Nephele and Faye

With that tacit permission, her hand slid further in. Her fingers slid gently over my vulva and quickly found my hard clit. I seized up and gasped. It's been so long since I've been touched there by someone else. My eyes turned towards the blackened horizon. There, still hanging beneath the heavy thunderheads, was the sun. A blood orange glow now, on the edge of a blade of ocean. The rain thrummed strongly all around us and on our bodies, with a coolness that barely stifled the heat coming off our bodies. The passing beams from the lighthouse lit the darkness with momentary golden brightness, casting shadows of the rain on Nephele's face like they were living, dancing tattoos.

Her hand stroked slowly. Her finger rubbed circles over my clit, and my breathing became more labored with each stroking motion. Her body was held so tightly to mine I could sense her breathing synchronizing with mine.

I wanted more of her body against mine. I wanted her naked breasts to touch mine, with no wet clothes between us, so I let slip the straps of my dress and rolled down the blouse to below my breasts. As she stroked me, her body moved up and down along with her heavy breathing, so her nipples grazed mine, and it was more than I could stand, but at the same time, I wanted a more profound pleasure from her.

She sensed this from me, so she went down on me. As she did, she looked over both shoulders and said,

"There's really no one else here, right?"

I replied, "it's only us."

Reassured that no one would catch us in this moment, she proceeded. First, she kissed my shoulders, then my collarbone, then my breasts. She lingered there for a moment, sucking hard on my nipples, pulling them gently and exuberantly with her teeth before going further until she was on her knees in the pattering inch of rainwater that had accumulated in such a short time.

She pulled my panties down from the waistband. It fell to my ankles. Then, she put her head inside the skirt of my dress. I braced myself against my car as my knees buckled.

Her tongue went where her fingers touched. To my clit and deep between the lips. I moaned loudly. My thighs quivered with involuntary contractions. I tensed up so much that it became hard to breathe. For as long as she's apparently been out of practice, she knew very well exactly what to do with her tongue. Then I remembered that she was teaching and that soon I would be doing the same for her. So, I did my very best to remember how she flicked her tongue and moved it slowly across my clit, up and down, and then in a circular motion. I took note of the placement of her fingers in the valley between my lips and their gentle penetrations.

Before long, I felt my climax coming. Every flick of her tongue against my clit caused a louder and louder moan. And the louder I moaned, the more assertive her tongue. My pussy tightened, my thighs shook violently, and then star-struck, blindness from the explosive orgasm.

"Oh fuck!" I exclaimed. "Oh fuck!"

I grabbed onto the side of the car to stop myself from falling. She emerged from my skirt with a triumphant and messy grin on her face and kissed me. I tasted a bit of myself on her lips.

The rain started to peter out. The sun was now dipped below the horizon, and glittering blue stars peeked out between the parting clouds in the deep purple sky.

"Let's get in the car," she said.

I found the keys, and we went in. Still breathing hard from the ecstasy, I put the key into the ignition and turned it. The car roared to life. The dashboard lights lit up. The car was soaked through, but I didn't care. I didn't bother with the soft top because it was better to drive it with the top down to dry out faster.

We sat for a moment together in blissful silence. She put her arms around me. Her hand curled through my hair. She kissed me and then rested her head on my shoulder.

It was like a dream. A ludicrous dream. A twisted dream, or maybe even a nightmare. The Widowmaker, my lover, her head on my shoulder. But it was hard to see her now as the Widowmaker. I saw her as a woman that tasted so good, I couldn't get enough of her.

It was with some satisfaction, though, to think that somehow, I had changed her. Like I had tamed her, and she was no longer the Widowmaker, the poster child of a fascist regime. Only a beautiful woman named Nephele. A woman who loved to play the piano, after all, just like my husband, and who desired love just as anyone desired love. It was a hell of a mental gymnastics, sure, but it came to me naturally.

When the tremors of my ecstasy finally subsided, I remembered that I still hadn't done to her, what she had done to me, so now I had to pay my debt.

