Dream Girl

"Pretty shitty duty," I said to myself. The cobwebs didn't say anything in reply, nor did the old pilots' licenses hanging in their cracked frames. Still, with my MP3 going and a thermos of hot, hot coffee, I wasn't seriously complaining. It sure as hell beat Iraq - nobody trying to blow my ass up again.

I brushed the hair out of my eyes. Long blonde bangs look good in a bar, not so great when the dust swirls like a blizzard and cobwebs hang everywhere. I could feel a thin layer of mud building where the dust contacted the sweat on my skin, and cool liquid trickles under my arms and breasts. Meanwhile, the old-fashioned spirit thermometer outside the small window by the door read a cool ten degrees Fahrenheit.

My cell rang, a short riff from a Talking Heads song, 'Life in Wartime.'

"Yeah?" I said into it. It was the Powder River County Manager calling.

"Haven't you got that place closed up yet? If you get your ass snowed in, I'm not sending the Sheriff out to rescue you."

"Ernie, I'll get the place closed up, although not by your deadline. All of my staff are down with the flu, so it's just the Director of Public Works doing the work," I said.

His tone softened. "Melissa, I didn't mean to be gruff. It's just that the County Supervisors are chewing my ass about the cost of that airstrip. When we took it over, we thought the county could handle the upkeep. Hell, most of them were going around saying the town'd make a profit off the Belle Creek airstrip. Just do the best you can - and be careful, okay?"

"Yeah, sure," I said and ended the call. I wondered about the dreamy quality in Ernie's voice whenever he addressed me. He gave me a hard time, alright, but I know if he hadn't been able to raise me on the phone, he'd be out here, snow or not, just to make sure I was alright. Nice man, maybe we'd go out some time. But even in rural Montana, people frown on a boss dating his employee.

I was just getting ready to heft up another piece of thick plywood over one of the few windows in the small hangar, part of the soon to be closed 'Belle Creek Airpark,', which was really just a 1300 foot paved runway, and a couple of steel buildings. My muscles were already starting to get sore - I wasn't sure if I was next in line for flu, or if it was just my 34 year old muscles rebelling. After service in Iraq and a total of 10 years in the Army, I'd spent the last few years in Powder River County, a lovely little Montana county near, well, nothing. And Belle Creek was just a speck on most maps.

As I lifted up the sheet of wood, the shortwave radio in the building crackled, then a woman's voice came over, clear and strong - "Unknown air strip tower, this is Cessna 1564B, I need to set down. Do I have clearance? Can you verify runway length?"

What the fuck? I was only vaguely aware of how to even use the radio, and had no idea of clearances. Matt Granger took care of that stuff, including closing this whole shebang down, except, Matt was in bed....with Miriam, his wife, who he 'said' had the flu. He said he had the flu, too, but I'd seen his wife. Even I'd be tempted to be in bed with her, and I'm a chick.

"Um, hey there, this is Belle Creek air, uh, airpark. Sure, you can land here, there's no one else using the runway. And it's about 1300 feet long - I hope that'll do you." I wasn't going to be mistaken for a real control tower, I didn't think.

"Oh, great, that'll work," the woman's voice replied brightly. "The sky is lowering like mad, it looks like there's gonna be a blizzard. I can't get above it, and I can't fly through or around it. See you soon, tower."

I figured I'd better get outside and look her in. Soon enough, a tiny black dot in the western sky turned into a bigger dark red dot, which eventually became a lumpy looking burgundy thing with a small passenger cabin, a long tail, and one propellor, in the front. She came in, smooth as silk, then taxied down to the end of the runway, by the hangar and the sheds. The prop spun, then stuttered and stopped.

The pilot got out, a young and slim, black-haired girl of about 5'9", hair long and glossy, wearing aviator sunglasses, a brown leather bomber jacket over a thick sweater, blue jeans and cowboy boots. She looked around, then spotted me and strode over.

"Hi," she said, extending a hand. "I'm Valerie Gates - you are...?" Her words came out in a white cloud that hung in the still air around us. We shook hands - her hand was as cold as a banker's heart.

"Melissa Johnson. What brings you to Belle Creek?" I asked, being hospitable. She pulled off the glasses to reveal clear, warm brown eyes that smiled all by themselves. They didn't go at all with the cold hand.

