The Future is in the Air Ch. 04

"What are you doing?" she moaned.

I didn't answer, and I didn't stop. I kept licking into her slit, bringing an aftershock within less than a minute.

She rested her head on my hip, kissing my dick as her climax waned.

"You touched my butthole," she groaned.

"I did."

"You're naughty."

"I am."

"You licked it."

I parted her cheeks and licked her perfectly cute little ass again. Hell. We'd been swimming in chlorinated water for hours, so everything was squeaky clean, and I was having fun exploring something I'd never done. I felt her sigh deeply against my cock when I slowly penetrated her butt with my pinkie.

"Oh, god, Lance," she moaned when I stroked inside her. I kept her clit between my lips and gently suckled it until she climaxed yet again.

I grinned. "That's how I put a face to a tail."

She laughed at my revelation, then turned herself around, slowly taking me into her warmth.

"Don't rush. Just hold me inside you and kiss me," I whispered.

I moved only enough to maintain my erection. We kissed softly and slowly, fully attached, legs interlocked, listening to the softly lapping water and the music. It was an incredibly tender, intimate time.

She rocked her pelvis back and forth, not up and down. The pleasure at the head of my penis was intense as her cervix rubbed it repeatedly.

I looked down and could see our union clearly when she rocked backwards.

"I wish you could see what I see," I groaned, finding the sight intensely erotic.

She grinned. "Tell me."

"I see your pussy stretched around me. When you pull me out a little, its skin follows. It's so pink and stretched so thin I can see a freckle through it. Your juice has made a little bubbly ring at the base of my dick. The way your abs flex as you rock is really hot." I ran the backs of my hands over her firm tummy all the way up to her breasts.

"You have the most beautiful titties."

"I barely have any."

"They're perfect. Their shape, their size, their softness, and these rock-hard nipples ..." I pulled them.

"Your entire body is perfectly exquisite, and the fact you let me admire, touch, hold, taste and smell it is so incred⁠—"

"Oh, fuck !" she yelled with impressive volume.

Her rocking turned into a full gallop as she slid her cunt fully up and down my shaft. Her pussy clenched so tightly at one point, my cock popped out and slid up the cleft of her ass.

"No ! No !" she hissed, repositioning and entrapping my member again. She slid back to the root. I felt her orgasm grasping at me, and I tried to rock myself.

"Cum inside me, love! Cum in my cunt!" she hissed.

I willingly obeyed her command.

"Leah! I love you !" I shouted as I spilled into her pussy what felt like a month's worth of my seed.

"I love you, too!"

My head went back, somewhat uncomfortably, onto the sanded plaster a few inches below the water's surface. She must have heard the "clunk."

"Ouch, baby! Oh, no!" she said, insinuating her hand underneath my head to cushion it.

It wasn't a hard enough impact to cause either a knot or any pain, but it was pretty funny. I laughed out loud.

"You bonked your noggin," she said, kissing me tenderly again.

"I got an owwie," I childishly and playfully whined.

"My poor baby. I love you," she whispered before more following kisses.

"I know," I said, trying to mimic Han Solo's voice.

It made her laugh hard, which ejected me from her body.

"Oops!" she said, then climbed off of me, sitting on her heels. "Watch."

She was pointing toward her crotch, and I saw my stuff dripping out of her pussy into the water.

I grinned, feeling masculine pride.

"Now for the rinse!" she said, scuttling to slightly deeper water. She settled her pelvis below the surface.

I saw her tummy's muscles move, then she tilted back and gushed a jet of water out of her pussy all over my feet, grinning wildly.

"No. Freaking. Way! Do that again!"

She repeated the amazing display of feminine anatomy, muscle control, and mechanical prowess.

"That's freaking incredible! I'm going to try!" I said, sitting in the water and making a tense expression with a grunt.

"No! Don't!" she yelled, laughing hard.

She sighed deeply. "I love your goofiness." She crawled back to me and kissed me sweetly.

I smiled.

"I'm getting hungry. We going out to dinner?"

"We can, but I was thinking I'd grill some Reiter Ranch Prime Angus brisket burgers."

"Oh, that sounds absolutely amazing. Plus, we don't have to get dressed," she said.

"I don't know about you, but I'm not going to grill totes nekid ," I said with a chuckle.

"Come on. I'll help any way I can."

I lit the grill on the way into the house where we dried ourselves and re-dressed.

