Deep Control (Dark Dominance 2)

Silence greeted my barked orders. I finally had visual contact with the islands and we started to descend. “Okay, we’re here,” I said to the people on the ground. “We’re right near the airport. Do we have a place to lay this baby down?”

“All cleared for you,” a sharp voice replied.

“Do some S-turns,” said Ayal, as if in a trance. “We’re too high.”

“I got it.”

I’d never flown a jetliner without power before, but flying was flying, and I’d tried just about every variety of it over the years. Big planes, small planes, old planes, military jets, state of the art hovercrafts, planes with mechanical anomalies, and lightweight planes designed to glide.

I tried to think like a glider pilot rather than a jet pilot, making measured S-turns in the air, balancing distance and speed, altitude and angle to reach the airport in the correct position to land. They’d cleared all the air traffic from São Miguel, so I picked an east-west runway and lined up the plane, letting it drop to the earth. It fell fast, but we had to land fast, or we’d shoot into the ocean.

“We’re almost there.” Ayal yanked off her headset. Ground control couldn’t help us now. “Oh, please. Oh God. Please land us.”

“I’m trying. No chance at a redo.”

The runway widened beneath us as we dropped the last few feet. Ayal sucked in a breath and held it.

“Brace! Brace!” I yelled the words a second before we touched down, and the cockpit door slammed shut from the impact. The plane bounced and shimmied, but held together, the typical noise of reversing engines and air flaps replaced by the squealing and thudding of the tires. Thup, thup, thup, thup, thup, flat tires, shuddering fuselage, high-pitched screams from the back.

I would have screamed too, if I wasn’t so busy nursing the brakes and working the controls. The safety belt bit into my shoulders and hips as we rapidly decelerated. Ayal braced her hands on the control panel, silent and pale at my side. We passed waiting fire trucks and ambulances, zipping by them on the runway that was both too long and too short.

Pumping the brakes did nothing. All I could do was try to hold the nose down so we didn’t lift into the air again. I gritted my teeth as the tires’ thumping died to a scrape. The plane pitched forward, then slowed to the point I could let out a breath. It hadn’t flipped or broken apart. We finally rolled to a stop about two hundred meters from the end of the runway.

“Bless you,” said Ayal, touching her forehead, then mine. “You did it. Thank you.”

I looked at the piles of manuals in her lap. “I couldn’t have done it without you.”

While Ayal signed off with ground control, I took off my oxygen mask, feeling keyed up, angry, euphoric, overwhelmed, devastated. Fire engines pulled alongside our crippled jet, filling the air with sirens, but I barely heard them. Outside the cockpit window, the earth looked green and beautiful. I could have died, we all could have died, but we were alive.

“Devin,” said Ayal. “Are you all right?”

I’d think about that question later. For now, I had to look after the passengers, and get all of us the hell off this plane.

Chapter Five: Ella

All around the universe, things were happening all the time. I knew this from my work. Galaxies were colliding, stars were dying in supernova explosions. But right now, on this tiny island, on this tiny planet, every step I took seemed like a miracle.

I don’t remember how we got from the airport to the hotel, only that Devin guided me into an elevator with floral wallpaper. All those flowers. Fort and Juliet were with us, clinging to each other. I felt unhinged, lost in a whirl.

I knew Devin had somehow guided the plane to earth without engine power, had saved us from a horrific crash, because I’d lived through the rough, bouncing landing. Somehow, he and the female co-pilot had wrangled the plane to a stop, ignoring the shrieking controls. As we stumbled off the crippled plane, she’d cried. I’d cried. We’d all cried, but not Devin.

I didn’t trust him anymore, because he hadn’t cried. There was something unnatural about his self-control.

Another reason not to trust him: he’d lied. He’d told me before the flight that everything would be okay. I felt a sob rise in my throat, choking out like a grunt. Was the crash landing I’d experienced more or less shattering than a black hole exploding? I studied gravitational waves to make sense of the universe. Now, nothing made sense.

When I made my choking, sobbing sound, Devin touched my elbow, perhaps to comfort me. I pulled away. Fort and Juliet got off the elevator and we continued to my floor. He’d asked me at least a dozen times if I was okay, but I hadn’t answered, because, obviously, I wasn’t okay. Physically, I was okay. We’d all survived the hard landing with minor bumps and bruises, a fact attributed to Devin’s flight experience and skill.

