by Wood, Vivian
I unzip my own pants as she shimmies her panties down her legs, kicking them off with her shoes. I hook my thumbs into the waistband of my boxer briefs, shoving them and my pants down to the middle of my thighs.
My cock springs free, long and thick, the tip of it already slick with precum. Rachel’s hand is on my cock instantly, her fist closing around it.
Fuck, that feels so good.
It’s been so long since I felt anyone else’s grip on my dick that I close my eyes when she touches me. She gives me a few experimental strokes, testing the waters. But when I see her head going down to my cock, I have to stop her.
“No, not now,” I grit out, guiding her face up to mine. “I don’t want to blow my load in your mouth. I want your pussy, and I want it right now.”
She straddles me, breathing a little bit faster. I force her head down and kiss her, even as I lift my hips up. My cock touches her warm inner thigh. I close my eyes for the briefest moment, distracting myself.
Then I open my eyes, realizing that I should’ve definitely jacked off in the last couple of days. Or maybe been with a girl that was less hot than Rachel, who is a straight up bombshell.
I kiss her, pressing her ass down so that her knees widen.
“You’re going to have to ride slow,” I warn. “I’m so fucking hot for you right now, I can barely see straight.”
She gives me a wicked grin. “Is that right?”
I just grunt, pressing her down again. I use my free hand to stand my cock straight up, groaning as the blunt tip touches her pussy lips. They are already dripping with moisture.
She has been waiting for me, it seems.
She sinks down on my dick, her expression enraptured. I have to close my eyes and list whiskey brands while she stretches to take all of me.
“Fuck!” I mutter. “God damn, you’re so tight. So wet. So perfect.”
When she finally takes all of my cock, I pull her down for a long, slow kiss.
“Can you handle me?” she asks, already breathless.
To answer her question, I move my hips upward. She cries out, but she doesn’t stop. No, she keeps going, her actions growing frenzied. Her pussy grips my cock as she rides me.
I move my hand down between our bodies, rubbing her clit. I am going to make damn sure that she comes when I do… and I’m going to come pretty damn soon.
“Oh my god,” she says, leaning forward. “Ohmygod, right there…”
I can feel her tensing and clenching, getting close to the edge.
“Fuck. That’s right. I love the way you ride me, Rach. The way that sweet pussy grips my cock so tight—”
That little bit of dirty talk is enough to push her over the edge. She cries out, her pussy spasming wildly, her nails scoring the flesh of my chest.
I let myself go, pumping up into her body with abandon. I can feel the orgasm before it hits, feel it start down low in my balls. It tears loose and I thrust upward again and again, her greedy little pussy milking my cock of every drop.
I slow, then stop, trying to catch my breath. She lays sprawled across my chest, her breathing rapid, covered in a layer of sweat. Not just hers, but mine, too.
I close my eyes and hold her close, enjoying the musky scents rising from our combined skin, and the moment of closeness.
It’s not enough, just being with her. It’s not nearly enough.
But it’ll have to be good enough for right now.
Chapter Thirty
Rachel
I wake up to find Grayson gone. I’m not sure what I expected, honestly.
Sex without strings attached is more emotionally fraught than I was expecting.
When I get my pack together and go looking for him, I don't have to look hard. He’s on the front porch of the mess hall and seems to be in good spirits.
When he spots me coming up the stairs, he nods. “Hey. You just missed Olivia leaving for the airport. Aiden took her.”
Raising a brow, I try not to smirk. “Did he? That’s awfully nice of him. She was just here for the night, then?”
Grayson shrugs. “I guess so. She’ll be back before too long though, I bet.”
Smiling, I keep Olivia’s secret. I guess Grayson is still completely unaware of his little sister’s crush. I’m not going to be the one to tell him about it. Especially not after Olivia and I had our talk last night.
Besides, if it’s a one-sided crush, it’ll never go anywhere anyway.
