by Serena Bell
She scowls. “I hate you.”
“So you’ve said.”
She disappears, returning a few minutes later with a dark expression on her face.
“For my going-away present, you’re taking me to the fanciest restaurant in Seattle.”
I groan, loudly.
And am grateful she’s walking ahead of me and can’t see me grinning.
Chapter 36
Liv
“I’m dead,” I wail. A few minutes ago we left the main trail, and now we are delving deep down a narrow side trail that seems to be getting more and more overgrown. Every part of my entire body hurts. I think I’d probably be crying, except there is no water left in my body. All of it has been excreted as sweat that has pooled between my backpack and my back.
“We have less than a mile to go.”
“I can’t.”
“You can. I guarantee it.”
“My feet are killing me. My hips are killing me. My shoulders are killing me. My neck is killing me.”
“Here. Try this. It’s an old chant, maybe army. It’s supposed to distract you and give you a rhythm. ‘Left. Left. Left my wife and forty-eight kids, right—’ ”
My steps are backwards from his counting, and I almost trip over myself, my feet are so leaden. “It didn’t work out. I was on my left.”
“Just put one foot in front of the other.”
I’m about to protest that I can’t, but it’s impossible to miss the logic of his command. We are in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the wilderness, and we’ve already hiked something like six miles. There’s no going back. Only forward.
Chase resumes the chant. “ ‘Right. Right. Right in the middle of the kitchen floor. Left. Left…’ ”
It’s more like stumbling than walking at this point, each step an act of faith that my foot will actually catch me. And somehow we keep moving forward, and then we emerge into a clearing and—
“Oh. Wow.”
There’s a small rocky beach and a crystal-blue lake, surrounded by spikes of mountain and dark green forest. The surface of the lake is still, and now that we’ve stopped clomping, I can hear all the forest sounds—the wind blowing through the trees, birds chirping, something that sounds like a frog.
He hoists his pack down and helps with mine.
“It’s beautiful.”
“You’re beautiful.”
I tear my gaze from the lake to discover his eyes on my face. He takes a step toward me.
I back away. I’m filthy and disheveled. There are leaves in my hair. My gray Lady Gaga shirt is drenched in sweat and smeared with peanut butter and dirt. My socks are damp, my feet blistered—
“Don’t you dare try to kiss me,” I warn. “I am so disgusting…”
“You are glorious.”
I think he might mean it.
“You’re crazy.”
“You hiked six miles. Aren’t you proud of yourself?”
“No. I’m crazy, for agreeing to this.”
“Take off your shirt.”
I glare at him.
“Take off all your clothes.”
The bossiness is secretly very sexy, but no way am I admitting that. “Chase, I am the grossest I have ever been in my whole life. There is no way I am having sex with you.”
“We’re not having sex. Take off your clothes.”
When I hesitate, he does it for me, peeling me out of my smelly, awful shirt that I may have to burn in the campfire tonight, rolling down my shorts—because they are so wet and sticky that they won’t slide.
“That is not camping underwear.”
I’m wearing black boy shorts with lace trim and a black lace bra.
His voice is stern, but his eyes are approving. It’s a good combo on him.
“I like beautiful things. So sue me.”
“I like beautiful things, too.” His gaze eats me up.
He grabs his T-shirt at the back of his neck and yanks it over his head in one smooth motion.
I’m not sure if it’s that distinctly alpha male gesture or the ripple of his abs that makes me woozy.
He unsnaps and unzips his hiking pants and drops them to the ground. Wearing only his gray knit boxer briefs, he scoops me up—every last tired, sweaty, disgusting bit of me—and, ignoring my protests and kicking, carries me into the lake and drops me in the water.
Every cubic inch of air gets sucked out of my lungs by the cold.
“You bastard!” I sputter, surfacing. “Oh my God, that’s cold! I’m going to die of hypothermia.”
He dives under, surfaces, and wraps his arms around me. “Let me warm you up. So you don’t die of hypothermia.”
He’s 100 million degrees of smooth skin over bunching muscle. I almost forget to hate him, because I’m so busy pressing myself as close to the heat source as I can.
Almost. “You are an evil, evil man.”
“Here’s what’s good about the icy lake.” He ducks his head, slips the cup of my bra down, and takes one rock-hard nipple in his mouth. The contrast between the heat of his mouth and the cold of the lake is electrifying. So electrifying that I shut up, clutch his head, and let him suck my nipples in turn, while his hand slides down the front of my panties. He finds my core with two fingers, his thumb circling my clit.
“God, Liv, you’re so hot.”
Circling, spiraling, the perfect pressure, the perfect rhythm.
I forget my extreme physical misery and come, thrashing, against him.
He wears the self-satisfied expression he always gets when he makes me come. Cat that swallowed the canary, all the way.
He tromps ashore, digs something from his pack, and returns with some camping soap and a washcloth. “I want you to know that this soap is a concession to you. It feels wrong to get clean on the trail. My ideal is three to four days of uninterrupted sloth and filth.”
“Thank you,” I say, not particularly graciously. But I get more gracious as he washes me, gracious enough that I find myself squeezing camping soap into the palm of my hand, cupping his balls in one hand to warm them while I get him off, slippery and slipperier, with the other.