Leah started some crinkle-cut french fries in the air fryer as I portioned out a pound of ground beef into patties mixed with seasonings.

She buttered and toasted some brioche buns on the flat-iron griddle as I grilled the patties and slices of sweet Vidalia onion.

Smoked gouda and provolone topped the patties in their final minute on the grill, and the gooey, cheesy delights were deposited on the buns with bibb lettuce and sliced beefsteak tomato.

"Yummy?" she asked between bites.

"Totally," I answered, chewing happily.

We ate in a few minutes of silence.

"Where does all this stuff come from?" Leah asked, referring to the fresh ingredients.

"I use an app for my groceries. The service has been security screened, so the delivery folks have access to the house to tuck everything away."

"Wow. Super convenient."

"It really is, but it comes at a premium. Can I ask you a question, too?"

"Of course, baby."

"Is this too much?"

"Too much for what?"

"Come on. You know what I'm saying," I said.

"I'm kind of getting used to it."

"Okay. That makes me feel better." I smiled.

We watched a few episodes of Mando in the theater until the food coma became too much to resist.

In the days at the beginning of Leah's flight training, the daylight hours were seasonally shortened. Then, they were long as summer fully settled in. Both seasons worked against us by refusing daylight when we needed it and night skies when we wanted. Legal night landings for training can't happen until almost 10:00pm in north Texas because of the long daylight hours.

But we managed.

For the required long night flight, we departed McKinney at 10:15pm, right after Leah was done with work.

I carefully crafted our circuit to include a stop-and-go at McKinney, then one at Greenville's Majors Airport followed by Rockwall, Mesquite, Commerce, and Wills Point before the return to McKinney.

The point of the pattern was based on the vast differences in their runway dimensions. Long and wide, long and narrow, very short and very narrow, Long and wide again, medium in both, et cetera.

Leah damn-near pranged my plane in a stall on the arrival to Rockwall, which was exactly the point of the flight. Well, not so much to force a hard landing, but to demonstrate the illusions night flights can induce when arriving at strips of varying sizes.

At Greenville, Leah gasped when she saw the concrete appear under the illumination of the landing light. I recovered from her too-rapid decent and executed a touch and go.

"Try again," I encouraged. "Check the altimeter more often. Keep in mind a narrower, shorter field is going to make you think you're high, and a larger one is going to appear the opposite."

"Crap! I get it now!" she exclaimed.

The following weekend, we repeated the course in reverse, with much better results.

She was ready for her solo cross-country.

I triple checked the weather and assigned her to fly via pilotage and dead-reckoning alone a flight from McKinney to Hugo, Oklahoma, then Mount Pleasant, Texas, and back. I asked her to send me photos to identify each airport once on the ground.

Her next ten hours airborne were flown by herself, practicing and hardening her ground reference maneuvers and crosswind landings.

On the big day, Eric and Peggy texted me earlier that morning and asked if they could wait with me during Leah's checkride, a question I deferred to Leah.

"Sure. Why not? They deserve credit, too," she said, "that is, if I pass. If I fail, it's all on you."

"I know you're ready. But it's really your decision. Not too late to back out," I said as we climbed into my plane.

"No way. I've got this. I'm excited!"

Our last two hours together as student and instructor were our flight to Oklahoma City for her checkride with Smitty. I grilled her with a boatload of crap all the way there. Sure, there were plenty of designated examiners in the North Texas region, but I knew Smitty. I knew how he worked, and I understood his processes and tendencies since I'd flown with him for four different checkrides. I also trusted him to treat Leah fairly and objectively.

I was able to coach Leah on ways to effectively and efficiently interact with him, what signs to watch for, and tried to tailor our final assessment flight in much the same way as he would evaluate her.

We were scheduled to meet him at Mace Aviation at 11:00am, where Leah and Smitty would begin with a sit-down in one of the offices for an hour or so for the oral portion of the exam.

He arrived forty-five minutes late, but we didn't have anywhere else to be, so it wasn't a problem.

He seemed harried and rushed. The introductions and small talk were reduced to the bare minimum as they went into an office and shut the door.

I was surprised when they exited after less than ten minutes. Smitty made a beeline for the apron. Leah was left behind, struggling to collect all the paperwork she'd prepared.

I remembered my own private pilot checkride when Smitty asked me, right out of the gate, "Okay, Mr. Marlin, I want you to show me that both you and the aircraft into which I'm about to trust my life are legal for flight."