I readjust one of the straps on my backpack. “Ready to go?”
“Yup. Got my pack ready to go. You need anything from inside the mess hall?”
I shake my head. “Nope. I’ve already stocked up on trail mix and fruit. I have water. I think I’m good.”
“Okay. I’ll be right back, then.” He disappears inside the mess hall and comes back a few seconds later wearing his backpack. “Let’s go.”
“Lead the way,” I say.
He heads down out of camp. The hiking is easy, following the river for a little bit.
“This looks like where we hiked before,” I say.
He shrugs. “Kind of. Last time we followed this river north. This time we are heading south. Tomorrow we’re going to hike west, all the way to the coast.”
He brandishes the list of water sources to be sampled. I see roughly a third of them are crossed off. The paper is crinkled and folded in several places.
I wrinkle my nose. “That piece of paper is what you’ve been using to set our course?”
He shoots me a look, but his expression is playful. “Don’t you worry your pretty little head, princess. We’ll get by just fine.”
I roll my eyes, lapsing into silence. He has done okay setting the course before now, so I see no reason to argue with him on this. After a second though, he turns his head to look at me.
“I feel like we need to talk about last night. Just to like…” He shifts his pack, looking uncomfortable. “You know, establish boundaries and stuff.”
I scrunch up my face. “Ugh, boundaries.”
“Yeah, ugh. But also, they’re pretty important.”
“They are important.” I stop walking. A few steps later, Grayson pauses and looks back at me. I flash him a smile. “This summer is just not turning out at all like I had planned. You’re here, and I’m just… I’m trying to enjoy what I can, where I can. Before I know it, the summer will be over and then I’ll be weighed down with so much real life stuff…”
He raises a brow. “Are you saying that you are sowing your wild oats out here on the west coast?”
Blushing, I duck my head. “I mean, sort of.”
“But when you go back to New York, that’s all over. Is that it?”
I cringe. “Yes.”
He looks thoughtful. “So… when you put it that way, you can fuck around with me as much as you want out here with no repercussions. Until your contract is up on August 1st, I mean.”
I close my eyes. When he paints it in that light, I want to crawl under a rock and hide. “Yes.”
When he speaks, he doesn’t say what I expect him to. “Okay. Then we can keep fucking around for the next two months. Or less than that, if we get bored of each other.”
My eyes fly open. “Excuse me?”
His eyes narrow on my face. “That’s the deal. You get your wild urges out of your system. I get my itch scratched in the process. Then we go our separate ways. No muss, no fuss. And definitely no attachments. This is purely about hot sex.”
My mouth opens. For several seconds, I’m not sure what is going to come out. Laughter, a biting retort, and immediate agreement all war for supremacy in my mind.
I finally land on a mixture of the first and the third. I chuckle. “All right?”
It comes out as a question rather than agreement, but he gets the point. “Great.”
Just then the trail we are on narrows and begins to climb. Grayson surges forward and leads the way, his long legs carrying him twice as fast as I can manage to move. The path grows rugged
and steep. Every so often he stops and lets me catch up to him, only to start moving again as soon as I do.
Up a mountain, down a mountain. Up another. It proceeds like that for so many hours that I lose track. I sample a couple of water sources that I find along the way.
I’ve got the sampling down pat by now. Waving my GPS locator around and labeling the sample only takes a minute each time. Then we are on our way again. Aside from a few brief stops for water and food, we hike until the sun is nearly down.
When we head down into a valley, a strange little wood cabin pops up in my line of sight. I can see it from quite a way as we travel down a ridge. It takes me by surprise because I haven’t seen any signs of civilization since we left the base camp.
“Who would build a cabin out here in the middle of nowhere?” I ask. I’m mostly talking to myself, but Grayson answers.
“It’s a ranger station. And it happens to be a good stopping place for tonight.”
