After the Climb

by Kristen Ashley

  And she bent her head to read the letter.

  When she was done, her hand fluttered down, and she twisted on her perch to stare at his view.

  She didn’t see anything; he knew that before she spoke.

  “You know, Corey had a dad like yours.”

  He crossed his arms on his chest. “I know.”

  “Of course you know, that was what drew you two together.”

  She turned her head and her gaze came up to his. “But you were you, and he was a runt.”

  “Yes,” Duncan forced out.

  “His father was tall and lean and strong, like Hale. Like you.”

  Duncan said nothing.

  “And Corey was not that.”

  Duncan remained silent.

  “And even if he couldn’t escape it with every time he looked in a mirror, or someone said something mean to him, his father never let him forget it.”

  “Nope,” Duncan confirmed.

  And yeah, back then?

  Duncan had hated Corey’s dad maybe more than Corey hated him.

  “I see now, how jealous he always was of you,” she whispered.

  “Yes.”

  “And I see also, how much he worshipped you.”

  This was harder.

  But he couldn’t disagree.

  “Yes.”

  “I forgive him,” she whispered like she was confessing an ugly secret.

  “Of course you do,” he whispered back. “You’re you. But, baby, I don’t. He was my brother. Honest to Christ, it would be like Gage doin’ that to Sully.”

  “I understand, Bowie.”

  They remained silent, holding each other’s eyes.

  Gen broke it.

  “He killed himself because—”

  “He killed himself because he made bad choices in his life that he couldn’t live with. It had nothin’ to do with us. And he made that plain in that letter, Genny.”

  Her voice was small on her, “I know.”

  “I need to hold you,” he told her.

  “Then why aren’t you doing that?” she asked.

  Good question.

  In half a second, she was in his arms.

  She didn’t burst into tears or even weep.

  She just lay her cheek on his chest, circled him with her arms and held him tight.

  “I feel guilt, because, in truth, now that the shock of it all has worn off, I don’t miss him. He was a lot of work,” she confessed.

  “Try to get that out of your head. It might be hard, but that also isn’t on you.”

  She sighed.

  Then she said, “Hale hasn’t shared. He got everything, but I don’t know if there was some letter, some wish—”

  “If there was, would he tell you?”

  “Yes, or Tom.”

  “Then brace, baby, because one thing we know, Corey was thorough. And systematic.”

  Her head tipped back, and she breathed, “Oh my God.”

  He nodded. “One down. One to go.”

  “He wanted you around to—”

  “Yup.”

  “Oh my God.”

  They stared at each other again.

  And then she asked hesitantly, “Will you do that?”

  “Tell a man that his father was once a good guy? A good friend. Hilariously funny and whip smart and unceasingly loyal? Until he wasn’t?”

  “Bowie—”

  “Yes, I’ll do it. Any boy needs to know that his father had that in him.”

  That was when they came.

  The tears.

  She shoved her face in his chest.

  He was just glad she hadn’t gotten to the makeup part of her morning.

  He held her while she wept, quiet and sad.

  And he did this staring at his view.

  Corey hated their hikes.

  But he loved riding horses and being around water.

  He would also love to be there, with Duncan, with Genny, their kids.

  You fucked up, buddy, huge, he thought, staring at the clouds drifting in blue sky.

  He took in a deep breath and let it go on his next thought, the one he’d need to remember when it was his time to give Corey to his boy.

  But fuck, I missed you.

  *****

  Gen rolled him.

  Not a surprise.

  His woman always liked the top.

  Then she rode him, staring down at him, hot and hungry, and he had to concentrate on not coming just from that look on her face.

  But it couldn’t be avoided how she was pounding down on his cock.

  Or how goddamned gorgeous she was.

  His Genny.

  Right there.

  The look on her face got hotter.

  So Duncan warned, “Don’t you come, Genny.”

  She smiled, sultry and smug.

  Then she started to gasp.

  He grasped her hips, did an ab curl and rolled them again, him on top.

  “Bowie!” she snapped.

  He hitched a leg and went at her harder, coming around with a hand to go at her clit.

  “Just you,” she panted through an inward stroke.

  “Clit,” he grunted on another one, finding it and beginning to roll.

  “I’ll come too fast if you go at my clit.”

  “Baby, I didn’t do that in the shower, and you came in two seconds.”

  “It wasn’t two seconds,” she snapped breathily, lifting her hips and clenching.

  Christ.

  Fucking ecstasy.

  “All right, three.”

  She tried to glare, started to giggle and ended in a whimper.

  “Yeah,” he whispered.

  She caught his hair in a fist.

  “Yeah,” he bit.

  This was Genny. Always.

  They could start slow and sweet.

  But she always needed it to end with a hard, fast fucking.

  The same as he.

  He rolled his hips and went in.

  And she was off, climaxing while puffing out cute, sexy little huffs of air, clenching him with all she had.

  He kept at her clit and her pussy, until she went off again.

  Then he concentrated on himself.

  While he did, she engaged more than lips and tongue and fingers, also teeth and nails.

