by Tia Siren
Maybe that will help.
Almost immediately, the tree gives another inch, then another, and I know I was wrong about the damn backpack making a difference. I’m going toppling into that ravine, pinned beneath a good-sized sapling. Several inches of the root structure slide from their holdings in the earth, and this is definitely it. Here we go. “Fuuuck!”
I’m dangling in open air, a plaything for the gods now, when, suddenly, I lurch to a halt. Everything lurches to a halt. I stop screaming and begin trying to figure out what’s happening. Isn’t this violating some laws of physics right now?
I scream again as I find myself dragged through the air and back onto semi-solid ground, all while hugging this naked ganglia of roots. I collapse when gravity no longer sucks at my feet, landing immediately in a deep puddle, completely coating my face in goop. Awesome. Doesn’t matter.
I splutter on my hands and knees as someone in front of me commands, “You’re all right!” and I find it oddly comforting that he can tell me that, even though he is just a disembodied voice as far as I’m concerned. The voice is deep and measured, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t yelling. “We have to get out of here!” I can’t really see because there’s mud in my eyes, but I do stagger to my feet and someone grabs my forearm tightly, drawing me forward with a firm grip. I lurch after him.
“Thank you,” I call. “I almost kind of died back there.”
“Yep,” the stranger agrees shortly. “It was incredibly stupid.”
“I’m Morgan Lewis,” I offer the stranger. “My name is Morgan Lewis. I’m… I’m… Thank you,” I finish dumbly. “Who are you?” I wish I could see him instead of stumbling after him in this downpour. But fuck it. I’m happy to be alive.
“I’ve got a tent set up at Diamond Lake,” he answers. “But I’m caught out here, too. I found this cave. The storm isn’t going to stop anytime soon, and we’re both soaked. And you’re filthy. We’re close. Don’t worry.” I’m grateful for the mysterious voice and the shadowy figure I only glimpsed for a second before dashing my face into the mud. “Please don’t tell me you’re traveling alone,” he says, and I think maybe I should lie to him. But then I realize he doesn’t sound so much curious as he does furious.
“Maybe,” I answer, like I’m trying to outwit a parent.
“Do you know how irresponsible that is?” the stranger growls. “Do you know how many solo hikers get mauled by bears every year? And you’re a woman!” he adds, like that actually exacerbates the threat of a bear attack.
“So?” I snap, digging my heels into the trail. Maybe I’ll be better off blinded and drenched than taking the help of this sexist, though I’m still oddly surprised when he does release my arm. I could have been hiking alone dozens of times. I haven’t been. But I could have been. “What, women can’t walk in the woods without an escort?”
I feel so stupid, arguing with my eyes squeezed shut, knowing beyond the shadow of a doubt that I’m caked in dirt from head to toe. I want to look at this guy so I can hate him more fully. And I hate that he can see me like this. I don’t care anymore that he might have saved my life. He immediately started yelling at me and pulling on me. That tiny mudslide could’ve happened to anyone! I’m not incompetent! It was very resourceful to grab that root! Maybe I saved my own damn life; did he ever think about that?
In the distance, water roars. I barely notice. I’m starting to really sting and burn with all the scrapes and scratches from the landslide. I feel marks on my cheeks, my chin, my chest, my arms, and my legs. Cold rain still pounds down on us, lightly hailing. I know he must be drenched, too, by now. He’s probably hungry. And exhausted. And I also probably scared the shit out of him, which is kind of nice. He clearly ran pretty far. He must’ve been moving very fast to make it in time.
It’s kind of incredible, actually.
“Look, lady, if there is some feminist hiking brigade, I doubt they want you to be their spokesperson,” he fires, and my heart simmers, knowing he has a damn fine point. “We’re there. You can take it or leave it.” I hear his boots treading over grainy earth, and my heart climbs into my throat at the thought of truly being alone again. I can’t even see…
“Wait,” I call out in a small, terrified voice.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he calls back from a distance. “I’m not going to leave you. You can’t even see.” He says that like it’s obvious, and I take great comfort in his empathy.
