Microburst (2 page)

We checked into our rooms at the front desk of the impressive hotel. There was a full-fledged waterfall in the lobby that fell from the top floor to the bottom, and the rooms were arranged around the free space so that every single room had a view of the impeccably lit display.

“Which do you prefer,” he asked, “One of these fancy places that steam three pieces of asparagus and serve it with a rare piece of beef that has a French name I can’t pronounce or do you want a real Kansas City meal?” I laughed and told him the truth, I may be small and dainty, but I love to eat. Everett laughed then. “I thought as much, so jeans it shall be.” We arranged a time for him to meet me in the lobby, and then discovered to our chagrin that we were only two rooms apart on the same floor.

I answered my door an hour later and was as impressed with Everett in his casual attire as I had been with him dressed in his tailored suit. He wore faded denim jeans and a similarly faded chambray western shirt open at the throat, and a blue corduroy sport coat. His feet were clad in the same fancy handmade Mexican boots and he wore a very expensive but old and well-worn Stetson hat. What was amazing was that he made the tux wearing denizens of the lobby look like rag pickers… he just naturally carried himself as if he owned the place.

I was surprised to find that he had rented a vehicle, and even more that it was a pickup truck. I have to confess it was a very fancy pickup truck, but it was still a bit of a shock. He opened my door and I climbed up into the high seat, giving Everett a spectacular view of my denim clad butt and my running shoes. I wore a dark blue turtleneck sweater that really made my small breasts stand out, and the jeans were snug but not tight. My long hair was pulled to one side in a Liza Doolittle ponytail… I had taken his suggestion at casual dress at face value. The end result was that we were going to be very comfortable for our first real meal together.

Everett seemed to be as familiar as he said he was with the streets of Kansas City, and he reminisced as we drove past some of the more famous name restaurants in the city. He turned onto East Eighteenth street and drove through some dubious looking neighborhoods to a brick restaurant with a large number of cars parked around it. The smell outside was absolute heaven.

Inside, the floor was covered with cheap, light colored linoleum and the tables were stainless steel with red Formica tops from the sixties. There was a counter about thirty feet long and several large men were opening steel doors in a monstrously long brick oven, large knives in their hands as they trimmed dried and blackened pieces of barbecued beef off the rounds and butts. The bits and pieces were tossed in a stainless steel tray at the front of the counter where a hand lettered sign read “Burnt End Sandwich $2.50.”

“Do you want to taste something totally amazing?” Everett asked me. Wide eyed, I simply nodded yes. He ordered two of the combination platters and a burnt end sandwich. We took the two gigantic platters to the end of the counter, where a smiling girl greeted Everett by name and placed two huge glasses of iced tea on our trays.

We sat at a table by the window and Everett took the greasy bag with the burnt end sandwich and opened it. He took out two pieces of plain white bread and lay them on a paper plate, and then pulled out a folded piece of what looked like kraft paper and began to fork out pieces of the burnt ends of the meat from the oven. He stacked the meat at least three inches high and there was still more left in the package. There were three kinds of barbecue sauce in plastic ketchup bottles and I picked the regular instead of the mild or the spicy. Everett capped the sandwich with the second piece of bread and cut the whole thing in half, handing me half of his creation. I bit cautiously into the thick sandwich, uncertain as to whether Everett was playing a trick on me. What I bit into was the most incredibly delicious barbecue I had ever tasted. I gobbled the rest of my half down in seconds, and was licking the barbecue sauce off my fingers. The platter was even better, and neither of us bothered to talk as we obliterated the food in front of us. I felt so stuffed I could barely move.

We took a ride through the downtown area, which was surprisingly pretty at night, and cruised around looking at all the fountains. Outside of the city of Paris, I had never seen so many fountains and statues. Kansas was a surprise. We stopped and parked in Westport and took a carriage ride. The night was cool and glorious, and I snuggled close to Everett in the night air.

