by Tanya Chris
“Right,” Derek said, leaning over me to grab a shirt, although that hadn’t been my intention.
Alone in the tent, I swiped a fresh layer of deodorant over yesterday’s sweat, then changed into capris and a tank top. The hell with my flabby underarms—today I was going to be cool.
I added a long-sleeved shirt for warmth until the day heated up, then pulled my hair into a stubby ponytail on top of my head. The Pebbles look was the only one my bangs were long enough to pull off.
Derek came back just as I finished dressing and I left him to pack up the tent while I made a trip to my favorite camping amenity. Using an outhouse was starting to seem like a small price to pay to have the things I wanted—climbing, camping, Derek.
After breakfast and that all-important cup of coffee, we headed to the crag. Derek took me, splitting off from the others.
“Where’s Jenny going?” I asked, following his back up the stone steps leading towards the rock face.
“With Conrad and Leon. They’re going to do some hard stuff at one of the other crags.”
“Don’t you want to do the hard stuff?”
“We’ll catch up with them later. Right now, I’m going to teach you to lead.”
“Oh.”
Learning new things was good. Being independent was good. But I wasn’t sure about leading. Leading was dangerous. And hard.
“Nothing hard,” Derek said, knowing without turning around where my head had gone. He brought me to the spot we’d started in the day before and threw his pack at the base of the easier route.
“This is only a seven,” I pointed out. Yesterday I’d climbed that one ten.
“Like I said: nothing hard.”
I’d climbed the route easily the day before. It definitely wasn’t hard, but knowing that the rope wouldn’t catch me immediately if I fell made it feel a lot harder. When I got to the point where I needed to climb past the first bolt, I froze.
“Do you see the next bolt?” Derek asked.
“Yes.”
“Just climb to it. One bolt at a time.”
“What happens if I fall?”
“You’ll go for a little ride. It’s fun.”
“I won’t die?”
“Not on my watch,” he said, his voice amused but certain.
I struggled with moves that ought to be easy, applying too much pressure, passing over small holds that were perfectly good for bigger holds that were too far away, clinging with my hands when I could have balanced my weight over my feet. My perch on the rock was tenuous. It felt like a breeze could shake me off. All my attention narrowed down to the rock—the rock in front of my face, the rock against my hands, the rock beneath my feet.
“Clip the bolt, Lissie,” Derek said from a long ways away.
“What?”
“The bolt. It’s just to your left.”
I cautiously turned my head to the left, adjusting the focus of my eyes to take in a larger area. Yes, there it was. I clipped it, relief surging through my nervous system. What had been a difficult posture to maintain moments before was now casual. I leaned my forehead against the wall, enjoying the chill.
“Nice,” Derek said. “Now just do that again. See the next bolt?”
I looked up, spotted it, and nodded.
“Don’t lose sight of it. I can’t always see them from down here.”
I nodded again and started climbing, more purposefully this time. If I kept moving, I could get to the next bolt before the paralyzing fear of being too far away from the last one had a chance to sink in.
Near the top, I reached a spot I remembered from the day before. There was a long reach up to the next good hold—not a hard move, just a long one. The last bolt I’d clipped was at the same level as my waist. No harm could come to me now. But if I stood way up to grab that next hold, I’d be a few feet higher. And if I didn’t catch it and I fell ...
“You’ve got this,” Derek said, noticing my hesitation.
I could reach the next hold. I was pretty sure of that. I just wasn’t one hundred percent sure.
“What if I want to come down now?”
“Then you’d lower off and I’d finish the route and clean our gear.”
“You wouldn’t be mad?”
“Me? Of course not. Would you?”
“Be mad at you?”
“At yourself.”
The answer to that was yes. I looked up at the good hold and then I looked past it to the next bolt. I’d used a pit toilet. What couldn’t I do?
I stood way up and caught the big hold. Yes.
With confidence surging back into my arms, I finished the route. I clipped into the anchor at the top with a whoop of victory. As Derek lowered me to the ground, my nerves tingled with adrenalin. I’d never felt more alive. I threw my arms around him.