That task alone required twenty minutes as I offered proof with logs.

Leah scuttled out of the room.

"That man is an odd duck. He's in a horrible mood, too. I'm nervous now." She followed him out to the plane.

"Huh," I said to Eric. "That's unlike him. I wonder if he's trying to put pressure on her and see if she forgets to do something."

"Beats me. I haven't even seen the man in years."

Kevin joined us in the lounge a few minutes later. I'd programmed presets on my portable NAV/COM with the appropriate frequencies for the Will Rogers area.

"Well?" he asked.

"They just went out to the plane," I answered, very nervously.

"Huh? That seems kind of fast."

I was nervous for a number of reasons.

Of course, I was nervous for Leah, though I was confident in her abilities.

I was also nervous because I'd planned a very particular way of celebrating her success. I hoped it'd put the post-solo trip to Kansas City to shame.

I heard her voice over the radio after about ten minutes.

"Oke City clearance, Skylane three four eight lima mike at Mace Aviation, request VFR departure southwest, with information charlie."

She received the requested clearance and squawk code, and was immediately handed to ground.

"Skylane eight lima mike, taxi to runway one seven left via november two, november, echo one," said that controller.

"Runway one seven left via november two, november, echo one, eight lima mike."

I knew the airport. Though the distance to the runway was short, I expected about five minutes to elapse before she'd call ready for departure because she would be talking through every single step of the checklist so Smitty could be certain she knew what she was doing.

Sure enough, after about that amount of time, we heard her call the tower.

"Oke City tower, Skylane three four eight lima mike, holding short one seven left at echo one, ready for departure, VFR southwest."

"Skylane eight lima mike, winds one niner three at nine, runway one seven left, cleared for takeoff."

"Cleared for takeoff one seven left, eight lima mike."

"Eight lima mike, contact departure. Good flight," we heard about a minute later.

"Eight lima mike. Thanks!"

"And now, we wait," I said after we heard her brief exchange with the departure controller.

Kevin said, "If he follows his typical playbook, he'll have her fly out to Chickasha for her ground references, probably have her do short- and soft-field procedures there, and on the way back, simulate an engine failure to see if she spots any of the private strips. Shouldn't be more than an hour, tops."

All of us were pilots, which afforded us the opportunity to hangar-fly while we waited. We were all surprised to hear her voice on the radio after only thirty minutes.

"Mayday mayday mayday! Skylane three four eight lima mike, mayday!"

"What the hell?" Eric gasped.

Kevin said, "Smitty'll be up shit's creek if he's pulling something like this as part of a test."

"Eight Lima Mike, mayday received. Advise your situation."

"I need to land immediately. I'm on my checkride, and my examiner is ill. He's unconscious."

"Eight Lima Mike, roger. Say fuel and souls on board. Ident if able."

"Three hours. There's two of us."

Though professionally calm, I thought her voice sounded weakened, and it made me feel even more so.

"Eight lima mike, radar contact, eight miles southwest Will Rogers. Do you have the field in sight at your eleven o'clock?"

"Affirmative!"

"Descend two thousand five hundred. Are you able to switch to Will Rogers tower? That is one one niner point three five. If unable, just stay with me."

"One niner one three five?"

"Negative. One one niner decimal three five," he said much slower. "If they don't answer, switch back to me, okay?"

"Roger."

"She's a little rattled," Eric said.

"No shit, Eric! I'm kind of freaking out myself."

Peggy leaned over and rubbed my back reassuringly.

"She'll be fine, Lance. She's talking to pros like herself."

I suddenly remembered I needed to change channels on my own receiver.

"⁠—the long one closest to me?" we heard mid-sentence.

"Eight lima mike, that's runway three five left. It and every other runway is yours, break break, Spark fourteen seventy, emergency opposite-direction approach in progress. Execute missed as published except expedite climb now and maintain four thousand. Contact approach."

"Spark fourteen seventy, going missed, expediting four thousand and over to approach. God be with you, eight lima mike," encouraged an invisible aviator.

"Landing to the north, she's got a ten-knot tailwind. How many of those did y'all do?" Kevin asked.

"I'm wishing we'd done more. None of the ones we did were in anything this strong. She should fly a downwind and land south."

"That'd take a lot longer," Peggy said.