"Those, and that," she said, pointing to the thickening clouds and building mist. As if they were her sidekicks trying to emphasize her point, the first few flakes drifted down between us, to add themselves to the two foot plus already serving as a base."Plus my cockpit heater went out." The red tip of her nose, her ice cold hand, and her bright red cheeks supported that claim.

"Wow, you must be pretty cold," I said, looking up at her. She had a good three inches on me. "I don't have much here, but I've got a thermos of hot coffee. Like some?"

"God, yes please, I'd love it!" she said, her lips shivering. I showed her the way into the old hangar. As the door thumped shut behind us, her leather boots echoed off the concrete floor and the open space of the vacant space. My rubber soled desert boots were almost noiseless. "Sorry I don't have any cream or sugar, I wasn't really expecting guests," I said.

"No worries. So long as it's hot...." She smiled. It was a nice smile.

"So, what's your story?" I asked. "You don't look as though you were planning on making a visit to Belle Creek..."

"No," she said. "I was transporting this Cessna 337 from Minneapolis to Seattle for my father. I can't get through the clouds and storm, so I looked around. Fortunately, you all had a strip here." She looked around. "I don't suppose there's a hotel or something?" She'd seen what Belle Creek looked like from the air.

"Well, there's a guest ranch...but it's closed until April," I said. "Otherwise, not much of anything for thirty miles or so." She frowned. It was still attractive.

"Maybe I could just bunk here?" she asked, the timbre of her voice rising, looking around the empty concrete. "I've got a sleeping bag in the plane..."

"Well....there's no heat, no water, and you might have a couple of feet of snow around you when you wake up." I smiled at her. "I could probably put you up, I live in Broadus, about 30 miles from here - there's really nothing here."

The space between her eyebrows furrowed. She hesitated, then answered.

"I don't want to impose..." she said.

"Oh, I've been looking for some excuse to knock off, anyway," I said, setting aside the straw broom I'd been holding absently. "These days I'm more suited to desk work."

"This isn't your usual job?" she asked, eyebrows raising slightly, a slight twinkle in her eyes.

"Don't let the dirty face fool you," I said. "I'm no worker, I'm just a government bureaucrat. I'm in charge of Public Works for the county." I paused, then added. "Well, the offer's still open. I could use the company for an evening."

She smiled, warmly and as though we'd been girlfriends for ages. "I think I'd like that," she said.

"Good. My Grand Cherokees's behind the building. Gather up whatever you need from your plane. Oh, and I'll help you tie it down." We took care of the plane, then she took a bag out of the cockpit. She held it up. "This stuff'll keep us warm,' she said, with a grin, showing me a bottle of Courvoisier.

As we walked to the SUV, the flakes started getting serious, a real snowfall, whitening the view of the trees around us. We climbed in the Jeep, and I started it up, heading for Broadus.

"Wow, I didn't realize how chilled I was," Valerie said. "Feel," taking my hand and holding it against her smooth cheek.

"You've got a seriously cold face, Val," I said, a little concerned. "Do you feel numb anywhere? Frostbite is a serious threat in Montana in February."

"Naah, hey I did a couple of years in Alaska, I've dealt with cold, I'll be okay," she said.

As we rounded a switchback on the downslope of a steep hill about halfway to Broadus, I swerved to miss a jack rabbit jumping in front of us. The Jeep slid on a patch of ice. "Fuck!" I muttered, feeling it slide into a snowbank on the left side of the road. I was thrown against the door panel, and Valerie into the console between us.

"Are you okay?" I asked, looking over at Valerie.

"Yeah, I'm okay. How about you?" she said. "Can you get it going?"

"We'll see," I said as I put it into four wheel drive. "Shit. I'll take a look. It's probably just a little thing."

As I exited the driver's side, I immediately stepped into a drainage ditch filled with icy slush under a coating of snow. "Shit!" It soaked my boots, pants and legs up to mid-thigh. At first I felt just wetness, then thousands of icy-cold needles jammed themselves into my lower body.

To make things worse, the snowfall and fog had become so heavy, it was as though our Jeep was wrapped in cotton batting. I couldn't see more than about fifty feet away.

"Can I help?" Val yelled.

"No, I'm fucking up just fine by myself," I yelled back, only a little sarcastically. I heard her door open, then slam shut, her boots making crunching sounds in the packed snow.

"I KNEW these boots'd come in handy," she said, as she helped pull my rapidly numbing self out of the icy muck. The desert boots weren't doing much to protect my feet from the elements. I hadn't planned on being out in them for long. I lay down on the snow bank and looked under the Jeep. I found that we'd snagged on a guard rail anchor cable.