  So it didn’t take long before his mind blanked and he blew.

  The best.

  Best ever.

  Always.

  Absolutely.

  Duncan nuzzled her neck, they kissed, then he slid out and rolled to his back.

  She rolled with him, plastering herself down his side.

  “You think the kids heard?” she whispered.

  “This house is built solid, the doors are closed, and we left them outside around the firepit, swapping ghost stories. A competition which, I’m pretty sure, Chloe’s gonna win. Though Sully will give her a run for her money. But even if one came in for something, they wouldn’t hear.” He grinned at her. “You’re quiet anyway.”

  “You’re grunty,” she replied.

  His brows went up. “Grunty?”

  “You make a lot of noise. It’s a massive turn on. But it’s still a lot of noise.”

  He started laughing.

  She was smiling down at him when he finished and said, “They didn’t hear us.”

  “Okay,” she whispered. “Good day.”

  No, it hadn’t been a good day.

  Genny and her kids and his hiking around the lake, the sun shining, Chloe’s sass, Sasha’s sweet, Sully’s cool, Gage’s goofy, coming home, cooking dinner, throwing a few back, and then sitting under the stars by a fire?

  “Great day,” he replied.

  She started playing with his chest hair, her eyes watching, saying, “I love having this back with you.” Her gaze came to his. “The sex, I mean.”

  “I love having you back, but also love having you back in my bed.” He gripped her ass. “Hottest piece I ever had.”

  She smiled at hi
m, bent in to kiss him, but when she pulled away, she said, “You don’t have to say that.”

  “It ain’t a line, darlin’,” he replied.

  She looked dubious.

  Duncan wrapped both arms around her and pulled her up, so they were face to face and chest to chest.

  “Eye on the ball, honesty, out there, it was good with Dora, in the beginning. Different from you. Though straight up, nothing against her or what we had, it was not as good. But it worked. We worked. It was fulfilling. Healthy. Because the emotion was there. We loved each other. And then she turned. And it was not any of that. It was like I was a show pony, performing for her, every move, every second, aware that I was trying to convince her of something I shouldn’t need to. It got to the point, if I didn’t get hard the second she looked at my cock, she’d say shit like, ‘That proves it. You’re too tired from fucking her to even get it up for me.’ And we can just say, a man needs some stimulus to perform, and that’s not it.”

  “Oh, Bowie,” she whispered.

  “By the time we divorced, we hadn’t had sex in two years. And that was on me. In the end, the man she’d convinced herself I was, that she could think that about me, I couldn’t bear to touch her. Though, unsurprisingly, she used that as an excuse to prove I was fucking around on her.”

  “Oh, Bowie,” she repeated, sadder, quieter.

  “I’m not telling you this to put Dora out there.” He lifted, rolled again, so they were chest to chest but Genny was on her back. “I’m telling you this, baby, because you need to know. Two years, and before that, shit was not great, and I did not stray. After I moved out, to prove something to her, and maybe to me, I didn’t date, nothing, until well after the divorce.”

  Now the sad was dripping from her, “Darling.”

  “The point is, I will never step out on you, Gen.”

  She got what he was saying, he knew it when her body twitched under his.

  “Bowie,” she said softly, gliding her arms around him.

  “Never,” he told her. “And not only because you’re a seriously great fuck.”

  Her eyes went huge.

  And then she burst out laughing.

  He grinned down at her while she was doing it and kissed her when it started waning.

  She rolled him in the middle of it and then there was some groping, some licking, some sucking, before she took a bite of his beard then got in his face.

  “I need to clean up, be back,” she said, and slid off him.

  He watched her ass as she walked to the bedroom.

  And reclining on the pillows, hands behind his head, not too broken up about his attention being taken from the view of a moonlit lake, he watched her walk back.

  She came right to him and then fell on him, teetering like a tree.

  He grunted and curled his arms around her.

  She put her face in his.

  “It’s almost more beautiful here at night than it is during the day. All those stars. The moon so bright. Crazy.”

  “Glad you like it, baby.”

  “You get Thanksgiving, but I get Christmas.”

  He was not quick on the conversational change uptake.

  “Sorry?” he asked.

  “I have a company that does my decorations and they are, as Gage says, off the hook. You and the boys have to come to the condo for Christmas.”

  “I do my own decorations, and they are off the hook, so your ass is here.”

  “Fifty-fifty,” she haggled.

  “Boys gotta give their mom time,” he warned.

  “Okay, we’ll figure it out,” she allowed.

  “Tom?” he asked.

  She bit her lip but let it go to say, “We still do holidays together with the kids.”

  “He’s welcome here if he can handle it.”

  “God, God, God,” she hissed fiercely, her sudden change in tone and expression taking him by surprise, not to mention, she’d grabbed hold of his beard, “I love you.”

  He stared at her.

  Then he rolled her.

  Before he kissed her, she said, “Please tell me we’re fucking again.”

  “Genny, baby, I am no longer twenty-six.”

