22. Cam
twenty-two
Cam
I open my eyes to a pitch-dark room and squint into the darkness. Through the tiniest gap in the blackout curtains, daylight shines like a beacon, and I glance over at the clock beside the bed. Its neon green numbers read 11:23am, but I know better than to trust it. I slap my hand around on the nightstand for my phone and pull it to my face. It’s actually only eleven-fifteen.
I still haven’t figured out where I am.
After a few hours of delays, an aircraft change, and an Air Traffic Control system outage, I finally reached my hotel room after three am. I managed to call Maisy to say goodnight, but I was sitting at my gate, surrounded by delayed and irritated passengers, and it was the quickest call we’ve ever had. I didn’t get to tell her a bedtime story. She was crying when we hung up, big, shuddering sobs that broke my heart, and I didn’t even get to talk to Amie beyond a quick hello.
I felt like crying, too. I miss my little girl. I miss Amie. I miss them both with a fierce ache in my chest.
Stretching my arms above my head as I stand, I move over to the window and pull the curtains open, surveying the impressive ocean view. It looks like Miami. The clouds look ominous and the palm trees are swaying from side to side, bending so far they look like they might just break. Excellent.
I grab some underwear and my workout gear, whiz through my morning ablutions, and head for the gym, water bottle in hand. I stuffed my earphones in my ears before leaving the room and as I swipe my card at the gym door, I scroll to the newest episode of my favourite podcast. Then I find myself an empty treadmill and prepare to sweat.
Six miles later, with my muscles nicely warm, I hop off the treadmill, refill my water bottle and move over to the free weights. As a pilot, we’re always being told how important our physical health is. Mentally taxing though the job is, I pretty much sit and look out of a window all day, so it feels good to do something that gets me moving. It also helps to combat the effects of jet lag—supposedly, at least. Someone better remind my body of that next time I cross an ocean.
I push myself to a personal best with the weights and then move to a yoga mat in the corner, lying down to stretch and cool off. I don’t usually run so far and I never do so many reps, but I’m mad. I’m tired and I’m mad, yesterday’s delays pissed me off and I miss my girls. Pushing my body to its limit helped to relieve some of the stress, and a little more of it poured out in the sweat soaking the basketball jersey I keep in my suitcase for hotel gym workouts. I wipe down the yoga mat, toss my used towel in the designated basket, and head back to my room for a shower. I need a hot one to soothe my sore muscles but after spending the last four miles thinking about Amie’s ass, a cold one might be more beneficial.
Steam fills the room and fogs the mirror as I step out of my shorts. Once I step under the spray, the warmth envelops me and I feel my muscles begin to unclench. I lean heavily against the tiles, letting the hot water beat down on my back and shoulders.
Inevitably, my mind wanders to the same place it always does: New Year’s Eve in Singapore, with Amie on me, under me, wrapped around me. I close my eyes and I can smell her apple shampoo, the musky perfume on her inner wrists and throat. I can still feel her fingers dancing down my ribs, my stomach, my cock. It twitches, swelling quickly and aching with need as the memories play behind my closed eyes. I’m detached from my own body as I watch the playback memory of her on her knees, lips wrapped around my cock, looking up at me with a wicked smirk as she sucks me all the way to the back of her throat.
Fuck .
The way she sucked me deep, the way her tongue swirled and rubbed, the way her fingers cupped and teased. I huff out a breath and my hand grips my cock, jerking it hard under the water. Amie.
I let out a strangled yelp as her tongue swirled around the tip of my cock, followed by a light graze of her teeth. Her hands moved from my hips to cup my balls, gently testing their weight and squeezing lightly.
“Fuck, Amie,” I grumbled. Her lips twitched around me like a smile, and my hips moved without warning, my breathing heavy and erratic.
“I can’t hold—”
“Sshh.” She released me with a warm breath and a lewd pop, taking me in her hand once more. “Just fuck my mouth, baby. Make me yours.”
Well, fuck, I didn’t need any further invitation. She took me in her mouth again, sucking me down until I bumped the back of her throat, and I thrust his hips against her face. She met each movement, sucking and licking, her fingers teasing at the base of my cock and my balls until they began to tighten, a dull, tingling sensation spreading from the base of my spine. Her dark hair draped over her shoulders until I gathered it in my hand, wrapping the wild curls around my fist and using it to drive her mouth up and down my shaft, in and out, tangling my fingers and my soul in her.
“Amie, I’m—” I bit out. Then, “fuck.”
My orgasm tore through me, an explosion in each limb, and Amie swallowed it down with a coquettish smile. She released me with another pop and licked her lips, then moved back up me body to capture my lips with her own.
