by Maya Riley
“Uh,” I began, “my wrist. It twisted and hurt.” I looked away sheepishly. “It’s actually been hurting, but I kept pushing it. Then I guess it was one push too much.” Embarrassment filled me, heating my cheeks as I paled at the same time. At least, that was what it felt like. I wasn’t entirely sure what I looked like right now. All I knew was that I wanted to curl up into a ball and hide from the world. “Plus,” I added, “this happened.” I held up the rope and showed them the fraying part above my harness. “Going to need to cut it here and then take a lighter to it.”
The faces in front of me drained of any color that was left in them, and J.D.’s arm tightened around my waist.
“We should have stayed and taken another day of rest,” J.D. said.
“No, we can’t. We’re already behind schedule from the extra days we already took.”
“Your life is more important than sticking to some schedule,” he growled out.
“Alright, I’m sorry. I’m still shaken up from it. Can we just, put together the hanging platforms? I want to lay down.”
The guys all looked me up and down, then nodded in agreement and began rummaging around each other’s packs. J.D. explained everything to the other four on the route next to us, and I did my best to block out their conversation.
I knew I’d let them down and worried them, and the feeling began to eat away at me from inside. Aside from all that, I’d be the hardest on myself, and sometimes that was the worst kind of punishment.
My fingertips ran along the seam of the fabric of the portaledge.
Neither of the guys had mentioned anything about my wrist pain and fall, which was a surprise. With something like that, I’d expected a good grilling. I flexed my wrist around and it was feeling back to normal again. It was still sensitive at times when under pressure, but it was mostly good.
“What’s going on in your mind, pretty girl?” J.D. asked, as he carefully scooted over on the hanging platform to be next to me. There were two to three of us on each of these, all lined in a row and directly next to each other, basically making one long one.
I sighed, unsure what to tell him. “I don’t know,” I told him. “Just thinking.”
“It wouldn’t have anything to do with your near-fall, would it?” he inquired, spot on.
“Maybe a little,” I admitted. “Though, I’m most likely just overthinking everything. I just don’t want to ruin my chances of getting to the top, but I also want to be able to make it up there. It’s an internal of what I want versus what I should do.”
He looked at me, his cobalt eyes swirling with the blue of the sky we were climbing toward. “Hey, it’s okay,” he soothed. “I’m not going to grill you about it.”
“Why not?” I questioned. “Wouldn’t you normally?”
“Normally I would in training, but not here where it’s real. Tearing you down wouldn’t accomplish anything. I’d rather build you up and watch you succeed.”
I was surprised and slightly speechless.
“How exactly would it help you to tear into you for that? You’re already tearing yourself up over it. There’s no reason why I should add to it. You are always your toughest critic. Nobody else in the world could make you feel worse about yourself than you do,” he continued.
He reached over and took my hand in his. I turned my head and saw that he was smiling at me. “You’ll be okay. You will always have us to back you up. We will always catch you every time you fall. I promise you that.”
My heart fluttered. “You’re so good with words,” I murmured.
He laughed. “I’ll take that as a compliment. Normally, I’m better at talking with animals than people, which is partly why I’m a veterinarian assistant. Maybe that gave me practice talking to girls too. Who knows?”
I laughed. “Yeah, actually, I think working with animals would help you get a date.”
He pecked a kiss to my forehead. “Stop worrying that pretty little head of yours. What’s done is done. It all turned out okay and everyone is alright. Why is it bothering you so much? I mean, obviously it could’ve ended badly, but it didn’t. You normally learn something and then apply it to every situation where it’s needed. Why is this time different?” he challenged.
I sighed. “I just can’t stop thinking about him.”
J.D. paused for a moment. “Your brother?” he asked, eyeing me carefully, as though he was worried I might fly off the handle.
“Yeah,” I answered. “All it took was one small mistake.” I opened my mouth to say more, but I paused.
Carson’s gentle snores on the other side of J.D. cut through the silence. Today had worn them out, and the others were asleep before the sun even set. They’d put me on the side closer to the mountain. Not that it would help any at all if we somehow ended up falling, but it seemed to make them feel better so I’d obliged. Of course the only downside to that was it meant that I couldn’t be between the two. And they sure didn’t seem to be big fans of that, but J.D. won simply by taking the spot right next to me and refusing to let Carson win. So Carson settled for calling dibs on the spot next to me on the next night.
“You don’t need to talk about it if you don’t want to,” he told me, and I smiled. He was so sweet.
“No. It’s okay,” I said. “I should probably talk about it sometime. I never really do. It might be good for me.”
He nodded, urging me to continue.
I looked up at the top of our portaledge. “We were twelve years old when we learned about the Carbolitas. We saw pictures online and were immediately drawn to it. After a little bit of research, we discovered it was the only place in the world where the blue thorns grew.”
J.D. nodded. He knew this part, but he was letting me tell my story anyways.
