Page 20 of Hidden Desires

I incline my head at Eliza, who’s standing just behind my shoulder.

“Eliza, this asshole is Daniel, a friend from my Air Force days. He’s saved my ass more than once, and I guess they liked him so much that they made him the head of this museum.”

Dan, who’s always had a thing for pretty girls, takes Eliza’s small palm in his own and lifts it to his lips.

“Don’t listen to anything this asshole says,” my friend chortles. “But you two have a good time. I’ve told the security guards not to bother you, so you’ll have plenty of privacy.”

Then, with a wink, my bud strolls off, leaving us alone in the foyer of the National Aviation Museum. It’s just me and my date because I called in a favor from Dan, who was only too happy to oblige. We’re at the museum during after-hours, which means we have the whole place to ourselves. It’s going to be me, a beautiful young blonde, and a warehouse of ex-military metal.

I pull my date into the hangar, which echoes with a kind of quiet I haven’t felt since the desert: the kind that’s both too much and not enough at once. Rows of warbirds are lined up under flickering lights, props stilled and wings folded in like sleeping animals. It smells like dust, oil, and paint. I take it in—never gets old, this feeling—and then look at Eliza, expecting her to be bored or overwhelmed. Instead, she’s electric. Her blonde tresses glow under the sodium lamps, and her green dress curves beautifully around her big bust and wide hips. Even better is the look of wonderment in her eyes.

She spins a slow circle, taking it all in. “Okay, this is actually pretty cool. Did you fly any of these?”

I laugh. “Yeah, maybe one or two. Or their younger cousins, more accurately.”

She wanders toward a Vietnam-era jet, tilting her head as she reads the plaque. “Tell me which one was your favorite. And don’t say the B-2, because everyone picks the stealth bomber.”

I shake my head. “No love for the B-2. Too many computers. If I’m getting shot at, I want something that lets me feel every rattle.” I lead her past a row of fragile biplanes, up to a C-130 that’s been stripped of seats and turned into a floating classroom.

Eliza’s hand ghosts along the wing, fingertips tracing the pockmarks in the aluminum. “You ever take fire in one of these?” she asks, voice pitched low.

“Not in the States,” I say. “But over the Middle East? More times than I can count.”

She looks up at me, and there’s a calculation in her eyes. “You like living on the edge, don’t you, Jack?”

I shrug, but she’s already smiling, like she knows the answer.

The museum is technically a single building, but the interior is maze-like—there are a multitude of catwalks, ladders, little nooks with half-dissembled helicopters or engine blocks. I take her hand to steer her through a tight spot, and she doesn’t let go, even when the path widens. Her palm is smaller than mine, skin so soft that I have an urge to caress her. I remember the last time a woman held my hand in public, and the memory is so faint it might as well be fiction.

We pause at a display with a table covered in Vietnam-era radios. Eliza eyes the battered headsets and picks one up, turning it over in her hands.

“What’s this one do?”

I take the set from her and fit it over her ears, then flip the PTT switch. “This is a field com. You’d use it to call in an airstrike, or beg for backup, or, if you’re like most pilots, complain about lunch.”

She giggles and bites her lip. “Did you ever call for help?”

“Once. Didn’t like it.”

She cocks her head. “And now you never ask for help?”

I meet her gaze. “Not unless I’m out of options.”

Something in her expression flickers—sympathy, maybe, or the understanding of someone who’s had to claw her way up from nothing. She smiles, but there’s empathy in her eyes. “It must be hard to be a soldier,” she whispers, then sets the headset down.

We drift through the rest of the exhibits, and I tell her stories, some true, some a little warped by time. Eliza laughs at all the right moments, asks intelligent questions about how to steer, how to evade, what it’s like to land a bird that’s leaking fuel and on fire. She’s a good audience, but more than that—she wants to know, wants to feel it through me.

I show her the cockpit of an old fighter, the seat barely wide enough for my ass, let alone her curves.

“Want to sit?” I ask, half-joking.

Eliza smiles and climbs up, hoisting herself into the cradle with more grace than I expected. The skirt rides up her thigh, showing off ivory flesh and my fingers itch to grab her to me. But I resist as Eliza pretends to fly the plane, curving the steering wheel right and left.

“Pew-pew!” she cries, pretending to fire machine guns.

“Very realistic,” I deadpan.

She giggles. “I bet you made way more embarrassing sounds in the cockpit.”