Her Wings

by Liz Peters

  In truth, Ali knew she was capable of doing it perfectly, though she had feigned a few bad attempts at placing her hands on the proper location or locking her wrists in the formation to do compressions. Maybe no one was looking, but she wasn’t going to chance anyone calling her out on this right now.

  “Here, I’ll show you.” He moved in next to her, pointing out a few locations on the dummy and placing his own hands in the proper orientation, but Ali shook her head.

  “Why don’t you just help me get everything lined up?”

  She moved into place, gesturing for Ben to move in behind her. This was exactly what she wanted. Ben was close enough that she could feel the heat from his body sinking into her back as he wrapped his arms around her from behind and took her hands in his own to place them on the dummy’s chest just where she knew they should have gone.

  “So you see, the heel of your palm should rest here...” Ben’s words trailed off as Ali curved her back, pushing her body more firmly into his.

  “Mmmhmmm.” Ali let him move her hands around, moving slightly against him as he positioned her body properly to deliver the compressions she was supposed to have her focus on, though she was really concentrating on making sure that as much of her body was in contact with his as possible.

  When she heard him stumble over the instructions of how many compressions she was supposed to give, Ali couldn’t help the grin that spread across her face.

  “Everything alright, Mr. Dixon?” Ali turned her head to look over her shoulder, knowing that her lips were only inches from his when she looked back at him. She ran her tongue over her lower lip, wetting it slightly while she watched his eyes follow her every move.

  “I’m quite alright. Just a little out of breath I think.”

  “Oh? Not used to such a workout?” She grinned and let him help her push in for the first compression until the dummy’s chest clicked under her palm. Ali pressed her ass backward until it made contact with Ben’s hips, as they both rose to allow the foam beneath their hands to return to its original shape.

  “I suppose not.” He cleared his throat, before taking a deep breath and moving back to straighten his tie. Ali turned to face him with a warm grin.

  “You know, since we’re neighbors, we should go running together sometime.” Ali raised an eyebrow to indicate the unspoken question in her words.

  “Perhaps.” Ben moved to stand as Ali noted the slight flush in his cheeks.

  “At the end of class today, I’ll give you my phone number so we can set something up if you’d like.”

  The only reply she could get out of Ben was a simple nod before he moved on to the rest of the class. Ali went back to her dummy with a slight smile before she proceeded to do the rest of the exercises perfectly. When the time to test each of the students came, she completed them all without a single mistake, though it was one of the assistants who was there to check her off on the requirements for this particular part of the course.

  She was a little disappointed that it hadn’t been Ben, but there wasn’t much she could do about that since it appeared that he wasn’t doing the final check-off for anyone this morning. Instead, he was walking around the room making sure that everything went smoothly. Luckily, the class was about to break for lunch before beginning the second half of their day.

  Once Ali was done with her CPR exam, she walked over to her purse, grabbing a slip of paper and a pen from the bag to scribble down her apartment number and cell phone number on. She made sure to wait for the rest of the room to clear before she walked over to where Ben was standing arranging the papers in his briefcase before leaving for lunch. When she got his attention, he looked up, appearing a little surprised when she walked over to his side of the desk to slide the little piece of paper into his chest pocket.

  “You can call me anytime, Mr. Dixon... Ben...”

  Ali had chosen his first name for a reason, though there was something very attractive about the fact that he was in charge of her. She had no idea why she found it so intoxicating to be flirting with her teacher or to have the kind of effect she was clearly having on him. It had an element of taboo in it since he was the guy teaching her about the career she had always wanted.

  Ben didn’t even manage to get out an answer before she walked away. It made her feel powerful to know that she had managed to make someone who appeared to have everything under his control entirely speechless as she walked out of the room for their lunch hour.

  Kristina was waiting for her out in the corridor as she exited the room with a cheeky grin on her face.

  “I have no idea if you know what you’re doing, but you’re sure as hell doing it.”

  Ali moved in and linked arms with her new friend.

  “Come on. I’m buying lunch today. I’m in an excellent mood.”

  Chapter Six

  Ben

  Another week had passed, and Ben couldn’t remember a class that had kept him on his toes as much as this one. It was all down to one person — Alicia Hansen. He’d been flirted with plenty of times before. Usually, they were very easy to shoot down because he hadn’t been interested in any of them in the slightest. The people who thought they could flirt their way through the class were generally the ones who didn’t make it halfway through before they either failed or quit because things were just too hard.

  Ali was something else. She was smart. Ben didn’t think that he’d ever met anyone who he thought was as intelligent as she was even if she was still young. She was older than most of the other people who came through the class. In fact, she was the oldest person in this particular class even though she was still about ten years younger than Ben. She was gorgeous. That was obvious from the first moment he laid eyes on her, and after only a couple of weeks, Ben was starting to find her irresistible.

  That was a huge issue. If he gave into the flirtation between them, then he could lose his job, the one that he had spent his whole life working for and Ali would get kicked out of the training program. There were plenty of rules and regulations set in place to avoid just this type of situation, and Ben knew every last one of them from memory. That should have been enough to help him keep his head on straight, but for some reason, it wasn’t.