"Hey, look in the back and get me a tire iron, okay, hon?" I said. Val rummaged around and brought it back to me, lying down on the snow and ice next to me.

"Here ya go....hon," she said, and winked. Then it occurred to me that I'd just called her that.

"Oops....sorry about the 'hon' part," I said. Val smiled.

"It sounded real friendly. I didn't get much of that in New York."

"I thought you said you were from Minneapolis," I said.

"No, I said I was flying from Minneapolis. For the last few years I lived in Manhattan - New York, not Kansas. I used to work for Lehman Brothers." She looked at me appraisingly.

"Too bad. Lost your job, huh?" She nodded. I guess I passed her 'knowledge of current affairs' test. "Here, help me with this." I could give her my own test.

I lay under the SUV, the frigid ground rapidly sucking heat out of me. If things didn't go right, this little thing could turn into a big bad thing. I told her to crawl next to me, and hold onto the end of the tire iron, while I flexed it into the cable. It took us about five minutes, but we wrestled the underside of the engine off the cable, then we both stood up.

"Oh my goodness, you got grease all over your hands...and face...and arms, and those cinders ground into your jacket. It looks ruined," I said. Val looked herself over.

"It'll clean up." I smiled inside. She seemed like a nice lady, with a nice attitude.

To my consternation, though, I was starting to feel a little disconnected. I was seriously being affected by the cold.

"Val, we've gotta get going, I'm feeling this," waving my hand at our surroundings.

"Sure, hon," she said, with no hint of irony. I put the Jeep in gear and headed out, a little slower this time, in case there were any more jihadi bunnies out there. I was starting to really hurt from the cold, and I felt a sensation of just...drifting, my vision narrowing to small circles.

"Melissa, you okay?" Val said, looking over at me.

"I guess I got a little more exposure than I should have," I groaned. The next thing I knew, Val was helping me over to the passenger seat, and she took her place in the driver's seat.

"You navigate, hon," she said. From there, most of the trip was a blur to me.

Somehow, she got out of me which house was mine, once we got to town. She helped me through the door, and up the stairs. I vaguely remember hearing water running in the bathtub, as she helped me to pull off my icy wet clothing. Then I felt a searing liquid heat that hurt and simultaneously felt achingly good as she sat me down in the water.

Val had managed to get me home, in an area I doubt she'd ever been before, then took it upon herself to get me re-thermalized. I came to, waking up, really, in the tub, immersed up to my nipples in bubbles and hot water. Val was seated on the ledge of the tub.

"Hi," she said. "You kind of blacked out there. Um, I took it on myself to get you in some hot water. I suppose I could as easily have put you in bed, but 'six of one, half-dozen of another', I guess." I looked down at myself - I was completely naked. "Wow, that's never happened before," I said.

"Been undressed by another woman? Pity," Val said. I looked at her. Her look gave nothing away.

"Huh, no, I mean blacking out," I said. I could feel a blush rising up my chest to my face.

"I've seen people react that way to hypothermia before. I spent a couple of years flying in the National Guard in Alaska. With some stimulation of your extremities, I think you'll be okay."

I stared at her. "Oh, right...stimulation."

"No, seriously," Val said. "We recovered your core temperature, but a lot of capillaries - you know, the tiny little blood vessels at skin level and about an inch under your skin - may have shut down, part of your body's attempt to protect itself from the cold. Heat doesn't bring them back, massaging does." I thought about it. It SOUNDED like it made sense.

"Um, okay...what do you want me to do?" I asked sleepily. Val smiled as she stood up, and started peeling off her clothes.

"Well, I think you should continue your heat therapy in the tub, so I'll just join you." As she was talking, she was looking into my eyes - hers were dark, almost black, and kind of mysterious. I didn't know the first thing about this woman, but she was drawing me in to her. She unzipped her Neve Heidi sweater, then pulled it over her head, her long, glossy black hair falling out over her shoulders in swirling waves.

Underneath, she wore a plain white crop top. She pulled that over her head, revealing the plain white bra, maybe a 34 C, underneath. She set it neatly next to the sweater on the vanity. "When I fly in the winter, I like to layer," she said.

In my confused, dreamy state, it sounded like "lay her." But of course, that couldn't be right.

