Fly With Me

by Chanel Cleeton

  “It’ll be fun. Promise.”

  THIRTEEN

  JORDAN

  I left Florida first thing in the morning Friday, my flight arriving in Oklahoma City in the early afternoon. I took a cab to Noah’s house, struggling to get my bag up to the front door, lifting the mat for the key he’d left there. I found it and unlocked the door, hauling my bag over the threshold and shutting the door behind me with a thud.

  I walked back to Noah’s room, setting my suitcase down, checking my cell to see if he’d texted. He’d mentioned that if he finished up with his debrief, he’d try to come home early and spend the rest of the day with me.

  I couldn’t wait to see him. Nearly three weeks apart from each other was way too long. I didn’t know what it was about this relationship that made the distance so tough. Maybe it was that we were just starting out. We were still in that honeymoon, can’t-keep-my-hands-off-you phase, which only made the time apart seem even longer. And it was also the fact that this was our norm. It wasn’t like he was on a business trip; our relationship was defined in so many ways by being apart. By me being the one who came to see him. Our relationship was shaped as much by the time together as it was by the absence of each other.

  I started rummaging through my suitcase, setting my toiletries in the bathroom adjoining Noah’s room, hanging up the outfit I’d planned for tonight to avoid wrinkles. And then the door swung open and I turned, my gaze landing on Noah.

  I opened my mouth to say, “Hi,” but the word got lost somewhere between our lips as he devoured me, his hands running over my body, kissing me until I went dizzy. God, I’d forgotten how good he could kiss. Forgotten how amazing his tongue felt, the slight nip of his teeth, the hair against my face . . .

  Wait. What?

  He leaned back, his arms still wrapped around my waist.

  I froze at the sight of my man, tall and lean in his flight suit, aviators in hand . . . mustache.

  What?

  “God, I missed you,” he groaned. “You look gorgeous.”

  I’d woken up at 3 a.m. just so I would have time to do my hair and makeup before I arrived. Given the thing on his face, clearly he hadn’t been as concerned.

  I couldn’t look away. “Mustache” wasn’t the proper word. Mustaches were trimmed and groomed, and while definitely not my favorite thing, there was symmetry to a mustache. This was just like a forest of hair had moved in, bushy and unruly, and invaded his upper lip.

  What the fuck?

  “Sorry, but I have to go back to work.”

  I tore my gaze away from the mustache, focusing on the words coming out of his mouth.

  “I thought you were home.”

  He shook his head. “Sorry, but we had a last-minute flail with the schedule and they need me to lead a four-ship.”

  He’d taught me that a four-ship meant a formation of four planes.

  “I’m probably not going to make it back before the party starts tonight, so can you catch a ride with Easy? He’s coming back and can get you on base.”

  My mind sped as I tried to dissect all the things being thrown at me. I was nervous enough about going to this squadron thing without the added pressure of now going with Easy, who I wasn’t even sure liked me. I wasn’t going to know anyone there; I’d sort of been counting on Noah to be there. And I really wasn’t excited about the fucking forest on his face.

  I’d flown across the country expecting the Noah who was sweet on the phone with me, and instead I’d gotten Grizzly Adams. Grizzly Adams mixed with a bad 1970s porn star. I’d sort of thought he’d be excited to see me, too. No, I didn’t expect him to get up at 3 a.m. to do his hair and makeup, but was personal hygiene too much to ask for?

  My eyes narrowed as I gestured at that thing. “What’s going on?”

  “I told you. Flying tonight. I’ll be home late. Sorry.” He stepped back, releasing me. “I gotta go.”

  Wait. What?

  “I mean what’s on your face?” I blurted out, figuring that was the easiest and most obvious place to start. I gestured toward his lip, not really wanting to touch it, already mentally cringing over the fact that it had brushed my face.

  I had a thing about hair. On anyone. Boyfriend or not, I always landscaped for myself. So to say I was not thrilled to see a mustache on my boyfriend’s gorgeous face was the understatement of the year.

