by Zoe Chant
"Sure!" she said, thinking, No need to make it short. If you can read the phone book too, that'd be grand. Your voice is great and the more you talk, the less I will. Please don't stop talking. Ever.
"Okay," he said, "so this airplane is a Cessna 172. The door you just got in through is your emergency exit. Flip the handle down and push to open, flip the other way to lock it." He demonstrated on the open door. "Now, if you'll just turn around and lean behind the seat for a minute—" and he repositioned her with a gentle but deft touch of his big hand on her shoulder that left her breathless. "The back seat pockets have your emergency gear. There's a life preserver in each one. The one behind the pilot's seat has a first aid kit, flashlight, and emergency radio. Good?"
"Good," she agreed. Better than he knew, actually. If he could just stay right where he was—
But now he was reaching above the door to pull down the lap belt. Oh Lord, stop tempting me. When he was this close, she could actually feel the low rumble of his deep voice. "You've put one of these on before, right?"
"It'd probably be faster if you did it," she said, with perhaps just the tiniest catch in her throat.
He didn't seem to notice. "Sure." She wondered if she imagined the way his breath caught, too, before he leaned across her lap to get the other part of the belt off the floor of the plane. All the way across her lap. For a glorious instant, her lap was full of firmly muscled torso. Then he came up with the belt; damn, she'd have been totally fine if it'd slid behind the seat and he'd had to grope around a bit. But no.
The Cessna had the same kind of buckled lap belt as a jet airliner—insert the buckle, pull the strap to tighten—and then the shoulder strap clicked into a rather complicated mechanism next to the lap buckle. He buckled her in with brisk, efficient movements. Now that he was out of her lap, he wasn't touching her more than necessary. Was that a hint of a flush on his face? The blood had certainly rushed to a certain part of April, and it wasn't her face.
"Do you want some stuff from your bag before we stow it?"
"Okay, sure," she managed, and took the bag when he handed it to her. Before she could say anything else to him, he'd slammed her door and flipped the handle from the outside to lock it. April clutched her backpack in her lap with both hands, took a few deep breaths, and got control of herself while Nathan bustled around the plane, doing some sort of final checking. Then she got out her camera and the clicker for bear-counting.
Nathan opened the pilot's door. "Here, gimme the bag." He tucked it under a cargo web in the back of the plane, and then climbed up into his seat. His broad-shouldered bulk seemed to fill the cockpit. Whenever he moved, his arm brushed against hers.
"If you take down the headset," he said, pointing above her side of the windshield, "we can talk to each other in the air. And it'll protect your ears from the noise."
She clamped it over her ears as instructed. Her fingers found the little side-mounted mike and flipped it up in front of her mouth.
"Ready to ride?" he asked. April gave him a thumbs up.
The airplane's engine coughed to life, and they began to turn, pointing down the runway. April liked taking off in little planes. It was more exciting than in a big jet, more like being in a race car—the growing anticipation as they picked up speed, scenery racing past outside the windows, then a weightless drop in her stomach as the wheels left the ground.
This time, though, she kept being distracted by Nathan's big hands steady on the controls, by his sure and deft movements as he trimmed the wing flaps. He was a good pilot, she could tell: steady and controlled, no wasted movements. Competent, strong.
Fucking distracting, was what he was.
She'd be lucky if she managed to count a single bear, the way things were going.
4. Nathan
The flight was sweet torment.
Nathan took them up the coast, flying lower than he normally would so they could see everything, and doing his best to pretend this was just another flight with a particularly stunning client. He pointed out the white specks of polar bears, the silver flashes of seals. Once they saw a group of whales, their long gray backs like tiny islands in the shimmering water. Another time, he dipped the plane's wing so she could look at a little group of caribou with new spring calves, sunning themselves on a patch of red and gold tundra.
The whole time he was so acutely aware of her presence that he could have said, even without looking, exactly what every part of her was doing. Even with the headphones on, even over the roar of the plane's engine, each tiny rustle told him when she'd moved her arm, turned her head.