“Congratulations.” His hands slipped down my back to hold me tighter against him. The urge to press my mouth against his raced through me. His eyes softened; his gaze moved to my lips.
From behind us came the sound of feet heavy from the weight of loaded packs crashing through the underbrush. I separated myself from Derek as a group of climbers traversed the path behind us, their eyes angled up towards the rock.
“Thanks for teaching me how to lead,” I said when they’d passed. “That was amazing.”
“You’re amazing.” He tugged at my top knot with a rueful smile, then turned away. “Now let me see if I can climb this route you led.”
Chapter 15
Derek pulled up in front of my house and shifted into park.
“Will you come in?” I asked him. “I need a shower, and I need you. In that order.”
He turned off the car—an unspoken yes. I got out and walked around to the trunk and in an instant he was beside me, pulling my bags from the trunk and shouldering both of them despite my protests.
“You can drop those here. There’s a bathroom in there if you need a minute.” I gestured towards the door to our right. “Come upstairs when you’re done.”
I left him standing in the foyer, the bags still across his shoulders. I went upstairs and used the toilet in the master bathroom—ah, indoor plumbing—then opened the door so he’d know he was welcome and turned on the water.
Once it was the right temperature, I looked around and found him leaning against the wall outside the bathroom. I took him by the hand and drew him in.
Remembering what he’d told me about that last girl in college—how he hadn’t been able to perform—I wondered if it’d been a mistake to come on to him, but it was too late for second thoughts now.
I lifted his shirt over his head—his bare chest nothing new between us—then ran my hands over that chest, across his shoulders and down his back. Looking wasn’t new, but touching was.
I stepped in closer, brushed my nose lightly against his neck, felt his shudder.
With my hands on the bow fastening the laces of his board shorts, I paused. His eyes were lowered, his hands lay passive at his sides. I pulled on a strand and watched the bow unravel. Moving with deliberation, I separated his fly, letting my fingers brush the cock beneath the laces. It wasn’t hard, but it was growing.
When I pushed his shorts down, taking the boxers beneath them down at the same time, he finally moved. He leaned over to loosen the straps on his sandals, then stepped out of sandals, shorts, and boxers all at once. He stood before me fully naked, shell-shocked but not trying to shield himself. I took a moment to enjoy the sight of nothing but Derek, my eyes lingering on his cock, now almost fully hard.
“Mmm,” I said, appreciating its smooth symmetry. It jumped to full attention, as though it knew I was calling to it. I reached behind him and ran a hand all the way down his back to cup his ass. Then, because he’d reacted to it the first time, I skimmed my nose along his neck again. He inhaled sharply and his hands came up to my arms. I licked his earlobe, felt his hands tighten.
“Shower,” I reminded myself.
I yanked my tank top over my head
and dropped my capris and panties. Before I could step over the tub, Derek lifted me into it as though I weighed no more than Lyla, then came in after me.
It was an inefficient shower. We dallied, fondling each other with the excuse of soap. When I picked up the shampoo bottle, he took it from me, pouring some into his hand and lathering it into my hair. His fingers massaged my scalp. He turned me into the shower spray, one arm supporting me along my back, the other rinsing the suds. I wondered if Emily had taught him to do this—all that blonde hair.
He turned back to the array of bottles along the shower shelf, picking them up and sniffing at them until he found my conditioner.
“This is you. I could smell it on you last night.”
“I probably smelled like sweat last night.”
“You smelled delicious.”
He worked the conditioner through my hair. I relaxed into him. I wasn’t sure what I’d been expecting when I set out to seduce him, but it wasn’t this.
When he’d rinsed out the conditioner, I couldn’t think of any reason to stay in the shower except to stall. I tamped down my nerves and turned off the water. His eyes shot to mine, showing me he had nerves of his own, but his cock, which had been hard since I’d released the laces shielding it, didn’t balk.