He didn’t have to help me. Standing on that loose, soft dirt was just as dangerous for him as it was for me—and it must have been hard work. He pulled me, and an entire tree, out of the air. He must be very strong.
“I’m just collecting some brush to dry out, in case we need a fire tonight,” the man explains. “There’s a small cave to your left. It’s pretty narrow. Hold on. I can guide you.” I hear scuffling and rustling, then, “No snakes. Come on in.”
In case we need a fire tonight? I wonder but I don’t say anything. It’s become clear to me that this man is the more experienced hiker. If he thinks we’ll be trapped here overnight, I’m inclined to believe him.
The stranger guides me in, grip gentle for the first time, and I hear soft splashing sounds, then feel a saturated cloth press to my eyes. “Let’s get your sight back,” he murmurs thoughtfully, rubbing and pressing again and again. It’s soothing, and I don’t mind that it takes several minutes. I let my head loll like a cat being petted. I don’t mind that it’s freezing in here. I’m just glad to be alive. Everything that just happened to us was amazing. I’ll never forget those beautiful and terrifying moments.
My lips still tingle from all the excitement.
“What’s your name?” I wonder as he works.
“Kai,” he answers. “Kai Rosemont.” Finally, my eyelashes come unglued, and I’m able to open my eyes without ruining them. Even though I can do the rest of this myself, he keeps gently mopping at my cheeks, clearing away the tracks of dirt. “There she is.”
I blink away the blurriness, and Kai’s features sharpen into view.
Oh my damn.
Crisp, bright blue eyes peer back at me from an unholy fringe of lashes. He’s young. I don’t know why I thought that he was older; his grip was firm, his hands rough, and his voice deep. But he can’t be over thirty. His hair is coal black, or maybe just wet. Regardless, it’s as trim and well-kept as his beard. I wish I could see more of his face. His red plaid flannel is drenched, plastered to his broad, chiseled chest. A few buttons are gone now and the shirt gapes open, showing a few inches of carved pectoral and the beginning of a colorful sleeve tattoo. There is a jagged patch of scar tissue, too. It disappears across his abdomen and into his shirt.
My eyes slowly trace him all the way to his damn boots, like I think he might not be real.
His jeans are soaked. His jeans and boots are caked in mud.
I look down at myself and experience an unwelcome swell of self-consciousness.
Every inch of my body is painted in dirt. I can feel the granules in my hair. My pristine white tank top looks like it got smeared in chocolate cake. My jeans are sodden and heavy with mud. My Timberlands—suede, wheat-colored, and over a hundred dollars—are ruined. I probably look like a cave woman to him.
I blink at Kai, subconsciously comparing our attractiveness levels—he’s a solid ten and I’m a seven when I’m not covered in mud and scratches—and then it hits me.
“You’re hiking alone, too,” I scoff. Even though I already decided that I don’t care if I’m cold, an uncontrollable tremble still rumbles beneath my skin. I wrap my arms around my torso. This little cave is frigid, even though we huddle right against its dripping mouth. “Don’t you know how many solo hikers get mauled by bears every y-y-year?” My teeth chatter as I sneer at him.
“That’s different,” he snaps at me, eyebrows lowering with annoyance. “I didn’t have a choice.”
“L-like, you started out with company, b-but then they all froze to death and d-d-drowned?” It ju
st pops out of my mouth. I’m such a bitch.
Kai glares. “You think you’re smart.”
“The New York T-Times thinks I’m smart,” I tell him.
He might have all the street smarts—or whatever street smarts are when there are no streets—but I’m an observant people-watcher. I’m a writer. Examining individuals and their motivations is my job. I kind of want him to ask me about the comment, so I can prove myself to him as an intellectual, but he doesn’t take the bait.
Instead, he looks at me and says, “You should seriously take off those clothes.”
2
Kai
“Wh-what?” Morgan asks me to repeat myself, trembling hard in her own embrace.
