Mountain Man's Valentine

by Lauren Milson

  I just told Danny, my driver, that I wouldn’t need him anymore for the night. I hate calling him to come back after he’s already started home. It’s really fucking rude. He’s got his own life, and he needs to go home to put his babies to bed and catch up with his wife. Instead of calling him to come back I could just grab a cab and go downtown to one of the college bars. It’s springtime and the girls are falling over themselves right now for a high hard one, plus it’s still early and I can get one of the good ones. They’re always the first ones to get plucked from the bars.

  But fuck, I don’t want to troll for pussy tonight. Not anymore. Not since I saw Ava. I’m spoiled rotten by her.

  I walk up to my building and make my way through the revolving glass door. Eddie, the doorman, is sitting in the lobby with his feet up, reading the newspaper. He starts to get up to see if I need anything, but I wave at him to sit back down.

  “Evening, Mr. Ryan.” He tips his head and shakes out his newspaper, putting an ankle over his knee.

  “I told you a million times it’s Caleb,” I joke, striding past him toward the elevators. He’s an old school kind of guy, and he insists on calling us by Mr. or Ms. so-and-so. He thinks it’s a sign of respect. I say fuck that. It’s a sign of respect for everyone to be equals, no matter if you’re a doorman or a fund manager. I think I may have literally told him a million times to call me by my first name, and I’ll tell him a million more times if I have to. “Night, Eddie.”

  I hit the button for my floor once I get to the elevators. It’s a pretty modest building, and the one I grew up in. I could afford more, but I like it here. And it’s perfect for bringing women to. Perfectly located, and in the morning I can just pile them into a cab or if I really liked them, have Danny drive them to where they’re going and have him back in no time to get me to the office.

  It’s perfect.

  After what feels like an eternity in the elevator, I finally get into my apartment, my sanctuary, but I can’t focus. Something’s off, and I know exactly what it is.

  It’s Ava. It’s the fact that her sweet little pussy isn’t wrapped up tight around my cock right now, and she’s off somewhere doing anything else. It’s a fucking shame.

  And I was so close. I had her. And I don’t understand why she left, why I let her slip through my fingers like sand and disappear, melt into the crowd until I couldn’t find her.

  There’s something she didn’t tell me. There was something behind her eyes, something stopping her.

  Fuck, maybe she really was married and she she felt guilty as soon as I got her off.

  No, the way she looked at me with her sparkling eyes and how young and innocent she was, there’s no way she’s a married broad. She was too wet for me, too soft and sweet.

  I make my way into my bathroom and strip off my clothes. My cock’s been hard as a rock for the better part of forty minutes, and it bobs between my legs fucking comically as pad over to the shower across the cool tile floor. It feels good to be out of my suit.

  Fuck, my cock feels good free-birding in the cool air of my apartment. I can taste Ava’s bubbly sweet champagne on my lips still, competing with the harshness of my whiskey rocks. It’s nice. Maybe I should buy a bottle of it for her, switch it up.

  But I’ll never see her again. In a city of nearly eight and a half million damn people, I’ll be lucky if I ever even get to breathe the same air as her, which would be a blessing in itself, just to breath in what she’s breathing, see what she sees through her innocent baby blues.

  I reach into the shower and turn the faucet, making the water extra-hot. I should take a cold shower to calm the hell down, bring me down from the high of tasting Ava, but I want to ride this wave as long as I can. My cock aches for release, and I step into the tile and glass box, letting the water from the chrome shower head beat down on me like pellets of ice in a snowstorm. It’s so hot it almost feels cold, so cold that the hard stream of water is shocking my skin like embers from a fire, but it feels fucking good. Everything is heightened, and my thoughts are drowned out by the feeling of my heart thrashing inside my chest.

  The water rolls down my body in slick beads, washing away the dirty sweat from the evening. I palm my cock and twist my fingers around it, thinking of how close she was to this, how her body was begging me to bury myself deep inside her. I need to know what stopped her, why she said no, why she pulled herself away from me so suddenly. Fuck, I should have let her keep going when she had her fingers inches away from my zipper.

