The Shasta Gate

by Dick Croy

  He sighed and lifted his eyebrows in an expression which said more clearly than words would have: “Don’t ask me what that was all about because I don’t know. Please just accept it.” And since she clearly had accepted it, even the unspoken words were unnecessary as far as she was concerned. That’s what her expression said. Because she could see now the pattern in their coming together. Far from being the direct approach she favored, it was nonetheless happening, even if they seemed to be taking a step back for every two or three forward.

  It was like fishing: letting out line, then reeling it back in. She laughed to herself at what Eugene might have to say about this: in her picture it was she who had him on the line. “Let’s go,” she said impatiently—“I’m dying to show you the falls!”

  They both found relief in the long steady climb.

  Chapter 27

  The scent of evening was already in the air when they arrived at the falls. A hundred yards ahead of them the setting sun had turned a long filament of water into a shimmering scarlet ribbon. Catherine was speechless. For a moment Eugene had the feeling that she and the falling water were actually connected in some way, as if it were a projected, exquisitely-focused image of her emotion—or as if it were cascading not just there at the head of the ravine but right here beside him. Extremely moved, he stepped behind her and put his arms around her waist. “...Isn’t it beautiful?” she murmured.

  “It would make a beautiful ribbon for your hair,” he said, lifting it from her shoulders to his face, closing his eyes as he inhaled its warm dusky fragrance. She turned. His arms opened to enfold her again, his hands drinking the warmth, the scent, the feel of her body as her own slim arms tightened around him and she felt the muscles of his back tense against them. Then she lifted her face and their mouths came together as they had that first night. They became their mouths: lips, tongues, and clashing teeth; because the mouths knew—the slippery epithelial tissue, the breath, the teeth, the saliva... the mouths knew. As did the hands—the hands knew. And their bodies: the legs intertwining and locking, seeking a closer, tighter embrace, the urgent movements then softening and harmonizing, beginning to flow together.

  ...And then, as suddenly as it had arisen, the passion ebbed, this time for both of them. They were together now. They both heard the music and it was the same music. It was their music.

  When they parted, some essential part of themselves remained commingled and seemed to tear away from their bodies. What exquisite pain! Was that a gaping hole in his chest, Eugene wondered, or an incredible lightness. Only in retrospect did he perceive the density of flesh and bone bound within itself. Confused and agitated, he reached up to release his headband and realized for the first time that it wasn’t there. He remembered immediately where he’d left it.

  “What’s wrong?” Catherine laughed.

  “Nothing; I left my bandanna back where we camped.”

  “I wondered why you were letting your hair go au naturel. I like it this way. Even the Lone Ranger’s gotta take his mask off sometime....Who is this masked man?”

  He smiled. “Stay tuned.”

  She laughed and threw her arms around him, this time in excitement and pleasure rather than passion.

  “You’re all right, Mr. Motorcycle Man.”

  “Well thank you. You’re pretty fine for a horsewoman yourself.”

  * * *

  It was exceptionally warm for so early in the summer; they had allowed their campfire to burn itself to embers. Catherine saw and felt in the coals her own languorous passion. To Eugene the evening around them was resonant with intimation. In the reflected radiance of her solar relationship, the moon revealed a younger yet more constant union: Shasta and his consort, created from the mountain’s flank like Eve from her husband’s rib...while moon, mountain and the past alike looked down on them in benign indifference.

  “It’s been a wonderful day,” Catherine sighed. She was sitting with her knees drawn up, one arm hugging her legs, the other following her restless hand as she sifted the fine volcanic dust of the mountain through her fingers. “I’m sorry I went on so at you this morning about your meditating. Most people who’re into that sort of thing seem so smug and self-righteous. They’ve found the answer. I’m not saying that’s true of you—I wouldn’t be here if I thought it was. I just...react, that’s all.”

  “I understand. I considered not doing it, for that very reason. But hell, this is the kind of situation where it’s most beneficial.”

  “What kind of situation?”