  If anyone else had slipped Ben their phone number with that little wink and a ‘call me’ the way that Ali had, he would have tossed it in the trash. Instead, the slip of paper with a list of numbers and a little heart in the corner was sitting on his dresser. He’d looked at it more times than he would have admitted to. At least, it didn’t have her name on it. He could keep it around without raising too much suspicion, and he kept telling himself that there was no way he was going to use it, even though he kept fighting off the urge to call it and arrange a workout with his hot neighbor.

  At least Jeremy and Camille were arriving today. It was Saturday, and he was due to pick them up from the airport in about an hour. He could use the distraction that his friends being here in Daytona was sure to provide. They already had plans to go out for a few drinks this evening once they got settled in.

  Ben grabbed his keys and headed off into the parking lot to drive to the airport. By the time he arrived in the pickup area, Jeremy and Camille had already grabbed their luggage and were waiting for him on the sidewalk outside of the terminal. He parked the car, getting out to help them load their luggage. Before he could grab the bag that was at Camille’s side, they pulled him into a hug that he needed more than he had realized.

  “Old friend!” Jeremy pulled back to look him up and down. “How is it that you still look like a model in your mid-thirties while I look like someone’s dad?”

  Ben let out a soft laugh, shaking his head and lifting Camille’s suitcase so that she wouldn’t have to. She looked as beautiful as ever.

  “Maybe because you’re about to be someone’s dad, and I’m still a single guy living at the beach surrounded by women who all look like models themselves?”

  Jeremy shot him a cheeky grin as they hoisted the sui
tcases into the trunk of the car. “Touche, old man. I’ll grant you all of that.”

  Camille was standing by the side of the car and shaking her head with a soft laugh.

  “It’s good to see you, Ben.” She wasn’t obviously pregnant, though he could see that her stomach was just starting to change shape and swell into the characteristic baby bump that was going to take over her entire frame before the end of the nine-month process.

  “It’s always good to see you, Cami. You’re going to have to ignore Jeremy and me for the rest of the week. We’re guaranteed to act like idiots, and I guess I’m going to have to apologize in advance.”

  Cami giggled this time before letting out a deep laugh.

  “Ben, I’m a middle school teacher. I’ve seen more than my fair share of adolescent boy behavior. I’m used to it by now.”

  Ben moved to help her into the backseat of his car while Jeremy slid into the passenger seat. The three of them had a lot of catching up to do. Ben was definitely looking forward to it. For the first time in a long time, he wasn’t going to be spending a Saturday night curled up with a cup of tea and a book on his own. It was a welcome change and a much-needed distraction.

  “Well, I’ve got a big weekend prepared for the two of you before I have to go back to work on Monday, so I hope you’re ready for a good time.”

  Jeremy laughed, glancing back into the backseat where his wife was sitting before glancing back to Ben.

  “So you’re telling me that you’re going to do something else besides read a book and carry on about the state of the American economy or something else equally boring?”

  Ben shot him a glare with narrowed eyebrows.

  “I’ll have you know I planned to watch paint dry this weekend before you called saying you were coming down.”

  “Yeah, yeah, old man. Alright, I can’t wait to see what you have planned.”

  EIGHT o’clock rolled around, and Ben, Jeremy, and Camille found themselves walking into a bar down by the beach that he’d never been to in the entire time he’d lived down here. In fact, he couldn’t remember going out to more than a couple of places with some work friends after the end of a training class session that had been particularly stressful. The rest of his staff had a habit of going out for celebratory drinks together at the end of every eight-week session. It was just rare that Ben joined them, so he wasn’t familiar with any of the bars along the beach.

  However, Jeremy and Camille were visitors in town, and they were definitely more interested in the beach scene than Ben had ever been. In the end, they had dragged Ben down to one of the many beach bars along the main strip of town in a taxi after the end of their dinner. Cami wouldn’t be drinking since she was pregnant, but Jeremy certainly would be. Since his wife didn’t know her way around, it only made sense that the three of them would just get a ride out to dinner and then back to Ben’s apartment when the night was over. It just made everything a lot easier.

  As they were walking into the bar, Ben looked around the room a little dubiously while Jeremy and Camille were trying to pick out a table. Eventually, they wound up in a booth near the jukebox in the bar, pouring over the list of beers that had been left on the table.

  “First round is on me, guys,” Ben said, unprompted while his friends decided on what they wanted. In the end, Jeremy chose a beer, Camille decided she was drinking soda, and Ben settled on a particular brand of whiskey he knew he could stomach pretty well before he walked up to the bar, trying to get the attention of the bartender.

  The woman behind the bar had her back to Ben, working on mixing a couple of drinks on the worktop behind her as he walked up, but as soon as those drinks were done, she turned around and Ben froze in his tracks. He recognized her face as soon as he saw it, though she was dressed entirely different than what he was used to.

  “Alicia?”

  This time, it was Ali’s turn to freeze, looking wide-eyed at the man in front of her. Ben suddenly realized that he certainly didn’t look anything like his usual self either. Ali moved to set the drinks she’d been mixing down on the bar in front of her, before drying her hands on the towel that was close to where Ben was standing.