I lifted her head by the chin and kissed her deeply. I pushed her against the passenger side door. Then, I unbuttoned her jeans. They were heavy with rain and shrink-wrapped to her body, but with some effort, I managed to pull them off her body. I discarded it in the back seat like a soaked, dirty rag. Then, I pulled her legs apart. She placed one foot on the headrest of the driver's seat. The other rested across my lap. I leaned over to kiss her body. I slide my fingers into her panties. She was wet and swollen down there. A finger went in easily. So, I put another finger in.

It wasn't the most comfortable place or position to do it. But we were alone out here, and I had to pleasure her.

Nephele, for her part, did not seem hindered by our spatial constraints.

"That's it," she breathed as I pumped my fingers. She thrust her hip to rub her clit against the palm of my hand.

The pleasure grew in intensity like a slowly building wave. I felt her grow tighter. Her pussy clenched around my fingers. She thrust her hips more powerfully.

Then, nearing the height of her climax, she grabbed my head and pulled my face into her pussy.

"Lick me until I come," she squealed as she held my face to her pussy. Her hands clenched my hair, and she pushed her clit against my tongue.

Her body tightened into a scrunched-up, corded ball. She squealed, and her pussy tightened up as a wave of orgasm crashed through her like a flood in a storm while I moved my tongue across her clit.

Then, when the worst of it was over and she was relaxed, she curled beside me and brushed her hands tenderly against my arm as she shivered with the fleeting aftershocks.

I reached for her hand, and when I found it, I weaved my fingers through hers and rested my head against her breasts to feel her heartbeat. There, I felt, without any doubt, the heart of a bird battered by a storm. Just like me. I wondered what her storm was. I wondered if she could feel mine.

The purple sky had turned black when we got back into our wet and muddied clothes. The lighthouse beams continued their relentless sweeps, cutting the night like golden blades, out to the unseen horizon. The clouds were gone now, the Milky Way appeared above us, and the crescent moon crept out of the saw-shaped silhouettes of the mountains across the bay. We held each other in silence, watching the deep night sky and its shimmering reflection in the inky ocean.

It was past curfew when we finally drove back. We were stopped at a few checkpoints, and I feared they'd hassle us, but we had no issues. Nephele flashed her badge. They all knew who she was.

She spent the night in my apartment above the bar. We showered and slept like tired dogs, curled into each other tightly. I kept the windows open as the A/C was turned off. Tonight was a blackout night, which we occasionally did as practice for an air raid that would likely never come. The air was humid, but light as a constant breeze came in from the north. We lay uncovered, naked, and sweating, but I slept a peaceful, dreamless night. It was the first time since Eli left that I had fallen asleep in someone's arms, and it was nice. That it was her's was a hot mess that I would just have to worry about tomorrow.

Bat

Time sure flies. Particularly when you have an unscrupulous secret you're constantly trying to hide.

I've asked her to keep our fling a secret. My excuse was Noah -- that he would never forgive me for this. She wasn't offended by it. She agreed to it, perhaps believing this to only be a simple fling.

During our first months together, she constantly talked about the coming end to the war and what she would do with her life when she went back home. But eventually she stopped talking about it.

At some point, though she had never said it explicitly, she grew to love it here. She grew to love being with me. And though I never explicitly admitted it, either to her or myself, I loved being with her. She excited me, and I hated myself for it, as an alcoholic might hate herself for finishing the bottle after drinking just one more glass of fine wine. Hearts change. And hearts find desire even when the mind wants to be blind to it.

I've grown so accustomed to their presence at my bar that by the end of summer, I've come to the feeling that there was no war at all.

Nephele played the piano often. She played every night she was there. When she played at the piano, that was the happiest it ever was at that bar since the war started.

She took to teaching Noah, too. He was a quick study. A natural. And she was a good teacher.

Just like we promised each other, we kept our flings secret. None of that romance made its way into the bar, save for brief glances and fleeting flirtations. The passion was saved for after the bar closed for the night. She'd linger after closing, then she'd come up with me to my bedroom.

Perhaps some part of me thought it was possible to keep the fire of my desire for vengeance alive, but that fire was being slowly consumed by the fire of my desire for her.

