Lida barked before Ranger could question my sanity again. Eager togo. My girl loved to fly.
She hopped back into the aircraft and hovered by the door. I went to her and slipped her defenders on, smiling as she claimedthe seat behind the pilot’s to lick my ears whenever she felt like it.
Ranger was unamused. “I’m not getting in that tin-pot death bird.”
He folded his arms, cementing his boots to the tarmac as I turned to consider him again.
“Would you get in if we stayed on the ground?”
“No.”
“It would feel good if you did... to fly, for you, I mean.”
“How do you work that out?”
Torn between touching him and giving him space, I returned to the chopper, hoping that perhaps if he saw Lida and I were safe inside it, he’d relax. “It is always good to face a fear. Did you have a bad experience?”
“What?”
“In the air,” I clarified. “On a plane, maybe?”
“No.”
Because he had never flown, I deduced. And I could not decide if that made this easier or more complex. “Come here.”
“No.”
Maybe it made no difference at all. “I want to show you something.”
Silence.
I leaned back, perching on the floor of the chopper, absorbing the familiar smell of fuel and leather. It was not dissimilar to the scents that clung to Ranger, the top notes that led to the smoke and sandalwood I had dreamed of for so many months, and I remembered how I had felt then. Compared it to how I felt now.
“The fuck are you grinning at?”
Ranger’s growl was harsh against the gentle dawn. He did not seem in the mood for me to tell him that the only reason we were here, in this airfield, with me contemplating something Ihad not done for more than a year, was because he had given me my life back.
I took the weight off my hip. “I am not grinning. And I will not make you fly if you really don’t want to, but you should know that it is something I have to do. So you will need to be okay with waiting on the ground.”
Ranger made another indecipherable noise low in his throat. I thought he might leave. That of everything I’d thrown at him, it was this that would drive him away.
But that sound, it wrenched from him, and he came closer, stepping between my legs. “Don’t leave me behind.”
I slid my hand up his torso, coming to rest over his pounding heart. Would it beat this hard if we were fucking? Would the rush be the same as the first flight I’d ever taken?
It would be better.
I kissed him to be sure, and my pulse ascended faster than any machine ever could. And like this, sitting as he towered over me, it was easy to forget that I had come here with a purpose beyond the taste of him, the warmth of his body pressed to mine, and the dizzying euphoria his touch left in its wake.
My skin.
My blood.
The hardness that grew in the black fatigues I’d thrown on before we’d come.
My cock being hard around Ranger was not new. Beingherewith it was, and I wondered if it was fear that made him kiss me with more intent than he ever had in the club. If it was me making him tremble or the thought of how it would feel to truly fly.
Perhaps they were one and the same.
