HEATHER

"So let's go."

"You're kidding me.  Now?"  I turned over and looked at Lach.  Why did we always wind up having these odd conversations at three a.m.? 

He twined our fingers together and shot me a cheeky smile that faded into something else.  Something warmer.  "Yeah...  It's our holiday, isn't it?  No reason we can't change our plans."  His eyes twinkled playfully.  "And lucky you, you've some pull with the pilot."

Lach chuckled when I reached under the covers and gave the pilot a pull of a different sort.  God, I love his body.  Hard.  Soft.  And everything in between. 

He covered my hand with his larger one.  "Easy, girl.  Don't want to risk damaging the equipment now, do you?"  As if I would.  He just wanted an excuse to keep my hand between his legs.  He wasn't hard.  I love touching him when he's soft and spent.  There's an intimacy inherent in that that's so different from sexual intimacy.  So much trust to let a woman feel them that way, when they're most vulnerable, when their power is latent, dormant.  Felt only in the sweet ache inside me and the wet residue of our lovemaking between my thighs. 

He curled my fingers around his scrotum and rested his hand over mine, rumbling his contentment into my mouth as he kissed me.  "So, what do you say, love?  You want to?"

Our eyes met.  So much hope there.  "Lach, it's October.  Are you really sure you want to give up sunny beaches for late autumn in the Canadian outback?"  He pulled a face and I laughed but we both knew that wasn't the real question here. 

He kissed me again, long and deep, full of emotion and passion.  "I want to find my portal with you.  Now.  I want to give it a shot, Blue.  We've been talking about it for so long...."

"Oh, Lach... are you sure?"    

"I'm sure."  He nodded.  "We have a month.  There's nothing stopping us but us.  Think of it if we did find it."

He sounded so hopeful.  I was too... but I was also afraid of disappointment.  I was filled with 'what ifs'.  What if we didn't find it?  What if something went wrong?  What if stepping back into his past was too much?  He hardly ever talked to me about that part of his life.  Still, when I came into this world, I did so having decided to make some changes in the way I lived my life.  To take some risks I wouldn't have otherwise taken.  Lachlan's excitement was infectious, though, and I couldn't help but let myself be caught up in it.  To throw caution into the wind.  "Alright.  Let's go.  Let's do it."

His smile was blinding.  "That's my girl!"  His fingers tightened on mine and I felt his cock twitch.  "God, this body.  It's like bloody being nineteen again," he muttered as he pulled me into his arms and hugged me with excitement.  I giggled.  He swatted me.  "Up.  C'mon... don't be such a slugabed."  He hopped up and grimaced as his feet made contact with the cold wood floor.  I wasn't watching his feet, though.  Men's bodies are so lovely.  Especially this particular man.  My selkie man.

My eyes traced the play of his muscles as he bent to retrieve his t-shirt from the floor and pulled it over his head.  As he lifted his arms, my gaze slid lower following the fuzz on his belly down to the dark tangle at his groin.  His cock hung heavily between his legs, swaying enticingly as he hurriedly dressed.  He smoothed the shirt down his chest with his palm and then wrapped his hand around his cock, absently giving it a slow tug while he hunted through the dresser for his socks.

Typical man, he turned around to ask me where they were and caught me mid-perve.  Busted.  He snorted and rooted through my drawer instead, grunting with satisfaction as he found exactly what he wanted.  He turned and tossed a pair of panties at me.  Black and sheer.  Heh.  He really is a perve.  "C'mon, Blue.  Kick the tires and light the fires.  Let's get in the wind."

Pandemonium ensued.  We were packed for the tropics.  Shorts.  Sunblock.  Bathing suits.  The whole nine yards.  He tossed our two suitcases on the bed and between stolen kisses and some seriously inappropriate (but fantastically enjoyable) groping, I managed to get us repacked.  You should have seen the face he made when I pulled out the tiny little black bikini I'd packed and put something warmer in its place. 

He played completely helpless, of course.  Like he hadn't packed on the spur of the moment probably more times than I could count.  New orders, pack it all up in a seabag and he was away.  Oh, not now though.  He was busy messing up my packing, tossing in lingerie and a few of his favorite items from the goodie bag I'd gotten at the Temple, sneaking back in the bikini when he thought I wasn't looking.  Shameless!  God, I love him. 

He was, of course, rushing about doing all the things men do before they leave their homes.  Making sure everything is stowed and properly locked up.  Still, between our mutual responsibilities, we managed a quick but satisfying tryst amid the suitcases and the piles of clothes strewn all over the bed.  It left us breathless and flushed - and grinning like two teenagers caught snogging in the back seat.  He grabbed a pair of soft cotton boxers from one of the piles and cleaned us both up before he pressed a kiss to the flushed pink lips between my legs and pulled me to my feet with a grin. 

