I sit back and study the little dish Craig has left. It is divided in two, olives on one side, cashews on the other. I eat one of each. I sip the champagne and, that's the thing with champagne, one sip becomes two sips and two sips becomes three. Then you lose count.
'It's one of the things the French do well, don't you think?' he says, holding up his glass. 'Food, too. When you're in Paris, don't go to any of those restaurants they recommend in the guide books. The best places are in the backstreets, just wander around and follow your nose.'
With the empty flute being waved through the air, the eye-fluttering attendant is soon back again refilling our glasses.
'I've never been to Paris,' I admit, revealing myself. 'I've never been outside the United States.'
'You will. And I'll tell you something else, Kelly,' he says, leaning forward in that way he has, holding me with his gaze. 'You have to see everything, do everything, try everything. If you haven't tried something, how do you know whether you like it or not.' He shrugs. 'Don't you agree?'
'Absolutely.'
'You have to take your pleasure where you find it,' he continues, and there's that word again: pleasure, expanded on his tongue like elastic.
We clink the rims of our glasses once more and I sit back sipping away. The seat with its big arms holds me in an embrace. I stroke my bare arm. My skin feels electric and there's a feeling in my belly, not hunger or emptiness, but a blankness, like a white wall that needs a painting, or wet sand waiting for footprints. It isn't long before I finish the second glass of champagne and I feel tempted to push my tongue down inside the glass and lick out that little bead of nectar out of reach on the bottom.
But that wouldn't be business class now would it, Kelly Conway?
A smile slips on to my lips. I am content, at ease, going with the flow. On a flight you are floating in the void, neither here nor there, but suspended in time. I glance out of the window. The sky isn't fifty shades of grey, it's all grey. The lights of New York have vanished. Down there, as darkness falls in Pennsylvania and Ohio, people are having dinner or going out for the evening, the lonely in search of something or someone, the married couples staring at each other across the table and mentally ticking the boxes of their lives: what they have done, what they wanted to do, what they dream of doing one day, and that's the thing with dreams, they always fade on waking. Life is like that: you dream, you wake, then there's nothing.
In my experience, relationships are accidental, random, a jigsaw puzzle that's never finished. What is it that makes us pick one person, not another? How do we get picked? It's all so imprecise, so chancy. And after all the picking's been done, it seldom works. My parents are divorced. Harvey, my boyfriend of two years, just moved to California and said it's best that we 'call it a day.' Boom, just like that, two years gone like a balloon bursting.
Perhaps that accounts for the empty feeling in my tummy and, as I decide it is, I realize it doesn't matter, and the feeling slips away.
'You seem very pensive, Miss Conway.'
'Do I?'
'Very.'
He smiles. He has even white teeth, full lips, those deep sea eyes that seem to look into me, into my heart, my unknown yearnings. Harvey is dark, broody, with fingers never far from a keyboard, a head forever somewhere else and a way of making love that always left me feeling…incomplete.
Yes, that's the word. Incomplete. Sex for Harvey is a bodily function, like taking a shower, or using the john. Just like it's a good idea to stretch your tendons before a run, Harvey would stretch me out like a roll of cloth, scissor away between my thighs and leave me in hanging shreds, wham bam, thank you, mam. Five minutes later, he's snoring and I'm thinking about the PR assignment I've got to prepare the following day. As for pleasure…
'Ah, it's our friend, back again,' James continues, changing the subject.
Craig arrives with dinner on a trolley. There's a choice, chicken with Parma ham or the sea bass he had recommended, which I take. James has the same and asks for two bottles of wine which, thank God, are quite small.
'Mmm, not bad,' he says, taking a sip. 'What do you think?'
'Totally gorgeous,' I reply.
'There, you see, you're becoming an expert already.' He glances at me with that smile that draws you into his world. 'Tell me about yourself, Miss Conway. I get the feeling you're a girl with secrets.'
'On the contrary, I don't have any secrets at all.'
'I don't believe that for one second. Beautiful women always have secrets. Are you married?'
