I burst out laughing. Never had anyone so seriously mistaken me for someone else.

“Oh, I didn’t ask for any such thing. I would never—”

Before I could finish my sentence, Eileen gently removed an envelope from the folds of my blanket and left it on my lap. “I’m sure we’re not mistaken,” she said, eyeing me steadily. “I’ll return in a few minutes to escort you.”

The envelope was unmarked, but I recognized the paper’s creamy color. My heart started to race. Was I facing Step Three at thirty-five-thousand feet in the air? My hand was shaky as I ripped open the envelope. Sure enough, Step Three scrolled on one side of the heavy card stock and just one simple word was on the other: Trust. But who was doing the trusting—me, or every one of the passengers on this plane who wouldn’t care to know how I was about to distract the pilot? I slipped the Step card into my purse and shook out a half-dozen Tic Tacs, which I barely had time to finish before the flight attendant returned.

“Are you ready, Miss Mason?”

I swallowed the remaining candy shards. “Um. Yes. I think so,” I said, trying to disguise the terror in my voice.

“An old friend of mine once said that a fear uncovered is no longer a fear. It’s an opportunity for a decision. Once you see how a plane operates, once you get an intimate look at all the buttons and levers, you can decide to end your fear of flying. Captain Nathan will be all too happy to help you.”

She was quoting Matilda! Eileen was one of us. She gave me her hand, and practically had to pull me to my feet because my legs were rigid with terror.

“There. See? That wasn’t so bad.”

We made it down the short aisle. Standing in front of the cockpit door, she gave three quick knocks. A second later, a sandy-haired young man with thick glasses and a space between his front teeth poked his head out. Oh dear. I hated to admit that my shallow Southern heart sank, though I politely pulled my grin a little wider, reminding myself what the C in S.E.C.R.E.T. stood for. If my fantasy man wasn’t … compelling, I didn’t have to go through with the fantasy.

“Is this our lovely visitor?” he asked with a lisp. Oh dear.

“Yes,” the flight attendant said. “Miss Dauphine Mason, this is our multitalented First Officer Friar. Miss Mason is keen to see what goes on in here. It might help her with her fear of flying.”

“Ah, yes. Dispel the mystery and the fear disperses. That’s Captain Nathan’s specialty. He can show you around while I stretch my legs. Three’s a crowd in here! Good luck!”

After enunciating all those s’s, First Officer Friar made a beeline to the back of the plane. Out the window in front was a dark sky; below, nothing but black water. The high whine of the engines masked the screams in my own head as my legs now turned to cement. Eileen nudged me through the narrow doorway.

“I’ll be back in a little while,” she said, looking at her watch. “Enjoy your flying lesson.”

She shut the door behind her.

The pilot sat silhouetted in the window. The only thing I could see above the seat was the back of his head. He wasn’t wearing a jacket, only his white shirt, the muscles on his arms apparent beneath his sleeves as he flicked a number of switches from left to right on a panel in front of him. Thankfully, the white noise drowned out my pounding heart.

“Be with you in a moment, Dauphine. I just want to make sure autopilot’s running smoothly. A robot takes over for most of the flight from now on. A very smart one.”

There it was. That accent again. The man from Security! The man with the sexy Cockney accent! The air left my chest and the pressure squeezed my lungs. Feeling tantalized and terrified at that same time had a bad effect on my stomach. I slapped both hands on the curved walls of the cockpit to steady myself as the plane rose and straightened. The pilot faced a wall of lights and levers that seemed to blink and shift on their own. Then he finally turned his chair around, aviators off, dark eyes on me. I gasped.

“Don’t worry, we’re on automatic, but we’re not going to be alone in here for long, so I apologize ahead of time for the furtive nature of our interlude,” he said, loosening the top button of his uniform. “But I need to know, before we continue with our tutorial on the safety of flight: Do you accept the Step, Miss Mason?”

I couldn’t believe this was happening.

“Here? Now?”

“Yes. Here and now. Trust me when I say I can help you with your fear of flying. And a few other things too, I suspect,” he said, leaning back into the plush leather of his pilot seat, taking me in from bottom to top.

“I’ve never been in an airplane before,” I muttered, stalling.

“I understand that,” he said, steepling his fingers. “But you are doing a fine job of your first time.”