As she reached behind to unhook her bra, she said, "It can be sixty degrees on the ground, and get down to twenty in the cockpit, so you've got to be ready for anything, y'know?" I just nodded dumbly, still weak from hypothermia and the soporific effects of the lovely bubble bath Val had drawn for me.

She leaned forward, shaking the cups of the brassiere off her breasts, revealing quite lovely full breasts, nipples deep pink, with moderately wide areolas surrounding them. Her nipples weren't erect or hard, but small. Val smiled softly at me, seeing me appraising her breasts. "My ex-girlfriend used to love kissing 'em," she said, looking down at her sweet mounds.

I felt a shock run through me - she'd as much as admitted she was a lesbian! Should I be scandalized? Perhaps at another time I would have been, but I was having trouble being bothered by it. And frankly, I'd always pictured lesbians as being sort of ugly, or mannish, though I'd run across several in the Army, and they'd just been ordinary people. But Valerie was absolutely stunning.

I decided to lay back and closed my eyes, enjoying the heat of the bath, and using my hearing instead of sight to 'visualize' the scene in my bathroom. And I thought to myself, as a small tingle began to form in my clit, if I wished a wish hard enough, I could make it so... When I hear the rustle of denim, I know she's taking off her jeans. I can imagine her pulling the tail of the brown leather belt out of its loop, then unbuckling it. Reaching down to unsnap the top button, or pull the copper rivet out of its hole, then slowly sliding the zipper down to its terminus, the opening there widening to show the color of her panties. Are they white, I wonder? Satin? Cotton? I guess 'pink, and satin.' That seem to suit what little I know of her.

The small sounds as she shimmies the rough fabric off her hips - probably full, wide hips, I guess...I really couldn't see them under her bomber jacket. She'd take care to leave her panties on when she removes her jeans. She seems to like the art of seduction - patience and planning are the most important factors there.

I visualize the denim jeans forming a dark blue puddle around her bare ankles. Perhaps she'd catch the tip of her tongue between perfect white teeth, as she tries to pull, first her left foot, then freeing that, her right foot, giving the foot a little shake so that the jeans fall to the floor. I can almost see her reach down and gracefully pick up the jeans by their waistband between thumb and forefinger of one hand, draping them over the vanity, with her other clothing.

Then she would run the fingers of her right hand up the small crotch of her bikini panties - they WOULD be bikini panties - her fingertips softly caressing her vulva, along the labia, softly against the small clitoris, giving a tiny shudder of pleasure as she touches herself. The panties giving no hint of a pubic bush - would she be entirely bare?

She would smile at me, then hook her thumbs into the waistband of her panties on both sides of her hips, pulling them down....off her hips, the vee of her groin narrowing, her skin pink and smooth, until the deeper pink and the folds of her clitoral hood, and her clit, and her labia...a glistening of new excitement in her center.

The shiny pink of her panties slipping down, against the smooth, satin skin of her perfect thighs, their destination a complete mystery, as all of my attention centers on her vulva, perfect little pussy, lips begging to be kissed, clit begging to be touched.

She steps over to the tub, holding two small glasses of her brandy up, the price of her admission into my pool of pleasure, her smile warm. She lifts her right leg over the edge of the tub. As she moves, her small slit opens, her center dark and glistening for me. Her toes delicate and pink, they touch the surface of the water gingerly, small rings running away from her and towards me.

She wrinkles her nose. "Hot," she comments.

I slide over, making room for her. She sets her foot, hissing at the temperature, then lifts her other perfect foot and brings it in to join the party. She kneels down, her slim calves and thighs pressing against my thigh. She sighs with pleasure as she sinks into the heated water. I hear a whisper, a woman's voice...

I opened my eyes, and looked at her. It was just as I had dreamed. Naked Valerie slipped into the tub with me, her skin silky against mine, her nipples hard against mine.

"I said, you look as though you've been dreaming, sweetie," she said, her eyes smiling. "I just flew into town. I couldn't miss you, today of all days."

"I missed you, hon," I said, our lips meeting, as she pressed herself against me. "I decided to take a leisurely bubble bath, waiting for your return. I was sleeping, and I had the most pleasant dream - that I was meeting you for the first time, somewhere in Montana, I think. We both nearly froze to death, and you were rescuing me....right here in this tub."

"Like this?" Valerie asked, with a crooked little smile, her fingers just beginning what would be a long evening of pleasuring me. "Happy Valentine's Day, darling."

My lover had come home to me.