“I’m not trying to be… you know,” I tell her. And I’m not. She’s a traveler in distress, for Christ’s sake. Of course I’m not trying to see her tits. But she could get hypothermia. Look at her, in her standard-issue Tims, covered in mud and scrapes. Trying to see her naked would be like trying to see an abandoned puppy naked. I’m way more concerned with her survival than I am with the fact that I can easily make out the shape of her high, full breasts in that soaked tank top. I’ve hardly noticed how long and voluptuous her legs are. I’m more concerned with the scratches running down them. All of that could get infected.
I haven’t noticed how her nipples look like marbles pressed against the tight tank top.
Morgan must be so cold, and all I can think about—for just a split second—is cupping her clammy breasts in my warm palms, heating her up the old-fashioned way. Sweat blooming on her skin as she shudders and stretches open for me. We could fill this cave with warmth just as fast as a natural fire.
A sudden throb down to my prick forces my eyes away from my newfound companion. I can’t be like this right now or it could get us both killed. We’re still miles away from the lake, and every year, hikers die in this park. Most of them are horny men making bad decisions.
But when her prismatic amber eyes blinked open for the first time, they got me like a stun gun. I’m still feeling the aftershocks from that. When I first saw her, she was a traveler in distress, almost genderless to me. But after looking into her eyes, I realize that she’s a woman… a beautiful woman who is soaking wet. Damn it, Kai! Shut up! Stop thinking with your cock!
Because right now, her honey-colored eyes are bulging with alarm as she quivers in a little ball, arms wrapped around herself ineffectually. Focus.
She needs dry clothes. Now. She’s too small to handle the sudden temperature drop. She might even be going into shock.
“I have a change of clothes,” I offer to her. “They’re dry. They’re in my pack.” I root through my bag and pull out a pair of long, thermal underwear in black, then a white Henley, my favorite. They’ll consume her like blankets but that’s good. I’m not trying to see her body in relief anyway.
“Th-those aren’t c-c-clothes,” Morgan complains. “Th-th-that’s jammies.”
I raise an eyebrow at the princess. “It’s all I have. Take it or leave it.” I’m not bluffing. There is no second option really.
She peers back at me and tilts her head to the side. She trembles harder now. “Wh-wh-what about y-you?”
I’m freezing, but I don’t let it show. I hold out the clothes in a bundle in my fist. “I’m fine,” I lie. It’s not summer. This is late September in upstate Washington, and Blackridge Mountain is known for its plummeting nighttime temperatures, among other dangers. I can’t believe this woman came alone. I’ll be fine, though. I’ve survived worse.
“Th-there’s n-n-nowhere for me to ch-ch-change,” she says, though I feel her take the clothes from my hand. I don’t look at her. I don’t want to muddle this exchange with my more basic instincts right now. I’m still trying to talk my boner into a state of compliance. I didn’t notice the way her nipples speared her shirt until I looked into her eyes for the first time but now, her pebbled nipples taunt me.
I squeeze my eyes shut and twist to turn my back on her fully. “Just change,” I tell her, half-snapping. “I won’t look.”
She sighs but she doesn’t say anything else, and I hear the rustle and drop of her heavy clothes.
My dick gives another pulse against my jeans, and I wish I did have another change of clothes. I’m going to be freezing tonight unless we can get a fire going—and that all depends on how quickly this brush can dry out.
“What are you doing on Blackridge Mountain, anyway?” I wonder, just to cover the tantalizing sound of the clothes rustling and brushing over her bare skin. I’m not like this. I’m not this guy. It’s the cave, amplifying every little sound.
“Um, I’m a wri-writer,” Morgan explains. More cloth slithers over her skin. “I wrote a s-series of novels about Blackridge. 'Untamed. Have you heard of them?”
“Can’t say that I have.” I imagine adventurous, wild tales about starving mountain lions and avalanches blanketing cabins, men who carry long-range rifles, and women in gingham.
