Taking Flight Read online

  Taking Flight

  by

  Tabitha Rayne

  Taking Flight

  Copyright © 2013, Tabitha Rayne

  ISBN: 9781940744216

  Publisher: Beachwalk Press, Inc.

  Electronic Publication: May, 2014

  Editor: Pamela Tyner

  Cover: Fantasia Frog Designs

  eBooks are not transferable. No part of this book may be used or reproduced without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations in articles and reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

  Back Cover Copy

  Lovers on the run in search of a bond that transcends all else.

  Dr. Deborah Regan is a scientist working on a cure to the poison that’s killing the male population and destroying the natural world. But when she makes a breakthrough in her research, it becomes clear that the authorities have no intention of finding a cure, and now that she’s getting closer to an answer, she’s a threat to them—a threat they need to deal with quickly.

  Deborah and her partner, Marcus, flee to the forest where they meet another couple on the run. Birch and Hazel show them how to survive in the wild and teach them the theory of ultimate unity. They believe that by finding sexual nirvana at the point of intense orgasm, they will break through the barriers of physicality and become one.

  It soon becomes apparent that Deborah has an aptitude for falling into this trance-like state, and she manages to bring Marcus on her journey. Their spirits can indeed join together at the meeting point, suspended in time and space while they climax.

  When Birch and Hazel become jealous of the young couple’s ease at reaching ultimate unity—something they’ve unsuccessfully tried to do for years—they betray Deborah and Marcus to the authorities. As they are separated, Marcus begs Deborah to continue to search for the ultimate sexual unity, because he’s convinced that no matter where they are, this connection will allow them to meet again on a spiritual plane.

  Will this metaphysical union be enough for a couple so deeply in love?

  Content Warning: This book contains apocalyptic peril and graphic sexual content, including m/f and f/f sexual interaction, along with BSDM

  Dedication

  For my A

  my muse,

  my lover,

  my life.

  Acknowledgements

  Many thanks to Pamela and the Beachwalk staff for all the hard work and care taken with this book.

  Big love to my fellow Beachwalk gals and my Brit Babes—you make everything so much sweeter.

  And to you, lovely reader, how would these stories come alive without you? Thank you.

  Tabitha x x

  Chapter 1

  “I’m sorry if I treated you badly.” Deborah addressed the woman behind her but kept her gaze ahead. The land seemed to stretch out for ever. Grasses, trees, and moorland filled the view until it sloped gently into the horizon. It humbled her in a way that made her want to fall to her knees in both grief and joy.

  “You never did what I didn’t need, Mistress.”

  The words of her companion hit her in the back like tiny darts, reminding her of her actions. She turned.

  “I am no longer your mistress, Cheryl.”

  * * * *

  Eight years previously

  “Please, doc, you need to help me.” Marcus clutched his heart, contorting his face in anguish, and writhed around on the sofa.

  Deborah looked briefly over her shoulder, removed a pen from behind her ear, and went back to her papers.

  “Come on, please, you’re killing me here…” The agonized body of her lover was now crawling toward her, gasping and flailing, trying to get her attention. He finally came to rest at her feet where he whimpered and pawed weakly at her ankles.

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Marcus,” she said, kicking at him irritably. “I need to work. We’re on the brink of a breakthrough.”

  “So am I,” wailed Marcus, working his fingers up her calves. “At least take a break, won’t you?”

  Deborah ignored him and stiffened in her chair, once again returning to her work. His body went slack at her feet and she held her breath, waiting for the sigh that always signaled his defeat. It came.

  “Fine,” he said, and scrambled out from under her desk, deliberately knocking her chair as he went. “You go save every other man on the planet, but leave me to die, alone, of a broken heart and underused…”

  “Enough!” she shrieked as the symbols on her page began to form a faraway formula, “Please just shut up, will you?”

  She started again, trying to get in the zone where her brain ran fluidly and thoughts burst to the surface like oxygen bubbles. Too late; her concentration had been shattered. Her heart rate slowed as unused adrenalin leaked away, leaving a nagging sense of failure and loss. She’d been so close. Why did he have to do that?

  She turned to her lover with fury brewing in her very cells.

  “For fuck’s sake, Marcus, when I say I’m working, believe me—I’m fucking working.”

  He lay on the sofa, his whole body flaccid with disdain. Picking up a newspaper, he flicked the pages and disappeared behind them.

  Retreating to the kitchen, Deborah put the kettle on the one functioning burner and slumped against the wall. The weight and gravity of her responsibilities bore down on her. She’d graduated top of her class in medical envirology and had been quickly snapped up by the leading research lab, where they worked tirelessly to find a cure to the toxins that were slowly diminishing male fertility. Deborah had seen firsthand the way the noxious gases targeted the male sex cells under the microscope, and had made it her mission to find a cure to eradicate the poison. Her mind lapsed into labyrinths of formulas, once more twisting patterns of possibility through her brain. She could see it, forming like an intricate 3-D jigsaw puzzle, but there were still pieces missing. A lot of pieces.

  The high-pitched whistle pierced her thoughts and the images fragmented and dispersed. She pushed herself off the wall and made two cups of coffee.