  I pump at myself hard like I haven’t gotten laid in weeks, even though I fucked one of the hostesses at my favorite Italian spot near Wall Street a few days ago. I made a point of getting her name because she was so beautiful, but now I can’t remember it. And I can barely even remember what she looked like. Everything is blocked out by Ava. I brace myself against one of the glass walls of the shower and my hand slips a little bit. I imagine Ava under me, bracing her body against mine, my hands exploring every inch of her soft, supple flesh, her curves moving under my fingertips.

  Shit, I pump at my dick faster as I think about the water slipping between us, the pure erotic energy of her skin dotted with pearls of moisture. I picture her tongue sliding across her top lip as she sinks down to her knees and opens up wide to take me all the way into the back of her throat. I imagine my dirty girl making long, deep strides against my cock as her tongue plays at the underside of my shaft, barreling me hard and fast toward a fucking explosion.

  I pump hard and don’t stop as I cum, my cock shooting out a thick, unencumbered load onto the floor of the shower, some of it getting on the hard lines of my belly. I freeze and struggle to catch my breath, and I almost forget I’m in the shower. I want to close my eyes and fall fast asleep right here, but there’s something missing, and it’s her. My girl, taken away from me too fucking soon, and I don’t know why. I never got to taste the sweetness of her cunt, to push myself into her and have her moan and beg and scream my name like her lips were made for doing.

  Finally regaining some fucking composure, I push off the wall with the hand that’s been mounted there since I got in. I squeeze some Diptyque shower gel into my loofah, and even though I just had a mind-erasing orgasm, I still can’t stop thinking about her in the shower behind me, her lips against my shoulder blade as she runs the scrubber over my skin, getting me fresh to climb into bed with her. The aftershocks of my orgasm erase everything...everything but her.

  This isn’t like me. When I cum, that’s it. I don’t have any feelings after that. It’s what I’ve trained myself to do over the past year. It’s what’s kept me safe inside the fortress I’ve built.

  This isn’t like me at all.

  And there’s nothing I can do to see her again.

  My self-imposed rule dictates that.

  That’s a fucking problem.

  6

  Ava

  “Yep,” I say, picking at my cuticles. “In the top drawer of the desk in the office by the guest room. Uh huh.”

  I lean back in my chair and turn my attention away from my chipped manicure and tip the cover of my Environmental Science book shut. I closes with a thwomp and I glance over at Zoe, spread out on her bed with all manner of printouts scattered around her, earbuds in and typing furiously on her laptop.

  What’s going on? she mouths at me. I roll my eyes and before I can tap my phone to end the call, my dad does it for me on the other end of the line.

  “Got to go,” I say, defeatedly. I have this midterm, and I’m not really great at science. It’s a requirement that I’ve been putting off, and I selected the intro class that seemed the most germane to what’s going on in the world currently. But damn, is it boring.

  Zoe peers at me over the top of her laptop and tugs her earbuds out.

  “Where are you going? You know midterms are this week. You’re the one who said we had to get the contraband coffee pot because we would be holed up in here and couldn’t leave even to get caffeine.”

&nbs
p; “I know,” I say, grabbing my short spring jacket. I’m so glad my big puffer is tucked away for the winter. “But my dad left this thing at the apartment, and he wants me to grab it and bring it to him.”

  “Thing?” Zoe arches an eyebrow at me and closes her laptop. “What kind of thing?”

  “It’s a report, or a document or something. I don’t know. But apparently it’s important enough that he needs it right this second.” I swing my bag over my shoulder and start toward the door.

  “Want me to come with you?” Zoe asks, but I can tell she doesn’t really feel like it. I don’t feel like going myself, and I won’t subject her to this, even though I know she’d come if I asked. “Isn’t this why people hire messenger services?”

