by Juniper Bell
“Funny thing,” Jimmy winked at him, “you’re not invited. This is ladies only.”
“You’re saying you’re a lady?” Katia reached out and brushed her hand over the tips of his hair. “That explains a few things.”
“You hop on this snow machine and you can decide if I’m a lady or not.” He grabbed her hand and made to pull her on board behind him.
Lars planted his ski poles in the snow. “Maybe you missed it. We’re about to take off.”
“I heard you. Katia? Whiskey Gulch? Salsa band, free beer for the babes, dancing. Guaranteed rockin’ good time.”
Katia stole a look at Lars’ stormy face. The scene Jimmy described could have been lifted straight from her life at any point during the last fifteen years. A smoky bar with loud music and dancing and free beer—that was her natural habitat. Or had been, until she’d ogled a blond heartbreaker in a random laundromat. If she went with Jimmy, she’d get buzzed, guaranteed. Then she’d start to find him sexy despite his goofy hairstyle and full-of-himself attitude. And once that happened, watch out. Liquor plus Sexy Guy would equal Disaster with a capital D, that stands for Dick.
“Maybe some other time,” she told Jimmy.
The youngster tilted his head. “The next Wild Nights isn’t for another year.”
“Yeah? So?” She looked from Jimmy’s fading smile to Lars’ dangerous frown.
“Well…” Jimmy shrugged and turned the key of the snow machine. The motor gave a loud roar. “If you change your mind, show up whenever. I’ll be there all night.”
“See ya,” Katia called over the receding whine of the snow machine. She turned to Lars, who was adjusting his gloves with an impassive expression. “You look like you want to beat the guy up.”
“Can’t. It’s Wild Nights.”
“Oh. Right.” Revelation dawned. “Nothing counts during Wild Nights.”
“Nope. Anything goes.”
“So you can’t hold a grudge.”
He pulled his ski poles from the snow and tapped one against the other to brush off the ice crystals. “Anything goes, and everything is forgotten.”
“Holy crap.” Katia’s eyes widened as she considered the implications. “People must go crazy.”
“Yep.” Lars planted his poles in the snow to propel himself back into motion. Katia hurried to follow. “It’s our midwinter madness. But it works for us.”
He set a blazing pace up a short hill. At the top awaited a view of the famous ice fields that edged the bay. Katia knew the trip was worth the effort, but that didn’t make it any less tiring. By the time she reached the top she was puffing and panting.
Lars leaned on his ski poles and gazed out at the gray water of the bay. “Squall’s coming in.”
A dense cloud drifted above the water. No boats were out, not even an oil tanker waiting to offload. But Katia refused to be distracted by the weather.
“Hang on a minute. If nothing counts during Wild Nights, why couldn’t I go out drinking with Jimmy?”
“You could.”
Katia snorted. “You should have seen your face when he asked. I’m surprised you didn’t pull a rifle out of your back pocket.”
“I never said you couldn’t go.”
“Not in words. Just nasty looks.”
The wind blowing in from the bay didn’t feel as cold as the look Lars shot her. “You really wanted to go with him?”
She shrugged. Maybe she did, maybe she didn’t. That wasn’t really the point.
“And do what? Fuck him?”
Katia’s face tingled and her palms twitched, the way they did when she got angry enough to rip someone’s head off.
This was exactly why she’d always avoided “relationships”, why she’d drifted around the world from one interesting situation to another, why she’d never kept a job more than a few months. She didn’t like other people telling her what to do.
Lars took off his blue watch cap and scratched his head. “Because that’s what he wanted,” he said in a softer voice. “I was only trying to save you the trouble of turning him down. He doesn’t deserve to touch the tip of your fingernail.”
“Oh, really? Well, that’s very thoughtful of you.” Katia squinted at him. Over his shoulder the sun was sinking behind the dark cloud. She told herself to stop right there, but when had she ever listened to reason? “What makes you think I would have turned him down?”
Lars shook the snow off his cap and yanked it back over his ears. “Is that a serious question?”