“Well, I’m here to inspire myself,” she breathes, sounding much better already. “I’ve had writer’s block for about six months now, and it’s driving me crazy. You can turn back to me now,” she invites, and I twist to look at her, draped and swallowed in all my nightclothes like a little girl. My heart gives up a funny squeeze at the sight. Her dark hair is starting to dry now, and it falls around her shoulders in a kinky, crunchy mass of waves. I can see the dirt in it. The poor thing needs a bath. Tracks of dried mud trace down her throat and disappear in my white Henley, which doesn’t completely erase her breasts from view. They’re too high and too round, impressing the cotton before it falls like a tent over her stomach. The long john pants are also comically baggy on her, though they do fit the apex of her hips… meaning that I have a tantalizing window into one narrow strip of alabaster skin, just every now and then, inches away from her bared sex. I’m not thinking about that.
I’m probably just hungry. Famished, now that I think about it.
“What about you?” Morgan wonders. She settles beside me and I bristle, not expecting it. She smells like a provocative mixture of the wilderness and me. “You’re soaked,” she notes, able to see it clearly now that she’s in dry clothes. “And cold.”
“I weigh twice as much as you do,” I remind her. I don’t make eye contact. “We should clean your scratches. You got some good ones. I have a kit in my bag.”
Morgan nods. “You’re pretty smart,” she says, still sounding dazed. She must have forgotten that I never answered her earlier question.
She leans back on the rock slope and I trace her every abrasion and laceration with my wet rag, then with antiseptic fluid on gauze. She cringes every time, so I don’t let myself look at her face. I have to do this.
I start at the bottom and work my way up. There’s a good one running down her left leg, and she hitches up the long johns. She moans softly at the pain and squeezes her eyes shut, pressing her lips together as I clean it. I move up to her arms, where most of the damage is, and delicately clean every scratch on her fingers. The abrasion on the top of her chest. A few nicks across her face: one on her forehead, one on her cheek, and one on her lip.
As I tend to her face, she closes her eyes and still frowns, murmuring to me as the gauze touches each patch of open skin. I let myself absorb her beauty without guilt for the first time since meeting her. I decide that there’s nothing wrong with me; any man would’ve been thrown into an ethical conundrum while commanding her to undress. I look at her freckles, her jawline, her pink lips, which seem to jut out to me, just begging for a kiss. But I don’t kiss her. Of course not.
She’s a traveler in distress. Practically genderless.
Anyway, I was in the Marines for eight years. I can handle a night in a cave with some soft-skinned writer I literally had to fish from the jaws of death. Who sees a hailstorm converging with that kind of speed and just keeps walking? I can handle this… easy. This girl must be as soft as cream pie. Not my type.
I s
lide my thumb, slick with ointment, over her scratches.
First, the leg.
She purses her lips and calls out against her own closed mouth. I tell myself it’s not hot. It’s not hot at all.
I gloss ointment over her fingers, her arms, the abrasion at the top of her chest.
Her eyes are closed, and I could swear that her chest rises and falls with unusual speed as I do it. I can hear her breath. It seems to fill the cave.
Are we thinking the same thing?
No. No. I’m out of my mind. It’s just been too long.
I sweep my thumb over her forehead, over her cheek.
My thumb traces the last wound—a nick right on the cusp of her lower lip—and her eyes flash up to me, opening suddenly and fastening right to mine. My cock thrums and fills immediately. I cannot help it. When her eyes are on me, I’m just there, ready to go from out of nowhere.
I pull my hand away from her cheek and it might just be my imagination that her chin and jaw tilt, fighting the separation.
We stare at one another, seeing something for the first time, and I blurt, “Are you hungry?”
“Famished,” she replies.
A little smile tugs at one corner of my lip. “Famished,” I echo. “Good word.”
“I am a writer,” she reminds me proudly.
I dig through my bag and pull out tins of beef jerky and crackers. I unscrew each cap and we divide them, picking through them together, as if each tin is a bowl. We don’t talk much at first, busily filling our mouths. The salt and the chewy texture do alleviate some of the pressure to sink my teeth into something. My eyes go to Morgan in glances.
“I’m thirty,” she says. “Went to college at Princeton.”
“Princeton, really,” I say, because it seems like what I should say. I have no interest in telling her my backstory. I survived two wars without a scratch, just to come here and have a near-death experience. I’m a workaholic with trust issues. I’m not one of you beautiful snowflakes. “They didn’t teach you about the importance of packing your lunch at Princeton?”