  “Well, fancy meeting you here. What’s a nice guy like you doing in a place like this?”

  Alicia was wearing a tiny pair of cut off jean shorts and a black tank top with her hair in a little bit of a mess around her head. She was gorgeous, even more so than normal and Ben stumbled to find the words that he wanted.

  “Umm. What are you doing here?” Ben’s question was blunt, nothing like the manners he usually tried to project whenever he was at work. It was just a little jarring to run into Ali in a place where he didn’t usually see her like in class or their apartment complex.

  “Well, clearly I work here.” She gestured to her place behind the bar like Ben should have easily put two and two together to figure that out. The smile on her face was obviously smug.

  “The last time I checked, you were training to be a flight attendant.” He raised an eyebrow, moving to sit at the barstool closest to where she was standing.

  “Yeah,” she grinned, running a hand through the loose hair that framed her face as she shot him a sly look. “Well. I guess a girl has to make an extra buck where she can. I’m filling in for a friend who needed a night off. I used to work here before I started training, for like two years. I can’t believe I’ve never seen you in here before.”

  Ben shrugged, glancing around him at the unfamiliar room.

  “I’ve never been in here before. I have some friends in town and they decided we were going out for drinks.”

  Ali nodded, grabbing another glass and starting to dry it off with the bar towel before placing it back in its proper location on the worktop behind her. She moved over to where Ben was sitting, leaning on the bar to give him a great view down the front of her shirt. She clearly knew what she was doing.

  “I like the sound of those friends. I’ll tell you what, tonight, all those drinks are on the house.” Before Ben could protest, Ali reached across the bar, putting one finger across his lips to silence him. “Nope. We’re not going to argue about it. You might be in charge in the classroom, but this is my world, Ben, and what I say goes. You’re going to have a good time tonight, no matter what I have to do to make that happen.”

  Ali shot him a wink, settling back to her place behind the bar while Ben tried to get himself together to order the drinks for himself and his friends. She took the order, nodding and sending him back off to the table along with the promise that she’d deliver those drinks personally. Fortunately, it was the beginning of the off-season here in Daytona, and the bar wasn’t as packed as it might have been on a normal Saturday night in the middle of summer.

  A few minutes after he’d placed the order, Ali walked over to the table with a tray of drinks, laying it on the table before she slid in next to Ben, moving as close as she possibly could while she settled in and got comfortable.

  “Ben, are you going to introduce me to your friends?”

  THE night passed quickly, and Ben wasn’t even aware of how late he’d been up, or how much he’d been drinking, especially since he wasn’t paying for drinks. Ali mostly just kept them coming, only leaving their table when she was needed at the bar to mix drinks.

  It was great to be with his friends. The conversation was warm, animated and punctuated with lots of laughter. Occasionally though, Ben had the opportunity to glance over at Ali and watch her as she worked. He noticed that she had a warm smile and was polite to everyone she encountered. It struck him that her personality was perfectly matched for being a flight attendant. He couldn’t really tell if this was a professional side of her or a personal one. It didn’t really matter though, it was absolutely essential for the line of work that he was training her for.

  Maybe it was stars in his eyes, or maybe it was the alcohol, but either way Ben definitely liked what he was seeing in Ali. When she came back to their table once more, he slid over and ma
de room for her to sit down beside him. Their thighs were touching under the table and Ben was finding it difficult to hide the warm fuzzy feeling in his brain, and the increasing hardness in his pants.

  He was amazed at how well Ali got along with Jeremy and Camille. They were already entranced by her, and when he’d first introduced them, he’d avoided mentioning that she was one of his students, instead referring to her as one of his neighbors. That had left him with a little pang of guilt.

  Socializing together was against every rule in the book, but after his third or fourth drink, Ben had completely forgotten that he was even supposed to care.

  “So how did you all meet?” There was a lull in the conversation and Ali took him by surprise by asking such a personal, yet general question.

  Jeremy eased the awkwardness of the moment saying “We’ve known each other since birth, actually. Our mothers delivered us at the same time and as they became great friends, so did we.”

  “Yeah, we were raised more like brothers than friends. After my mom died, Jeremy’s mom Gina stepped in and was sort of a surrogate mother to me. We’ve been like family ever since.” The words were out of Ben’s mouth before he even realized it. There was a short moment of silence as everyone at the table took in what Ben had just revealed. He rarely mentioned his mom’s passing, and certainly not to a new acquaintance.

  It was Ali who broke the awkward moment. “I’m so sorry Ben. That must’ve been difficult for you.” She spared him the prying questions about the details of his mother’s death, and Ben was extremely thankful for that. In fact, instead of regretting blurting out his personal history, he actually felt relieved.

  The conversation quickly moved on to the present, and of how everyone was excited about Jeremy and Camille’s growing family. Ali listened to their stories and plans with her usual warmth and laughter. Ben noticed she didn’t seem to share any of her own personal stories. He didn’t think too much of it but made a mental note to ask about her backstory next time, secretly hoping there would be a next time.