The trail ends rather abruptly. Grayson pays it no mind, leaving the top of the ridge and cutting downward. I plod after him, uncertain. Soon the little cabin is out of sight, blocked by the trees. But he does seem to be making a beeline for it.
We come to the little clearing at last. The cabin sits at the far side, looking quaint and dusty. I sigh. Another thousand yards and we are finally done for the day. Thank god.
I step forward, not realizing that Grayson has slowed. He catches me by throwing his arm out in front of me.
“Shhhh,” he silences my protests before I can make them.
My eyes narrow suspiciously as I look at him. His brows are pulled down over his blue eyes. His face is creased with a frown. When he speaks, his words are whispered.
“Something isn’t right. I don't hear any birds.”
Birds? What exactly is he talking about, again?
Two seconds after he says it, I find out why he’s on high alert. There is a hint of movement on the roof of the cabin that gives it away.
A full-grown mountain lion lies in wait, its eyes trained on us.
My whole body locks up. I struggle to even draw a breath. Right away I am shaking and my heart is going a million miles per hour.
“Fuck. I see you, buddy!” Grayson calls to the cat.
“Are you fucking crazy!?” I hiss to him.
He grabs me by the arm and begins to slowly back away from the clearing. “I see you. I respect you. But you don't come near us, or we are going to have a big problem.”
My eyes are trained on the mountain lion. I’m sweating bullets and shaking. I feel like Grayson and I are both about to die and he is crazy for not acting like I am. As we back into the trees, the big cat stands up and growls. I want to turn tail and run, but Grayson just keeps talking loudly and backing away uphill.
It seems that the mountain lion has better things to do than to stalk us. At some point Grayson finally turns to face the other way. We hike as fast as we can back up the ridge. When we crest it, the last rays of sunlight are slipping from the horizon.
“Shit,” Grayson mutters. “We are out of time. We have to build a fire and stay close to it.”
I squint at him. “What do you mean? The mountain lion is gone.”
“Nah. They like to stalk their prey. They have been known to follow people for an hour or more. Our best chance is to stick together and look like we’re too big for the cat to take down by itself.”
“Okay…” I make a face. “What does that mean, exactly?”
He drops his backpack and rummages around inside, pulling out the tarps again. “First order of business is to make a shelter out of these tarps. If we do it right, we should be able to build our fire inside and still have a place to lie down too.”
“Tell me what to do.”
He squints. “Start piling rocks and sand for a fire pit. Any small sticks that you see are great for kindling. I’ll start grabbing tree branches to make a circle around us.”
I drop my pack and set to work. In the time that I am able to pile rocks and scrape together some kindling to start a fire, Grayson builds a shelter around me using tree branches and tarps. He leaves the top open so that when he starts the fire, the smoke and ash mostly blow away into the rapidly cooling night.
Without a real place to cook, I resort to eating fruit and trail mix for dinner. I’m sick of it, honestly, but Grayson doesn’t seem to mind. Tending the little fire, he finally sits down and relaxes.
That tells me to relax. My muscles loosen a bit. We both pull our sleeping bags out and sit on them. I pick through a bag of trail mix, eating mostly raisins and cashews. It’s only then that I realize how exhausted I am.
“I’m tired. Like more tired than I thought I could be.”
Grayson looks at me and gives me a half-smile. “Yeah. Today was pretty nuts.”
“I think today was the first day that it really hit me that you’re a park ranger.”
His eyebrows rise. “What gave it away?”
I roll my eyes. “No, really. Like… it didn’t seem like today was the first time that you’ve seen a mountain lion.”
He chuckles. “No, it wasn’t.”
I lean toward him, wanting to be close to him. I’m bone tired, almost too exhausted to stay awake, but my body still aches for his.
“How did you learn the walking backwards and the talking to them?” I murmur.
“Uhhh… I think I read about it in a pamphlet my first week in Whiskey Bend. Nate was my ranger trainer and he loves pamphlets.”
I smile at that. “Yeah, I have noticed that he does love paper.”