"Right-o.  There you are, gorgeous."  He gave me kiss and a twirl, zipped himself and then our two suitcases with a flourish, hefting them easily.  Men.  They take their strength for granted at times... but I do so love watching it. 

We were at the airport before five.  It was still a couple of hours before sunrise but neither of us cared.  Actually, I was looking forward to getting to watch the sunrise with him several thousand feet above the Earth.  I snuggled deeper into my coat and he smiled at me, wrapping me up in his scarf and making sure I was settled in before he started the preflight checks.  Cozy and warm, I dozed until I heard the radio crackle to life as he requested permission to take off. 

He was grinning; his sheer enjoyment of flying seemed to seep from him.  He was relaxed and happy, joking with me and with the 'bloke' in the tower who wanted to know what an Aussie was doing taking off from this little airfield.  You know Lach, of course.  Always a smart answer for everyone.  He told the tower he'd taken a wrong turn over Hawaii and was just trying to get back before he froze his tits off permanently.  I can't take him anywhere! 

As usual, my face was pressed to the window as I watched the ground fall away under us and the stars above become brighter as we got away from the lights of the city.  I loved every minute of it.  I thought at first a smaller plane might frighten me, but the sensation of flying was much more intense in this plane as opposed to the jet or a regular commercial flight.  I felt less removed, more a part of the wind and sky, feeling the gusts buffet the airplane, feeling the smooth thrum of power as Lachlan throttled up the engine.  God, it was incredible.  He once told me flying sometimes makes him hard.  Now I know why.  What a rush.   

Lachlan was in high spirits, giving me his usual 'Curry Air' speech....no smoking in the lav....overhead cabins... seats that transform into flotation devices- never mind that this plane didn't even HAVE overhead bins or a lav.  He looked over at me, smirked, and then launched into an incredibly graphic spiel about pilots and joysticks and cockpits and the uses for all three.  I laughed until I cried, until my sides ached and my face hurt from smiling.  Nobody talks dirty like a pilot. 

I shot him a naughty grin and gave him my best cheesy 'Top Gun' line.  "Son, your ego is writing checks your body can't cash."  He snorted and shot back a cheesy line of his own (and also his opinion as Tom Cruise as a pilot- he was not impressed) and we traded cliché movie lines until he wound up serenading me with a fairly decent (if somewhat cheesy) rendition of She's Lost That Lovin' Feelin'.  I love it when he sings, though, and he knows it.  That whiskey voice of his just sends me.

We lapsed into a comfortable silence.  He was absorbed in the joy of flying and I was absorbed in watching him.  No wonder he loves that poem so much.  I could hear it in my head as I watched him.  Up, up the long, delirious burning blue... I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace.  Flung his eager craft through footless halls of air.  He seemed so free here; free in a way he never was on the ground.  Lighter.  Happier. 

It was hard not to touch him but I didn't want to disturb him.  Instead I turned to look out the window, fascinated as ever by the twinkling lights spread out below us like the glittering threads of some distant spiderweb.  Forehead pressed to the glass, I held his scarf to my nose and breathed in his masculine scent, smiling off into the dark.  Pathetic I know, but there you have it.  I am in love with Lachlan Curry and I couldn't wipe the smile off my face if I tried.          

A short while later, I felt his touch on my arm.  "Blue?"  When I turned, he tapped the altimeter and gave me a tender smile.  "Angels twelve, hey?"  Is he the most romantic man, or what?  And a little while later when the sun rose and painted the sky the most glorious pinky-orange, I felt like God had stilled the world to make that one perfect moment last forever.  It looked like a painting, this warm golden light spilling in all the windows, touching his face and hair and making him glow.  His hand found mine.  Neither of us spoke.  Neither of us had to.  

Some hours later, we touched down at some little airstrip in Montana to refuel the plane and ourselves.  I was starving.  Lach was in his element.  Sitting across from him in that little diner, watching him, it was one of those moments where you just all of a sudden realize how damn lucky you really are.  He had a mug of tea in his hands and a lazy smile on his face as he sat back and stretched his long legs out in front of him.  Jeans.  Boots.  That brown bomber jacket.  I was in perve heaven but what really made it good was that it was my hand his fingers were wrapped around and my direction he aimed that private smile.