She's a customer, he told himself firmly. You can't run a business if you go scaring off customers before they can pay you. What's the matter with you? You've never done anything like this before.
His bear didn't understand customer. His bear only understood mate, and the glorious smell of her, the sheer proximity of her was filling him with passionate, aching need.
"Oh look!" April cried in delight, straining up in her seat and giving him more of a view than he needed (but considerably less than he wanted) of her round behind. "There's two bears down there, a mother and cub!"
And there's one bear in here, who desperately wants to slide his hands down your pants.
"You know, they only weigh about a pound when they're born," April informed him earnestly through the headset. She was still plastered to the window. Nathan obligingly circled so she could have another look, while she clicked away with the camera. "Twins are most common. I wonder if this mom had another baby that died, or if this one was a singlet? No way to know, I guess."
"Nope," he said, only slightly strained.
"Can we go a little farther out? Those open leads of water between the ice floes look like perfect seal-hunting grounds. I would expect to find more bears there."
She had a good eye for bear habitat. Nathan wouldn't have minded lounging on those ice floes himself, if he didn't have a plane to fly. Unfortunately, thinking bearish thoughts just made it harder to contain his bear, and their shared lust for the woman next to him.
They skimmed low over the white ice and open stretches of dark-gray water, finding a few more bears. April's excitement was intoxicating, rather like April herself.
But there was definitely a storm front coming in from the northeast, moving a lot faster than the forecasters had predicted. Nathan tried to keep an eye on the dark, gathering clouds. The forecast had said it was supposed to sweep by the shore without affecting them much, but he knew from experience how erratic the weather could be alongside the ocean. Forecasts tended not to be worth the paper they were printed on. And he didn't like how fast those dark clouds had covered the horizon. A little heavy weather wouldn't hurt the plane, but there were often unpredictable winds in a storm like this, and they were flying awfully low.
"Hey, I'm gonna take her inland a bit, okay?"
"Okay," April said. She didn't sound worried. Then again, she wasn't a pilot and didn't have any reason to pay attention to the dark line of storm clouds bearing down on them.
He turned the plane landward. They'd come out pretty far, and by the time they approached the dark line of the shore, erratic gusts of wind from the leading edge of the storm had begun to buffet the plane.
It was rough and broken country here. Bluffs lined the shore, notched with the craggy teeth of boulder-strewn river mouths. Nowhere to put down safely. Nathan turned the plane and flew along the coast.
A curtain of rain swept across them, spattering the windshield. Another gust of wind made the plane jump and then drop. Nathan really didn't like these crosswinds at this low altitude; it would be too easy for the light, responsive little plane to hit one of those air pockets and jump straight into the cliffs. He tried climbing a bit, but the air was even rougher higher up.
"Sorry about this," he said, glancing April's way.
"It's okay. I don't get airsick, and I'm a pretty experienced traveler." Despite the brave words, she was clutching her camera in a
white-knuckled grip. "Is this, uh, normal?"
"It's a little rougher than I was expecting." Which was an understatement; the plane was really getting slammed now, and it was so dark outside the cockpit that he was having trouble seeing the ground. A little plane like this didn't have the full range of instruments that a big jet did. Aside from a handful of basic instruments like a speedometer and altimeter, they were made for visual flying only, which was a really big problem when he couldn't see.
"Hey, I'm gonna start looking for a place to land 'til the worst of this is over, okay?"
"I thought you said we could land anywhere." April didn't seem to be panicking, which was good, but she'd tucked the camera between her knees so she could hang onto her seat with both hands.
"Anywhere flat and smooth. This is pretty rough country down there. I'm gonna try to find a gravel bar or a low stretch of meadow that doesn't have too many hummocks. If a tire snags or goes into a hole, it could flip us."
Though flying into a cliff would be a whole lot worse.
