In the last installment:
CHAPTER 3: DEADHEADING
Author’s Note
This story was specially commissioned for Erik Nicholas.
This was his idea, I just brought it to life.
If you’d like to commission a story, send me a DM.
GABE WAS ONLY THERE A MOMENT before he said something and I’m pretty sure I captured none of it. Then he was off down the corridor of the main cabin. Lena was still fuming over 47G. The same family. Spent the day in LA and now they were headed to Hawaii. As the crew finished boarding, I noticed two first officers boarding.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“First Officer Robert Douglas,” he said, holding out this hand. I shook it tentatively.
“I’m First Officer Henry France,” I glance back down at the manifest.
Their names were listed under crew. Douglas was the relief officer, which meant he’d rotate in on the flight deck during the long-haul portion to Hawaii so Baylor and McKinney could get rest. France, though, was listed as non-rev—a term that meant different things depending on who you asked. For regular passengers, it usually meant standby travel or a companion pass. For crew, it often meant deadheading—catching a flight to position for another assignment or commute home. Since this flight was completely sold out—technically oversold, but that was the gate agent’s problem—France would probably spend most of the trip tucked away in the crew rest compartment whenever he wasn’t wandering the cabin.
We’ll be ready up here in five,” said the gate agent.
“Copy,” I said, “Lena hold down the fort, I’ll be right back.”
“Can you believe this shit?! said Lena, all but poking a finger through the sensitive paper.
“Lena, hang on,” I said, walking down the corridor.
Gabe was in the back galley prepping carts when I approached. The second he looked up and saw me, his whole expression changed—like he’d been hoping we wouldn’t have this conversation until we were safely in the air.
“So you work in the airline industry?” I asked, mocking the vague answer he’d given me the night before when I asked what he did for work.
He let out a long breath through his nose and leaned back against the galley counter, already looking exhausted by the situation.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I was afraid you wouldn’t sleep with me if I told you I was a flight attendant.”
“Do I look that vain to you?” I asked.
“Honestly?”
His brow lifted like he prepared to give me the unvarnished truth.
Before he could answer, the interphone rang. I picked it up. It was Lena.
“Baylor wants a word.”
Then she disconnected before I had a chance to respond.
“This isn’t over,” I said, already turning to leave.
“Wait,” Gabe said. “I’m not getting service on my phone—who’s the purser?”
“You’re looking at him,” I said without turning around.
The purser—or cabin manager, depending on the airline—was the lead flight attendant in charge of the entire cabin crew. Scheduling breaks, coordinating service, handling passenger issues, communicating with the flight deck—if something went wrong in the cabin, it eventually landed on the purser’s lap. Which meant, for this flight at least, everyone answered to me.
Back at the front, Lena was all but banging her head on the overhead compartment.
“Lena?”
“Can you switch me with one of the help?”
“Lena.”
“Do you wanna see me hauled off of here in handcuffs for murdering a child—child murderers don’t do well in jail,” she pleaded.
“Where‘s Baylor?”
“Flight deck.”
She huffed a breath and I walked up the stairs to the upper deck. Down the short aisle, the door to the flight deck was open. McKinney was standing outside with France, Douglas was already in the jumpseat and Baylor was at the helm. I stepped into the small space and walked up to Baylor.
“You needed me?” I asked.
He glanced around, presumably making sure Douglas wasn’t listening in—as if that were even possible with the low roar of the powered-up aircraft humming around us and McKinney carrying on a conversation three feet away.
“Henry—he’s my nephew. He’s heading all the way back to Charlotte with us, so why don’t you make sure he’s comfortable?” he said, giving me a look that made the meaning crystal clear.
It took me a second to catch on.
When I did, I glanced back toward McKinney and France. McKinney never stopped talking, never even fully looked over, but I still caught the corner of his smirk.
“Oh… that kind of ‘comfortable’?”
“Yeah,” Baylor said, voice low. “Take care of him, and I’ll make sure I take care of you.”
Then he winked.
It took everything in me not to kiss him right there in the flight deck, but instead I leaned down closer, close enough for only him to hear me.
“Anything for you, daddy,” I whispered in my most seductive voice.
And I kid you not—his cock twitched.
I left the flight deck, squeezing between McKinney and France in the narrow space between the seats and the doorway. As I passed, I made sure my ass dragged just enough across France’s crotch to let him know it wasn’t an accident.
The reaction was immediate. A sharp inhale, subtle—but there.