2. High-Flying Desires
Chapter two
High-Flying Desires
B y the time I heard the first ping, my phone was buried somewhere under a heap of club wristbands and a half-eaten wedge of manchego. Tom, sprawled on the other end of our sectional, had already seen the message flash across my smartwatch. He grinned, teeth white and wolfish in the bluish TV glow.
“Missy. It’s her.”
He always said my name that way when he wanted to make sure I was really listening. I set down my wine, C?tes du Rh?ne, French but not too precious, dabbed at my lips, and reached for the phone.
Even the preview on the lock screen was a red flag: “Hope you weren’t too sore after the other night. Cyril says you have the flexibility of a college cheerleader. Let’s put it to the test soon? xx, S.”
I had met exactly one woman in my life who could make an emoji look like a middle finger and a blowjob at the same time. Sandra Donovan.
“She’s not wrong,” Tom said, his eyes on the ceiling, arms folded behind his head. “You’re kind of amazing.”
I rolled my eyes. “You’re just saying that because she said it first.”
“Maybe. Maybe I just love seeing you show off.”
He wasn’t wrong, either.
The rest of Sandra’s text was a parade of carefully deployed compliments and not-so-carefully veiled invitations. I could imagine her thumbing it out while cross-legged on an ice-white velvet chaise, glass of Champagne in one hand and a dick-shaped macaron in the other. Probably Cyril’s.
“Do you want to respond or shall I?” Tom asked. He was already half-hard, not that I minded. Last night had been a blur, but my ass still wore his fingerprints. I picked up the phone and considered my options: cool and breezy? Or skip to the porn?
I typed: “Last night was... intense. You’re trouble, aren’t you?”
The dots on Sandra’s end started bouncing instantly.
“I get the feeling you like trouble,” she wrote, then sent a photo: her bare legs crossed at the ankles, toenails glossy red, a silk robe parted just enough to show a patch of honey-toned thigh and the suggestion of matching silk beneath.
I zoomed. Tom snorted. “Don’t play coy, babe. We both know you’ll say yes.”
He was right, and not just because Sandra had a hundred-pound head start in self-confidence. If I was being honest, this was the first time in years that someone else’s interest made me feel not just desired, but alive. Like my own body was writing checks I wasn’t sure I could cash.
Tom unlocked his phone and scrolled through his own messages, a tangle of group texts and club reminders and a new one from Cyril. He whistled and held it out to me: “Can’t wait to watch you again. You’re poetry in motion. Dinner tomorrow?”
I replied to Sandra, letting the wine talk: “We’re in. Where and when?”
Her response was instant. “Marquis Hotel. Penthouse. 7:00. Dress code: up to you.”
She sent a winking selfie, tongue between her teeth, then a photo of an ice bucket and two crystal flutes.
Tom caught my eye. “You realize they’re fucking loaded, right?”
“I figured. You don’t rent out a penthouse for giggles. Or, at least, not unless you plan to get some.”
I wondered what “dress code: up to you” meant to a woman who had probably worn pasties to PTA meetings.
Tom kicked off his shoes, propped his feet in my lap, and waggled his toes. “You nervous?”
I ran a thumb up his arch, then squeezed his ankle until he winced. “A little.” I’d imagined Sandras onstage at Sapphire, undulating to The Weeknd while men and women alike gawked and drooled. Even during our brief meeting at the club, her confidence had a way of owning the air.
Cyril, meanwhile, was built like the kind of guy who did one-armed pushups for fun but dressed in a way that said he could fire your entire company and then buy your house for his mistress. The two of them together? Terrifying. Also: irresistible.
I smoothed my skirt, aware that Tom’s attention was now focused entirely on the line of my thigh. “What do you think they want?”
He grinned. “What do any of us want? Something we haven’t had before.”
I snorted. “You mean, a little four-way action with no awkward brunch after?”
“God, I hope not,” Tom said. “I hate brunch.”
We finished the wine and pretended to watch a documentary, though my mind replayed every detail from the previous night at the boutique: the taste of a stranger on my tongue, the shiver of being filmed, the way Tom’s cock had felt when he slammed into me after watching it all go down.
Eventually, the evening blurred into a slow, molten makeout session that left us both panting on the living room carpet, shirts discarded, my bra somewhere in the kitchen.
Before bed, I went through the shopping bags from earlier, laying out my new arsenal: jet-black mesh bralette, scarlet lace teddy, white garter set with matching stockings, and the pièce de résistance, a crotchless bodysuit with velvet trim that was almost too obscene to model, even for Tom.
