The Heart's Dangerous Trek

by Maya McMillan

  “I mean, there were detours. I wished I’d had more faith in myself a decade ago instead of thinking it was good enough making a living as a waitress, then as an equestrian instructor…then...”

  “You like to ride?”

  She stopped and looked at him. Though Nick had not professed the desire for an unending steamy shower as she had, he was also in a terrycloth robe, his skin glowing pink from a long time under the nozzle. The tangle of hair, unkempt and wild, added an understated sexiness to his panther-like recline.

  “Y-yes. I did. I loved it. I loved teaching, also, but it wasn’t a job that paid the bills very well and there was a lot of politics.”

  Nick nodded. “I know what you mean about life detours. We mourn the years lost, but to be very honest, lately, very very recently, in fact, I’ve begun to wonder if, for some of us, there was no other choice. What we truly are inside could only push it’s way through with time and duress. Born of the forge, not just of desire…of passion.”

  Tara could only stare, his eloquent words perfectly echoing some of her deepest thoughts.

  And he was so undeniably sexy. Even the bearlike beard and hair were beginning to appeal to her.

  She bit her lower lip. She wanted to attack the man; she wanted both of them to shed their robes and intertwine again like they had …. just that morning? A lifetime and then some ago.

  “What are you thinking?” Nick asked, pulling her our of her reverie.

  She knew she had to lie, she would not be the one to initiate sex this time. She also realized she was too tired to lie. She shrugged and took another sip of wine.

  “What happened to your neck?”

  Tara tucked her chin and slowly turned her head trying to see what Nick saw. The slight shrug had caused her robe to shift down exposing her neck and collarbone. She saw the discoloration.

  “I guess when those thugs were pushing me around,” she said slowly as she started doing an internal review of all the various aches and pains throughout her body. There were so many, and things had been so hectic she’d barely noticed most of them. It was all just background noise to a tumultuous day.

  “I only saw you when you came out of the cabin,” Nick said. The malice in his voice was like steel on stone.

  “They got pretty rough.” Tara neither wanted to think or talk about it.

  “Let me see.”

  “What?”

  By way of explanation, Nick leaned forward, his feral grace making the awkward movement of bending forward across the couch more like choreographed ballet.

  Tara took and held a sharp breath, fighting the urge to resist. She didn’t want him making a big deal out of what happened, On the other hand she desperately wanted him to touch her.

  Which he didn't.

  With disarming slowness Nick pulled her robe open. He stopped just shy of baring her bosom, but not by much. Tara felt herself blush.

  Then he examined her.

  The intense look in his eyes--the way they consumed every bit of her--made her instantly wet. It also made her nub so hard that she was fighting not to squirm as much as she was fighting not to resist his touch.

  Soft and clean, Nick ran a delicate finger along her collar bone. A whisper of a touch. The gentlest pull of a bow along a violin string.

  Tar shuddered. His eyes went from examining the bruises to a penetrating examination of her eyes.

  In that instant they were both lost.

  Nick leaned in even as Tara pressed up. Their mouths met in a deep passionate kiss, both soft and pliant as each gave the other what they had in their souls.

  Tara felt herself transported to a world of the softest but most deep invasion as the two of them became a single heated thought of flesh. If she could have she would have faded away into sleep in that moment and lived the rest of her life as a dream.

  But then, too soon, it ended.

  As Nick pulled away and the song of their mouth-touch ended, Tara immediately became aware of his need, pressed hot and hard against her inner thigh.

  The breath stopped in her throat as her body screamed to her that she needed to have him right now.

  The thought had barely settled in her brain when she felt the mountain man using his ferocious strength to pull her up off the couch with the gentle power of a cresting wave.

  Before her alcohol-fuzzed mind knew what was going on, she was standing several paces from the couch, facing the fireplace, its warmth adding to the deeper heats boiling within her. She imagined its soft yellow light glinting off the dribbles of moisture that must have begun collecting on her southern lips as Nick stood behind her.

  Then the robe was being slid off her shoulders and the modest, conservative photographer stood nude in the living room of an alien hotel, in a small town at the edge of the world.

  Tara barely had time to feel the exhilarating adventurous shame of it before she saw, from the corner of her eyes, that she was not alone in her skin-only state. Nick had dropped his robe on the floor next to hers.