“We couldn’t pronounce the correct name at the time, so we called them the blue thorns. And we couldn’t say Carbolitas at the time either, so we referred to this place as ‘where the blue thorns grow.’” I chuckled at the memory that flashed through my head of younger versions of us hunched over a book, trying to pronounce the names. I never did get the flower name right. I only knew it was a flower with blue petals and blue thorns. Whenever we talked about it, we never mentioned the blue petals though. They were simply always known as the blue thorns to us. Even when we got older, that didn’t change, and it sure didn’t change when I grew up.
They were like people. Most flowers had pretty petals on the outside that drew people in. What pulled me in the most, though, were the thorns. The ones that no one liked to acknowledge existed. I always thought thorns were the most fascinating part of each person. Thorns were where the real stories lay.
“I still have never pronounced the name correctly,” I murmured.
“Have you tried?” he prompted.
“Nah,” I answered. “I don’t really care to. To me, it’ll still always be known as the place where the blue thorns grow.” Then I added, “You know, we didn’t always get along. We used to fight. A lot.”
“Most siblings do,” he said.
“This was different though. Even after he died, everyone always commented on how much we got along. But it’s not true,” I stated. “We fought a lot. Mostly on playgrounds, where we’d fight to get to the top. We tried to push each other off a lot. We both ended up with broken arms from that. He pushed me off first and I broke my arm. I was still in a cast when two days later, I beat him to the top of the playground and pushed him off, breaking his arm in return,” I reminisced. “We both had casts and competed at everything. Sure, we were the best of friends, but our drive to compete, not with others necessarily but with each other, was what made us better,” I explained. “Then, when he died, I guess I didn’t know what to do. I no longer had anyone to compete with, or to push me more, so I pushed myself. Hard. Much harder.”
I began to laugh out of nowhere. “We grew up around climbing. We even learned to climb before we learned how to walk. Our first steps were actually on a bouldering wall in our parents’ garag
e. They left us in a playpen, and when they turned back around, we were a few holds up on the boulder. We were always getting into trouble at school. Teachers quickly learned to keep an eye on us during field trips. Ever since the very first field trip we were on with preschool.”
“What’d you do?” he asked, tilting his head to the side.
“We climbed onto the roof of a building,” I replied. “And not just the roof from an upstairs window, no. We scaled the entire side of the building. No one had even noticed that we’d disappeared until another kid pointed us out. Up there on the roof, talking with each other about the best ways to climb down.” I laughed. “Ever since then, every school and teacher sent the new school and teachers warnings about us.”
“How old were you?”
“Five.”
“What kind of five-year-old scales a damn building?” he blurted in disbelief.
My eyes widened at him. “Do you realize who it is that you just asked?”
He took a moment to think it over. “Alright,” he agreed. “I guess I can believe that after all. What else?” He squeezed my hand, urging me to go on.
Talking about the past was loosening me up. I hadn’t realized just how tight and closed off I’d actually been.
“Where we were growing up, there was this creek not far away. It had a huge hill. Like, to us, it may as well have been a mountain. We had to use raised tree roots to climb up, otherwise we had no shot. We tried, but it was the only way we could get up.
“When we weren’t climbing in the gym, or on the boulder and walls that our parents had transformed the garage into, we were climbing that hill. Even in the rain, although sometimes on a rainy day we’d scale every piece of furniture in the house instead. We had so many races against each other, it really helped to strengthen us. I can’t even remember who won the most over the years, but I remember how much fun we had. Well, in the moment they were pretty bloodthirsty, but yeah.”
I laughed again, then continued, “One time, our parents took us out for pizza. It was this really cool and fancy place. None of us were dressed up enough so we got a bunch of looks.”
J.D. looked at me out of the side of his eye in suspicion.
“Mostly because before the pizza had even arrived, we’d scaled the inside of the building up to the ceiling. It was a three-story building. It was so much fun!” I smiled at the memory.
“So, basically you just never learned to keep your feet on the ground,” he concluded.
“Precisely.”
“Now what are you thinking of?”
“Mmm?” I responded.
“You’re so quiet all of a sudden. Run out of stories?” he asked.
“I don’t know if I can sleep,” I admitted.
He reached up and pulled out a book. “So, I meant to grab a rock climbing book, but I grabbed the wrong one. I grabbed my sister’s book. Imagine my surprise to find out what kind of books she reads...” He trailed off, apparently not wanting to elaborate.
“What is it?” I questioned.
He showed me the cover, which was a stunning purple and black cover with a floating girl on it, with scales on her legs and wings coming out of her back.
I turned the book over to read the blurb. It was about this girl who had no memories of her past. She was trained by her guardian dragon shifter. There was a war brewing, and she had three shifter men helping her out. The author was new to me, but so was the genre. I’ve heard about it, but hadn’t dived into it yet. I was intrigued and wanted to check it out.
“Interested?” he inquired.
“Yeah.” I shook my head. “I think this is the same book Pete had earlier. Memories Forgotten. I recognize the cover and blurb.”
“So that’s why this disappeared for a couple days, Pete was reading it.” He laughed hard enough that I worried it might knock our floating platform off the mountainside.
“Wow. Yeah, I guess you guys just wanted to read up on harems,” I teased, laughing along with him.