  There was an inflection of hopeful interest in her voice that Eugene couldn’t miss, nor was he intended to, although he could sense her restraint as well. He tried to match her light touch. “New experience...feelings stirring that I haven’t felt for a while.”

  “Hmmm. How does meditation help? Not by restricting them I hope.”

  “Not at all. More like the opposite, by providing a sort of sanctuary—like your pool.”

  “I like that.”

  “Yeah, I actually feel freer to give in to my feelings. Than I might otherwise.”

  “You don’t quite trust them do you.”

  “I’ve had reason in the past not to.”

  “Oh?”

  “Like everyone else, I’m sure; it’s no big deal. I didn’t murder anyone in a fit of rage or anything. But I know how feelings can rule if they get the chance.”

  “Well of course, what’s wrong with that?”

  “I guess it depends on the feelings.”

  “Not the feelings. Feelings by themselves never hurt anyone.”

  “When do you ever have feelings by themselves? I’m talking about feelings that led to actions.”

  “But you don’t strike me as someone with anything to be concerned about. You don’t have some deep dark secret do you?”

  “I told you, it’s no big thing. But it’s nothing to be proud of either. I guess I’m talking about using people.”

  “Using or being used?”

  “...Both. I’m trying to learn a better balance: of feelings and...”

  “...And what?”

  “I don’t know, my mind’s not working very well all of a sudden. How’d we get into talking about feelings anyway? Oh yeah, I remember: it’s interesting, what you said about my being afraid of them.”

  “I didn’t say you were afraid of them. I said you didn’t trust them.”

  “You did?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “...Maybe ‘afraid’ is more accurate. Anyway, when I’m going through a lot emotionally, that’s when meditation’s most helpful. It’s like I’m able to step out of myself—rise above any turmoil that’s going on and take a look at it. Not analyze it; just look at it, be aware of it.” She nodded, encouraging him to continue.

  “I get in touch with a part of me that sees beyond the things bothering me. Like some higher elevation where I can see my life as part of something far greater. I’m just part of the landscape—and so are my problems; they seem a lot less significant. They lose their hold over me.”

  “Is getting to know someone like this a problem for you?” The question was asked so gently, there was no sting in it. He was able to return her smile.

  “That’s a good question....It can be difficult—let’s put it that way.”

  “Maybe that goes along with not trusting your feelings.”

  Yeah, trust was certainly part of it, and not just of his feelings. But he didn’t see any point in stating the obvious. He just nodded.

  They fell silent, drifting into that light sensory hypnosis that campfires and summer evenings make so hard to resist. Something of what Eugene had been saying nagged at Catherine’s stubbornly resistant mind. All this talking about feelings was starting to seem pointless to her. Although she’d known people who would rather talk about life than live it, she hadn’t known them long—and she wasn’t about to encourage Eugene. But she knew he was becoming emotionally involved with her. That was enough for now.

  “W
hat’s wrong with a little turmoil?” she asked silkily. “Maybe you just haven’t been involved with the right kind.” Her smile cut through Eugene’s muddled thoughts as if someone had pulled the plug on his computer. Her hand moved slowly to the top button of her blouse. That lovely warm smile was so innocently inviting. The blouse came off. Then so did the no-bra bra. Her breasts looked up at him like impudent white Persian cats, or ermine in their white winter coats: they had that sleek saucy look to them.

  Except that already he was imagining them in his mouth. Either one would more than fill it.

  And they were so firm! What a joy they’d be to suck, his lips floating over the smooth, taut, slippery flesh, plump and round to fill his mouth or the cupped palms of his hands....Round: was there anything on God’s earth more perfectly and deliciously round than a woman’s breasts?...anything that made the mouth more want to shape itself into an urgent slavering “O”?

  Her dainty pink nipples filled out and stood up like rosettes as he watched them. It excited Catherine to see that his cock was doing the same as she wriggled out of her tight jeans and bikini pants at the same time. Her body unveiled was just simply breathtaking, embodying exquisite feminine variations on this theme of roundness and curves that can drive a man bananas. It certainly had Eugene, and she was longing to feel his in her hand and mouth and deep inside of her. But she wanted to play too.