  “It’s March, babe.”

  That was his explanation? I stared at him like he was delusional—no, scratch that—I stared at that thing on his face. It was like a hairy caterpillar had crawled up and taken residence over his lip.

  Ugh.

  Tell me the mustache wasn’t a permanent thing and I’d just met him on a brief hiatus. We’d met in February. Last time I’d been out here had been the last weekend in February. And our video sex chat had been a few days after that and the quality hadn’t been all that great. Sure, I’d seen some stubble, but not this.

  “You don’t shave in March?”

  He gave me a look like I’d just said “fuck” in church. “It’s Mustache March.”

  I blinked. “What?”

  “Mustache March.”

  “What the fuck is Mustache March?” I asked, my foot tapping now. Meg was getting married next weekend. No way I was taking him to my sister’s wedding with that thing on his face. No fucking way. A whole month? Those pictures would last forever. How could he not mention this? I didn’t mean to be superficial, but he looked like a total perv.

  He just stared back at me like we spoke a different language. Maybe we did. He was clearly speaking Fighter Pilot and I was speaking Girl Who Is a Bridesmaid in Her Younger Sister and Ex-Boyfriend’s Wedding.

  “We grow mustaches.”

  He said this proudly, as if mustaches were something to be glorified. His lips curved. The caterpillar twitched.

  Was this normal behavior? Had I somehow time warped back to college and fraternity rush week or something?

  “We?” I asked, my voice weak. It was like a car crash I couldn’t look away from.

  “Everyone. The squadron. Fighter pilots. Pilots. The Air Force.”

  “Everyone grows a mustache,” I repeated.

  What the fuck?

  He checked his watch. “Babe, I gotta brief soon.” His voice became impatient now, and my annoyance grew. I got that in the grand scheme of life, it wasn’t a big deal, but right now, it felt like a big deal.

  I’d flown across the country to see him. Multiple times. My friends and family thought I was crazy. I was beginning to think I was crazy. He hadn’t been able to pick me up, now he couldn’t even stay, and then to top it off, he’d said he wanted me to meet his friends, and now he was going to miss out on most of that. I didn’t know if it was the lack of sleep or what, but the mustache, stupid as it was, felt like the tipping point.

  “Can we talk about this later?” he asked, his voice growing even more impatient.

  Oh, yeah, I was getting pissed.

  “No. No, we can’t talk about this later. My sister’s wedding is in eight days. Are you telling me that thing is going to be on your face in all of the family photos?”

  He grinned, and I swore he almost puffed out his chest with pride. I couldn’t.

  “Yeah, it’s awesome, right?”

  Oh my God.

  “No.”

  “Babe.”

  “No.”

  The smile slid off his face as my tone changed, my foot tapping even faster. We hadn’t been together long enough for him to see my temper, but I had a temper. A big one. And it was about to blow. I didn’t like feeling like I was an afterthought or an inconvenience, and I definitely felt like both now.

  “Everyone grows a mustache,” he repeated.

  “Even the women?”

  “No.”

  “So not everyone grows a mustache.”
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  Noah’s eyes darkened, and I got the feeling he was getting pissed. If I’d been a little more together, I would have registered that he was probably not the kind of guy who handled being told what to do very well, but I was in the middle of losing my shit, so that didn’t register.

  “I don’t have a pussy, so yeah, everyone in my world grows a fucking mustache in March.” He glanced at his watch again, the gesture spiking my temper. “I don’t have time for this. I need to go.”

  I glared at him. Asshole. “Well, you definitely won’t have my pussy if you don’t shave that thing off your fucking face.”

  I hated saying the P-word—did any girl actually like it?—but desperate times called for desperate measures. If I had to speak Fighter Pilot to get that shit off his face, I’d do it. Not to mention, I wasn’t feeling too into him right now anyway.

