Chapter 8: The Private Flight
The tarmac lights painted wet streaks across the jet's polished hull as Veronica Diaz led them toward the airstair. She moved with the easy authority of a woman who owned everything she touched, her silver gown catching the breeze, her bare feet slapping against the concrete. Aiko watched the way her hips swayed and filed the observation away. Useful, maybe. Pleasing, definitely.
Tessa followed a half-step behind, her eyes already sweeping the perimeter. Two ground crew, one security guard, all of them pointedly looking away. The Female Public Nudity Law made their nakedness unremarkable here, but the three of them together still drew a particular kind of attention. Aiko had grown used to it. She had never grown tired of it.
"Welcome to my sanctuary," Veronica said, pausing at the base of the steps. She gestured upward with a manicured hand. "The crew is loyal. The walls are soundproofed. And the champagne is from a vineyard that no longer exists."
"Your favorite kind," Tessa said.
"Indeed." Veronica's smile was sharp as glass. "Shall we?"
The cabin swallowed them whole. Cream leather seats curved around a polished mahogany table, and circular windows framed a sky that darkened by the second. The air smelled of cedar and something floral, some perfume Aiko could not place. She let her hand drag along the back of a seat as she walked, feeling the grain of the leather under her fingertips.
The door sealed with a soft hiss. Veronica stood at the center of the cabin and reached behind her back. The zipper went down in one smooth motion, and the gown pooled at her feet like water. She stepped out of it, then hooked her thumbs into the waistband of her underwear and slid them down her thighs. She stood naked before them, arms spread wide.
"Better," she said. "I always hated flying in clothes. It's unnatural."
Aiko watched the way the cabin light caught the curves of Veronica's body, the long brown hair falling past her shoulders, the confident set of her spine. The woman moved like she had never once doubted her place in any room. She probably hadn't.
The jet began to taxi. Outside the window, the terminal lights slid past, then fell away as the nose tilted upward. The engines deepened to a growl, pressing them back into the leather as the ground dropped out beneath them.
Veronica settled into the seat across from them, crossing one leg over the other. Her body was oiled too, Aiko noticed. A different sheen, more lavender than gold, but unmistakable. The woman had prepared for this flight like a performer preparing for a stage.
The champagne came from a small fridge built into the cabin wall. Veronica worked the cork with practiced ease, the pop echoing off the mahogany. She filled three flutes, passed two across the table, and raised her own.
"To new partnerships," she said.
They drank. The champagne was cold and sharp and tasted like money.
Veronica set her glass down and studied them both with an appraising eye. The warmth from the gala had cooled into something more clinical, more interested.
"Tell me," she said. "What is the difference between an investor and a patron?"
Aiko felt the question land like a stone in still water. She glanced at Tessa, who was already lifting her glass to her lips, buying time.
"A patron writes checks," Aiko said. "An investor reads the fine print first."
Veronica's smile widened. "And which are you?"
"Neither," Tessa said. "We're the ones who make sure the fine print is worth reading."
The cabin hummed with quiet approval. Veronica uncrossed her legs and leaned forward, elbows on her knees. The movement drew Aiko's eye down the length of her torso, the soft shadow between her thighs. She forced her gaze back up, but not before Veronica noticed. The woman's smile sharpened.
"What do you look for in a production company?" Veronica asked.
Aiko let the question hang. The jet leveled out, cruising altitude reached, and the sky outside settled into a deep, endless blue. She could feel Tessa's gaze on her across the table, a familiar heat that had nothing to do with the champagne.
Aiko set her glass down and let her gaze drift to the copilot's door, then back to Veronica. "I have to ask," she said. "This show of yours. Wonder Woman Unbound. What is it, exactly?"
Veronica's eyebrows lifted. "You haven't seen it."
"We've been busy," Tessa said dryly.
A smile crossed Veronica's face. She rose from her seat, naked and unhurried, and moved to a panel beside the fridge. Her fingers found a hidden seam, and a section of the mahogany slid away to reveal a large flatscreen.
"Words are cheap," she said. "I'd rather show you."
She tapped a control, and the cabin lights dimmed to a soft amber. The screen bloomed to life, and the opening title card appeared in bronze letters: WONDER WOMAN UNBOUND.
The title card dissolved into a wide shot of a laboratory, all chrome and white light. A woman stood at its center, and even in silhouette, Aiko understood what power looked like.
Carol Conners stood there, or rather, Wonder Woman did. The costume hugged every inch of her tall frame, the stars and stripes stretched taut over a chest that defied physics, over thighs that looked carved from marble. Long black hair fell past her shoulders. Blue eyes blazed at the camera.
"Doctor," Wonder Woman said, her voice rich and steady, "you know this won't hold me."
The scientist appeared on a raised platform, a thin man in a white coat with spectacles that caught the light. He smiled, slow and cruel.