  “Peace offering?” She placed a cup next to Marcus, who was still hiding behind his newspaper, brooding. He slowly lowered it and smiled.

  “Sorry,” he said, cocking his eyebrow in the way Deborah found heartbreakingly endearing, though she imagined he meant it to look sexy. “I just, I don’t know…”

  “Get jealous?” Deborah was smiling now. She picked up a cushion and held it at her back while slinking forward. She knew it was hard on him, the hours she spent at the lab and even through the night at home.

  “I’m not jealous, I’m…”

  “You’re jealous.” She laughed and brought the cushion around, flinging herself onto him.

  “Well,” he said, wriggling under her, “that damn chair sees more of your ass than I do.” He jerked his hips, throwing her off onto the rug, and pounced quickly on top of her, holding her hands above her head.

  Deborah let her tension go and sank into the floor, relishing the strength and weight pressing down where he straddled her. He stared, studying her; she felt like he was trying to read her thoughts when he looked at her like that—but then, maybe he was just trying to get her attention. Maybe he knew that even at this very moment a part of her mind had logged back on to the puzzle and was beavering away on other matters despite both their intentions.

  She wrenched her focus back to the here and now. To him. They’d been together since high school. He’d seen her potential and had taken jobs to house them both and send her to college then grad school, sacrificing his own education for the sake of hers. Affection flood
ed through her as it always did when she remembered that.

  Then he squeezed her wrists tight, stretching her t-shirt across her chest, and the affection turned to lust. He languidly drew his gaze away from her eyes, down to her breasts, watching each nipple pucker and stiffen in turn as if he were a conjurer. He held her hands fast in one of his and yanked her t-shirt up to expose the excited mounds of flesh. She wriggled as he bent his head to her ribcage and nuzzled, tickling her sensitive sides.

  “Stop it,” she squealed. “I can’t stand it!”

  But he kept nibbling and tickling until she thought she might pee herself. Then he stopped. Pulling off his shirt, he slithered up to her face again and kissed her ravenously with his full, sensual lips. She responded and suckled on his searching tongue, pulling him deep into her mouth. His free hand was now working her right breast, kneading and toying with her nipple, making it buzz with sensation. Her house trousers were suddenly oppressively tight and she shuffled her hips, trying to free herself of them. He pinned her fast to the rug.

  “Oh no.” He broke away from the kiss to whisper into the base of her earlobe. “That’s my privilege.”

  The grip on her wrists went slack, and he snaked his way down her body. She lifted her chest as he reached her breasts, trying to force a nipple into his luscious mouth, or at least have him graze one with his weekend beard, but he ignored the offering. She should have known better; he was an outrageous tease and she reminded herself not to lift her hips when he reached her mound. He was kissing her belly, circling her naval with his tongue, dipping in now and then. It felt odd, and somehow, very naughty as he engulfed the area, drawing it into his mouth while tonguing the dip of her belly button. She had the usual hangs-ups about her stomach and had flinched the first time he had rubbed it sensually, telling her there was nothing sexier in this world than a real woman’s soft belly. She’d never quite believed it, and to this day still held her muscles tight, even when succumbing to his attentions.

  His hands reached underneath her and cupped the top of her buttocks at the waistband of her trousers. She resisted the temptation to lift her hips just as she’d promised herself, but when he gripped the fabric to pull it off, as she expected, he pulled up instead of down and the already tight pants rode snugly up into her crotch. Now she wriggled.

  “Stop, don’t move,” he warned, and held her in place with the straining material.

  She looked down over her own body to see his face disappearing between her legs. He pushed her knees apart to make space for himself and pulled the cloth tighter as he bent forward. Her constricted pussy felt raw with the seam forced crudely between her lips, and when he leaned into her, the heat of his breath caught her by surprise.

  He lapped at her through the material, quickly soaking it with his kisses. The wet heat and friction began to make her pussy peak and yearn, and her clit hardened at the attention. Her juices mingled and she gave herself over to another new sensation her lover had given her. Pulling away slightly, he blew onto the wet patch. Automatically, Deborah’s legs tried to clamp shut at the sudden bracing cold, and she gasped.

  “Sorry.” He laughed gently and plunged his face back in, warming her up again. It was one of the things she loved most about him—his inventiveness as a lover. He was always trying different ways to pleasure her, never afraid to try something new, always sorry if it didn’t work out as expected. There must be a bank of moves stored away in his mind, ready to surprise her.

  The hands under her back were removed and placed between her inner thighs. He pushed her legs further apart, stretching the material further into her. Then he pushed his tongue into the dip of her entrance, using it like a tiny battering ram, again and again. It was an odd sensation, like being flicked by something pleasant, yet strangely invasive, considering nothing was inside her. He licked his way up to her clit and filled the space left by his tongue with two knuckles. As he teased her hardening bud, he began the pulsing ramming motions with his hand. Deborah caught her breath as part of the fabric gave and entered her a little. Pushing harder his time, his fingers forced their way in as he kept the rhythm up on her excited clit. Feeling very horny, she squeezed her still exposed breasts together, pulling and rolling her nipples between her fingertips and watching how they looked, so pink and inviting.