'What! Are you crazy?'
'Boyfriend?'
'He dumped me.'
'He must be out of his mind.'
'He's a mathematician, very…calculating.'
'Sounds like my accountant.' He grins and we rub knuckles.
'And you?' I ask.
'Me?'
'There's nobody else here.'
There's that smile again. 'Well, you know, I work, travel about…'
'Digging holes for oil?'
'I don't actually dig the holes. I tell other people where to dig them.' He leans forward and places the tips of his fingers on the back of my hand in a way that is weird, intimate. 'Some people have to be told what to do and others have to do the telling. Don't you agree?'
'I suppose.'
He stares at me closely. 'Which one are you?'
I'm not sure how to respond, this is way too personal.
'I've never really thought about,' I finally say and his expression changes. He smiles again.
'You know what I mean. Now you're going to be running the PR department.'
My pulse is racing. 'I guess I'm going to have to learn as I go along.'
'Like all things. You do something long enough and you get to be an expert.'
I imagine he's a regular expert at a lot of thinking, more that just sinking bore holes searching for oil.
We eat the fish and drink the wine. I ask for a bottle of sparkling water and accept the coffee Craig pours from a silver pot. He then places on our tables small bamboo dishes each containing two chocolates wrapped in gold foil.
'Marzipan,' he whispers. 'It's an aphrodisiac.'
I watch as he scoots off. 'Did he really say that?' I say, and look back at James as he takes one of my chocolates and unwraps it.
'Let's see, shall we?' he says.
Our eyes meet as he holds the chocolate before my lips. I open my mouth wide for him to slip it in and plunge into those blue pools as I bite into the marzipan. The taste is rich and bittersweet, the texture moist, the moment charged with meaning and ambiguity. He has unwrapped a chocolate for himself and, before he pops it in his mouth, I greedily accept it from his fingers. His eyes never leave mine. He unwraps one more chocolate from the golden foil and I watch as he eats it, his jaw moving slowly, his eyes bright like neon.
'Mmm, yummy,' I say, stating the obvious.
'Yes, yummy,' he repeats, and the ways he looks at my lips makes the flush climb once more up my neck.
He'd called me a 'beautiful woman.' A beautiful woman with secrets. It wasn't true, either part, but it was thrilling hearing him say it.
He holds up the last chocolate.
'Would you like it?'
'No, I've had enough.'
'You're sure?'
The way he looks at me, and the way he asks, I understand that we're not talking about chocolates now.
'Yes, I'm sure.'
Craig returns again with slippers and masks. People are snoozing. Most of the lights have been turned out. Craig checks his passengers are comfortable as he moves slowly back to the front of the cabin. He closes the curtain behind him as he joins the rest of the crew, eating dinner, probably, their voices a low whisper.
The flight to Houston is only three and a half hours and two hours have raced by. I glance out of the window. Nothing but darkness.
'Where do think we are?'
'Just coming over Arkansas, I guess,' he answers. 'Soon be there.'
; 'Time waits for no man.'
'Or woman,' he adds.
He stares at me, long and hard. I've got that feeling in my belly again and now I know what it is. I've drunk masses of water and I'm bursting.
'Excuse me, I…' I begin and he stands.
'After you.'
He follows me down the aisle and I have a sense of déjà vu. Or maybe the opposite, whatever that is. I feel like a character in a novel and the character that comes to mind is Anastasia Steele when Christian Grey opens the door to the Red Room the first time and she glances about with dread and disbelief. Nothing like this had ever happened to Anastasia before, and nothing like this has happened to Kelly Conway before.
It can only have been a few moments that passed, but that narrow passageway to the wash room seemed to stretch endlessly and the whole of my life like a drowning person flashed before my eyes. Who I am and who I might become were in the balance. There was a disconnect between my thoughts and feelings. I was afraid of what might happen in the next thirty seconds and afraid that the feelings were all in my own imagination and nothing was going to happen at all.