He stepped out of the tub, then reached back to lift me out of it the way he’d lifted me into it. I took two towels from the cupboard and handed him one, but he spent more time drying me than himself, softly patting me from top to bottom, even kneeling to rub each leg and foot. Sitting back up, he landed eye-level with my pussy, stopping there. He took a deep breath through his nose.
Both aroused and self-conscious, I put my hands on his arms and pulled him up until we were eye to eye, holding each other, his hands on my hips.
“I have to comb out my hair,” I said, very non-sexily.
He let go of me immediately, but it took me another moment to let go of him. Nerves were warring with desire, both insisting I press forward. I jittered my way through my post-shower routine as quickly as I could.
When I turned, he was watching me, leaning against the wall outside the bathroom like he had been twenty minutes ago but now naked and hard. I took a step toward him and he met me partway, sweeping me up into his arms and carrying me out of the bathroom.
He put me on my feet in the bedroom, drawing the towel from me and dropping it on the floor. Simultaneously, we took a step closer to each other, our bodies bumping, his erection pressing against my stomach. I put my hands on his face and pulled it to mine.
He exploded. Up to that point he’d been gentle, even timid, but when my mouth touched his, something in him snapped free. His tongue was in my mouth, urging mine to open wider. His hands were on my ass, dragging me up and into him.
I tried to slow the kiss down, accustomed now to Nate’s teasing, languorous seduction, but Derek wasn’t Nate. Nate tasted, sipped, savored. Derek was starving. He tore into me with savage wolf bites, wanting it all right now.
I only realized that he’d been walking us back towards the bed a moment before we fell into it. Side by side when we landed, we rolled with his passion so that first I was over him and then I was under him. He pulled away enough to get a hand between us, going straight for my pussy, his shoulders jerking when he felt my wetness.
He broke the kiss and burrowed his face into my throat, his breath ragged. “God,” he choked out. “You don’t know ...”
I wiggled my way out from under him. He flung a hand out to grab me as I crawled across the bed, catching my ankle. I laughed.
“Not going anywhere,” I said. I opened the drawer of the nightstand and pulled out a box of condoms. Removing one, I held it out to him. He frowned at it, then sat up and took it.
“We don’t have to put that on right now.” My hand reached for his cock. In all that frenzied motion, I’d barely touched him.
Derek watched as I slid my hand up and down his shaft, trying to mimic the rhythm Nate had taught me.
While Alex was circumcised and Nate wasn’t—meaning their flaccid penises looked nothing alike—their erections were of a similar size. I’d only had a few lovers before Alex, but I’d come to think of that size as normal. Which would make Derek something else. Not so big as to be intimidating, his cock was nevertheless impressive—round, hard, smooth, the head projecting formidably beyond the shaft. I hoped the condom was going to fit.
Derek seemed happy enough with my stroking—he’d stopped watching, laying back against the bed with his eyes closed and his expression somewhere between tortured and content—but I felt awkward, as I always did when trying to give a hand job, so I decided to move on to what had become my strength. I shifted around his body until my mouth was positioned for the first long swallow.
He jumped. Levitated, almost. I smiled around his cock and kept sucking, trailing saliva up and down his shaft. He grabbed me by the arms and hauled me up to him, flipping me over onto my back. My eyes flew open, my breath leaving me in a whoosh of surprise. What the hell?
“I’ve got about fifteen seconds of that in me.” He took a deep breath. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. I’m trying to keep this under control.”
I shook my head, startled but not scared. His passion was a powerful aphrodisiac. I was hungry to feel it inside me.
I tapped the condom he still grasped with tightly-curled fingers. He opened the packet and rolled the condom down over his cock, then rolled onto me, framing my head with his elbows and dipping down to brush his mouth along my neck.
“Sorry,” he whispered as he entered me. He slid easily through my wetness despite the extra length and girth. Before I could ask him why he was apologizing, he showed me.
