says, holding out his arm to indicate the plane.
We climb onboard and take our seats. We go through the motions of buckling our seat belts and pulling on our headsets. I remain silent, but I watch as he checks all the gauges and flips all the right switches.
My breathing turns shallow and thready as he backs up and taxis down the runway. I close my eyes as the local tower gives him permission for takeoff; his flight plan is already cleared with ground control. I can feel us hurtling down the runway, every bump and bounce along the runway, and then we lift up, higher and higher. I open my eyes when I can’t stand it anymore.
Blue sky is all around me as far as the eye can see. Hot tears track down my cheeks, because Kyle was right; he was so right. We are better together. I was afraid to fly. I was afraid of who I was without being a pilot, because being in a plane scared me, made me feel trapped, and I was terrified of how that made me feel.
But with Kyle, I’m not trapped.I’m free.
He flies me around for another hour, and when our time is over, he executes a perfect landing and returns our borrowed plan back to Surfer’s hangar, although the mysterious man in question is no longer present.
He takes care of all the post-flight checks with the same clear proficiency that he had before. Color me impressed. While he completes his tasks, I set my headset aside and unbuckle my seatbelt. I open the hatch and climb down. I walk around the hangar that belongs to his enigmatic friend, because I’m nosy as fuck.
Who is this man who found me? And how did he know where I was? Even I know those are questions that will likely never be answered because they are well above my pay grade. But still, I can’t help but wonder. His personal space gives me absolutely no clues.
Fortunately, Kyle is done with his checklist, because we are mercifully alone and I am done wondering and waiting. Watching Kyle be so thorough and confident in the air is… attractive. A fact that seems ridiculous when I think about how I never wanted to date another pilot before. But he’s not a pilot—he’s everything. And he’s mine.
“What are you—” he starts to ask, but I cut him off when I leap into his arms and crush my mouth to his. The adrenaline from the flight is coursing through my body and I need a release.
I wrap my legs around his waist and skate one hand up underneath his shirt, over his taut belly, and rake my nails back down.
“I need you,” I beg, and thankfully, he doesn’t make me wait. His hands flex over my ass at my spoken plea, and then he sets me on the ground so that I can kick off my sneakers while he rips open the snap on my jeans and pulls down the zipper.
He dips his hand in the front of my panties and down, down, down until his fingers part me. He hisses out a breath when he feels how wet I am for him, only for him. And then he shoves my jeans and panties to the floor, and I kick out of them.
Kyle’s belt clanks as he drops his jeans to his knees, and then his hands find my thighs and he hoists me up, my back slamming against the tin wall of the hangar. The very tip of him hits my opening, and then he drops me down as he thrusts up into me while I let out a moan.
I wrap my arms around his shoulders and hold on tight as he pounds into me. I arch my back and let my head fall back against the wall so I can meet him thrust for thrust. I need this. I need him.
“Yes,” I pant, because this is everything I need. I need to be with him, connect with him in this primal, vital way. Kyle has given me so much, and now, I need to be the one giving to him.
“That’s it,” he growls as he drives deep inside me. “This is mine.”
“Yes.”
“Only mine.”
“Yes.”
“Always and forever,” he promises as he plunges faster and faster, his movements growing choppy.
