by Jessie Cooke
“That’s some fancy-looking bike you’ve got there,” she said as she looked at a silver and black contraption that seemed part mountain bike part dirt bike.
“This one’s yours. I rented it for the day,” he said, and he nudged it towards her.
“What is it?” she asked afraid to touch it.
“It’s a Stealth Electric Mountain Bike. It’s fully charged; you don’t even have to pedal, unless you really want to.”
Her muscles celebrated at the news. “I have a feeling I won’t have any desire to pedal, but this seems pretty powerful.”
“It’s not like riding a dirt bike or motorcycle. Much more tame than that. You can handle it. In fact, I think you’ll be wanting to buy one of these babies at the end of the day.”
Bella looked at him doubtfully but decided to remain optimistic. After a few passes through the parking lot to get the feel for it, Bella was excited about hitting the trails.
“This thing is awesome!” she said. “Why didn’t I know about this before? I might actually like mountain biking now.”
Reece chuckled. “I’m surprised your little Luke didn’t mention it to you. What’s he thinking taking a rookie out and making her work so hard? Doesn’t he appreciate the delicate creature you are?”
Bella narrowed her eyes at Reece. “Ya know, women don’t necessarily like to be told to their faces that they are delicate creatures, unless they say it about themselves first. I, for one, have mixed feelings on that terminology, but I’d rather not hear you refer to me in that way. I know you mean it condescendingly.”
He gave her a mock salute and mentioned that he meant no offense in the observation. “I just like my women a little softer than Luke, I guess. But if he wants callused hands and tough muscles, then that’s his own prerogative. Too masculine for my taste, though.” His eyes met Bella’s. “You know I have to admit, I’ve gotten mixed signals from him. I thought for a bit you were pulling my leg, trying to get back at me for something by introducing him as your boyfriend. I was sure he played for the other team.”
“Can we not talk about Luke or my relationship with him? That’s really none of your business,” Bella snapped.
“Let’s ride!” Reece said, and then he took off towards a trailhead with Bella behind him on the Stealth. After a few minutes of trying to stay behind him, Bella opened it up and sped past Reece. He caught up to her where she had pulled over to wait for him about a quarter of a mile ahead. She was tilting her head back allowing the cool water to trickle into her mouth, and Reece felt his grip tighten on the handlebars at the thought of kissing the soft skin of her throat.
“I’m going to be ahead of you all day at this rate,” she said. “The fact that you have to pedal is going to make it hard for you to keep up with me.”
Reece smiled. “Good thing I’m used to working hard for what I really want, eh? Besides, this trail is child’s play to me now. I’m growing bored with it. Having you to chase gives me a little extra incentive.”
“Good luck!” Bella shouted, gripping the handlebars to rev the little motor and taking off. She didn’t even look to see if Reece was following her; she knew he would. He liked the chase. She bounded through the woods hopping ditches and streams like she had only wished she could have the day before. A hairpin turn afforded her a glance at Reece whose muscles were taut with the ride, and for a second she wished she could find the tree she’d been against the previous day.
Then she shook her head at the thought. She was not that kind of girl—the kind who bounced from boy to boy; the kind who played the field and slept around. She wasn’t that kind of girl, all right, but neither was she the kind of girl to have unprotected sex with a stranger in disguise; neither was she the kind of girl to waitress an event wearing nothing but body paint and a skimpy thong; neither was she the kind of girl to sit for a nude portrait.
Suddenly, she felt dizzy and clammy. Her throat seemed to be closing and constricting air from getting into her lungs. She drove herself off the trail, propped her bike against a large tree trunk, and struggled with shaking fingers to unfasten the helmet. Finally getting it off her head, she flung it away from her. Reece approached to her stripping off her jacket and breathing shallowly.
“What happened?” he asked.
“Can’t. Breathe,” was all she could manage.
“Did you get stung? A bee? Is this an allergic reaction?” he asked checking her arms, her neck, searching her face.
Bella shook her head as she still gasped for breath. “Panic. Attack,” she whispered.
Reece reached for Bella’s hands. She’d been pacing in a circle and swinging them from the wrist while she tried to take in breaths. “Ok. Let’s do this together,” he offered, his helmet still on, and his bike flung on the forest floor where he’d exited the trail quickly. “Slow down. Match your breath to mine. Inhale slowly.”
Bella tried and coughed a few times. It seemed she couldn’t concentrate on his breathing long enough to match his breath; she was too worried that the air wasn’t getting to her lungs. Reece began a series of breaths again, slowly inhaling and telling Bella in a soothing voice that she could do it, to feel her lungs filling with air and then slowly expelling the bad stuff including the panic out of her body.
Within moments, Bella’s breathing had slowed and the clamminess in her hands was fading away. Reece could see her pulse slowing and softening when he looked at her neck. They had slowly lowered themselves to the ground, and Reece still held her hands in his as he searched her face for any indication that he should let go.
“Better?” he asked quietly.
She nodded. “Getting there,” she said. “Embarrassed.”
Reece smiled softly. “There’s no reason to be embarrassed about it. It happens to the best of us.”
“You?”
“Sure.”