  “Yeah, well, my dad isn’t very trusting. There’s no way he’d let a stranger into the house. So I guess it’s up to me. He couldn’t tear himself away from what he’s doing, so I guess I have to.” I start to leave in a huff.

  “And you don’t even get one of those cute messenger hats!” Zoe calls out as I lock our door behind me, putting me in a slightly better mood. I turn around and start toward the stairs, eager to just get this over with so I can come back and continue studying.

  It’s hard enough to concentrate on my studying with visions of what was hiding under Caleb’s suit dancing through my head. Every time I shut my eyes, I see a ripple of tanned flesh narrowing down into a V, and inside my imagination my eyes trail lower and lower until I see his strong hands undoing his belt slowly, the smooth leather popping out from the metal loops, until he pulls out his huge dick from inside his pants.

  And that feeling of regret has started to cease a little, but it still creeps in when I’m not expecting it.

  Drawing up my jacket around me, I come to the door at the end of the hallway and start to elbow it open, but there’s someone on the other side who gets there first. I step back with a startle and see it’s the guy from my glass who I had the unfortunate coffee date with.

  “I’m so sorry!” I say, softening up a little bit around the edges. He smiles and nods, mumbling a little greeting in response.

  He’s tall but thin - not at all what I imagine Caleb was like back in school. His shirt doesn’t fit him quite right. His torso is too long for his legs, and his pants could lose about an inch. He’s clean-shaven, and he’s not bad looking at all, with sandy, dark blond hair and light brown eyes. He regards me kindly, holding the door open as we meet in the middle.

  “Ava,” he says, “it’s nice to see you again.”

  “You too,” I say, ducking past him. I think back to our date, how nice he was when it came to coffee, and how his face turned bright red when I said I didn’t want to join him in his room. How his whole demeanor switched.

  I hear his tongue clicking behind me as I start down the stairs, feeling him still looking at me as I walk away.

  My stomach flips over as I get to the first floor, rushing to get out of the building. I’m unsure of what he’s thinking, but I don’t like how he keep oscillating between nice as a peach and pissed off at me. Whatever he’s thinking, I take it as confirmation that I did the right thing turning him down.

  Of course, I don’t know what not turning him down would have entailed. I guess some of my classmates have sex with people they don’t really know, who they meet at a party or an art show on campus. Hell, I know Zoe’s done it in the past, though she really doesn’t do it much anymore.

  But last night, at the party...I’m one of those people now, at least partially. I’m the girl who does sexy stuff with a random stranger, aren’t I? A sexy, tall stranger who tore at my panties and had me dripping wet for him...

  I struggle to push the thoughts out of my head, making my way to the subway on the corner to grab an uptown train to dad's apartment. I figure that I could take a cab, but at this time of the afternoon there’s probably enough traffic that the subway would be faster.

  Plus, I like the subway. I like the swaying of the train, the sound of the conductor announcing the next stop. I know despite the changes I have to face in my life, the stops on the subway will always be the same, even if sometimes a few stops have to be skipped.

  I make it onto the train just as the doors ding and start to slide closed. Squeezing on, I take a seat near the door. It’s miraculous that there’s a seat available.

  I lean my head back against the wall like I always do, and close my eyes, letting the gentle sway take me away. But leaning my head back makes me think of Caleb...how Caleb softly caught the back of my head last night when I rested my head on the wall behind me, unable to do anything else.

  What was that wonderful feeling I had deep in my stomach, and why haven’t I felt it before? It was so good and so light, and all I’m doing now is trying to push it away and forget it ever happened.

  But I can’t. I close my eyes softly and slip the fingers on my right hand around my wrist. I can feel his presence there. I can taste his mouth on mine.

  The train stops with a jerk and halts in the dark tunnel. The lights overhead dim and flicker, finally going dark, and the only lights illuminating the train are from the walls of the tunnel. It’s like I’m back in that hallway again with him, where no one can see us but we risk everything. It’s a rush, and I feel the blood in my body swiftly go to my head, that ache forming again between my legs.