Our first kiss was tentative, searching, and outrageously erotic. One moment I was gazing into his steel gray eyes and the next moment I closed mine as his soft full lips molded to my own. Everett was a man who knew how to take his time with a kiss, lingering over it and savoring each minute detail. I realized that one of the characteristics of this man that appealed to me most was that he was very tactile. He wasn’t grabby or forward, but he had constantly touched me unobtrusively from the time he had picked me up at my hotel room. He offered me his arm when we walked, or placed a large warm hand on the small of my back. He touched my wrist or my forearm when we talked. I’m not sure exactly when it happened, but sometime during the evening the constant attention transitioned, at least in my mind, from friendly to erotic. By the time he kissed me I was dying for the taste of his lips.

I was totally prepared for an onslaught of passion after that first amazing kiss… to be brutally honest I think I wanted it. What followed was not only a very pleasant surprise, it actually increased my desire to be close to this fascinating man. Whatever else Everett Samson is, he is definitely a connoisseur of women. His kisses simmer, and their languid nature leaves me waiting breathlessly for the next one to start. I’ve never met another man who kissed the way Everett does. I swear I felt like dessert.

I really hated for the carriage ride to end. The clear night, the quaint lights along the streets in Westport, and the cool air combined to create a rare experience for me, and by now Everett really had me going. I half expected him to spirit me back to the hotel and ravage me, but Everett had more in store for me. He stopped the carriage in front of one of the bars in Westport, I can’t even remember the name. I just remember the green canvas awning covering the front of it and the brass accents.

Everett took me by the hand and led me to a small table in a dark smoky corner and I was amazed to hear the sultry voice of Billie Holiday coming not from the speakers of a stereo system, but from the mouth of a black man in drag… he sounded so much like the woman that I was astounded. Everett ordered us drinks while the performer sang ‘I’ll Be Seeing You’ and ‘I Cried For You.’

I love Jazz, and when we fly to Paris or New Orleans, I always try to arrange to have my mandatory crew rest scheduled around those destinations so that I can go to the spectacular Jazz clubs in those cities… and now I have added Kansas City to my list. The drag queen was superb, and he sang all my Billie Holiday favorites. The crowd refused to let him leave until after he had performed a third encore, a rendition of ‘Love Me or Leave Me’ that had me in tears, and Everett and I danced to all of it, our drinks half-finished on the table.

It was late when we returned to the hotel, and I have no idea how I let him get away from me after he kissed me languidly in front of my door. The night was rife with romance and I wanted him, my body was crying out for him…and then he was just gone.

My bed would have been cold and lonely but the memory of his kisses kept me warm. A fire was burning in my belly and I promised myself that he wouldn’t get away from me again. I slept with my hands inside my panties, and my dreams were of Everett.

I slept until the phone woke me the next morning. I smiled sleepily into the phone as I realized it was Everett. “How did you sleep last night?” he asked me in a low voice.

“I slept like a baby,” I told him, remembering the dreams I had that I couldn’t bring myself to tell him about.

“I don’t think I slept at all Telma. I had a wonderful time last night.”

“I did too,” I said.

“Would you like to join me for breakfast in, say, half an hour?”

“I’d love to!” I said, jumping up out of the bed.

“Dress for flying,” he told me, “I’ve rented a Cessna for the day if you’d like to get some stick time.” Everett knew how to get right to the core of me.

Breakfast was fantastic. I could smell the Westin’s custom blend of coffee when I got off the elevator, and then I savored the aroma and the taste of the brew as we waited briefly for our order. Eggs Benedict, and the hollandaise sauce was perfection itself, tangy and freshly made, served over crisp Canadian bacon and toasted English muffins. The plate was garnished with strawberries, apple slices, melon, and pineapple, and there was not a crumb left on my plate when I had finished. Most of the time, Everett had a hand on my arm or my hand and I was still dizzy with desire from the night before.

“Most men would have tried to take me to bed last night,” I murmured as we sat looking at each other over the coffee cups the waitress had just refilled.