"I don't need to hold you, Diana. I need to strip you."
Aiko felt Tessa's knee brush against hers under the table. Neither of them looked away from the screen.
Wonder Woman stood motionless as a ring of machinery descended from the ceiling on hydraulic arms. She watched it come, her jaw set, her blue eyes unblinking. Then she reached up and unfastened the golden eagle clasps at her shoulders.
The sound of the zipper was amplified in the quiet cabin.
She slid the bodice down her arms, and the fabric peeled away from her breasts like a second skin. They sprang free, full and heavy, their weight a visible relief as they settled. Her nipples were already hard, dark bronze against the pale skin of her chest. She shrugged the rest of the costume down her hips, the skirt falling to pool around her boots. She stepped out of them, then reached down and peeled off the briefs, bending at the waist so the camera caught the smooth curve of her ass, the shadow between her thighs.
Wonder Woman stood naked in the center of the lab.
"Your move, Doctor," she said.
The scientist laughed. "My move indeed."
The machinery descended. Aiko leaned forward without meaning to, her champagne forgotten.
The first suction cup hovered over Wonder Woman's left nipple. It lowered slowly, so slowly, and when it made contact, Wonder Woman's breath caught. The cup sealed around the hard flesh with a soft pneumatic hiss, and her back arched involuntarily. The second cup found her right nipple, and she bit her lip, fighting whatever current the contact carried.
Sensors descended next. They attached to the undersides of her heavy breasts, pressing against the soft flesh, the movement captured in loving detail by the camera. They found her muscled torso, the ridged plane of her abdomen, the flare of her hips. One sensor settled between her legs, snug against her clit, and Wonder Woman's thighs trembled.
Another found the cleft of her ass, pressing into the tight muscle there.
She did nothing to stop any of it.
"Oh," the scientist said, circling her. "You were supposed to escape."
The current came. It hit Wonder Woman all at once, and she cried out, a sound that was half pain and half something else. Her body seized, her nipples straining against the suction cups, her head thrown back. The sensor between her thighs pulsed, and she bucked against it, pleasure breaking across her face in waves.
"That's it," the scientist said. "Feel it. All of it."
Wonder Woman's knees buckled. She caught herself on one hand, crouching naked on the lab floor, and the camera moved in close. Her face was flushed, her lips parted, her eyes hazy. The current pulsed again, and she gasped, clenching around nothing.
"You're naked on screen, Diana," the scientist said, laughing. "And you always will be. I've made sure of it. You are naked forever!"
The lab lights shattered. The screen cut to black.
Tessa blew out a slow breath. Aiko realized she had stopped breathing entirely.
Veronica lowered the screen back into the wall, her smile knowing. She turned to face them, naked and glowing.
"So," she said. "Now you understand what we're building."
The trailer's silence hung in the cabin like a held breath. Aiko watched the dark screen, her pulse still loud in her ears, the image of Wonder Woman's arched back burned behind her eyes.
Tessa cleared her throat. "That's quite a product."
"It is," Veronica said. "And Tanaka is the engine behind it. That woman knows how to write a scene that keeps an audience coming back."
Aiko reached for her champagne and drained the flute. The bubbles stung her throat.
The rest of the flight passed in a comfortable lull. They talked of production budgets, of the logistics of a naked action sequence, of the ways a body could move through a scene to make the camera love it. Veronica was sharp, well-read, and unexpectedly funny. The champagne flowed.
The cabin lights shifted as the jet began its descent. The sky outside the windows turned from indigo to a bruised gold smeared with the low sun of late afternoon. Aiko felt the pressure change in her ears.
Through the window, Bangkok sprawled beneath them. A sea of concrete and green, the Chao Phraya River curling through it like a vein of rust. The jet banked, and the city tilted, and for a moment Aiko caught the glint of a temple's golden spire before the wings leveled out.
"Beautiful, isn't it?" Veronica said, fastening her hair back from her face. "You'll have to see the rooftop bars at night. The whole city glows red."
The wheels touched down with a gentle bump, and the engines roared in reverse, pressing them forward against the leather. The jet slowed, then stopped.
Veronica rose from her seat and went to the wardrobe panel beside the fridge. She drew out a calf-length dress of pale green silk. She stepped into it and pulled it up over her hips, smoothing the fabric across her body. She slipped into a pair of flats and then paused at the mirror, checking her reflection.
"If you'll excuse the reminder," she said, "my husband thinks I'm in Singapore for a property auction. Let's keep this between us."
She pressed the cabin door release. The hatch unsealed with a hiss, letting in heat and the distant noise of the airport. She stepped out onto the airstair and was gone.
Aiko sat very still. Tessa sat very still. The silence in the cabin was total.
Tessa looked at her. Her grey eyes were wide.
"Oh," she said.
Aiko's stomach dropped. "Oh no."