I tried very hard to not think about our relationship in terms of a romantic one. Every human need sexual release after all, and the warmth and the feel of a beating heart of another human body. She gave me those things and asked for nothing else in return. But my desire grew like an uncontrollable wild fire. My desire grew beyond the bounds of carnal pleasure. And I was helpless to do anything about it.

The hot, humid summer turned to chilling autumn, and the English ivy that crawled all over the front of my bar turned red as bricks. Then, the autumn turned into a biting winter bringing the constant whipping wind off the ocean and constant rain. The nights grew longer, the sun disappeared behind the clouds, and the Skybreakers increased their operational tempo. Their missions turned from routine air patrols in the Air Defense Identification Zone along the Southern coastline of Estea, to longer-range intercepts and escort missions. These missions took their toll on the Skybreakers and constantly reminded them of the stakes of this war. Many never made it back home from their missions.

Autumn turned to winter when the first of them went down. He had failed to eject. The others gathered at my bar afterward for a grim memorial. It was a poignant affair yet absurdly professional. I imagined Vikings would toast their fallen comrades this way. Bat gave a moving speech with an unerring tone, then reminded them grimly of the nature of their commitment to the task at hand. They then dissected the mistakes made on the mission that made it fatal with a morbidly clinical examination. The same ritual followed every death in the squadron.

By the end of winter, the war had returned to the same intensity that it had at the beginning. Only now, the Allies had grown in power and size while Donavia was weakening. The Skybreakers' missions were longer and took them farther away.

Over the winter months, twelve Skybreakers had fallen out of the original twenty-four. No new pilots came to replenish the numbers. Other squadrons were hurting just as much, and the higher-ups preferred to shore those squadrons up first. At the same time, the Black Roses became more emboldened. They started random attacks on checkpoints. The Allies were sending them weapons again.

Nephele, for the most part, remained unperturbed by the war's growing intensity and by Donavia being on the backfoot. In fact, she seemed tuned to it. It perked her up like a wolf to a hunt while the other pilots grew dogged by it. That was not to say there were no things about the war that bothered her. One afternoon she barged into the bar huffing and red with anger. I put a shot of bourbon in front of her.

"Neph, what's up?"

She tipped the shot glass back quickly and slammed it down on the table. So, I poured her another.

"They're changing our mission profile."

"And that means what, exactly?"

"We're going to start doing strikes. Today, they delivered bombs to the base."

"And that's..."

"Not what we were meant to do. We're fighter pilots. Not strike pilots."

She took the second shot. Then put her hand on my cheek. I gave her a smile. Leaned into the hand. I carried a cheery façade, but inside, I grew sad. That was a bit of intel that Regan would love to learn. Lately, I've become reluctant to share intel.

The rest of the squadron had a different attitude about their changing mission profile. Most were indifferent to the changing mission. Some were even excited to mix things up and for the opportunity to get closer to the action. There was a heated debate among them about the merits of conducting strike missions. Nephele, of course, argued that the pinnacle of fighting planes was in dogfighting, and since they were the premier fighter squadron, that's what they should be doing. Another pilot shot back,

"That's such a snobby thing to say, and exactly why fighter pilots get a bad rap. We shouldn't be above supporting our troops on the ground."

She shrugged off the call-out.

***

That night, Bat sat at the bar more sullen than usual, which was hard to tell with the stoic stillness he kept painted on his face. But I could tell through his eyes that a weight became heavy to bear. The deaths were taking their toll on him. I put in front of him his favorite scotch. The 15-year scotch he had brought with him from Donavia and had me open on the occasion of the first death.

Nephele was playing the piano. She played a sad song appropriate for the moody atmosphere. It was a nocturne that Nephele once mentioned that Chopin had composed in honor of his sister, Emilia, who died at the age of fourteen. A beautiful, haunting melody.

As we listened to her play, Bat recalled a story. One that I suspect not many people have heard.

"She wasn't meant to be a fighter pilot at first. But she was always meant to play the piano. I remember when she was little and had to sit on books to reach the keys. She played beautifully even then. It was a natural talent, and I was so sure she'd make something of herself playing the piano. Damn, was she good. Still is."

"She seems good at whatever she does," I answered.