I have arrived at the end of my journey. It is the moment of truth. I push back the door and, as I turn, I stare back into his eyes. He isn't smiling. He has a look of quiet determination as he moves towards me and, what goes through my mind that second is that the wash rooms in business class are bigger than in coach.
It all happens quickly. The door closes and the bolt slides across in the lock with a loud metallic click. I go to speak, but he presses his mouth against mine and what I taste on his lips is marzipan. The kiss goes on and on. His tongue swirls around with my tongue and it feels as if there are two little fishes swimming down my throat.
As we pause for breath and kiss some more, my dress rises like a curtain up over my thighs and hips. His hands cup my bottom. The air vanishes from my lungs, then something astonishing happens, something totally unexpected. He slides one hand around the top of my panties and, when his two hands meet, he breaks the elastic and rips them apart.
I hear the intake of my breath.
The sound of the tear is loud in the stillness, the action sudden and terrifying. My panties fall, destroyed, to the floor at my feet and I pant like I'm running up a hill. A bead of sweat runs down my back and my arm pits prickle as if I've being stabbed by a thousand tiny needles. His hands cup the curve of my bottom and his busy tongue slips into my ear. My whole body is moist and sticky. I'd read in magazines that women get wet when they're excited. It had never happened to me before. But it did now. I feel a pressure inside my stomach like a clenched fist and suddenly realize…
I break away, breathing heavily, and swallow hard.
'I'm bursting,' I tell him, and stare into his blue eyes.
He holds me still and runs the zipper down the back of my dress.
'Lift your arms,' he says, and I do, immediately. I don't know why but I want to.
He removes my dress and hangs it on the back of the door. I am almost naked, just my shoes with silver toes, my expensive bra, and I remember thinking when I'd put it on how crazy it was because no one was ever going to see it. I am shaking, shivering, as if with cold, but I am not cold. I'm in a fever. He lifts the lid on the toilet and I sit. I look up into his eyes, his expression is blank, the light behind him. I am, embarrassed, my bladder in knots, my pulse racing.
'I can't…'
He goes down on his haunches. 'Yes you can,' he answers, and there is a faint smile on his lips.
Nothing like this has happened to me before. It is not even something that has entered my daydreams, my fantasies. I have only known this man for two hours and I am locked in the wash room a mile high above the earth with my thighs spread and my breasts heaving. I can't believe he's watching me as I pee and, even more weird, more scary, I don't mind, I don't care. I like it. Now I have relaxed, my bladder opens and it gushes from me like water from a hose, swishing and hissing as the steamy pee hits the stainless steel sides of the pan. I feel proud and ashamed and wanton. If I can do this, I can do anything, averything...
I look back into his eyes as I reach for the paper. His hand clamps my wrist. He shakes his head and presses a finger to his lips. I sit there, motionless, dumbstruck, sweating, watching as he removes his polo shirt and reveals a smooth bronzed chest with a nest of dark hair. He balances on his heels, eases me forward on the seat and lowers his head between my legs. The tip of his tongue slides through the cowling about my clitoris and he kisses that neglected mysterious little bulb that's burning, electric, pulsating, yearning to be kissed. I am in a new land that has never been explored, virgin territory. I change the angle, spread my legs and sigh with elation as his tongue slips down into my vagina, in and out, in and out, before settling again on the magic button.
A spasm ripples through me. I arch my back, pushing myself forward, supporting myself with my hands, my head thrown back. I was ready. I was waiting. And then he stops. His tongue vanishes from the place where it belongs. I am instantly bereft, desperate, clinging on to…to what? The edge of a precipice? The edge of time?
'Open your eyes,' he says, his voice coming as if from far away across the sky. 'Open them.'
I do as I am told. I want to do as I'm told. He sinks the tip of his index finger that I recall flicking back the pages of his magazine into the silky pool of my vaginal oils and nurses my clitoris, gently, gently, and the spasm that had retreated back through my body begins to mount again.
'Open your eyes.'