The whole day sort of had this nostalgic feel and the closer we got to Manitoba, the stronger the feeling got.  It was a bit like stepping back in time, like Lach had begun to drop more and more of his 'modern' years.  It was almost like seeing flakes of a hard, dark shell being chipped away to reveal the brilliant color underneath.  It wasn't so much he seemed younger or more carefree, but he seemed....less lost I suppose.  I guess in a way he was.  I've always been a soft touch for lost soldiers but we were returning to a place and a time when he had a mission and a clear purpose.

It also seemed the closer we got, the more quiet Lach became.  I can't even imagine what he must have been feeling.  The last time he'd flown over the prairies below had been with Johnny, decades before I was born.  I suddenly realized Lil was probably buried somewhere below us.  What must that be like for him?  And he never said a single word.  It made me wonder just how many times he'd swallowed down his hurt and pain and simply endured in silence for it to come so easily. 

It made me think of that moment where Lil had lashed out and railed at him, bitter and hurt.  Told him she was just lonely and that he could have been anyone.  He'd endured that in silence.  Taken it with such grace and responded only with love and affection when I know her words had to have been tearing him up inside.         

Such a painful memory for him.  It made me wish we had proof his portal was elsewhere.  We'd spent many nights up late talking, speculating about where his portal might be located.  He felt it had to be here.  Manitoba.  He said it was the only place he still felt a connection to.  Said he'd been gone for too many years for even his childhood home to evoke such feelings in him.  My poor lost soldier, wandering the world for so long that no place felt like home to him anymore.  He truly was a man out of time.   

It was absurd, but I felt jealous of a ghost.  He so rarely spoke of this time in his life and yet in all the years he could recall, it is this time and place that held such powerful memories for him.  I don't begrudge him his past lovers, in fact I am glad his life was touched by love, but to know this place still holds such power for him is difficult for me.  In my heart of hearts, I had hoped finding his portal to be about making golden memories for our future not about the specter of a woman from his past. 

He laughed when I told him my fears but it didn't touch his eyes.  He only held me tight and told me it wasn't Lil that drew him there.  I wasn't so sure.  I was certain his portal would be on the ridge where he recited that poem for her.  What better place to find the high untrespassed sanctity of space, to touch the face of God?  Is there any better definition of a portal?

Lachlan was equally certain it was elsewhere.  That we might know the answer to that question with the next sunrise was as terrifying as it was exciting.  I watched his hands on the final approach to the airport in Gimli, a small town about sixty miles north of Winnipeg.  Manitoba was home to nearly thirty flight schools during the war, turning out both pilots and airplanes for the cause.  The summer he was twenty-five, he'd spent twelve weeks there, honing his skills.  As the small airfield grew closer, he smiled this sad little smile.  Sort of like 'hey, I remember you'.   

Watching him in that moment, I realized how completely I trusted him.  My life was in his hands.  It was akin to taking point with Dino in some jungle or walking the beat with Bud or sitting at some negotiation table with Terry.  Granted it wasn't a combat situation, but one wrong move and we'd be a pile of flaming wreckage on the tarmac.  He moved with the easy grace of a motion repeated more time than he could count.  It made me proud.  And in watching him, I became aware that he was just as much a warrior as Max or Terry or Dino and what I was seeing unfold before me was his familiarity with his weapon of choice. 

Seeing that ease of use born of hundreds of combat flights, it was like his every move said to me, I am a man.  I hold within me the power to take or give life.  I am capable of great violence and yet you are safe with me.  I can protect you.  Provide for you.  Love you.  It was this intense expression of masculinity and it made me feel exquisitely feminine in contrast.  I think it has probably been so since the first man picked up a club in some cave eons ago.  And I think my response to it was much the same as it had been then.  I wanted to lay with him. 

Though the airport had grown some, Lach was surprised at how little the actual town had changed.  Even I recognized some of the landmarks from his film.  The old control tower where he'd once tried to talk Scotty down was still standing at the edge of the airfield like some silent sentry.  Only now, there was a WW II memorial plaque in front of it.  He didn't stop and read the names.      

We rented a car and drove slowly through the city.  Lachlan didn't say anything but his hand found mine and he didn't let it go until we reached the hotel.  Neither of us mentioned he'd found it without needing so much as a single direction.  Most of the town looked as if it had been standing for a hundred years.  The hotel was the same.  Historic.  It too had that nostalgic feeling, like stepping back in time.

He was pulling at my clothes and kissing me intensely from the moment I heard the bolt slide home.  He didn't tear at my clothing or thrust me against the door in some wild rush of uncontrolled passion.  What happened was much deeper than that.  He needed to touch and to be touched.  To ground himself.  To lose himself.  He stripped me with purpose, kissing the skin he bared bit by bit; my arms, my breasts, my belly, my hips and thighs, the small of my back, the wet whorls of my sex.  Every inch of my flesh felt the touch of his mouth or hands.  It was profoundly moving. 