I tried each one on in the master bath, turning and posing in the backlit mirror. The mesh bralette made my abs look like something out of a fitness ad, and the cut of the bodysuit was so precise it might as well have been laser-guided.
Tom, standing in the doorway, gave a low whistle. “Wear that one. No contest.”
I blushed, but not from embarrassment. The idea of Tom showing me off to the Donovans was a little terrifying, and a lot intoxicating.
“Think they’ll like it?” I asked.
He came up behind me, hands sliding around my hips, lips at my ear. “I want them to watch you the whole time. I want you to show off for me.”
He spun me, so I was leaning against the marble counter, then knelt and traced kisses up my thigh, over the lace, pausing at the opening in the bodysuit. His tongue found my clit instantly; I gasped, knees buckling.
After, while I caught my breath, he pressed his face to my stomach and just held me. “You’re the hottest woman in this town, Missy. Fuck their fancy penthouse. You’ll own them.”
I laughed, because it was easier than admitting I wasn’t totally sure.
I thought I knew what it felt like to be the main character in someone else’s fantasy. But nothing prepared me for the moment a helicopter landed on our fucking cul-de-sac.
We’d been expecting a black car, maybe a discreet Benz or at most, a stretch limo.
Tom had even slipped the driver a tip in his mind, just for the pleasure of watching me blush under the porch light.
But when the rotors cut through the suburban stillness, rattling our double-paned windows and scattering a murder of crows from the neighbor’s magnolia, I stopped dead in my kitten heels.
He was already at the window, drawn by the low, insistent thrum that seemed to vibrate the water glasses on our kitchen island. I found him grinning like a kid at Christmas, mouth open, eyes wide.
“You have to be fucking kidding me,” I whispered, joining him at the glass.
There, on the asphalt, a twin-engine helicopter perched on spindly black skids, its hull gleaming with the name Donovan in gold script.
The side door was open, backlit in icy blue, and a uniformed pilot in aviator shades stood beside it with the posture of a man used to waiting for billionaires.
Our neighborhood, which never so much as saw a police chase, was agog. A block past the cul-de-sac, a garden-party of wine moms gaped in matching yoga pants, faces upturned and aglow with the reflected blade lights.
For a second I panicked: What would Vanessa think? Or worse, Tessa? Then I realized, with a thrill I hadn’t felt since my first varsity meet, that I didn’t care.
Tom, already collecting his keys and wallet, glanced at me over his shoulder. “You coming or what?”
“Let’s make history,” I said, and we strode into the maelstrom.
Outside, the air was all chop and whir, the rotor wash tossing my hair and plastering my dress to my thighs.
I climbed in first, careful to keep my skirt tucked under, but the pilot didn’t even blink.
Tom followed, gripping the safety bar with one hand and my knee with the other, and then we were airborne, the houses shrinking to Monopoly size beneath us.
The pilot handed back a bottle of actual French Champagne, sweating in a silver ice sleeve. “Compliments of the Donovans,” he said, voice filtered through a comms headset.
Tom popped the cork and filled the flutes. I sipped, then giggled when the bubbles stung my nose. The city spread below, all neon and river lights and distant stadium domes, and I leaned into Tom’s shoulder.
He stroked my thigh, thumb sliding up the bare skin just under the hem. “You okay?”
“Never better,” I lied, because my heart was a hand grenade and I wasn’t sure which wire to snip.
I snapped a photo: city lights, my champagne glass, Tom’s fingers on my knee.
I texted it to Vanessa and Tessa with the caption: “Go big or go home.” The replies came fast: Vanessa’s a fire emoji and a “Yas queen,” Tessa’s a pic of her own cleavage with a fanged emoji.
I laughed out loud, and Tom squeezed my leg, proud and proprietary.
The flight was less than fifteen minutes, but it felt suspended out of time: me and Tom in our own bubble of anticipation, watched over by the silent pilot and a city that had no idea what was about to happen.
We banked hard to the left, circled a glowing glass tower, and then settled onto a rooftop helipad with a feather-light touchdown. There, waiting in the wash of blue security lights, were Sandra and Cyril.
Even from a distance, Sandra was a vision.
She wore a white silk wrap dress that barely contained her, the slit up to her thigh, her platinum-blonde hair coiled into an effortless chignon.
She waved, fingers tipped in red. Cyril stood a step behind, immaculate in black: tailored shirt, narrow pants, and an onyx watch the size of a casino chip.
His expression said he’d seen it all before, but the flicker in his eyes was for us alone.