“Delicious,” she declared, using the pad of her thumb to wipe at the corner of my lips. “Now I want you to screw my brains out.”
I stroke myself, jerking into my hand, remembering the sensation of Amie’s mouth until the inevitable happens, hot white spurts hitting the tile and sliding down slowly. It’s a relief, but barely. I clean myself up, rinse the evidence from the shower wall, and turn off the water.
Dry and dressed in jeans and an old T-shirt, I pull out my tablet and download the day’s flight plans. They’re all electronic now, and while I wait for them to materialise on the screen, I check my emails and open my social media apps. I rarely use social media; it just never occurs to me to do so. I don’t ever have the urge. But every once in a while, I remember it exists just long enough to check in .
I leave a short congratulatory message for a high school friend who got married for the third time and like a few friends’ holiday photos, and then a photo stops me in my tracks.
I’d been scrolling mindlessly, but I’d know those gold-flecked eyes anywhere. Amie is in the middle of three other women standing under a bright purple spotlight and all holding glasses of something brightly coloured with umbrellas. Amie is wearing a form-fitting yellow dress that hits mid-thigh and shows plenty of skin. Fuck , she’s beautiful. Her lips are painted with something red and glossy and I want her to wear it while she wraps her lips around my cock again. I want her to stain my cock the way she’s left a stain on my soul.
I met two of the other faces in the picture when I was in London. They’re all beautiful women but none of them hold a candle to Amie and the way she glows through the screen.
My tablet pings with confirmation that the flight plans have downloaded and like a petulant child, I throw my phone face down on the bed. I need to stop wanting what I can’t have and focus on what I do: a friend in Amie, a daughter in Maisy. And two flights coming up, the first of which will have me crossing from one side of the country to the other.
I check the plans and see our path has us dodging weather systems from coast to coast.
Fucking brilliant.
“I have control,” I say, ghosting my hand over switches on the panel in front of me .
“You have control,” my co-pilot, Jeff, confirms. Then he tears his headset off his head and stands from his seat, shimmying out and stretching carefully to avoid hitting the overhead switches.
“Sorry man,” he says. “Just gotta get out of that seat for a minute. Do you mind if I take a walk?”
“Go ahead.” I shake my head and almost immediately, I hear a disembodied voice say Dino-four-two-Charlie . My brain is instantly alert when I hear our call sign over the radio. I hold up a hand to Jeff, signalling that my focus is elsewhere, and he picks up the interphone to call for a flight attendant while I check in with Air Traffic Control.
The voice in my ear—attached to a man in an office complex somewhere—instructs me to make a small turn, and as I adjust the dials, a flight attendant buzzes the door and Jeff unlocks it to let her in. Then he slips out and leaves me with Lisa, one of my favourite flight attendants to work with. She’s in her fifties with sun-bleached hair, sunbed-tan skin and a dark, husky voice that sounds every bit like her twenty-a-day smoking habit. But she’s got a heart of gold; she’s smart and funny, and she’s great with passengers. She doesn’t take any of our shit, and most importantly, she always saves us the good snacks.
“Got any new pictures of that little angel of yours? She spent Thanksgiving with you, didn’t she? I’m sure that’s what Darcy said.”
“Darcy Flynn, the omniscient gossip queen.”
“More like the host of Galley FM,” Lisa snickers. I grin, sliding my finger across my tablet screen and showing off my new background. It’s Maisy in my parents’ pool at Thanksgiving. Big flower-shaped sunglasses cover her face and she’s wearing floatie bands on her arms as she grins at the camera from the giant donut floatie. Amie is beside her, arms wrapped around our little girl, grinning just as hard .
“That’s your girl, huh?” Lisa looks at me with a smile.
“Maisy’s my girl. Amie is… I don’t know what she is.”
I don’t know why the words fall out—especially not in front of Lisa. I know she won’t tell anyone, but that’s not what I’m worried about. I’m more worried about vocalising my darkest fears: that Amie isn’t my girl at all. That she’s just out of reach. That she might always be just out of reach.
“Oh, Camden,” she scoffs, socking me lightly on the shoulder. That’s the Lisa I know and love. “Look at how she’s looking at you. You can’t fake that sparkle. She’s your girl, all right. You’re a lucky man, Captain Whitehouse.”
“Yeah, I certainly am, Lisa,” I say, pushing a few more buttons on the control panel and letting Jeff back in. Lisa leaves again, and Jeff and I sit in comfortable silence, giving me space to think about my girls. Maisy and Amie.
Once upon a time, I thought nothing could hold a candle to the way flying feels. And then I held the Caine ladies in my arms.