Everett didn’t look surprised, nor was he flustered by my bold challenge. “I enjoy the courtship,” he said simply, “and I’m not most men.” He took another sip of the delicious coffee. “Some women are just for fun and for fucking as a physical release. Some women are special, a gift to be savored and opened at the right time. Other women are sacred, the type to be revered and admired. And some few, very few, are a rare combination of the three.” His gray eyes stared brazenly into mine.

My body was frankly disappointed that he apparently didn’t think I was the first kind, and my mind was a tiny bit offended that he might think no more of me than that I was the second type. The third type didn’t sound like much fun at all, and the fourth type scared me as much as it excited me. What kind of man thought this way? And why did I want him so badly.

We didn’t go back to KCI, which is actually twenty odd miles northwest of the city, we went to a small private airfield in Independence. Everett had rented a brand new Cessna Stationair, a lovely aircraft I had been checked out in already, and we flew out over the rolling countryside towards the Lake of the Ozarks and Branson. The view was gorgeous and neither of us spoke until we reached Branson and Everett asked if I’d like to eat lunch there. He greased the Stationair in on the hard grass runway, as nice a small craft landing as I’d ever seen and I told him so. “Good,” he grinned, “so I passed my check ride?” I was aghast until I saw he was teasing me. “You can show me how the pros do it on the way back.”

The return flight was going smoothly, the headwinds weren’t bad and the day was bright and clear. I flown the single engine plane back up to five thousand feet, preparing to enter Kansas City airspace about forty miles outside of Independence, when the sky dropped out from under us. I had no time to think as we plummeted downward. I managed to get the nose up and slammed the throttle to the max and held on, my knuckles whitened by the death grip I had on the controls and my face ashen. The Microburst had dropped us to within three hundred feet of the ground when it released us and we swooped out of the column of cold air, wind screaming past the wings in a frightening rush. I was terrified that the wings wouldn’t stand the intense pressure, but they held up and we gradually regained altitude. I was shaking badly and it showed.

“Do you need me to take the controls?” Everett asked, his own voice quavering. The taste of the fear still strong in my mouth, I shook my head and directed the little plane towards the airfield in Independence. “Wow,” he said.

By mutual agreement we stopped at the first bar outside the airfield and I ordered a double Irish Whiskey, a liquor I rarely drink. I needed the harsh bite to raise my body temperature back to that of a living person, and I noticed that Everett ordered the same. It took me a couple of stiff swallows before mine was gone, but he drained his in a single gulp and ordered another for both of us. “That was quite a demonstration,” he said admiringly, “If I’d been at the controls we’d be dead now, do you realize that?” The compliment touched me because he meant it. It was my turn, and I reached out and took his hand.

“I was scared to death,” I told him.

“I was scared shitless,” he grinned, “but that was still some mighty fine flying.”

My heart was in my throat, and I suddenly wanted him, all of him. I slipped into his arms in the dim light of the bar and I kissed him. It was a deep, needful, wanting kiss, and it left no doubt in his mind what I wanted. The flying alone had aroused me, and the brush with death had intensified this infinitely. We staggered from the bar to the rental truck and somehow made it back to the hotel.

In a mystical blur we were inside my room and in my bed and we were one. I don’t remember the details and I don’t care to, all I want to remember is that I felt as if I had crept inside of him. I remember thinking that this was how a baby must feel just before it was born, safe, warm, and contented as I had ever been at any time in my life.

His sleeping face was as rugged as when he was awake. He looked weathered and tough and incredibly handsome… it was a visage that would easily cause a young woman to part her thighs and older women to sigh with desire. I touched his lips lightly and he twitched as if it tickled him. I traced the line of his jaw with a forefinger, and when I touched his chin his eyes opened. We lay for a long time, pressed tightly together, not feeling the need to speak. We spent the last two days of my crew-rest together. We ate, we drank, we danced together to remarkable Jazz and we made love over and over until we fell asleep together, exhausted.