"You're quite right, we are travelling Business Class," she said to the clerk. "Sam, it's not her mistake."
"But we decided we could afford to make this trip First Class all the way."
"We did, and we can, but Business has better seats."
"No, it doesn't. The seats in First are much bigger, AND they fold down so you can lie flat like in a bed."
"Like in a single bed, yes."
"Ah," I said, after a moment's pause for the implications of that to sink in. It had dawned on me where this conversation was heading and I was now more concerned about the clerk's reaction to it, because she had no idea what was coming next. Amy turned towards the puzzled counter clerk to explain.
"You see, the First Class seats are big but they are all separate. In Business they are next to each other in pairs, with an armrest between them that you can fold up out of the way to make one big seat for two. That's much better, because this is our first flight together and we want to join the Mile High Club before we get to Jamaica."
The clerk started like she had just got an electric shock from her keyboard and then looked closely into Amy's face to see if she was being serious or not. Amy was smiling innocently back, giving no hint at all that she had been joking, which of course she wasn't.
The clerk looked down at Amy's passport, then back at her face, then she checked the passports again and looked hard at my face.
"I saw some of your artwork in the paper a few weeks ago, didn't I?" she said to me. "And I saw you in nothing but your birthday suit on TV, didn't I, miss?"
"Very likely," said Amy, pleased to have been recognized. The clerk leaned forward and lowered her voice.
"After we read the story in the paper, my husband and I went to that gallery to see your show. He thought the pictures were wonderful - and so did I, to be honest - but I don't mean to offend you when I say that I couldn't put any of them on my wall at home, if you know what I mean."
"That's alright. I understand," I said.
"Mind you, they certainly had a positive effect on my husband, so I'll pretend I never heard the bit about the... the m.h.c.", said the clerk conspiratorially, lowering her voice to a whisper to make sure no-one could overhear what she was saying. "That's one of the more ridiculous things listed under 'security risks' that I'm supposed to report. Please don't get caught."
"But that's half the fun of...", Amy began to say before I grabbed her arm and started to walk away.
"Thank you", I said, "we'll be very discreet."
We were extra early for our flight because you never know how long the different security checks will take these days, and we had time to go to the club lounge for some breakfast. Amy sat with a croissant and a cappuccino watching the other waiting passengers with her back to the main window. I sat opposite her so I could look at her and see the planes behind her out on the runway taking off and landing as well.
By Amy's recent standards she was fairly modestly dressed, although it was very obvious that she was on vacation and not on a business trip. A double layer of brightly tie-dyed sarongs was knotted round her hips, so unless she was standing directly between you and the sun, they did a reasonable job of concealing her bottom half down to her ankles. It was a sunny day outside, but as a concession to the chilly autumn breeze she had chosen a longer waisted and longer sleeved top than she normally wore. Consequently, there was very little of her midriff showing, but the over-enthusiastic air-conditioning in the club lounge was keeping her headlights on high beam, so that two snap-frozen peas seemed to have been trapped inside her tight white top halfway between her neck and her waist. With her hair loosely clipped up, she looked casual, relaxed, and incredibly sexy.
I was not the only male in the club who had noticed that last fact. Glancing sideways, I could only see a few of the many business suits in the lounge, but those that I could see were all looking in Amy's direction. Amy could obviously see many more of them behind me, and I would have been very surprised if she wasn't the center of attention for most of them as well. As she looked around the large room, an amused smile grew on her face. As always, I could sense that she was drawing power from the many eyes that were on her, and that she would very soon use that power in some way.
She looked me in the eyes and her smile broadened into her special 'I know what you're thinking' grin, and I bathed in the affectionate warmth of its glow. Casually, she raised her right foot and placed it on the edge of the coffee table directly in front of her. As her knee lifted, the sarong went with it. Where there was formerly an overlap in the layers of thin skirt material, between the two edges of the fabric there was now an opening pointing directly at me. From somewhere behind my right shoulder, I heard a clatter and a splash as what sounded like a full cup of coffee hit the floor, and a sotto voce "Holy shit", presumably voiced by the person who had suddenly lost his grip on his beverage.
Even though my peripheral vision was trying its best to tug my gaze downwards, I grinned back and kept my eyes locked on hers for a very long time. At least several seconds. When I finally looked down, the sunlight from the window behind her was being diffused through her now suspended sarongs and streaking the underside of her right thigh and the top of her left thigh with soft blues and pinks, all the way up to her lower belly. As I looked into the shadowy area where her legs came together, she slowly illuminated it by moving her left knee sideways. It was like a shaft of sunlight through a stained glass window in a cathedral, revealing to me – and to anyone else in a fairly narrow range of sight – the whole of her holy shrine, the inner sanctum, the high alter at which I worshipped.
I eventually looked back to her face, and as she lowered her right foot to the floor and pulled her skirts back over her knees, she slowly mouthed the silent words "just...for...you". I raised one eyebrow at her, meaning "Oh, really?", and her giggle told me she had got the message and was admitting being caught in a lie.
I wondered if, in the world of air travel, there was another organization known as the 'Ground Level Club' for people who made themselves too horny to wait for the plane to take off. I knew the club lounge had some very nice bathrooms, mainly for tired incoming passengers to freshen up in when they have to go straight from the airport to a business meeting, so I fantasised for a while about getting a towel and toiletries pack from the reception desk and fucking Amy under running hot water in one of the shower cubicles.
I knew that the chances of us hearing the boarding call were pretty remote if we did that, so I just enjoyed the anticipation of what was probably going to happen in the next few hours at 30,000 feet, and waited.