We made love silently.  Just my breathy gasps and his soft grunts to tell the story of our joining.  He spoke to me the soundless language of his body, the only way he can speak when he is so choked with emotion.  It drew an equally emotional response from me.  There were no tears and he didn't kiss me once he'd put his body inside mine.  His mouth hovered a heartbeat above mine, open and warm.  We shared the same breath.  Our mouths didn't touch but I could smell him, taste him, feel the moist heat as he panted his need against my open lips.  It was more intimate than any kiss.                   

He came first, his eyes open and locked to mine, letting me see everything he was feeling.  I felt it, felt the way it changed how he moved inside me, how he slid more fluidly, his passage eased by his own seed.  And as it happens with him sometimes, he stayed hard and continued rocking into me, slow and steady, bringing me to my pleasure twice before we came together, shuddering into each other until we were spent and boneless. 

Turning me so my back was against his chest, he put his arm over me slipped his hand between my legs, curling it possessively around my sex as he dropped off.  Sleep took longer to find me.  I lay there and listened to him breathe.  Heard two kids run down the hall outside our room.  Heard the heater kick on and then cycle off a few minutes later.  And into the still quiet, I heard the shrill whistle of a train.  The same train that had once brought him here.  The train that had taken Lil's brother away to his death.  My selkie man stirred in his sleep and frowned, burying his face in my neck, instinctively seeking solace from the memories that sound brought to his subconscious mind.     

Spending the next morning on the town with him was a singularly unique experience.  While I was certainly curious about his past, and though he'd told me about some of it, I'd always been reluctant to ask to see the places in his memories.  I thought it would be too painful a reminder that everyone and everything he'd ever loved was gone.  I wasn't sure which would be worse for him, to return to a place and see all the changes the decades had wrought or to return and see it exactly the same but for the absence of the people he once loved. 

We toured the base.  It was a museum now.  He found that oddly amusing.  Told me if they really knew what went on there they'd have had the place fumigated not prettied up for the public to take a gander at.  At my questioning look he just raised his eyebrow, shrugged and said, "Pilots, hey?"  Pilots indeed.

Our searching continued.  We ate in his favorite diner, visited his favorite pub (he said that place looked exactly the same, right down to the same 'old bloke' warming the barstool in the far corner - probably the son of the man he remembered), visited the old building where he'd once danced the night away with Kate and Lil and Betsy.  Still nothing.  We drove out to the 'seaside'.  Lake Winnipeg was beautiful... but cold.  The blustery October day had me glad for my coat and his scarf, but it also whipped the water into pretty white-capped waves.

We wandered along the shore and then through the dunes... and still no luck.  I wondered if we were ever going to find it.  I turned my face from the water and saw Lachlan heading deeper into the brushy dunes.  Did he feel something?  He seemed to be walking rather intently.  I scuttled after him, hurrying even more when I lost sight of him as I crossed the low valley between two dunes.  I popped up over the rise of the next dune, breathless-scared and excited.  "Did you find it?"

His back was to me and he was standing still.  As he turned to face me, I realized why.  His zipper was down and his hand was on his penis.  "No."  An amused smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.  "Found a good place to take a piss though."

We stared at each other for a moment, and just like that, all the stress of the day, the nervous anxiety of wanting to badly to find his portal melted away and what had been a somewhat daunting task suddenly became funny.  His chuckles became louder and our combined laughter rose above the sound of the waves.  His eyes flashed playfully.  "Wanna come hold it for me, Blue?"  He shook it at me in that carelessly crude way men have with their good bits when they're in a silly mood. 

I giggled.  "Lachlan Curry, if I do, I'll write your name in the sand with it."

He wagged a finger at me.  "You haven't the aim, gorgeous.  Lachlan's a bloody long name."  He stuck his tongue out at me and let it fly and when we left the beach that day, I'll tell you this... he did leave a name in the sand.  But it wasn't his.  Or mine.  Heh.

The playful spirit brought about by our silliness in the sand dissipated when we drove to the top of the old ridge, to the place where he'd once wooed Lil with poetry and campfires and soft kisses.  We sat in the car a long time staring at the overgrown little clearing with its fallen log before he was ready to get out.  He didn't want me to come.  I was afraid to stay behind.  Afraid he'd find his portal and vanish before my eyes.  "I just....I'm sorry, love... I just need to...."  He stopped, frustrated with his inability to tell me how he felt.  I know he could sense my worry and I could sense strong feelings moving in him.  He wasn't crying but his eyes were wet and glittering as he cupped my nape in his big palm and drew me in for a kiss.  It was deep and wet. 