  “Come on,” she said huskily. “The water’ll be freezing, but we’ve got the fire.” With that, her body, an hourglass of golden sand flowing from one polished, sculpted curve into another, slipped into the darkness of the trees. “Bring a towel!” she called back to him.

  Eugene could only breathe deeply and shake his head. In his excitement and desire he imagined that he could see his own face: a caricature of the aroused male animal. Suddenly realizing that he still just sat here, dressed, he peeled off his clothes, grabbed the single towel they’d brought with them, and thought to throw another log on the fire. Then he followed her to the gathering roar of the falls.

  She was already standing in the moonlit pool, pale and trembling against a silver curtain of water. Hunched and hugging her arms tight against her body, Catherine was shivering from excitement, the cold, and anticipation. Eugene’s lean muscular body looked to her like it belonged here. The mass of hair on his chest and strong lithe legs, the dark vertical line of hair cleaving his abdomen from chest to navel, and the pubic hair surrounding his swinging, slightly swollen penis was, in a sense, the forest’s signature. He tested the frigid water with his foot, and the smooth surface of the opposite thigh tightened into a muscular topography to support his weight. The sudden metamorphosis reminded her of that latent masculine power she loved to call forth. “Hurry up!” she pleaded, “I’m fr- freezing!”

  He could understand why. His right foot felt as though it had been quick-frozen at the ankle—or amputated, and what he was experiencing was phantom-limb pain. But now was no time to turn back. He waded boldly out into the middle of the pool, plucked Catherine from the water and, carefully negotiating the slippery bottom, carried her toward the waterfall.

  “Don’t you dare!” she shrieked. Her violent thrashing succeeded only in getting them both wet as Eugene stumbled with her. But he quickly regained his balance and stepped with his wet squirming armload right into the middle of the icy fall of water. It sucked the air from their lungs as suddenly and completely as if they’d collapsed. He staggered back and set Catherine down while they both caught their breaths, then let go with a lusty rebel yell: Yea-hahhh!

  “Oh Lo-ord!” she managed to get out. “Are you...c-c-crazy?”

  Eugene threw back his head and roared. “G-g-goddamned right!” he mimicked her. “B-b-beat you to the towel!” He did but tossed it to her, and she applied it to her goose-pimpled skin with a vengeance while he frankly watched and enjoyed. Taking pity on his own naked, violently shaking body, she didn’t keep it nearly as long as she’d have liked.

  “See you back at the fire,” she said, hurrying up the trail with the exaggerated stealth common to cartoon characters and the tender-footed, as he began toweling himself vigorously. She was grateful for the additional log and added two more from the stack they’d gathered earlier. Then she put on just her panties. Her skin was tingling deliciously, and with a fire the warm night required no clothes at all. Modesty alone was responsible for the panties—that and her knowledge that she was more seductive in them than in nothing.

  As Eugene finished drying himself, he was replaying their slippery skirmish in the pool. She had squirmed in his arms like an eel vibrator; the feel of her flesh had been burned into his senses: electroshock for the libido. At one point in their tussle, he’d been pleasantly startled to find himself holding her by the crotch. It wasn’t intentional and had lasted only an instant as the two of them thrashed about in front of the waterfall. But now he had time to really feel her there against his outspread hand. His mind was certainly receptive to the sensation, even if it had happened too quickly for his hand to have felt the full effect. What a tasty sensory salad: the scratchiness of her pubic hair, a sort of parsley texture, combined with the avocado squishiness he had encountered just inside her vagina.

  He felt himself stirring—a little more and he could darn near hang the towel on it. He draped it over his shoulder instead—the towel, that is—and the sexual energy that had been concentrating in the tumescent organ dissipated and began to rise, until his whole body was tingling with it as he crept back up the trail.