Katia felt her already sketchy control snap. Fights always brought out the worst in her. She never knew when to stop. “A hot young guy offers to show me a good time. You figure it out.”
A muscle rippled in his jaw.
She’d gone too far, hadn’t she?
Turning back toward the homestead, she barely avoided jabbing him with her skis. She glided downhill and felt the exhilarating rush as she picked up speed. But as fast as she skied, she couldn’t possibly outrace the champion chasing her. Lars passed her as if she were walking in the park, then skidded to a stop in front of her with a rooster tail of snow.
“You can’t say something like that then just walk away.”
She wanted to point out that she’d skied away, not walked, but the look in his eyes told her it wasn’t a moment for literalness. “I can do whatever I want. It’s Wild Nights. And even if it weren’t, I can still do whatever I want.”
“Is that what you want? Fuck Jimmy Thorpe?”
“Maybe. Not necessarily. That’s not the point.” She tried to ski around him, but he grabbed her arm.
“What is the point?”
His storm-dark eyes demanded her response. In bed, when he got that look, she knew there was nothing for it but to bend over, spread her legs, whatever it was he’d demanded. Ecstasy always followed. Lars knew how to touch her like no one else, knew what she liked, what she needed.
But he didn’t know everything.
“You’re trying to put me in a box,” she said, loud enough to surprise a magpie in the woods. It fluttered to a higher branch.
“How? Why?” He actually looked mystified.
“You’re telling me who to fuck, and how, and when, and why. I don’t want a ‘why’, Lars! I want to fuck who and when I want. For whatever reason.”
“Katia, I know you’re a wild child. I know you like sex in all sorts of different ways. That’s one of the things I love about you.” He dropped his ski poles and pulled her toward him, thrusting his thigh between her legs. An instantaneous, irresistible urge to rub herself against him took over. She pictured his thigh naked, each massive muscle perfectly defined and sleek. On its own, her groin ground into him.
His eyes lit with fierce satisfaction. “See that? You’re just as crazy about me as I am about you.” He planted his hands on her ass, then manipulated her up and down against his leg until she moaned. “You can’t run from what we have.”
She tore herself away, stumbling because of her skis. He grabbed her so she wouldn’t fall. “Stop that.”
He came after her, intent and relentless. The sexy bastard knew what he did to her. Knew how to keep her coming back for more.
“Look, Lars. This isn’t going to work.” She scrambled for the right words. “I can’t marry you. The answer is no.”
His blue eyes flickered, but other than that he didn’t look one bit daunted. He kept coming at her. “Why? Because of Jimmy?”
“No! Well, sort of.” She shook him off, and this time he let her ski a few yards down the path before he stopped her.
“Sort of? What the fuck does that mean?”
“It means the answer is no. I can’t marry you.” She said the words as firmly and clearly as she could. It hurt like surgery, but it had to be done.
Lars rubbed a ski glove across his forehead, leaving a streak of white. She longed to brush it off but stopped herself short. She couldn’t do this if she touched him. Touching him made her lose her senses. “Is it Wild? Living in
Alaska? The cold?”
“No, none of that,” she said, taken off guard. “I like it here. No one’s telling you what to do or pushing you around. No one’s judging you. You can do what you want.”
The look of relief on his face tore at her heart. “I thought Alaska would drive you away from me.”
She shook her head. “No, it didn’t. It isn’t. It’s not Alaska.” A glance around the still woods gave her a quick vision of snow turning blue in the deepening dusk and velvety darkness settling among the trees. The beauty of it speared her heart. Leaving Lars would mean leaving Wild. She’d have to go back to the world of cities and her aimless existence.
Setting her jaw, she planted her ski poles and shoved off.
Of course, Lars chased her. “Then what? Give me an answer I can understand.” He slid next to her and they skied side by side. He had to keep brushing branches away with his pole.
”Oh, for God’s sake. Why do you have to be so persistent?”
“Because that’s who I am. I’m a competitor and I never give up.”