But mentally, I wasn’t doing very well. My fears of an airplane disaster had nearly come to fruition. I’d pressed an oxygen mask to my face and listened to an old man in the throes of a heart attack pray to a God I didn’t believe in, asking that God to look after a list of loved ones that was so long and heartfelt, his voice had cracked and faded to a whisper at the end.

The ambulance had come to the runway and taken Captain Ross away first. Devin assured me he would be okay, that the EMTs had stabilized him, and that he’d receive excellent medical care here on São Miguel, the largest of the Azores islands. He promised we could visit him later, maybe tomorrow before we left.

Before we left? I didn’t understand what he was talking about. I couldn’t leave. I’d never be able to get off this island, because I’d never be able to get on another plane. I couldn’t take a boat, either, since it might sink on the way across the endless, dark water. I understood now just how vast and unforgiving an ocean could be when things went wrong and you were stuck over top of it.

But Devin had saved us. I wasn’t dead. I was alive. Somehow, despite an eerie, twisting flight over the black ocean, I was alive.

I must have been muttering out loud, because Devin gave me a harried look, like he didn’t know what to do with me, but he was the one who’d broken our trust. He led me into my room, shutting the door behind us.

“Will you say something, please?” His voice sounded taut.

“What do you want me to say?”

He was already close to me, but he stepped closer. One of his arms came around my waist. “I told you everything would be okay.” There was anger in his voice, a rasping like dry paper about to ignite. “I landed the plane. The danger’s over, so stop looking at me like that.”

I didn’t speak. Couldn’t speak. He was beautiful and furious, and alive. Not just alive, but seething with life. His arm tightened around my waist, and he caught my chin between his fingers. I met his eyes, trapped against him. Our bodies knew each other from before, and now our emotions were melting into a tangled mess. I grasped his shoulders, afraid to let him go.

“I don’t trust you,” I cried, not even knowing why I said it. “I don’t trust anything anymore.”

He held my chin harder, staring at me, telling me without words that trust didn’t matter in this moment. When he pressed his lips to mine with savage hunger, I didn’t resist.

His fingers snaked into my hair as our kiss deepened. He pulled it hard enough that I cried out, and then I was arching against him, trying to wrap a leg around his. He scrabbled at my clothes with his free hand, kissing me, devouring me, shoving up my sweater, touching my bare skin with a heat like fire.

In my past life, before I almost died, I might have slowed things down at this point by pulling away with a comment, or a quelling look. I might have considered whether I was enjoying the kiss, and whether I wanted things to go further.

Now, I made animalistic begging sounds, needing more passion

, more force. He let go of my hair and clamped his fingers between my legs as if to assert ownership of my body. I answered his rough assault with an encouraging gasp.

He paused then, and took off my glasses, setting them on a table by the window. After that, it seemed he stroked and squeezed me everywhere. He spanked my ass, his large palms stinging me through the thin material of my leggings. His fingernails grazed over my skin, then dug into my spine, pulling me closer. His force thrilled me. I’d ached to feel more of it ever since Via Sofferenza.

As the passions between us ignited, our trembling bodies communicated without words: his rough handling, my hunger, my melting acquiescence. With a growl, he shoved me against the wall and ground his pelvis against mine. His cock’s hard outline seemed impossibly huge, pressing against me with shocking force. He wanted me.

And I wanted to forget.

I didn’t think, I just acted. I reached for the waistband of his jeans, tugging at the closure. I wanted him inside me. I wanted him to hurt me, because that was what I always ached for at the most intense and frightening moments of my life. I couldn’t explain that to him, but he must have understood, because he didn’t hesitate.

He pushed my hands away and released his cock, the hard length of it springing between us while I fussed at his sweater. I couldn’t get it off, which frustrated me, because I needed to feel his bare skin and muscles. He removed it instead, tossing it to the floor while I breathed in the scent of him: musk, cologne, male heat. I ran my fingers over his chest hair while he pushed my leggings and panties down and pulled off my sweater.

Our gazes met when we resumed our embrace, our warm bodies pressing together with only my cami between us. He pulled the neckline down and squeezed my breasts, never breaking eye contact, pinching my nipples as they hardened under his touch. He had the coolest, most pale-blue eyes I’d ever seen, yet they were searingly hot. His stare dropped to my lips and we were kissing again, even more violently. I squirmed against him, whining into his mouth as his tongue lashed mine. He pulled back and bit my lower lip, giving me a delicious burst of pain.