  As the lapping increased, so did the pressure into her sex, and she started to feel the swell mount deep in her abdomen. Darkness spread into her peripheral vision and she heard herself say something in the distance about stopping before she came, but it was too late. A trillion stars fell through her as she climaxed in a flood of juices through her own trousers and over her lover. Her pussy twitched and convulsed as he kept pounding her sensitive flesh with his digits until she doubled up over him, hugging his head into her with her arms and legs, rocking him there until her trembling orgasm subsided. When their breathing had slowed, and she’d finally let him loose, he crawled up beside her.

  “There, that feels better now, doesn’t it?” he said, ruffling her hair and pulling her close. “Shouldn’t you be getting back to saving the world or something?” He smiled and lifted the cooling coffee to his lips as she lay spent beside him.

  “To hell with the world.” She sighed and cuddled into him, trying very hard to ignore the nagging feeling that she really ought to get up and finish what she’d started—with a warm, dry pair of pants on. “What about you?” she asked, snaking her fingers down to his crotch, but he stopped her.

  “No,” he said gently. “Go on, get back to work.” He pushed her off the sofa, into a standing position this time, and picked up his paper.

  Now she felt guilty on every conceivable level. The least she could do was to pay him some attention. But he smiled and shooed her off. Reluctantly, she left him to his paper and went through to the bedroom to change.

  Once she was warm and dry, Deborah took up vigil at her desk and stared at the reams of text and calculations. For four generations the unknown toxins had been plundering the world of men and the population was teetering on the brink of extinction. The few pregnancies that made it to delivery were always female, apart from extremely rare cases. Deborah had been secretly pleased when Marcus had taken the test.

  “It means you won’t be taken away, Marcus,” she’d comforted him when it came back negative, slighting his virility.

  Any males who could produce viable sperm were taken to the manors, where their seed was collected for insemination in one of the birthers. As part of her research she’d been taken to one of the institutions where hallways of men were housed in what Deborah could only think of as cells. Luxurious though they were, they were still prisons, and the men inside knew it. She didn’t want that for her lover. Sometimes he joked that she was a prisoner in her own mind, the amount of time she spent inside it, trapped in her research.

  Seeing nothing but spiraling nonsense before her, Deborah decided it was quitting time. She packed away her papers into her briefcase, ready to take it to the lab in the morning. As she leaned back in her chair and stretched, her underwear caught in her crotch and she fell into the memory of just a couple of hours before. She reached down to her dampening panties and pressed her fingertips into the moist space between her lips. Marcus.

  Yawning, she stretched again, sliding her chair out from under the desk and watched her toes flex and point on the ends of her toned legs. She was a small woman—some said tiny, which irritated her no end. She’d always wanted to be tall and mighty—Amazonian was the term used for such women. Her mother had been Amazonian, but didn’t all mothers appear that way to their children? She’d died when Deborah was still too young to see her objectively.

  To compensate for her slight frame, Deborah kept herself strong, eating the right kinds of foods and doing daily flexibility and weight training. “You never know when you might need to run, Debbie-pie,” her mother used to say, and it scared her but kept her fit, using it as her mantra as she trained.

  Her muscles glided beneath her sm
ooth skin, which was developing a visible sheen of desire the more she thought about her orgasm. She craned her neck and looked over to the sofa where she knew Marcus would be fast asleep. He always insisted that he’d stay awake to wait for her, but he never did.

  She quietly shut off her table lamp and went over to him. His chest rose and fell and a gentle pulse quivered at his neck. Reaching into his open shirt, she laid her palm over his heart. His flesh was so warm and sensual that she began to explore it further, raking his chest gently with her nails and slowly winding her way down to his jeans. Her fingers slid easily under his waistband and down to the sleeping fleshy bundle. Leaning in, she kissed him lightly on the lips, inhaling his scent all the way from his neck to where her hands were now undoing his zipper.

  He stirred slightly and Deborah paused, holding still until he sighed and fell back into a deep sleep. Easing the jeans open, she nuzzled down into him, into that familiar musky place where she felt so at home. Kneeling before him, she bowed her head and closed her eyes, just for a second…

  Chapter 2

  “Doctor Regan, the next time you’re late, you will leave me no option but to put you on report.” The lab manager struggled to look authoritarian, and Deborah felt bad for putting her in that situation once again.

  “I know. I’m sorry, Doctor Grange. I was working through the night on my theory.” She ran her fingers through her uncombed hair, catching them in the tangles. A vision of her hairbrush lying on the bedside table formed in her mind’s eye. Damn it, she’d been tearing about searching for her lab keys, her shoes, everything. Only now, without the panic, could she visually remember where everything was.

  “And?”

  “And what?” asked Deborah, distracted by the other memory of Marcus grabbing her as she was about to leave and pinning her to the wall next to the front door. He’d kissed her hard and pushed his hand up under her skirt, sliding two fingers into the side of her panties. Her legs had buckled as he’d finger-fucked her right there, almost to the point of orgasm, but as her juices began flow, he’d withdrawn and shoved her out the door and on her way to work. She’d called him a bastard but she’d been smiling.