“I . . . I wouldn’t have guessed.”
“Why not? Contrary to what some may think, I am human. I get overwhelmed too. And sometimes, I have a really hard time stopping that inner dialogue within my head that will not just shut up!”
“You just don’t seem like that to me. You seem, I don’t know, much more in control.”
Reece reached up and cupped Bella’s cheek in his hand. “No one’s in control as much as he or she would like to be, and obviously I have you fooled into thinking that I can handle my shit with grace. It’s not like that at all. I just try to take it one day at a time, and one breath at a time, and remember the moments as much as possible.
Bella smiled. “I guess my problem is that sometimes, I lose myself in those moments.”
“That’s not always a bad thing,” Reece said. He leaned a little closer into Bella. “For example, what would happen if right now, in this very moment, you lost yourself?”
Bella swallowed hard, and Reece took the hesitation to pull her face towards him, gently laying his lips on hers in a precise match.
“See, nothing wrong with that,” Reece whispered. “Let go.” He leaned in again for a second gentle kiss, but Bella had her hands on his face faster than he anticipated. She pulled his face to him firmly, and her lips pressed against his, the need passing to him. He parted his lips and allowed her tongue access to the inside of him as one of her hands slid down to his shoulder and she pulled herself into his chest.
Reece tilted slightly, rolling himself towards Bella a little too much, and he felt his balance compromised. Trying to regain himself, he overcompensated the shift and found himself rolling downhill gathering leaves and sticks to his spandex as he rolled. Bella, having lost her balance thanks to his move to try and right himself, crashed into him having followed him down the mound. Reece had landed flat on his back, Bella almost practically on top of him. The sound of their laughter mingled into what sounded like one voice, until Bella caught a familiar look in Reece’s eyes and felt a familiar protrusion rising between them.
“Talk about losing yourself in the moment,” she said.
“Don’t
stop now,” he whispered, and Bella pulled herself off enough to tear her shoes and biking shorts off. She reached down and tugged at the spandex on Reece’s hips while he unzipped the sports bra, allowing her breasts to spring forth from the front-closure where they’d been tightly bound. Within seconds, his mouth was on her nipple, his tongue flicking it back and forth until it hardened and glistened with his saliva.
“Tell me you brought a condom with you,” Bella said hopefully.
Reece bent down, dug in his shoe, and came up with a shiny foil package. “Not that I was planning on this happening, but I had my hopes, and a good Boy Scout is always prepared.” He smiled as he tore the package open with his teeth.
“Boy scout you are not,” Bella said. “And neither was I a Girl Scout.”
“Yeah, but we both know how to make fire in the forest, don’t we?” he asked, and he tugged on her long braid. “Touch me, Bella,” he whispered.
Her fingers encircled him, and he breathed out a “yessssss.”
She angled herself up, allowing just the tip of him to kiss inside her, the thrill of the touch electric to her core. She slid herself around and down him before she brought herself back up his length. She moved away, took the opened foil, and slowly rolled the condom down upon him.
“You can even make protection feel amazing,” Reece uttered. “So often the ‘dressing’ of the man can kill the mood, but not with you.”
Bella smiled and licked at his lips. “There’s only one thing I can think of that will feel better,” she said.
“I know where you’re going with that,” Reece said quickly, and he angled his hips and guided himself into her slowly.
Bella’s knees drove into rock and dirt below her, but she could barely feel it as she sat perched where she was, Reece below her. She sat back a bit, her back against his legs, and she felt him glide deeper into her. She began slow thrusts up and down, circling her hips at times, feeling him fill the spaces he’d left void for too long. He squeezed her breast in his hand, and she took it from there and guided it to the spot between her legs and his stomach.
“Now, you touch me,” she said, her voice low and gravelly, and he willingly stroked the top of her opening, feeling for the hard assurance of her need. When he found it, he thumbed it, causing her to gasp.
“Don’t stop,” she said, and her thrusts became more like short, circular hops as she leaned her head back and looked into the treetops.
The friction and heat she was creating was driving Reece wild, and he reached with his free hand to her breast brushing her nipple with his fingertips.
Within seconds, Bella was grinding down, clamping with her muscles, hard against his thumb and pulling at him. Reece could almost see the white heat sweep up her body and explode into one fiery pulse that spilled over and surged into him, bright stars shooting across his vision even though it was the middle of the day.
48
A bug crawling on Bella’s naked flesh had been enough to rush the few minutes she deliberated about trying for a second orgasm, and that was enough to bring her right back to the reality that had caused the panic attack in the first place.
She had said she was not this kind of girl, but now look at her.
A chime from Reece’s phone grabbed her attention, and he checked it, typed in a response, then pocketed the phone again.
“Guess my time is up,” Bella found herself saying.
“On the contrary. How about a little lunch?”
Bella snapped her fingers at the thought. “I didn’t pack any. Crap, was that part of my deal too? Was I supposed to bring sandwiches?”
Reece laughed. “We’d be in a jam if you were, I’m guessing. No, follow me.”