He pulled away and touched my cheek.  "This isn't about Lil."  He tilted my chin up and searched my eyes.  "OK?" 

I squeezed his hand and whispered to him that it was OK if it was.  I'm glad he'd known her.  Glad his life had been touched by love.  I wouldn't wish a lonely existence on anyone.  He kissed me again and whispered, "Ever and always, Blue," before he slipped away.  I felt the cold bite of the wind invade the warm space in the car as he opened the door and stepped out.  I shivered but he seemed impervious to the cold.  He spent more than an hour there, walking a little but mostly just sitting on that log and staring out over the prairie below.      

A short while later, I watched him pick a small bouquet, mostly decorative grasses and a few scraggly wildflowers, and he left it at the bottom of a large gnarly tree before he returned to the car.  His eyes were dry but his face was tight.  He seemed not to realize he was shaking from the cold.  I took off my scarf and wrapped it around his icy hands.  He didn't fight me when I maneuvered him into the passenger seat and slid in behind the wheel. 

"You want to go back to the hotel?"  He shook his head and gave me directions instead.  We wound up on some farm road out beyond the old base.  He didn't say much, but as we climbed higher into the hills the tight look on his face went away and by the time he directed me to stop the car, his eyes were warm and bright. 

The prairie wind cut through me as I got out of the car but the view was beautiful.  The land below was dotted with a few small farms, but for the most part it looked just as it had in his film.  I recognized this place.  He came here after Zeke died.  This was the place his innocence died.  This is where he'd become a man.  A place where he'd been unafraid to let the deep emotions he was feeling move him to tears. 

His big warm hand found mine and as we walked up the grassy hillside, he told me about all the times he'd come to this place.  How he'd come there to be alone with his thoughts.  To think about his home, to think about all those people he'd left behind; his mother and father, his brothers, his extended family, his friends, the pretty girls he'd fancied at college.  The smirk on his face as he told me about that last bit earned him a good swat.  It felt good laughing with him in this place. 

He told me it wasn't just a sad place for him.  He'd spent a lot of his off hours here, sometimes thinking, sometimes catching a nap, sometimes doing nothing more than stretching out on his back in the long sun-warmed grass and daydreaming as he watched the clouds drift overhead.  I'm sure he also took advantage of the privacy he found there for other reasons as well.  Lach's too private a man to go for a covert pull in the community showers or in his rack at night surrounded by thirty other pilots, but I kept that observation to myself. 

This place, it was his place, he said.  Said he never came here except when he was alone.  He didn't say the words, but I knew what he meant.  He'd never brought a girl here.  He'd never brought Lil here.  Maybe he was right about his portal being here.  It was a place that was special to him and him alone.  And to be honest, I liked the idea of that a whole lot more than his portal being the exact place he'd wooed and loved another woman. 

The view was spectacular.  The sky above, the trees and farmhouses in the distance, the various patchwork of green fields below.  We'd just crested the top of the rise, where the entire view opened up below us, when I felt it.  This great swelling of power.  Inside me, I felt this flutter... a tingling....I don't know what it was, really, and then everything went all blurry for a moment.  The air, or maybe it was time, bent and rippled outward.  I felt Lachlan's hand tighten on mine and then the shimmer dissipated and there we were. 

I stumbled forward a few steps.  "Lach?"  He steadied me with his hands and I simply stared at him in wonderment, not really knowing what to say, trying to shake off the vertigo and process what was happening.  It was like stepping from a black and white world into one so vivid and rich and crisp it almost hurt to look at it.  I felt this huge upwelling of emotion.  It hit me so hard I swayed on my feet and Lachlan grabbed me tight around the waist and pulled me to him.  I don't think I could have stood being apart from him for one more second.                       

For a fleeting moment, I thought of all the things the other Sisters had said about what it felt like to be with a Brother inside their portal.  How it seemed to simplify the basic tenets of what made us, us.  How it made the men feel more masculine and the women more feminine.  How it amplified some things and intensified others.  Feelings.  Emotions.  Happiness.  Anger.  Lust.  Love.  Hope.   

It was just so much.  Too much.  My eyes filled with tears and he kissed me then.  Long and slow and deep.  Moist eyes.  Moist mouths.  The ebb and flow of blood as our hearts pounded.  I think I died then.  Or maybe, at that moment, it was then that I first truly lived.