Standing four feet from a complicated instrument panel that the pilot was no longer facing, I watched dark clouds whip by the nose of the plane through the high narrow windows.

“Are we … safe in here?”

“Very safe,” he said. “Safer than driving. Safer than almost any other activity you can do at hundreds of miles an hour, high in the air.”

“What if there’s turbulence?” I asked, just as we hit a little bump. I yelped. My arms flew up to grasp the ceiling.

He took it as a cue to gesture me over to him.

Here we go! I slowly, carefully, closed the gap between us, and over his shoulder got a better view of the world before me. It was dusk, but light poked through the clouds, illuminating little towns and villages nestled in the foot of a mountain range. They looked like a strand of jewels dropped from a great height. It was beautiful, but still I felt gut-punched and queasy. Levers and buttons continued to move in a ghostly way all around us.

“Turbulence is just air pockets. The plane will ride through it. And I’m right here if anything goes awry.”

I stood above him now, his head level with my breasts.

“Do you accept the Step?”

Handsome face, kind eyes, great smell, manly hands, but the clincher truly was his beautifully tailored shirt. Terribly shallow, I know.

“Yes, I accept.”

“Then may I help you off with your knickers?”

I almost laughed out loud at the old-fashioned British word for panties. I was wearing a pencil skirt and pumps, and a button-up pink angora sweater. The low ponytail completed my ’50s-housewife-on-an-errand look. It couldn’t be helped; planning my outfits always calmed me, and today I needed to be calm.

“Tell me more about how safe I am,” I begged, as his warm hands gently undid the back of my skirt, letting it drop to the floor.

“Well, Dauphine,” he said, inching my panties, or “knickers,” down, “takeoff is the hardest part. So much can go wrong. But we’re well past that now.”

Standing before him, I closed my eyes. I could feel his fingers unbuttoning my sweater, easing it off my shoulders. Ohh.

“Now the middle part of flight,” he said, leaning forward to nuzzle my soft line of pubic hair, kissing it. “That’s the easiest … sweetest part of the ride. But still, you never want to get complacent. Sometimes it’s deceptively easy. You still need to be careful, to watch for subtle signals.”

I stood over him, my legs trembling. He reached back to undo my pink satin bra, slid it forward and dropped it. Standing there naked, for a second I forgot the plane was flying on its own! It was black through the window. I wasn’t sure if we were flying over mountains or water, but I closed my eyes. If I couldn’t see it, it didn’t matter. I placed my hands on the ceiling again, pressing my body forward into him. He was so at ease, so in command as he gently urged my legs farther apart, reaching up to pinch and circle my nipples, like I was an instrument panel he knew exactly how to operate.

“How does the autopilot know what it’s doing?” I asked, so deeply aroused by his thumbs now expertly parting my cleft, I thought my knees would give.

“It listens to me. I tell it what to do and it follows my instructions,” he said, leaning forward to kiss my clitoris, now centered between his thumbs.

“Mmm, you taste so good, my darling,” he murmured, his fingers now joining his mouth, slowly gliding in and out, agonizing me. I felt every knuckle against my most tender parts, prodding my clitoris forward, as his mouth fully encircled me. I grabbed his head as it moved beneath me. Then I felt that rush, fast and hot, and the mounting energy as his urgent tongue fluttered and flicked, his fingers darting in and out. All I could do was shut my eyes and arch back, dying and shuddering as I exploded with a new kind of pleasure, moaning into the ceiling, his tongue lapping relentlessly at me, my hand over my mouth to muffle my cries.

“Oh my god! Oh yes … yes!” I whelped, trying to steady my legs as he urged his pants down, rolled on a condom and eased me down. Still in a daze, I felt every vein, every ridge, as I wilted onto his lap, my thighs straddling him in his captain’s chair, my feet barely touching the ground. A firm arm wrapped around my back, he moved up and into me, his brown eyes pleased as he took in my body, and I faced the fucking front of the plane and the window and, holy shit, would you look at that view! No, don’t look. Close your eyes, Dauphine. Don’t look!

“How much higher can this plane go?” I asked as he sped up his thrusts. Oh! The feeling of fullness!

“Much higher,” he whispered, as he began to grind hard beneath me, his hips gyrating, his arms weighing my hips down. “You just have to know how to drive it properly. You just have to have a feel for the plane, and its limits.”