Abandoning tenderness and timidity, he fucked me furiously, but briefly. His neck arched backwards as he came, a single strangled cry bursting from him, his chest pressing mine into the bed.
He lowered his head onto my shoulder. “I can do better than that. Give me ten minutes.”
I wiggled. Nate would have taken the hint and had his head between my thighs, but Derek only pulled out. None of this had gone at all the way I’d planned.
He rolled off of me and removed the condom, holding it out like it was a questionably dead snake. I took it from him and tied a knot in it like I’d seen Nate do and tossed it in onto the nightstand. I really needed to get a waste basket for my bedroom.
“You and Emily didn’t use condoms,” I guessed.
“The first time, maybe. She was on the pill. You’re not?”
“No.” I squelched the painful memory of the decision Alex and I had made to stop using birth control. “Even if I were, there are other considerations.”
“Well, I haven’t had sex in three years. I think I just proved that.”
“I have,” I said. “I do. I am.”
“Like when?”
“Like Thursday.”
“Who ... ?” he trailed off, shaking his head.
I’d fucked up. Nate had at least made clear the terms of our relationship before we’d consummated it. I’d engaged with Derek without warning him of the rules of engagement. Nate had cleared me to sleep with Derek. Derek had agreed to nothing of the kind.
I was appalled by my insensitivity, but dwelling on it wouldn’t help Derek.
“I’m sorry. I should have said this before.” I took his hand and he let me. “I’m really attracted to you, and I wanted to act on it, but I’m not looking for a serious relationship right now. Or even a monogamous one. I thought, you being so much younger than I am, that you might want the same thing I did. You’d be free to—”
“Fuck around like you’re fucking around?” He yanked his hand out of my grasp. “Yeah, I’m going to run right out and do that, just like I’ve been not doing it for three years.”
“OK, that’s a fair point.” I tried to remember why this had all made sense in my head before. Or maybe it hadn’t made sense.
“Maybe I just wanted you,” I admitted. “I told myself i
t would help you, free you from the inertia you’ve been stuck in, but maybe I wasn’t considering you at all.”
“I was stuck.” Some of his anger seemed to drop away. He took my hand up again, remaining silent as my pulse ticked off the seconds.
“Today,” he said, speaking so softly I had to shift closer to hear him, “when you first ... I was so ... excited? Terrified?” He shook his head. “I don’t know the word for it. I couldn’t breathe and my heart wasn’t racing—it just froze.”
He fell silent again, his thumb stroking across the back of my hand the only movement between us.
“I wouldn’t have ever ...” He looked up at me, his dark eyes bright but unbearably sad. “Thanks.” He leaned in and kissed me lightly on the lips, then stood.
“No!” I grabbed him around the waist and swung him with more strength than I knew I had back onto the bed. “No, don’t leave.” I kissed him on the face, the chest, anywhere I could reach while holding him down. “Please, Derek. Please?”
“Please what?”
I frantically searched for the key to talking him into giving me a second chance. Not ego—he wasn’t Nate. Not sex—he’d proven he could go without. What was Derek’s Achilles heel?
“You said you could do better.”
He flinched and looked away.
“Show me.” I injected a touch of wistful disappointment into my voice—poor Lissie, left hanging.
“You don’t need me. You have—”
“I need you. Right now. You.” Between words I nibbled and nosed at his ear, hearing his breathing deepen. “Don’t leave me like this.”
I brought his hand to my thigh, letting his fingers find the wetness that had trickled its way down my leg. He followed the trail upwards, curling his fingers into my pussy like it was the one good hold on a slippery route.
“Make me come, Derek. Show me how good it can be.”
He rolled me over. His eyes were fierce, his cock straining up against me. Too fast again, I thought. I put my hands on his shoulders, pressing him lower.
Nervous. He looked so nervous as he brought his mouth to a nipple, his hand returning to my pussy. His tongue licked at my breast like it was a melting ice cream cone while his fingers stroked in circles that ranged from feather-light to over-aggressive without ever quite hitting the mark.