My name echoes very nicely across the surface of the lake.
“Open-air hand job, achievement unlocked,” I murmur, making him laugh.
We get out and dry ourselves off with our dirty clothes—sigh—and then get into our warmest things.
“Grateful for a real sweater yet?”
I am, unbelievably cozily grateful, but of course I’m not going to admit it.
“You fell in the lake and you don’t have any extra underwear!” he crows.
I have to shake my head and roll my eyes.
We pitch the tent on a flat part of the beach. Okay, Chase pitches the tent while I more or less flap my hands and pretend to be useful. When he’s done laying the foam pads and sleeping bags inside, I pull a gauzy scarf from where I shoved it in the bottom of my backpack and hang it across the inside of the door. “Home sweet home.” I look at him triumphantly.
“You carried that all the way up here? Why would you—?”
“Just to annoy you—is it working?”
He can’t hide his smile.
We gather fallen wood and he builds a campfire on the beach. I watch. I wouldn’t have billed myself as a woman who could be snowed by Boy Scout tricks, but watching him kneel, broad-shouldered, and patiently coax flame from a little twirl of smoke—
Is it getting warmer, or is that the newly blazing fire?
We dry our clothes on a branch that conveniently overhangs the fire at a safe distance. He sharpens sticks with his Swiss Army knife (more points for both self-sufficiency and sexiness) and hands me one. As parts of the fire die to coals, we roast hot dogs.
“Where did you get these h
ot dogs? They’re really good.”
He laughs. “That’s the camping talking. Everything tastes amazing after a day on the trail. They’re just Oscar Mayer grocery-store hot dogs.”
Seriously, it’s the best hot dog ever.
The sun goes down while we’re eating—thank you, amazingly long Pacific Northwest summer days!—and the air’s cold now. I drag our sleeping bags down near the fire and climb into mine, wrapping it around me waist high. In the dark, it’s like something out of a book, the two of us sitting next to the fire, flames licking bright and cheerful. He gets out the s’mores makings and we spear marshmallows. Predictably, I suck at making s’mores and he has Eagle Scout–level skills. Two of mine go up in flames while he produces golden-brown perfection. He sandwiches it with a piece of dark chocolate between two half graham crackers, opens his mouth wide while I watch, drooling…
Then holds it out to me, intact. “Just kidding. It was always for you.”
Oh, my God, it’s good. I mean, gourmet good. Why don’t they serve this in restaurants more often as dessert? Like a big pan of graham crust with melty marshmallow and chocolate.
“O face,” Chase says, as I pop the last bite of s’more in my mouth.
His eyes are dark.
“What?”
“You make an O face when you eat something you really love.”
Something about the firelight slows time down, so when he leans in to kiss me I have an eternity to deliciously anticipate.
Chapter 37
Chase
Liv kisses me like I’m essential for her survival, like I’m food and oxygen both at once. Her mouth is sweet with marshmallow and chocolate, and her tongue tangles with mine like we’re wrestling. Something about the challenge of that gets me going, same as when we spar with words. It’s like I have to get the better of her, and in this case, that means I have to kiss her into submission. Kiss her till she can’t remember her name, or mine, or where we are.
My mouth still on hers, I unzip the sleeping bag that’s wrapped around her and spread it under her, easing her down. I release her long enough to open the other bag—
“Come back,” she whimpers.
I spread the other open bag over her and begin undressing her underneath it, pants first. She helps.
“Leave your shirt and your sweater on, but push them up. Take your bra off.”
“Not wearing a bra,” she whispers. “I wouldn’t be wearing panties, either, but my camping guru told me to bring only one pair of pants and I didn’t want to ruin them the first time you kissed me or touched me or talked to me or—”
I kiss her and remove the panties in question. They’re damp, which makes me want to bury my face between her legs, no preliminaries. But I promised I’d eat her out while the cold air pinched her nipples, and I don’t want to deprive her of any part of the camping experience.
I tug the sleeping bag cover up above her waist and she does as told, leaving her shoulders and belly covered but her breasts bare. Her nipples shrink and tighten in the cold. I kneel, bend close, and take them in my mouth, one, then the other, flicking the hard nubs with my tongue. She moans and clutches my head.
“The one you’re not sucking is so cold,” she tells me.
“Keep talking,” I instruct.
“It’s so tight it hurts. And I can feel the tingle all the way down. It’s like there’s a cord and when my nipple tightens, it pulls on the cord and my clit and my pussy feel it too.”
I make a choked sound.
“What is it? Me saying pussy? I don’t actually think of it that way,” she says matter-of-factly. “I usually say vagina, honestly, but you said pussy, so I figured that’s what turns you on. And whatever turns you on turns me on.”
“Convenient,” I gasp around her breast. My hand circles it while my tongue works the tip, and I’m so mindlessly hard it’s all I can do not to rub myself against her thigh, but if I do that I’ll be gone in a few good thrusts.