  Noah closed the distance between us, the expression in his eyes changing from slightly annoyed to supremely pissed off. Good, now we were even.

  “You’re saying you won’t have sex with me for all of March if I have a mustache?”

  I mean there was like a week left in the month, but I had to draw a line somewhere, flimsy though that line may be. It was my own Lysistrata. “That’s what I’m saying.”

  Arrogance flashed in those beautiful dark eyes and I felt a fluttering in my lady parts. Shit.

  Since he’d never seen my temper, and we’d never actually had a fight, we’d also never had angry sex. Which when done well, could be really freaking hot. And considering Noah did everything well, I didn’t doubt he’d deliver there, too.

  “Bullshit. You can’t go the whole weekend without my cock, babe.”

  Possibly true, but right now this was the best play I had.

  I leaned in closer, letting him get a whiff of my perfume and a chance to look down my shirt at the not-insubstantial cleavage there barely contained by the red lacy bra.

  “Bet I can.” I leaned back after a moment, after I knew he’d gotten enough of a show to want more, my gaze settling meaningfully on the area between his nose and upper lip. “Especially when you look like that.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Chicks dig the ’stache.”

  My hands fisted on my hips and a laugh escaped. “Newsflash, no one digs the ’stache. You look like Chester the Molester.”

  “Who the fuck is Chester the Molester?”

  “Someone with a ’stache exactly like yours.”

  He groaned, the anger sliding off his face. “I’m not shaving no matter how cute you are.”

  Something fluttered in me as he said that, and a little bit of my anger slid away.

  “Wanna bet?”

  A gleam settled in his eyes as he leaned into my body, the thin fabric of his flight suit doing nothing to hide his growing arousal. Another flutter. Shit. I shifted slightly so his hips were pressed against mine and he was between my legs.

  “I bet you can’t make it through the weekend without my cock, babe.”

  Well, now my anger was completely gone.

  “Can,” I whispered, my voice shaky as he bent his head, his lips grazing my neck. My head fell back, my body clearly not getting the Lysistrata memo.

  His lips curved against my neck and then his teeth nipped at the skin there and I felt myself getting wet. Shit.

  Noah pulled back, a satisfied smirk on his face, and I knew he could read the arousal flushing my skin and the way my chest rose and fell.

  “Sure, babe.”

  I should have realized that daring a fighter pilot to do anything would only encourage him.

  “Tell you what. If you can make it without sex for the next week, I’ll shave it off for your sister’s wedding.”

  That seemed doable. I could make a week. Hell, I wasn’t going to volunteer the information, but I’d gone months without sex when I was single—vibrators didn’t count, right?

  “Define sex.”

  His eyes narrowed. “What do you mean, ‘Define sex’?”

  “Like a week without sex, or a week without sex with you?”

  The second the words left my mouth, I realized I’d chosen poorly. Really fucking poorly. I’d meant to clarify on the whole vibrator issue without getting too specific, but apparently I’d just inserted my stiletto into my mouth instead.

  Arghhh.

  “Are you thinking of fucking someone else?” Noah asked, his eyes wide, his tone incredulous. God, he was getting growly. This did serious things to my body. Shit.

  “No.”

  “Then what does it matter if it’s sex, or sex with me, it’s all the same thing.”

  I made a face. “Hate to break it to you, but you are not my only supplier of orgasms.”

  His entire expression changed as I figured he got my meaning. “Babe. Gotta tell you the idea of you making yourself come is hot as fuck. Even hotter is the idea of me watching you do it.”

  Gah. He definitely got my meaning.

  For a moment, I really had to wonder if the mustache fight was worth it.

  He kissed me hard. “Gotta go fly, babe,” he whispered against my mouth, tickling my lips. “You wanna bet? You’re on. If you can make it a week, I’ll shave. If you can’t . . .” It lingered between us. “If you can’t, you’re mine the way I want it, when I want it. And the ’stache stays.”