"Eight lima mike, you have a tailwind on your final. It's no problem at all, okay? It's going to make you think your approach is too fast. Your indicated airspeed is all that matters. Don't let it catch you by surprise. It's an ordinary landing with plenty of runway in front of you. You're doing fine. You're almost home. Good … good … easy does it …"

"Damn. The controller sounds so calm," Peggy observed.

"That's Vicki Shires. She's a pilot, too. One of my students a few years ago," Kevin added.

That runway was at the opposite corner of the field and maybe two miles away from Kevin's facility. We knew we wouldn't be able to visually observe, so we stayed put.

"Eight lima mike, remain this frequency. Turn right next taxiway. Good. Keep going a little farther. Your plane is just fine, so don't worry about the fire trucks on your flanks. They're there to help. Keep going. Now turn slight left onto golf one. Go about fifty yards farther. Stop right there. Set your parking brake now and complete your shutdown checklist. Do not⁠—repeat, do not exit your airplane until emergency services instructs you to."

"Thank you!" we heard Leah's final transmission.

Kevin was already on his telephone.

"Yeah. Yes. Understood. Mace Aviation. Right. Okay. Appreciate the help. Thanks," he said over the course of about thirty seconds.

He told us, "Airport maintenance is sending a tug out there to tow your Skylane back. There's no way in hell she should be expected to taxi it here."

"I don't give a shit about my plane! How the hell do I find Leah!?"

"Easy, Lance," he said commandingly. "They're bringing her here."

It wasn't ten minutes longer before a red SUV pulled up at the high-lift doors of the hangar.

Leah exited the rear passenger side, walked straight to me, and embraced me. She noticed Peggy, Eric, Kevin, and several mechanics watching her, so she took my hand and walked us into the building. I followed her into the office in which she'd begun her day.

The door closed, and she stared at me. She stared for maybe five seconds before she broke down into tears with furious, gasping sobs.

"Baby. Oh, shit, honey," I whispered into her ear as I held her wracking body in my arms.

I heard a subtle knock.

"Give us a few!" I answered.

The door opened slightly.

"Leah? It's Dr. Reiter. Can I come in?"

She'd used her title, which conveyed volumes.

I pulled the door farther open, and Peggy entered.

"Oh, Leah," she said, rubbing her shoulder. "Come sit down. I just want to check you out a little, okay? I want to make sure you're alright."

Leah did as she was asked.

Peggy held Leah's wrist and placed two fingers at her radial artery.

"Lance, would you see if you can find some juice or a non-diet soda?"

"Yeah."

I went across the corridor to the lounge and bought a ginger ale from the vending machine.

As I walked back, Kevin stopped me.

"Hey, I just heard from the station. They're taking Smitty to OU Medical Center. At least for now, they think he's on the good side of the fence," he advised. He also related what the paramedics had told him.

I stepped back in and handed Peggy the can of soda. She cracked open the top.

"Leah, take a few sips of this. I think the stress has made you hypoglycemic."

She did as she was asked as Peggy knelt next to her and softly stroked her upper arm.

"I feel like I'm going to puke," she said, pointing to a trashcan.

Peggy fetched and placed the can between Leah's knees. "I know it's difficult, but I want you to try to slow your breathing, okay?"

She nodded weakly and took a few more slow sips.

"Can you tell me what happened?" Peggy asked.

Leah scooched more upright in her chair.

"I'd finished some s-turns over a fence line. Smitty asked me to climb another thousand feet to do two steep turns.

"He was grumpy. I mean, I don't know him, but he was very short with me. We barely talked in here at all. Only long enough for a few yes or no questions. Even though I had them out and ready, he didn't even look at my logbook or the plane's records.

"So, I start an s-turn, and barely halfway through it, he tells me to stop and fly back here.

"I thought I'd already failed. I'm trying to focus on flying and to understand what I did wrong. Next thing I know, he's grabbing his arm like this," she demonstrated, "then he threw up and slumped sideways against the window. I didn't know what to do!"

"You got yourself and your passenger safely on the ground," Peggy said.

Leah started crying again, standing from the chair, clutching me fiercely.

"Oh, honey. God, I'm so sorry," I whispered to her. "You're safe, baby. I've got you. I've got you."

I said to Peggy, "Kevin's EMT contact said it looked like an acute MI and something called … um … concomitant arrhythmia? Does that mean anything to you?"

"It means he had a heart attack and was probably feeling pretty crappy beforehand. It could explain his short temper. We'll hope for the best, okay?"