  He was bold enough to take what he wanted, and I was enraptured enough to give it. Zoe was right. He knew what he was doing, and even though I didn’t know what I was looking for, he gave me what I wanted...what I needed.

  The train jerks forward again and I try to think about other things. This document I need to pick up and deliver to my dad, even though it’s almost five and if he had a normal job he would be packing up his things to go home now. Instead, it’s like he’s just starting his day.

  I try to focus up on more important things, like my Environmental Science exam. Zoe’s right, I swore that I’d lock myself in the room and not leave until I knew every last thing there is to know about climate change, sea levels, and all the species that just had their conservation status changed from endangered to vulnerable (the last part is for extra credit).

  But my body keeps bringing me back to last night. I toy with the idea of letting myself just go along with where my body wants me to go, but my mind keeps pulling me back to reality, forcing me to abandon my fantasy.

  I have more important things to focus on. My classes, getting into a good grad school. Maybe if I weren’t twenty one and still a virgin, it wouldn’t be such a big freaking deal and I could let myself go down this path in my mind.

  But I can’t stop, because I’ve never met anyone like him before.

  7

  Caleb

  “Gimme a sec, I’l be out in a minute.” I hang up the phone, shut my laptop down and slip it into my bag. I buzz Serena, the admin I’ve had since I landed here and inherited her from the guy whose office this used to be, before he retired and moved to South Beach.

  “What’s up, boss? You need me to grab anyone? Coffee?” her voice crackles brightly through the intercom.

  “Not tonight, Serena. I’m out. You can go if you want.”

  I move around my office, tidying up some files I’ll need for a meeting with some investors Monday, putting everything in a big pile like a prop. They say a cluttered desk is the sign of a cluttered mind, then what the fuck does an empty desk mean? I make everything look somewhere in between on purpose, even though I’m anal about keeping an organized desk.

  “You sure, Caleb?” Serena says with excitement in her voice. I know she’s just bluffing, that she probably already has her jacket on, had it on the second I told her I was leaving.

  “I’m sure. I’m shooting around tonight. I want to get in there before it gets too crazy with college kids.” I hang up, duck under my desk and palm my basketball, hooking it onto my hip as I walk over to the door. “Get out of here,” I say to Serena. “Go.”

  “Anything fun planned for the week
end?” Serena asks, getting out of her chair and pulling her raincoat on. She’s a pretty young girl, but I’m far too much of an ethical, stand-up guy to ever try something with her. I glance out the window of the executive suites, the floor I worked my ass to get to, and it looks like all the clouds have rolled away, leaving bright spring sunshine in their wake. Perfect weather for shooting some hoops.

  I hold the ball up in the air and indicate it with a wag of my eyebrows. “This is tonight. Nothing else for the rest of the weekend, though.”

  “That’s a pity,” she says sarcastically. I know what she means. She’s not the only person in my life who wants me to settle the hell down and get married. Everyone from my admin to my boss knows that I’m not close to it. They try to nudge me further along, try getting me close with the power of suggestion, but I’m fucking impervious.

  But I don’t get mad. They think there’s something unnatural about being a bachelor at my age, but I figure that if it’s good enough for Clooney, maybe I’ll follow in his footsteps and settle down later in life, if at all.

  For now, I have enough. Well, except for one thing. The girl I claimed and couldn’t keep.

  All that shit they say about loving something and letting it go? Maybe there’s some fucking truth to it. Not that what happened last night was love. It was pure sex, plain and simple. But I’ll be damned if I ever let something that good get away from me again.

  I furrow my brows, knowing that I’ll never have sex that good again, and fuck, I didn’t even get my dick wet.

  She was the only one who got wet.

  I’m about to adjust my growing cock when my buddy Mike comes striding down the hall, looking like something out of a scotch commercial.

  “Are you getting better looking?” I say as the sunlight coming through the windows flash against him.