I crawl under the sleeping bag and reposition myself between her legs, the head of my dick—still clothed in boxers and hiking shorts—so close to the pussy in question that I can feel heat radiating. It’s hot under the covers, so I throw off my sweater and T-shirt, settling my bare chest against her belly and once again turning my attention to her gorgeous breasts. Overflowing handfuls, dark-tipped, incredibly sensitive—
She moans and thrashes, and I can feel her trying to get purchase on me, trying to get what she wants—friction, pressure, something to fill her emptiness. I slide farther down, breathing heat over her skin until I can tease my nose against her slit, the salty scent of her overwhelming my senses. I flick my tongue along the seam, and she cries out. I return my hands to her breasts, pinching her nipples hard, flicking them, while I let my tongue tease so lightly at her mound that it must be driving her fucking mad.
“Chase,” she begs.
There’s something so excellent about Liv begging. About Liv, who is so strong and so sure, reduced to this. So I do it more. I tease and tease, my tongue outlining the cleft over and over again, finding her clit more swollen with each pass but only barely touching where she needs me most.
“I hate you hate you hate you hate you hate you,” she chants, as I take my hands away from her breasts to part her lips, licking everywhere except her clit, teasing in circles that close in but won’t complete, making sure I touch every last sensitive surface with my lips and tongue. She lifts her hips and thrusts toward my face, she grabs my head and pushes, but I keep her right here, desperate and on the edge.
Then I raise myself up on my elbows and pull the edge of the sleeping bag back so I can see her face.
She glares down at me.
“Do you want to come?”
“Yes I fucking want to come.”
“Would you be willing to ask for it?”
“I want to come.”
“You can do better than that.”
“I’m going to get you back for this,” she says.
“I have no doubt,” I tell her dryly.
“Please, Chase. Please make me come.”
I squint at her. “More feeling.”
I resume my teasing, one hand once again circling her breasts but this time refusing to even touch the sensitive points, my other hand holding her open so I can apply the warmth of my mouth everywhere she wants me except her swollen clit.
“Please, Chase,” she begs, sounding much more like she means it. “Please, please, please—please make me come. God, Chase, you are such a fucking sadist, pleeeeeease!”
I oblige with an open-mouthed kiss to her pussy, my tongue circling in on its target, both my hands finding both her nipples, pinching, flicking, tweaking, until she’s thrashing under me and sobbing: “Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes oh my God, yes.”
It takes a while before she says anything else.
“This was a good day,” are the first words out of her mouth.
It wasn’t just a good day. It was a perfect day. Hiking in the woods. Eating by the side of a stream. Making camp by a lake. The swimming, the campfire, the hot dogs, the marshmallows.
This.
She clutches my arm. “I love this.” She gestures around us—the orgasm, yes, but also the campfire, the lake, the starry sky, the whole fucking forest—her sweep takes in all of it. “I didn’t think I would, but I do.”
I open my mouth. I’m not sure what I think is going to come out. I’ve done it, what I set out to do. I have made her love what I love, and surely, surely that means—
I love you.
Stay with me.
I open my mouth.
“Did you hear me?” she teases. “I admitted I like something you like. Aren’t you supposed to lord it over me?”
I stare at her.
Just say it. Just say it.
“Chase,” she
whispers.
She’s lying there, holding her arms out to me.
“Mmm-hmm?”
“I feel empty. I want you to fill me up.”
Oh, God.
Every single last thought flies out of my head.
I seat the swollen head of my cock against her wet heat, and press deep.
At first, she is sleepy and languid and relaxed under me, which is unbelievably sexy. Every time I push into her, she releases a soft little half-moan, and her breasts jiggle. Her mouth is open and her lids are at half-mast, and I think, I could do this all night.
But then at some point, her little half-moans break open into full moans, and her pussy starts gripping and squeezing me again, and she pulls her knees up and pushes her hips up and starts rocking to meet me—and that’s unbelievably sexy, too.
There’s almost nothing Liv can do that isn’t unbelievably sexy.
I wish I’d known sooner, just in case—
But right now, I can’t think about the past or the future. I can only think about heat and wetness, how red her mouth is, how blue her eyes are, how tight she is around me, the rhythm we’ve agreed on without any words, which is perfect, the perfect speed, the perfect depth (all of me, to the hilt, my balls meeting her body on every stroke so it’s like its own caress, sweet Jesus). Everything falls away—regret, fear, the forest, the sky, the rough ground beneath her—until it’s just the two of us, and then, when her jaw tightens and her eyes open wider with wonder and I know she’s going to come again, and I let myself tumble over the edge to meet her, even that distinction fades, and for a long, sweet moment, we’re one.
Chapter 38
Liv
I’m missing something. Something important. I’m in a hallway. Long. Vaguely familiar. Lined with bedrooms. Each bedroom, a child. Each child, vaguely familiar. But it’s confusing. The children don’t all belong together. The rooms don’t all belong together. The hallways don’t lead where I think they should lead. I wander. It gets darker. I hear sirens. The police will come and take me away and I’ll never find the thing that’s missing. I hurry, hurry, hurry, but I hear the door downstairs fly open, I hear the sound of voices, footsteps on the stairs, they appear at the top of the stairs, uniformed and faceless. I turn to run but they grab me…