"Bangkok." Tessa's voice was flat. "Bangkok does not have a female public nudity law."
The words landed like a cold brick in her chest. The air around them felt suddenly heavier, the memory of the sun on their skin a distant warmth.
"We were naked in the penthouse," Aiko said slowly, "at the gala. We walked through Macau. We were naked in the jet. For the entire flight."
"Right."
"And Bangkok is not Macau."
"Correct."
Aiko looked down at her own body. The oil had long since dried to a soft sheen, her bare thighs crossed, her breasts loose and exposed. Every inch of her skin was open to the air, unmarked by a single thread.
"I don't own clothes," she said. "I don't know where to get clothes. I've been naked for so long I've forgotten what they feel like."
Tessa pressed a hand to her forehead. "Odette's going to have a cover for us. There has to be a drop bag. There's always a drop bag."
"Is there? Because I don't remember a drop bag. I remember a mission brief about a naked Wonder Woman and a rogue scientist in a lab coat, and I remember being told we would be in Bangkok."
Tessa exhaled slowly. She stood, her body pale and bare in the cabin's dim light, and crossed to the window. Outside, the tarmac shimmered with heat. A few men in airport vests walked the concrete, dressed in work shirts and trousers.
She turned back. Her mouth was a thin line.
"We need to get off this jet," she said. "And we need to do it without attracting the wrong kind of attention."
"We need to get off this jet," she said. "And we need to do it without attracting the wrong kind of attention."
The cabin door hissed open before either of them could move. Veronica stood in the hatchway, silhouetted against the gold haze of the tarmac, her pale green dress already ruffled by the wind. She was smiling. Not the hostess smile from the gala, and not the curious, appraising smile from the flight. This one had teeth.
"I thought of something," she said.
Aiko blinked. "You were gone."
"I was. And then I came back." Veronica stepped inside and let the door seal behind her. She reached into a small clutch purse Aiko had not noticed she was carrying and drew out two slim cards. They were the color of burnished brass, embossed with a golden crest that caught the cabin light.
"Bangkok has rules," she said. "Strict ones. The kind that come with fines and paperwork and long, unpleasant conversations with men in uniforms who enjoy the power."
"We know," Tessa said. "We were just discussing our options."
"I saved you the trouble." Veronica held out the cards. Two fingers, one for each of them. "Diplomatic accreditation. Custom-framed for your specific situation."
Aiko took hers. The card was heavier than it looked, cool against her palm. Her name was printed in elegant bronze lettering: AIKO NAKAMURA. Below it, a line of fine print she could barely read in the dim light.
"What does this do exactly?" she asked.
"It grants you unrestricted access to the event as guests of the Phoenix Corporation," Veronica said. "More importantly, it makes you immune to public decency prosecution within the municipal limits of Bangkok. I made a few calls."
"A few calls."
"I know a woman on the city council who owes me a favor. A large one, from a property negotiation in Phuket. She was happy to expedite." Veronica's smile was still there, easy as anything. "You'll still draw looks. But no one will touch you."
Tessa turned the card over in her fingers. "And if someone tries to challenge it?"
"They'll find themselves in a very awkward conversation with the Thai Ministry of Foreign Affairs." Veronica shrugged, a small, careless movement. "I wouldn't recommend testing it. But it's a comfort to know it's there."
She stepped back toward the hatch. Her hand found the release, and the seal hissed open again. The heat rolled in, smelling of jet fuel and distant jasmine.
"Two hours to the premiere. The car will be waiting at the east terminal." Veronica stepped onto the airstair and turned back, one hand on the frame. "Do try not to cause an international incident before then."
She was gone. The door sealed with a soft click, and the cabin fell silent again.
Aiko stared at the card in her hand. The brass was warm now, carrying her body heat. She thought about the way Veronica had moved through this conversation, how she had known exactly when to re-enter, exactly what to say, exactly how to frame the gift so it felt like a kindness and not a leash.
"She's a little scary," Aiko said.
Tessa blew out a breath. "That's one word for it."
"Charismatic is the other."
"And they're the same thing." Tessa tucked the card into the small satchel she carried and stood. Her body moved through the amber light, pale and oiled, her thighs flexing as she stretched. "That woman rewrote a law because she was bored. She had ministry contacts in three countries on speed dial. And she knew we'd be stranded here before we did."
Aiko stood too. She slipped her own card into her palm, holding it like a talisman.
"We should not get on her bad side," she said.
"No." Tessa's grey eyes were flat. "We absolutely should not."
Aiko looked down at her body, at the curve of her breasts in the dim cabin light, at her bare thighs and the brass card gleaming in her fingers. Outside the window, Bangkok sprawled gold and green, indifferent to her nakedness. But the card in her hand made it feel like armor.
She smiled.
"Let's go cause an international incident," she said.