They swept across a river mouth, and Nathan turned the plane and flew inland, following the river's winding course. Rivers were often good places for finding flat sandbars to land on. Unfortunately, fog and rain obscured his view to the point that he wasn't sure if he'd know a landing spot if they did fly over one. Maybe he'd be better off risking it on the open tundra—
A warning beeped on the instrument panel. "What's that mean?" April asked. Now she sounded like she was starting to panic. Nathan didn't blame her. He'd be panicking himself if he could afford the luxury of it.
"Our wings are icing up," Nathan said grimly. More warning lights were coming on. Oh, this wasn't good.
"Ice? How? It's June!"
"And we're above the Arctic Circle." He fought with the controls. The plane responded sluggishly, like trying to steer a barge. "It's making our wings heavy, and the flaps aren't responding correctly. April, I'm sorry. I'm gonna have to put her down now."
"Okay," April said in a tiny voice.
They were pretty far inland now, and the bluffs along the river had flattened into to gently rolling tundra. He didn't have the option of picking and choosing, so between two sweeping gray curtains of rain, he picked a direction that looked flattish and went for it.
"You've seen people do the crash position on TV, right?" he said to April, pointing the plane as straight as he could. "Bend over and cover your head with your arms."
"Does it help?" she asked, a bit muffled as she obeyed.
"It'll protect your head and neck." In all honesty he had no idea if it did or not, but at least she wouldn't be able to watch the ground come up to hit them, which had to help psychologically at least.
In the dim light and the rain, he could barely see the ground until they were right on top of it, and they hit before he was ready. With a bone-jarring shock, the little plane bounced, skipped into the air and came back down with a crunch that had to be some of the landing gear ripping off. He didn't dare look to see how April was taking it. The plane slewed wildly to the side, and his powerful shoulder muscles knotted as he struggled to keep it from going over. For a minute he thought he had it, but then a wing snagged on brush, and there was a tremendous wrench as the plane flipped to the side. It rolled, tumbled, and finally fetched up slanting at an angle, tipped onto one broken wing with its nose buried in the brush.
5. April
There was rain coming in through the cracked window above her head, and someone saying her name. April groaned, peeled her hands off the back of her head, and looked up.
I'm alive, she thought. Somehow.
Big warm hands were touching her, rubbing her shoulders, cupping the side of her face. "April?" Nathan said anxiously. "April, say something, please!"
"I'm okay," she managed. "I think. I guess." Though she felt a sharp pang of regret when he pulled away from her and stretched past her to push the door open.
A wash of rain came in, sharp and stinging and cold. April yelped. Nathan slammed the door shut, after taking a look outside. The plane, April realized, was tilted halfway on its side, propped up on one wing—or, she amended, peering through the brush pressed against the downward-facing window, the remains of one wing. It was more like half a wing now. The front of the plane was crumpled, and, stretching out of her seat and looking out the window, she saw the tail was twisted, too. I can't believe we're alive. Thank God for seat belts.
"Mayday, mayday," Nathan said into the radio. "This is Polar Air, registration number—aw, shit, it's no use." He clicked the mike repeatedly. "Dead. No wonder. Our electronics are basically toast, and we probably ripped the antenna off, too."
April's stomach had finally been settling down after that wild ride, but now it plunged again. "You mean we're stuck out here?"
"I wouldn't say stuck. There's still the emergency radio, remember?"
Nathan crawled awkwardly over the back of his seat into the compartment behind them. There was very little room to maneuver in the half-crushed cockpit, especially for a big guy like him. April heard him rustling around behind the seats. She undid her seat belt and braced a foot against the side of the pilot's seat to keep from falling against the downhill door.
"Oh, fuck," Nathan swore.
"What?" she asked, trying to peer back into the dim interior of the plane.
"Our emergency radio? The batteries are dead." He threw it aside with a grunt of frustration. "We just got a new set of 'em this spring. Satellite uplink and everything. And completely, utterly useless."
"So we're stuck."