  She gasped as his powerful, skilled hands cupped her shoulders then slid down her back, resting momentarily on her waist before slowly, almost reverently, caressing her full shapely buttocks. She shivered and bit her lip as his hot breath tickled the back of her neck.

  She held her breath as the man crouched down behind her, his hands tracing over the pert globes of her asscheeks, his head resting against the small of her back.

  Then the tender warm touch moved down the backs of her legs, stopping to share their masculine warmth on the inside of her thighs.

  Tara shivered madly with a complex set of emotions; pride, shame, lust, and fear all rose within her at his intimate examination and touch of her body.

  Then added to all that was an embarrassed giggle as the man stood slowly, pressed against her and she felt the hot hardness of his cock sliding along the back of her legs, and as he covered her from behind, nestling between her cheeks. The thing’s undeniable need pressing against sensitive flesh sent signals throughout her body, igniting the fires beyond those that had already been raging in her sex cleft.

  “Oh,god, you are so hard,” she gasped pressing her head back into his chest.

  “I’m dying,” he growled into her ear as he bent her forward over the mantle and nuzzled his face into the back of her neck. Then he remained almost perfectly still, tormenting them both as they savored their ever-increasing need.

  Without warning of any kind, he swept her up in his arms. His strength, and her nudity magnified her sense of vulnerability. He carried her across the suite and through her bedroom door as though she weighed nothing.

  “I won’t survive it if you do to me again what you did in the woods,” she said, meaning every word as he stopped beside the canopy bed and, with unbelievable gentleness, laid her on it.

  “The woods were the woods.”

  Then, with a near-effortless leap he landed prone on top of her, holding himself in a push-up position.

  She was still giggling at his antics when he pressed his face down onto hers and continued the kiss that had begun on the couch. Only this time the needs of the mouth were overshadowed by the needs of the loins. Unable to resist it any longer Tara parted her legs to accept him. Nick didn’t respond. She reached down and grabbed the sex shaft that pressed against her belly and used it to shift him down, smiling to herself at how responsive a man can be when the proper tool is used.

  Tara had no sooner released the wonderful organ before Nick pressed inside her. They shared a gasp of sublime pleasure as he slid effortlessly in. Nick was beautifully, blissfully hard and Tara could not remember a cock feeling so like it belonged there. Unable to live with the maddening tickle of promise his invasion lit up in her, Tara’s hip began began gyrating uncontrollably.

  Nick chuckled.

  “You are a hellcat,” he said taking a momentary break from their kiss to look down at her.

  Tara froze. His eves invaded her, stripping right past everything she thought she was. His
blast of need ignited her deepest womanliness.

  “Go ahead,” he half-growled. “I know you can do it. Do what your body wants. I want it for you.”

  His understanding released her needs and she did just that.

  In an instant Tara was lost to herself as she let out a moan of primal need and began grinding and humping around the hard powerful cock that he held perfectly still for her to use.

  Then her mind and body shattered.

  She closed her eyes in the throes of orgasm, but every time she looked up at him and saw the intensity of his eyes, her nerves lit up and she found herself cumming even harder. Each time another part of her soul released into the man she barely knew, but who it seemed had been granted full access to her soul.

  With a mewling sigh that bordered on a sob of relief, Tara finally came down off her fourth or fifth orgasm to find the man still impaled motionless inside her, still staring down at her, the unaltered look in his eyes just as intense and, now that she was sexually satiated, a little frightening.

  Unable to think about what all of it meant, she grabbed his face and pulled him in for a deep kiss. She waited until he was kissing back with full fervor before pushing him gently away.

  “Cum, my darling, Cum all you want…cum hard.” She regretted the words the moment she spoke them, but thankfully things quickly moved on. The man on top of her arched his hips and his cock shifted, unbelievably, even deeper inside her. Her orgasms had loosened her inside, allowing him even deeper penetration.

  And Nick took full advantage of it.

  Tara grasped desperately at his hard, clenched ass, urging him on, urging him deeper. She was rewarded with a dizzying display of power as Nick increased depth and tempo, releasing another small trill of pleasure deep in her body.

  Then the savage came out.

  Nick brought himself up on his arms, grabbed one of her legs and lifted it upward, lifted himself even higher, causing him to sink into her even deeper. Then he did the same with the other leg.

  With her knees almost at her ears and his weight leaning into her, Tara felt more impaled than humanly possible.