He placed his arm up and over my head. I turned slightly and moved over just a little bit so I could rest my head in the crook of his neck, and breathed in his scent. It had a calming effect on me. Probably because every time I smelled that scent, I knew I was safe. However many thousands of feet up I was, no matter what happened up here, I knew I’d be safe in his arms.
He dipped his head down and looked at me with heated eyes, illuminated even more by the sun shining off his cartilage piercing. Perhaps I was living the reverse harem life after all.
“You really are amazing,” he whispered. “Seriously. I know that those guys care about you just as much as I do, and they deserve you too, if not more. I’m glad they can see that and treat you the way you should be treated.”
His head dipped down as he leaned in closer. Our foreheads touched, then our noses, then our lips. We shared a short and sweet heated kiss.
Our hands still entwined, his fingers curled around mine, holding me tighter. Gripping me harder.
He turned slightly, so that he was laying on his side with his shoulder pressing into the soft fabric of the hanging platform.
Now, in this new position, his other arm moved between us.
Still holding on to my hand with his, he used his other hand to grip my waist. He gave a gentle squeeze and I opened my mouth. He took advantage of the opening and slipped his tongue inside. Our tongues battled for dominance, and I really didn’t care which one of us won, I just didn’t want this to end.
His hand squeezed my waist then continued to my hip, and he dipped his fingers inside the waistband of my shorts.
My heart sped up at the possibility that I might be just about to join the mile high club.
I kissed him harder, hungrier, more ferociously. I wanted him. I wanted all of him.
He turned his hand slightly and his fingers dipped toward my core. I gripped his hand tighter, and he squeezed back even more tightly. I may very well lose all feeling in that hand soon, but I didn’t care. It would be worth it.
I moved my legs, spreading them just enough to grant him access. I’d give him all the access that he wanted up here. And down there. Pretty much just everywhere.
His fingers circled my clit, teasing me. My heart was speeding up and my body wanted more. This traitorous body always wanted more though.
His fingers began to dip down closer to my entrance. He dragged his finger up and down my entrance, teasing me, before he finally pushed one finger inside.
“Mmm, you’re so wet already,” he murmured.
“I haven’t had sex in days,” I gasped. “For a girl with four guys, I may as well be a virgin again.”
He laughed, his mouth still pressed against mine, but his lips curling up into a smile. “Let me see what I can do about that.”
Before I could say anything in response, his fingers were inside me and he was pumping fast.
My hand flew to his shoulder and gripped it tight, holding on for dear life. The faster and harder he pumped me, the more my grip tightened. My fingertips bit into his shoulder, and it was a good thing that as a climber I kept my nails clipped pretty short.
My breathing quickened, and I suddenly became worried about waking up the rest of the people around us. Sure, Carson was asleep, or pretending to be, but there was no telling who else would be awake. Not that it’d matter right now anyway, the others had let it be known they were aware of my new relationships.
His mouth sealed against mine and he swallowed my moans. He thrust faster, letting every bit of my arousal coat his fingers. He swallowed my groans and kissed my orgasm to the surface.
Pretty soon, he was curling his fingers inside of me, hitting that sweet spot every girl loved so much but extremely few guys were ever able to actually find.
J.D. was definitely a keeper. Not just for the reasons why I cared about him so much, but definitely for finding the sweet spot and stroking it with no problem at all.
His hand tightened even more around my hand and I was very vaguely wo
rried that he might crush my fingers, but at the front of my mind I wasn’t worried at all because this was J.D., and it would be well worth it.
I came apart in his hands and on his fingers. He kept his fingers inside of me, milking every last bit of my orgasm, before he pulled his hand out and held me close.
A minute later he reached back and unzipped his pack behind us. He pulled out a wet wipe, and proceeded to clean both me and his hand.
Good man, he’ll go far in life.
I sighed. “You really are amazing,” I whispered. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
He briefly kissed my lips. “Luckily you’ll never have to find out. Because I plan to be at your side forever, whether you want me or not.”
It wasn’t long before I was drifting off to sleep, snuggled up against my bear of a man who smelled like lemons.
I woke to the sound of raindrops on the hanging platform cover. Low voices murmured nearby, Carson and J.D. speaking softly so as not to wake me.
I groaned and turned slightly. I’d fallen to sleep safe and warm, but woke up cold and uncuddled. “What’s going on, is that rain?” I asked.
“Shhh, pretty girl, it’s okay.” Carson was next to me, they must’ve swapped spots at some point in the night. “Yes, it’s raining and that wasn’t on the forecast,” he answered me.
“That sucks.” It was all I could manage to get out, but it earned me a chuckle from Carson. His chest vibrated with the deep rumble of his laughter, and I loved feeling the vibrations of it.
A blue light lit up the inside of our tented platform. J.D. had opened up his phone. “Looks like it’s supposed to stop shortly. According to the weather app, it’s just a random pop-up shower,” he said.
“Weathermen lie,” I grumbled, earning me another deep, vibrating chuckle from Carson.
“Once it stops, I’ll poke my head out and check with the others,” J.D. said.
Sure enough, it was over within minutes. Figures, the one time I got to sleep in is the one time everyone else wakes up early.