They walked their bikes back on the trail to a fork in the road with a sign that pointed towards Rainbow Lake. They took that direction, and as they crested the hill and came out into a clearing, Bella saw a large umbrella staked in the ground. Under it was a blanket upon which rested a picnic basket and small cooler. A plate of something wrapped in a sheer plastic was being violated by two squirrels, and when Reece saw what was happening, he began running towards the area, waving his hands over his head like a wild man, yelling for those “damned varmits” to get out of their lunch.
Bella had to stop walking she was laughing so hard at the sight. She doubled over grabbing her gravel-pocked knees trying to catch her breath, this time for the laughter and the sight of Reece looking much like an orangutan as he ran forward. She finally caught up and flung herself under the umbrella still laughing.
“That was hilarious!” she gasped.
“Not when you see what they did to this panini,” Reece scowled. “This was my favorite!” he hollered after the squirrels.
“I wish you could have seen yourself,” Bella said, her laughter reviving itself.
Soon, though, Reece found himself laughing too, her laughter too contagious not to be infected. He lay his head on her bouncing belly as he began to partake in the moment, and within seconds, they were each wiping their eyes, their giggles finally slowing.
“Still think I’m in control of myself?” Reece asked.
“Not at all,” Bella answered.
They spent the next hour feasting on paninis, strawberries, chilled Pinot Gris, and stuffed grape leaves. By the time they had finished off the bottle of wine, Bella patted her belly with satisfaction and sprawled out on the picnic blanket.
“I’m the lucky one,” she said.
“Why’s that?” Reece questioned. “Because you have me, the most thoughtful man in the state of Texas?”
“Well, you are thoughtful . . . when you want to be,” she agreed. “But I’m really the lucky one because I don’t have to pedal my way back down a bike trail to get to the car. Geez, I feel sorry for you, having to do all that riding after all this food. The last thing I would want to do was move more muscles than I had to.”
His phone chimed again, and Reece slid his finger across the surface, typed something, and then slid the phone back in his pocket.
“Lucky for me, I won’t have to,” he said.
“Huh?”
About that time, the slobbery neigh of a horse caught Bella’s ear. “I could have sworn I heard a horse,” she said.
“Well, people do ride on some of these trails.”
“Not the bike ones, though?” she said alarmed.
Reece laughed. “No, silly. Certain trails are designated for certain things.” He picked up his phone again and began texting.
“Who do you keep texting?” Bella finally asked, just at the moment her own phone chirped an alert.
She looked at the screen and the banner across that read, “Message from Reece.” Her head popped up to give Reece a quizzical look. He nodded towards the phone.
Bella tapped on the phone’s face so that she could view the entire message from Reece.
“It’s a picture of a picture,” Bella said. Then she looked more closely. “It’s my picture.”
“The portrait you requested,” Reece grinned.
“What?”
“I’m fulfilling my end of the bargain,” he said. “I promised you the portrait if you came out for a ride.”
“This is a picture of the real portrait,” she said. “I want the real thing.” She shook her head. “Uh-uh. No dice. As far as I’m concerned, you didn’t hold up your end of the deal.”
Reece feigned a look of confusion. “You didn’t say you wanted the actual portrait itself. I figured this would suffice.”
“Well, you didn’t exactly say who you were when you commissioned it either,” she pointed out. “That’s why we’re in this mess to begin with.”
Reece shook his head and wagged a finger in Bella’s direction. “I don’t believe I’m in any sort of mess, if you must know. You, on the other hand, are making this a mess all in your head.”
She threw her phone down on the blanket beside her and began crawling towards Reece. “I want the real one, and I want it pronto.”
> He met her defiant stare. “Do you really want to take it from me? Look me in the eye and tell me that there isn’t a part of you that is flattered that I have it; that there isn’t a part of you that is glad to know that I look at you every night so that I can dream clearly of your beauty. And you would rob me of that?”
Bella didn’t know what to say, but she knew what she wanted to do, and just as Reece had encouraged her to do hours before, she let herself go and followed her instinct which led her to incline towards him and kiss him full on the lips.
“You can keep it for now,” she conceded. “But I’ll be thinking of what to do with it in the meantime.”
Kissing her tenderly, Reece gave Bella a wink and a smile. “We’ll see.”
The sound of a horse neighing interrupted the birdsong again.
“I swear I’m hearing things. Did you hear that horse again?” Bella asked.
The familiar sound of Reece’s phone made Bella roll her eyes as he checked his messages.
“What is so important?” she asked.
“Why, you are, my dear.” He arose from the blanket and offered her his hand.
“What about all this?” Bella asked indicating the picnic blanket, umbrella, and paraphernalia.
“I’ve got it taken care of,” Reece said, and he motioned for her to follow him.
Once over a little knob in the clearing, Bella could see two horses each with a handler standing beside them. One of the horses was a red chestnut with a golden mane; the other a stunning black with a white blaze between his eyes.
“Hi, guys!” Reece called and waved.
“Is this for us?” Bella beamed.
“Indeed,” he answered.
She skipped as she tugged on Reece’s hands. “Oh, wow! This is amazing. I love love love horses!”
“A little-known fact about you that I dug up somewhere along the way,” Reece smirked. “Didn’t you ride when you were younger, even thought about riding competitively?”