  “Then we’ll make out and feel each other up,” she declared. “For a long, long time.”

  “That I can do.”

  She smiled bright at him.

  Christ.

  There she was.

  In his bed.

  Genny.

  “I love you too, Imogen, and I never stopped.”

  Her smile faltered as her eyes got watery.

  That was when he kissed her.

  And they made out and felt each other up.

  For a long, long time.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The Settling

  Duncan

  “’Night, Bowie.”

  “’Night, honey.”

  After she gave him a smile, Duncan watched Sasha start toward the hall to her room.

  Before he began to go the other way, though, she turned and said, “You know, I know you all let me win.”

  “You’re bankrupting my boys, darlin’,” he told her.

  “Then you all should stop being cute dufuses and play for real,” she replied.

  He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been referred to as cute, or a dufus, or if either had ever happened in his life.

  But from Sasha, both felt like a compliment.

  “I’ll send out that memo,” he told her.

  She shot him another of her sunny smiles and a brief wave and then bounced down the hall.

  Duncan didn’t move until he lost sight of her, and he didn’t move for a while after.

  He had bi-monthly poker games at his house with his buds.

  She’d sat in the last two, which were the only two since he’d had her mother back in his life, and Sasha in his life at all.

  In that time, they’d been down to the condo on three occasions for short visits in order for Gen to show him her home, so Chloe could show off her shop, and for Duncan to attend his first event at Genny’s side, a fundraiser for the Arizona Humane Society.

  Which meant he now owned a suit.

  And Chloe had not only selected it, she’d bossed the tailor at the shop to have it fit to perfection (or what she considered perfection) while he was trying it on.

  Needless to say, there were a number more pictures of he and Genny together out there.

  And without them making a statement, they were now “official.”

  And through this time, in her pale-yellow convertible Beetle, Sasha tended to wander back and forth between the cabin and the condo.

  Though, she made a point to be at the cabin on poker night.

  Duncan headed to where her mother made a point to be on poker night.

  The bathtub.

  When he got there, he felt the humidity in the air, and you could still smell the scent of the candles she burned, but she wasn’t there.

  So he turned around and retraced his steps.

  He then went to her third favorite place in his home, outside his bathroom and his bed.

  The den.

  She hadn’t had an army of designers come in and fill it with chintz and florals, or what he’d discovered was her aesthetic when he first saw her condo: glamour and wealth.

  Genny liked it just as it was.

  Big stone fireplace with an arch fashioned in the rocks and a deep hearth. Comfortable, deep-seated leather chairs, throws over the back. Several thin but colorful rugs overlaid on each other on the wood floors. Small, unobtrusive standing lamps that didn’t give off light so much as warm glows. And rough-hewn tables close at hand to put down drinks.

  Gen loved that room and had claimed it. She said it was small and cozy and it didn’t have a TV, which was something he’d found she wasn’t big on. A surprise, considering her profession. But she definitely preferred to read.

  Or what he was seeing her doing now when he entered the room and saw her curled up in a
chair with Cookie in her lap, the dogs around her chair jumping up to come greet him, and Tuck snoozing on a folded blanket on the hearth.

  She was playing that game on her phone.

  She glanced up at him, looking guilty.

  “I need to clear the cursed forest,” she told him.

  He chuckled as he made his way to her with the dogs accompanying him.

  She was not a morning person.

  He was. Up early to face the day at least an hour before she cracked open her eyes. It would be an hour after that before she got out of bed.

  Which meant she was a night person.

  Duncan tended to hit the sack at around ten.

  Gen hit it at around midnight.

  They made this work sexually, because she woke him up when she got in bed, and with her there, he was all in to have a quick, or not so quick, fuck before passing out again.

  And in the mornings, if she was going to be in bed for an hour anyway, he figured he might as well return to it and keep her busy.

  So he did.

  This meant he was usually in the office an hour later than his norm.

  But he’d worked hard all his life.

  He deserved this.

  They deserved this.

  So he was taking it.

  And giving it to her.

  “They’ve left,” she said as he sat on the hearth by her knee and reached out to give Tuck some love.

  “Yeah.”

  “Did you all let Sasha win again?” she asked.

  He grinned. “Yeah.”

  She shook her head but did it also grinning.

  She stopped doing that and asked worriedly, “They don’t think it’s rude I don’t say goodbye?”

  “Babe, you came in, said hi. Came back, checked in, refreshed the food. And came back again to say goodnight. Now, it’s after midnight. It’d be rude for them to expect you to be at the door, waving at them as they drove away. I don’t even do that shit.”

  This made her relax. “You have good friends, Bowie.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Harvey especially. I adore him.”

  “Adoration wouldn’t be how I’d describe it, but he’s the best friend I’ve ever had.”

  It was the wrong thing to say.

  A shadow stole over her face.

  “I’m glad you have that,” she whispered.

  “I am too. And I have it, Genny. And I’ve had Harv and Beth and their girls a long time. So it’s all good.”

  Either that chased the shadow away, or the thought behind her next words did.