  This was not necessarily a hardship. I was almost ready to throw it for sex on tap.

  Focus on the ’stache.

  I nodded. “Done.”

  He grinned, and I sank down on the edge of the bed, watching him swagger out of the room, my odds suddenly not looking so good.

  FOURTEEN

  NOAH

  I couldn’t concentrate.

  The sortie had gone well, the debrief fine. But my mind was back in my bedroom, back with Jordan. I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d fucked up with how I’d handled things with her.

  I felt like an asshole for not picking her up at the airport today. And I was even more pissed about the fact that I hadn’t been able to spend the rest of the day with her. I’d been dying to see her, and when I’d gotten a call from Rush, who ran the scheduling shop, I’d known I was going to disappoint her. And maybe I should have mentioned the mustache, but honestly, it had never occurred to me. I’d been a fighter pilot for over a decade. The married guys did Mustache March. Their wives didn’t seem to mind. Apparently, Jordan did.

  I walked out of the vault where we stored all our classified materials and ran into Joker. As squadron commander, he worked even more intense hours than the rest of us and was always the first one in and the last one to leave, his office light on every weekend. I figured Dani was a little bit of a saint to put up with his continued absences.

  He jerked his chin in greeting. “Did your girl get in okay?”

  I nodded, my answer mostly true. I hesitated, feeling like an idiot, but also figuring I needed relationship advice, and considering my top choices were Easy, who fucked anything hot that moved, and Thor, who had a broken engagement behind him that he refused to talk about a decade later, Joker seemed like the best bet. Besides, there were a ton of married guys in the squadron, but few were as happily married as Dani and Joker appeared to be.

  “Does Dani, uh, hate Mustache March?”

  Joker let out a bark of laughter.

  “Seriously?”

  I guessed that answered my question.

  “She fucking hates it.”

  “But you still do it.”

  “She deals.”

  In the years I’d known Joker and his wife, I’d never heard Dani raise her voice, never heard her curse. Somehow I didn’t think she and Jordan would deal in the same way. Maybe I should have just shaved the thing. I’d gotten caught up in the moment and hadn’t thought about how surprised I would have been if she’d radically changed her appearance or something.
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br />   “Let me guess, your girl isn’t a fan?” Joker asked.

  “That would be an understatement. She’s pissed. I didn’t handle it all that well, so now she’s really pissed.”

  He shrugged. “She’ll either get over it, or you’ll cave. Just pick your battles. Is she coming tonight?”

  I nodded.

  I felt guilty about that, too. The party at the O-Club had started two hours ago. Maybe I shouldn’t have suggested Jordan go with Easy. She’d definitely been nervous. Fuck. This was why I was shit at relationships. I was so used to just worrying about myself, my focus on my job and the mission, that I hadn’t even thought about her feelings.

  Joker grinned. “Good luck. See you at the club in a few?”

  I nodded again, my mind back on Jordan. I’d been an asshole earlier. I needed to make it up to her. Somehow.

  JORDAN

  I ended up being spared from one-on-one time with Easy when he brought a date, a pretty, dark-haired girl named Sonya.

  She talked the whole way to the base, her stories distracting me from the nerves rolling around in my stomach and making my heart race.

  It turned out she was in vet school—definitely way too smart for Easy—and from the sound of things, their arrangement, or whatever it was, was really casual. Easy took a call from another girl to set up what sounded like a date while she was there, and Sonya legit didn’t bat an eye. I would have kneed him in the balls, so I figured she was a better person than me. I didn’t really get why he brought her. I mean, I liked her a lot. But Noah had definitely described this as more of a family thing. And neither Easy nor Sonya looked all that into each other besides the obvious physical intimacy between them.

  Not my business.

  Except she was young and nice, and sort of reminded me of Meg, and I liked her. And I didn’t trust Easy as far as I could throw him, which considering that body, wouldn’t be far at all.