  He was most pleased to find her dressed as she was—or wasn’t. “...Don’t you look fetching,” he said, stopping short to admire the way the firelight played across her creamy skin. He framed her with his hands and outstretched thumbs, like a self-important movie director. “Can you imagine what a scene like this would do for backpacking?” She laughed. “It’d be a disaster. The whole damn country’d take to the woods, and the wildlife would have to go live in the city.”

  “Better than the wildlife that’s there now,” she said. “If I thought taking my clothes off was all it would take to clean up the cities, I’d ride Jebel naked down the main streets of every city in the United States.”

  Eugene dropped the towel on the open sleeping bag on which she was luxuriously reclined before the fire and sat down beside her. “You’d be one saddle-sore lady.” They looked into each other’s eyes...there was nothing more to be said. They leaned together slowly and he brought just the tips of his fingers to her cheeks. Their lips met so lightly that each could clearly feel the shape and texture of the other’s. He took her lower lip between his own and sucked it gently, then ran the tip of his tongue inside the slippery crescent of the upper. Her mouth went slack and he thrust his tongue deeper, exploring with delicate, hungry curiosity every sweet mysterious recess and corner of her mouth.

  When that was no longer enough he sealed her lips with his own and began to suck against them rhythmically while, moaning in hunger or contentment, she kept her head moving about constantly to alter the way their mouths joined, satisfied for just a second with each new combination. She started sucking the inside of his cheek and then she was nibbling at it, and all the while her tongue stayed out of the way by being even more aggressive than either her lips or teeth. Eugene reached down, slipped his hands beneath her hips and, with her assistance, lifted her onto his lap. She scooted up against him and wrapped her legs around his waist, rubbing her slick, soaked panties against his erect penis.

  Of course this couldn’t go on for long. His fingers found the waistband and she blew his mind by the way she pulled her legs from around him and cocked them clear back against her chest to help him remove the tiny garment. When it was completely off after an impatient kick or two, she took hold of his penis, nuzzled it just inside her swollen lips and, as they both gasped, wriggled down against him until he was deep inside her.

  Taking her by the waist, feeling her wonderful tight ripe roundness within the curve of his hands, he began to bounce her o
n his lap as she hooked her feet behind him and tightened her legs against his hipbones with the ferocity of a woman possessed. While she posted, hypnotized, on his cock, her face upturned and flushed, her nostrils flared and her mouth rigidly open in the inverse lockjaw of sexual ecstasy, he buried his face against first one breast and then the other, rubbing his lips and tongue and open mouth passionately across the firm luscious fruits of flesh on a film of his own saliva—sucking the excited buds of her nipples until it felt, to both Catherine and Eugene, as though they were about to burst.

  It was thrilling to be manhandled this way, to be served and used with such ease. She surrendered more and more of herself to the strong hands that gripped her hips and waist and to the organ driving heat into her belly and light into her brain. The plunging phallus was producing waves of such intense pleasure it was as if the walls of her womb were unrolling to turn themselves inside out for it. It was difficult to distinguish between these rolling waves about to become contractions and the relentless penis generating them.

  When at last Eugene felt the first faint intimation of his orgasm, he abruptly slowed the gait of this dream stallion Catherine was riding with such rapt concentration. She grabbed his wrists and, while keeping him inside her, snaked her legs from around him so that she was supporting herself on her knees on either side of his legs.

  “Easy,” he whispered hoarsely, leaning back on his outstretched arms. She smiled, her eyes glazed, then closed them completely to savor the sweet warmth in her loins, the body’s hearth. Then in a few moments, with infinite sensitivity, keeping him deep within her, she began to gyrate in delicate, minute circles against his pubic bone.

  He grasped the back of her neck, feeling the luxuriant weight of her hair against it, letting the fingers of his other hand glide across her slippery labia. When they were thoroughly lubricated, he reached up to cradle her full breast in the palm of his hand, kneading the engorged nipple with her own aromatic juices. No longer was subtlety any part of Catherine’s fucking—it was frenzied now.