  And she loved it.

  Especially when the man began bucking uncontrollably.

  For just a few strokes he rocked inside her; unbeknownst to her, preparing her.

  Then, with a feral grunt he unleashed his full power. His hard sinewy body and ceaseless invasion of her core became Tara’s whole world, just as earlier, on the couch, their kiss had.

  He came with a roar, hot and gushy and deep inside her. Tara was barely aware of it as his ferocious need tore another deep orgasm from her and the room reverberated with their mingled screams of hot trembling ecstasy.

  CHAPTER 18

  She’d meant to make him breakfast. It was something she really, really wanted to do.

  But, as she had not woken up until 11:15, it would have to be brunch, at best.

  His body--heavy solid and warm beside her--was hard to leave. After slowly and gingerly pulling on her robe, she stood at the doorway staring back at him, trying to fathom who and what he was. He’d been in and out of the bed all night. She’d gotten up once to go to the bathroom and found him standing at a window, beautifully naked, silhouetted by the city lights down below. She assumed he’d sleep even later than she just because he had been up periodically throughout the night.

  And she knew it was because he was guarding her.

  But he always came back to bed.

  CHAPTER 19

  “You can cook,” he said, taking a bite of the corn bread muffin he’d just used to clear his plate.

  “Don’t seem so surprised,” she chided him, unable not to be ecstatic over the compliment despite herself.

  “Well, you’re a career woman, an artist, and a little insane. Domestic duties don’t fit the rest of the picture.” He looked longingly at the last corn bread muffin. The sad hound-dog expression on his face broke her heart at the same time it made her laugh out loud.

  “I’m full, take it. You cooked up a pretty good fish fry for breakfast the other day,” she said, “but no one would call you domestic.”

  To her astonishment the corn muffin had disappeared before she finished speaking.

  “Fair point.” He sucked his fingers clean and Tara found herself shivering with envy of them.

  With their meal done, Tara groaned inwardly as she got ready to get up and do the dishes. She felt like she’d been hit by a freight train, every movement made every muscle ache. He would never know what making them breakfast had cost her.

  Then Nick reached across the table and put a hand on her shoulder.

  “You really shouldn’t have done this. We could have gotten room service, though it probably wouldn’t have been this good. I’ll do the dishes.” He paused, noting how she didn’t resist at all.

  “There should be some ibuprofen in one of the medicine cabinets. If you’re sore that should go a long way to helping.”

  Tara mentally kicked herself for not thinking of that.

  “Then I guess we could have the hotel staff clean the dishes as well,” she finally said.

  He nodded.

  “But I’ll do them. However after that we will need to talk.”

  CHAPTER 20

  “I didn’t mind being in all day…sleeping, stretching. I needed it. But I don’t know if I can stay cooped up here another full day. I’m not that much of an indoor girl.”

  They sat at the dining room table. Nick was drinking still more coffee. She was sipping tea. He nodded.

  “I understand, but we have to be safe. Our car should be on the way, even here, by tomorrow night. If you want we can leave as soon as it arrives.”

  “You still haven’t explained why it’s taking two days to get a car in a town full of car rental places. Why not just call in another favor like the one that got us a free meal at the diner and this,” she swept her hand to indicate the $800 a night suite. Midweek, off season rates.

  He hesitated, as if thinking was getting a little hard for him. That was when Tara realized her restlessness must be nothing compared to that of a man who, for apparently months on end, had been living alone on the top of a mountain. She felt guilty for complaining.

  “The car,” he said finally, then stopped to suck down the rest of the mug, “is being.. .customized.”

  She waited, her face making it plain that the explanation was by no means acceptable.

  He took in a deep breath and let it out.

  “This is all my fault, Tara. I am doing what I have to do to make it right.”

  Her faced hardened. His flinched.

  “I wanted something with a lot of room, a lot of power under the hood, and big gas tank. Also, it has extra suspension in case we get a rough ride.”

  It was her turn to flinch. A tense silence strung out between them before she finally spoke.

  “So,” Tara said, ticking the points of on her fingers, “it can carry a lot of gear; go off road if it needed; out run anything that chases us and not have to do many pitstops. Do I have that right?”

  Nick sat back, surprise softening his face. He said nothing then looked into his empty cup and refilled it. Tara made herself breath long and slow and take her time sipping her tea.