I do. I am. I watch his hand and something mysterious and shameful happens. I don't just orgasm, I don't just rock with a wave of orgasms – a squirt of liquid rises in an arc from my vagina and splashes over his chest. I sigh and squirm. I am a fish on the end of a line, wriggling, hooked by my own desires. I can't stop myself. I am another woman. A woman I have never been before. The woman hidden inside me, and I wonder if in all women there is this needy sensuous creature frantic to get out.
He keeps his finger in place and the feeling starts again, the contraction blooms in my chest and runs down through my tummy into my womb. I roar as the tremor grows like a little earthquake, and he lowers his head and lets the discharge fill his mouth. He sinks down into my pussy and sups from the cup of my vagina and the feeling being joined like this is pure unadulterated bliss.
The moment is golden and timeless. Strange and shocking. I am an exotic plant bursting into flower. The sun rising on a perfect day. That blank wall with a painting hung. Through three long years trying to break through the glass ceiling something has been missing and this is what has been missing. Pure, full on promiscuity. There has been sex, not sensuality. It has been neurotic, not erotic, a bodily function without passion, a journey without a destination, wet sand aching for footprints.
What was it he said? You have to be old enough to know what you want and young enough to enjoy it. I am twenty-six. I am not a girl. I am a woman and this is what women want: hot brazen sex; wild uncomplicated sex, the kind of sex that makes you feel in touch with something deep-rooted and divine – the kind of sex that writers write about.
Our culture screws up our heads. The designers and advertisers turn us into the Virgin and Mary Magdalene rolled into one; the good girl and wild child. They want us to dress like courtesans and act like puritans. I have been lost, women have been lost, and I get the feeling sitting back with the oil man mining my precious liquids that the glass ceiling has not been above our heads but between our legs. For fifty years the glass wall has been breaking and now it is broken. We have entered a new era where a woman can be everything she wants to be.
Slurp. Sigh. Slurp. I am in heaven. I could have remained there with his head between my legs until we landed in Houston, till the sun rose over the Lone Star State, till the stars fell from the sky.
When he finally comes up for breath his face is wet with my fluids. We kiss. My mouth fills with my own juices. He moves away to remove his jeans and I notice his white boxers have pale b
lue sailing boats running around the waistband. He pulls them down and his cock stands rigid before me, long and straight with a tanned torso and a pink bulbous head that is so beautiful I can't wait to feel it, touch it, cradle it like a baby kitten, and that's what I do, stroking it gently, massaging his balls, touching the tip of my tongue to the narrow split at the top of the fruit.
He pulls me up, drops down on the toilet seat where I had been sitting and I fall to my knees like a worshipper at prayer. That's what I am. That's what I want to be. I want to worship his perfect penis and do so, licking its length, up and down, regular as a metronome, squeezing it with one hand, teasing it, kissing it. I stipple the tip of my tongue around the indentation and he sighs as I find a nerve ending that brings him pleasure. That's what I want. That's what sex is: the desire to bring pleasure to another knowing that pleasure returns like waves to the sea shore. You have to give to get. Most men don't know that. Most women never get the chance to learn. This is my chance. His skin is soft as silk. I can smell him. He smells of roses and marzipan. I press down with my teeth before opening my gullet and draw his cock down, down, deep inside the cathedral of my gaping mouth.
I don't just feel happy or contented or joyful. I feel something deeper, stranger. I feel as if I have uncovered the force of my primordial genes; the inner me that is truly me. I have been living a lie. I don't want to be a superwoman, the head of the company, the best PR in America. I want to lie on my back with my legs spread and my vacant places filled. I want to fuck...
But no, that's not what I mean. That's what Harvey wanted. I want more than that. I want to feel totally and completely at one with my own body and I know the only way to do that is sharing it with another body that wants the same. I have an intuition that in those unfamiliar places we are afraid to go, all girls have the same yearning, the same driving force, the same secret desire. In the vagina of every girl her clitoris is Sleeping Beauty waiting to be awoken by her prince.
Flight 69: The Mile High Club (Hot Sex with a Handsome Stranger) Page 2