"For now," he pointed out. "Until we're missed and they send out a search party."
"How soon will that be?"
Nathan sighed. "Thinking you might want to land and walk around on the tundra, I told Lee we might be out all day. We won't be missed until late—probably really late, since the all-night light means that we wouldn't have to come back at dark. I doubt they'll get worried enough to start looking 'til morning."
"So we're going to be here for awhile?"
"Overnight, at least."
"Great." April rubbed her shoulder, where the seat belt had bruised it. That seemed to be her only injury, and as far as she could tell, Nathan wasn't hurt at all. At least they had that going for them. Rain drummed on the outside of the plane and dripped in through a dozen cracks. She felt around until she found her camera, and was relieved to find that it had survived the crash with just a few dings.
Just on the off chance that it might work, she checked her cell phone, but of course there was no reception. The tundra wasn't exactly bristling with cell towers.
"It's not as bad as it sounds," Nathan said, crawling back into the plane's tail. "We have survival gear back here, and I brought lunch, remember? We'll just have to make it stretch a bit."
"I have granola bars in my backpack."
"See?" he said, and she could hear the smile in his voice. "We'll be all right. All we have to do is stay warm and dry 'til help comes."
The survival gear turned out to consist of a sleeping bag and a couple of tarps, all tucked into a bright-orange rucksack. Nathan crawled out the door and stretched one of the tarps between the wing and the body of the plane, then laid the other tarp down on the wet ground. He unrolled the sleeping bag on it. When he was done, it was a rather cozy little shelter, almost like a tent.
"What do you think?" he asked, sounding anxious, like he was really worried she wouldn't like it.
"It's nice. Like camping out." She handed down the cooler and her backpack, then crawled down to join him in it.
They sat side by side on the sleeping bag and shared two of the sandwiches from the cooler. Peeking in, April saw he'd brought lots. Of course, a big guy like him must eat a lot. Nathan cracked open a bottle of water, took a drink, hesitated briefly and then handed it to her. April smiled at him and drank too, her lips on the bottle where his had been a moment before. She could still feel the warmth of his fingers where they'd brushed hers when he handed it to he
r.
Rain was still pattering on the roof of their shelter, and occasional gusts of wind rattled the tarp. Inside, however, they stayed perfectly dry, though it was chilly. After the warm morning, April wouldn't have expected how quickly the temperature could drop. Ice on the wings of the plane! At least there was no ice now, but it felt like autumn instead of the middle of summer.
As if he was reading her thoughts, Nathan said, "Our biggest concern is going to be staying warm until they find us. You can take the sleeping bag—"
"Don't be ridiculous," she said. "It's plenty big enough for two." And it was: enormous, warm and fluffy, scaled for a guy of Nathan's size. Or even, she thought, a guy of Nathan's size and a not-so-tiny girl who might slide in with him.
They were so very close together in the little shelter. It wasn't big enough to move around in without bumping into each other. Every brush of his arm, every semi-accidental bump of his leg sent a little jolt of electricity through her.
Does he feel it too? she wondered, looking at him from under her lowered eyelashes as she finished her sandwich. Surely he must. It couldn't just be her. She'd never felt such electricity with anyone before. Maybe this was what people meant by "chemistry". The first moment she'd seen him, she'd wanted him, and every time he brushed against her, the ache grew. She could feel his warmth just sitting next to him. She wanted to stretch into it, to lean her whole body against him, let him cover every inch of her with every inch of him ...
Even sitting down, he was taller than she was, a full head higher. This placed her on his chest level, which meant every time she reached for something from the cooler or shifted to tuck down the edge of the tarp, she brushed against his chest, his shoulders. It was driving her wild. How can he not feel this? Or does he? Come on, Nathan, do I really have to make the first move here?
Tipping her head back, she saw he was looking down at her with eyes as deep and brown as the shadows under the trees in a midsummer forest. Dark limpid pools that she could fall into, be lost in, forever.