“This isn’t a race!” But she found herself skiing faster nonetheless.
“No, it’s more important than a damn race. I’ve never felt about anyone the way I feel about you. I thought you loved me.”
“I do. But I don’t want to be married.”
“Because marriage is a box.”
“Exactly.” Finally, he got it. Hope fizzed through her. Maybe they could just go back to how things were.
“You don’t mind it when I’m making you come three times in one night.”
“Of course I don’t.” The power of his body gliding next to her gave her the shivers.
“You don’t mind it when I tie you up and fuck you until you scream for mercy.”
“No. I love it!”
“But it’s not just sex. Everything feels right when I’m with you. When we’re together.”
“But we are together. That’s why I came here.”
“So why not get married? That’s what comes next when people feel the way we do.”
Katia’s eyes stung from the wind in her face, or maybe the realization that he didn’t get it, after all. Up ahead she saw their house. Lars’ house. The one she couldn’t stay at anymore. She stopped, panting, and waved a ski pole at him.
“Why can’t you leave things the way they are?”
“The hell with that.” He lifted her up with one hand on the back of her jacket, like a giant cat with its prey. “You want me right now, don’t you?”
“Yes! But you don’t understand.” Those last words came out as a wail as he clicked off the bindings on her skis. They clattered against each other as they fell to the snowy ground.
“Then make me understand.” He let her feet touch the ground again but kept his grip on her parka. With a flick of his free hand, he unzipped her snowpants. The rush of cold air made her breath catch. He plunged his gloved hand between her legs. Tears sprang to her eyes as the rough friction of the performance leather, custom made for an Olympic champion, brushed against her clit. She went from zero to wildly aroused with one flick of his finger.
“Oh god, Lars. You’re killing me,” she moaned. The underbrush rustled as some tiny alarmed creature scurried to safety.
She writhed against the leather at her crotch, but his hand kept dancing away. The warmth of it radiated through the glove. His refusal to move against her the way she craved drove her right to the edge.
And he knew it, the bastard. “I bet you wish this glove was up your pussy, don’t you?” he growled in her ear. “Or maybe you’d rather I turned you over and spanked you with it. Is that what you want, Katia? I will, you know I will.”
“Then do it,” she urged.
“I will. As soon as you start talking. What are hiding, my wild love?”
She wriggled frantically against the glove, but Lars had iron control. He tracked her movements, administering only a certain amount of friction and no more. Her pussy burned and throbbed with white-hot need. She thrashed her legs at him, but her kicks had no effect. Lars was about as easily budged as the mountain range across the bay.
“Fine!” She hissed at him. “You want to know why I can’t marry you?”
“Why you think you can’t marry me.”
At that infuriating statement, the last of her restraint fell away. “Picture me at twenty, hitchhiking around Morocco. My first trip by myself, without my mom.”
Something flickered in his gaze. “You, Morocco. Got it.”
She’d told Lars the bare minimum about her crazy upbringing, being dragged around the world by her adventure-seeking, ashram-loving, sexually voracious lost soul of a mother. Now she’d give him a bigger dose.
“I got picked up by a French couple who took me back to their place, some kind of palace they were renting. We smoked a ton of hashish, then they tied me up and played with me for about a week. We fucked our brains out, all three of us, in every possible way. They used everything they could put their hands on. Clamps, ropes, a hashish pipe. Things I’d never seen before. They used every part of my body however they wanted. And the thing is…”
Lars’ face looked like granite. Bad sign. But he’d asked for this.
“I loved it. When they sent me away, I cried. I missed them. I craved them. I thought maybe that meant I was submissive, but the next car I got into had two Australian women in it. For a solid week I’d been coming all day and all night, over and over again. I was spoiled. I needed an orgasm. So I made the women pull over and go down on me. I don’t know why they did it. They both had boyfriends. Maybe it was because I needed it so bad.”
She couldn’t look at Lars anymore, choosing to fix her eyes on a long snow-covered log at the edge of the trail.
