Page 57 of When Sinners Dare

“What if I promise to hold your hand the whole way?” I scowl at her and look back at the hangar, noticing the nose of a jet sticking out for the first time. Noise starts up in there, and then a vehicle’s creeping it out like a menace to society. “I’m still here, aren’t I? And I’ve been on it a hundred times at least.”

“That was luck then.”

She backs up and grabs hold of my hands, trying to drag me towards it. “No, it’s mechanics. Propulsion, lift, aerodynamics. Stop being a pussy.”

One step forward, and I halt again. “A pussy?”

“A little, yeah. Man up.”

Eventually, I huff and give in. Not only because she called me a pussy, but also because I seem unable to ever say no to this woman. I might grumble the whole damn way to the jet and up the steps into it, but I just keep looking at her in the hope that the real fucking fear in me will settle its ass down at some point soon.

It doesn’t. Doesn’t as we taxi out onto a runway. Doesn’t as we start speeding up real damn fast. And sure as shit doesn’t when the bottom of my guts drop out my ass and we lift off the ground.

The climb finally seems to level out, and the sky out there slides by. I do my best not to look downwards at all. I can’t even think about it, let alone look at it. My hands are gripped onto the seat. My eyes are set fast on her. And my legs are shaking like a mothafucker.

“See?” she says, unstrapping her belt to get up. “Safe.”

“Fuck that. I need a drink.”

She moves around the cabin for a minute or two, and eventually comes back with a whole bottle of Jack and a glass. I don’t take the latter. I gulp from the bottle, sure as hell knowing that if I’m out of my head on booze, dying will go a lot easier.

“You’re really that scared?” I look at her over the bottle, not about to admit that shit, but damn sure there’s no other answer than yes. “Okay, well, it’s only a few hours. Four at most.” Four? Fuck. “How about a little distraction?” My brow cocks as she reaches past me to the window and pulls a blind down.

“Better be a damn good distraction.”

She backs up a few steps to another, doing the same, and before long the whole space is just me and her in darkness and a closed door to wherever the pilots are. “Better?” she asks. I nod a little and swig from the bottle again, watching as she unzips her jeans slowly. “How about now?” I swallow and lower the bottle as she starts making a show of undressing. “There’s a bed back there. Big one. How’s your dick doing?”

“Could be waking up. Keep going.”

“Good.”

~

Flying, it turns out, isn’t as scary as I first imagined. That’s a fucking lie – it is. It’s just that when a woman as fine as her is intent on teasing you into forgetting about it, the air beneath us meant shit. Her mouth on my dick helped with that, and then I got so lost in her for a few hours that I didn’t even remember we were flying for a while. Landing, though. Different story. Couldn’t fuck our way through that, apparently. Needed to get back in the seats and strapped in, blinds up as well. Hell on earth.

The cabin door gets opened and I’m out of her before her, dragging her hand like she did with mine to get me in there. She’s still giggling about shit that is not funny as she makes her way down behind me. In fact, she’s full on laughing by the time we arrive at a guy in a suit who’s got a clipboard in his hand.

“Miss Cortez,” he says. “Welcome to New York.”

“Yes. Thank you,” she says, as she signs a piece of paper and takes some keys off him.

We walk out through some corridors and finally turn out onto land that doesn’t involve planes. “So,” she says, as we approach a blacked-out Lincoln. “Other than sharing the flight with you, the main reason we’re here is that I need your help picking something up.”

“My help? Is it heavy?”

She nods at the car and slides into the driver’s seat. “Yes. Kind of. I’d let you drive, but too much booze.” True enough, so I walk around and get in the other side. She inputs an address into the navigation, as I slam the door. “It’s not too far. About an hour or so I think. I could use a coffee first. You too?”

She’s not wrong with that either, so I lean back and look at the road as she pulls away.

Outside goes by slowly, as heavy traffic hampers us, but, in all honesty, I’m just glad to be back on the ground. Add in the fact that she’s next to me and I couldn’t give a damn where we’re going or why. We pick up a coffee at the first store we come to, and then we’re back on the road and skirting around the other side of New York, through Queens, and towards Long Island.

Eventually, the land turns wealthy as hell. Cars start getting expensive, and houses begin looking like weekend retreats for the rich and famous, with all the lights twinkling in the night sky. “I’ve never been here,” I mutter as I watch the world go by.

“New York?” she asks, sipping her coffee.

“No, out this side of it. This is where the rich folks head. I’ve never been one of them.” She pulls off down a ramp, heading to somewhere called Smithtown Bay.“I suppose you’ve got a place here too. You know, with all that wealth you’ve got.”

“Us? No. We don’t have anywhere in New York. At least not yet. I might expand out here, though, eventually, if we can. We have set limits on the boundaries we control, and the kind of rules we live by dictate where we can and can’t operate. There’s a bigger name than us here. We’re not friendly.” I frown and think on that. It’s strange hearing her talk like this for the first time. Yeah, I saw the whore house, and I accept it, but these brothers around her and their world – her world – seem so far from the gangs I used to run in.

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