Bat chuckled, turned to me, and said,

"To tell you the truth, she really sucked at flying when she first started. Honestly didn't think she'd make it through flight school. There are times when I thought she shouldn't have. Maybe it would have put her back on the musical track. It would've made her dad happy, that's for sure. But what she lacked in flying talent, she made up for in sheer grit. She had a more singular focus on flying than anyone I had ever met. Destiny would eventually and inevitably test her. She not only passed that test but crushed it."

"She became the Widowmaker," I responded.

Bat nodded and answered, "She became the Widowmaker."

"So why did she choose to fly? Why didn't she stick with music, like you said she should have?"

"Has she ever told you the story behind her callsign?"

I shook my head. So, Bat leaned in and whispered his story as if it were a secret.

"Her dad and I flew together. We were wingmen. Best friends. Anyways, when she was a kid, he always dragged her to the squadron bar. She loved hanging out with the guys at that bar. And she always wanted to 'drink' like they did, so the bartender would always make her a Shirley Temple. And she would sit on her dad's lap at the bar and drink that Shirley Temple like it was a highball whiskey soda. That's why she's Shirley."

"Does her dad still fly?"

Bat shook his head. His face saddened.

"He was shot down a few years back. During the Unification War."

A crowd had edged in around the piano. They watched her play with deferential silence. There were pilots in that crowd, but there were many civilian patrons there too. Many had returned to my bar despite its association with the enemy. Many of them had served in the war and lost someone close to the war. Yet, they listened alongside the pilots that were once and likely still their enemy. They had returned to the bar because they had heard that someone had taken to playing the piano again. Listening to a piano at a bar is about as good a thing as anything in a war-torn city.

When Nephele finished, they clapped. She swiveled around on the bench, caught my gaze, and smiled at me. She had a beautiful smile.

***

That night, after closing, Regan walked right into my bar. I was still cleaning up. His unannounced appearance not only surprised me but also frightened me. It had been many months since I'd seen him in person. To be here now meant nothing nice.

The bar was lit with candles on account of a scheduled blackout. Regan stood at the edge of the shadows of the flickering candlelight. He wore a rain-splattered khaki trench coat and a fedora pulled tightly over his eyes.

"You a private dick now, Regan? Awfully risky of you to break curfew."

"To see you again after so long, it's worth the risk," he replied.

He pulled a chair down from atop a table and sat in it and lit a cigarette. He had a look of absolute smugness on his face. I put an ashtray in front of him.

"What do you want, Regan?"

"Been a while since we've heard from you. I've been getting worried."

"Haven't had too much to report."

"A little birdie told me otherwise."

His words made me wince.

I thought immediately of Noah. I had mentioned to him what Neph told me about the bombs going to the base. He must have passed the intel to Regan behind my back.

I leaned against the bar counter and stared deadpan right at him.

"I was going to make the drop first thing tomorrow morning. Like I always do."

Regan pursed his lips, sniffed loudly. He replied,

"War's heating up. The Allies have started their offensive. So, we gotta be on our A-game. Are you on your A-game, Faye?"

I glared.

"Yes."

He smirked.

"Good. The tide of war is finally changing. Thanks, in no small part, to you. So, why don't we have ourselves a little celebration? How about pouring us that 15-year on the top shelf? Been a while since I had a decent whiskey."

"That's theirs."

"I'm sure they won't notice a few drops missing."

I narrowed my eyes at him. He bit into his cigarette and smiled. He wasn't going to leave until he had his whiskey. So, I poured him a glass. I didn't pour one for myself.

He took a long, slow sip and breathed a soft satisfaction. He sucked his teeth when he was done with the sip.

"God damn, that's good shit. Your girlfriend's got good taste in alcohol."

That nonchalant utterance of the word 'girlfriend' made my heart skip a beat. He knew about Nephele and me. I thought to feign ignorance, but I knew he'd see right through the bullshit. I only looked down at the floor. I felt my cheeks start to burn red.

"Oh yes, I know about you and the good Major, Faye. I know very well everything you've been up to. Hah! Who would've thought? Eli's widow, fucking the Widowmaker. Helluva thing. I know I wouldn't be able to stomach it. But I suppose it's helping the cause. Would she have told you about the bombs otherwise? Probably not."