“After that I got kind of freaked out, and I didn’t have any sex for a month. But I kept dreaming and fantasizing about everything I’d done in Morocco. I’d pinch my own nipples to remind me of the clamps they’d put on me. Some kind of ancient bronze clamps they’d gotten at a bazaar. I was dying without hands on me, without stimulation and release. I realized I wasn’t like normal people. I need sex. All different kinds of sex. After that, everywhere I went, I’d hook up. I’ve had sex on every continent, Lars. With men, women, man and woman at the same time, two men at the same time. I’ve calmed down now, I don’t get crazy like that anymore. But I still like new things. Things I haven’t tried yet. New people. How can I be married, Lars? How? Why would you want to marry me? I don’t want to hurt you.”
She made herself look at him, dreading what she’d see in his face. His normally calm gray-blue eyes had gone nearly black. She sensed, more than saw, his intense arousal in the split second before he spun her around and pushed her facedown over the log she’d been staring at a second before. It was a couple of feet thick, so her face didn’t quite reach the snow and her feet didn’t touch the ground. He yanked her pants down and kicked her legs as far apart as they’d go.
“You like my stories, Lars?” she shot over her shoulder. “You like hearing about all the things I’ve done? Did I tell you I’ve posed for a fetish photographer? I’m on the internet, if you know where to look.”
“No more.”
“What about the time a minor-league pitcher hid me in the locker room so I could blow him between innings?”
“Stop!” Lars ripped off his glove and fumbled between her legs. Katia knew she was dripping—remembering Morocco always turned her on—and Lars waited not a single second before driving into her, deep as he could go. She moaned at the impact. The heat of his body fought with the cold of the air nipping at her bare ass.
“Why, Lars?” she managed between his bone-jarring thrusts. “Can’t handle it?”
He rocked her against the log with his cock. No finesse, no art, just pure, stone-cold fucking.
She taunted him. “How’d you like your wife to strip for a living? I did that in Amsterdam. They loved me over there. And I loved feeling all those eyes on me. On my nipples, on my cu
nt. I’d get so wet, I’d nearly come right up against that pole. I’d run offstage when I was done and screw the first guy I saw. Or use my own hand.” Her words came in short little gasps as he sped up to a jackhammer pace.
“Stop,” he ordered with a strangled groan. He twisted his hand in her hair and pulled her head back. Her throat went taut. In this position, she couldn’t form words at all. In fact, she could barely breathe. The snowy woods blurred. Everything went soft and light. Things started to move in slow motion. A snow shower floated from a tree. A rabbit paused to look at her with wide eyes, then hopped away. A white haze turned everything to gauze.
The only clear thing was the hard pole ramming her from behind. Her body felt as if it were floating in midair. In nowhere. In her lightheaded, oxygen-deprived state, wild fantasies drifted through her head. She was a runaway maiden snatched by a giant in a magical forest. A nymph taken in the woods by a wild beast.
In the silent dusk, the grunts of the beast were loud as gunshots. The fresh smell of the bone-cold air joined with the pungent stink of male lust. Her nostrils flared, wanting more of that scent. Her back arched as her hips sought more of his hot flesh. He put his hand on her lower back so her belly pressed into the log. That move set off explosions inside her.
Then he let go of her hair. The blood rushed to her head. Everything snapped into its normal speed. Dizzy, she slumped over the log while he drew her hips up in the air and ground her sex against his cock. Tremors raced through her insides. Faster they gripped her, faster, faster, in time with the pounding strokes of the wild beast tearing her body apart.
“Oh, oh, ohhhh,” she cried in a rising shriek.
Lars grunted, primitive as a caveman. That primal sound drove her over the edge. Fuck me, fuck me, she chanted to herself, the words trapped inside her churning, dazed mind. She didn’t have to say it out loud, because Lars was right there with her, fucking her, fucking her, his balls slapping against the backs of her thighs, his powerful hands digging into the flesh of her hips, his cock filling her to completion and beyond.