We are silent for some time. Grayson stirs the fire, adding a few extra sticks to it. The heat of the fire feels nice on my face. My eyes grow heavy and I yawn.
“Do you think you’ll be able to sleep?” I ask him.
He shifts in his sleeping bag. “Eventually, yes. I just want to watch for an hour or so to make sure that mountain lion found something better to do. Go ahead and close your eyes, though.”
I yawn again. “You sure?”
His mouth curves up in a smile. “As sure as I can be. I have about an hour of silent meditation to do anyway. Go to sleep. I’ll see you in the morning.”
He brushes a few stray strands of hair back behind my ear, making me smile sleepily.
I snuggle down in my sleeping bag, closing my eyes. It’s a little weird having Grayson awake and watching me, but I’m too tired to argue with him. I drift off quickly toward a night of dreamless sleep.
Chapter Thirty-One
Grayson
I try to spend the day meditating while I hike. Walking west toward the coast is breathtaking, all green pines and blue skies. I think about Rachel and how she is right beside me.
I want her body, I’m sure of that much. But her soul seems wrapped up in that bargain. When I think of having both, it seems like too much to ask. Of her, yes. But also of myself.
Then again, there is some buried part of me that loves to fix things for her. And if what I fix is her shattered heart, then so much the better… right?
After a night of too much personal reflection, I feel that meditation calls to me. But I can’t go as fast as I want to go with Rachel tagging along. And apparently she is inquisitive today too.
“Do you mind if I ask you some questions?”
I turn back to look at Rachel, casting a jaundiced eye over her. “About what?”
She huffs out a breath. “About your… ummm… treatment. For your PTSD and stuff.”
I face forward again, wanting to say no. I don't want anyone poking around in my barely closed wounds, much less Rachel. I still want to fuck her. I don't want anything to get in the way of that, especially not her feeling sorry for me.
But there is a little part of me that wants… I don't know, to be less guarded with everyone. I know I can’t keep the entire world out all the time. It’s too hard. Talking about my friends when they aren’t here seems wrong to boot. But what am I supposed to do, just act like an IED never bl
ew up and killed them?
That wouldn’t even make sense and it’s damned near disrespectful to their memories. So I just sigh.
“All right.”
“Okay. Thanks. Let me just figure out what I want to ask, exactly.” It takes her a minute to arrange her thoughts in the right order. “When you first got home, where did the Navy send you? A VA hospital?”
I exhale, taking my time to answer. “My injuries were light. I tore a ligament in my shoulder called the rotator cuff. I had a sprained ankle. And a concussion. When I was first hurt, I was flown out to a Naval hospital in Naples. I don't actually remember much of that because the docs gave me the good painkillers. But then they brought me home to the states. I bounced around a little from Virginia to New York.”
“Ahh.” Another half-minute passes. “And how did you get admitted to a psych ward? You told Aiden some… stuff?”
I suck in a breath. “I had some suicidal ideations, which are like ideas of how I would hurt myself. And they only got more intense as time went on. So… yeah. I was medically discharged from the Navy, but still seeing doctors at the VA.”
I pause, trying to find the words for the next bit. It feels like I’m poking around in wounds that are barely scabbed over, but I push through. Rachel, for her part, just hikes behind me without saying a single word. I don't know how she knows that is what I need, but she does somehow.
I start again.
“Eventually I realized that it isn’t normal to wake up every day dreading having those thoughts. I sort of had a mini-breakdown in front of Aiden. And he called one my doctors at the VA. Before I knew it, I was on my way to a psychiatric hospital. And I stayed in those… well, I got admitted and released a few times. I moved from hospital to hospital, but they are essentially all the same… and I spent a year of my life there.”
It feels so strange to talk about my time like this. As if it wasn’t the most painful thing I’ll ever experience. But at the same time, it is good to air things out a little. I started with my psychiatrists and with Aiden, but this is the next step.
