by Tia Siren
I just don’t want to spend more time with her. Not now that I’ve decided everything. I don’t really know her. We have two totally separate lives. We’re separate types of people. The sex was unquestionably fantastic, but using it as a foundation would be naïve.
“That’s crazy,” Morgan says. “You don’t have a plot but you have a tent and a sleeping bag. I have a plot but no tent or sleeping bag.” Her face lights up. “Maybe you’re right about the Universe, huh?”
“Maybe,” I say. “You wouldn’t mind letting me set up camp on your land?”
“Are you kidding me?” Morgan’s eyes glimmer up at me excitedly. “Let’s get started!”
We unpack the tent together and I instruct her on how to assemble one, since it’s immediately obvious that she not only has limited experience hiking but also camping. I tell myself that it’s not cute; it’s a hindrance. It’s a nuisance. She annoys me further by taking direction perfectly and the tent goes up without any real problem. Night falls around us and she suggests that we build another fire. That is a good idea. “I’ll collect some kindling, then, and meet you back here,” she says, venturing off into the surrounding wood. She might not be too experienced in the wilderness but that optimistic, observant spirit has served her well so far… with the exception of that landslide.
But she is right. That could’ve happened to anyone.
I dig through my backpack for anything to speed the kindling process, finding my lighter and Morgan’s little black notepad. There’s probably still some dry pages in here—more today than last night—we can rip out to help start the fire.
I flip open the notepad and start rifling through the pages, searching for one that is both blank and dry. But all the dry pages are covered in Morgan’s penmanship. I don’t mean to read them but my eyes skim the words without really trying, and then my own name grabs me.
Kai could be a burly mountaineer or a ranger of some kind. His body is carved into perfection, and his eyes are blue crystals. Rough hands, firm voice, could be a lumberjack or a hunter… a hunter with a scar from a bear attack that still haunts him…
I stare down at the notepad, unable to believe my fucking eyes.
She wrote about me?
She took notes on my personal story? My scar?
And this is supposed to be her “women’s” fiction? A map of my naked body? A history of my private stories? What the hell?
“Hmm, sounds manipulative,” I remember telling her when she boasted about understanding people and how to use their own motivation to get them in the right position to be used.
Just like me.
I thought I was fucking her… but she was fucking me even more.
“Oh, don’t use that,” Morgan breathes behind me, sounding exhilarated and cheerful. “I filled it up this morning.” She stoops at the rim of the fire pit and fills it with pinecones and dead leaves and sticks, smiling to herself, not really looking at me. “That stuff is very private,” she purrs suggestively, finally looking at me. She’s got bedroom eyes on.
I glare back at her and let the notepad fall into the dirt at my feet. I stand fully. “Yeah, no shit.” My tone betrays every trace of indignation in my body right now. “I didn’t realize you were interviewing me last night.”
“I wasn’t,” Morgan says, still smiling, watching me with a mild confusion. The smile fades at the corners of her lips. “Are you okay?”
“Are you kidding? Look at this!” I snap, snatching up the notepad and reading the character bio she wrote—based on me—verbatim. I flip to the next page and keep reading, invigorated by how right I am. “‘His prick feels like a hot water balloon popping when he comes inside her,’” I read loudly, forgetting all about the other campsites that I’m sure can hear us. “Inside who, Morgan? Inside you?” Her eyes turn glassy with misery as I read on. She knows that I have every right to be furious. “Why is this written in the goddamn… third person? This is an invasion of my privacy!”
“Wait, let me explain,” she pleads. “First, I was going to change all the names, of course.”
“I thought you wrote, like, frontier sagas!”
“What? No. Who would buy that? I write romance.”
Then it hits me.
“Well, I’m here to inspire myself… I’ve had writer’s block for about six months now, and it’s driving me crazy.”
I guess it should feel good to be used for my body—I’ve always been told that men don’t take offense to it the way that women do—but, it turns out, everyone is wrong. Men do take offense to being used for their bodies. At least, this one does.
“So, when you came out here to be ‘inspired’… did you mean ‘impaled’? On some ranger’s cock? This was all just some experiment, wasn’t it? What, like, research?”
“Excuse me?” Morgan hisses, crossing the hearth to jab her finger against my chest, thrusting her little chin at me like she wants me to fight her. “I did not come here looking for sex. That was just a happenstance. What, did you think I planned that landslide? You said it yourself. The Universe sends us what we need, when we need it.” She hesitates for a moment and adds, “I can’t help what you brought out in me.”
“Oh my god.” I cruelly guffaw and shake my head at her. I’m such a dick. “I can almost see the tag-line on the paperback now. ‘I couldn’t help what Kai brought out in me.’ And then Fabio on the cover. You’re going to put me in some corny bodice ripper, aren’t you?”
“Do not make fun of me,” she seethes. “I’m a real writer.”
I know I’ve hit a nerve, so I drive into it with everything I’ve got.
“That story? That story I told you? That was the story of my life, Morgan. It deserves to be in a real book.”
Her face flushes red. “You don’t know me, Kai,” she promises. “I write real books. I’m amazing. You would be lucky to be immortalized in the pages of my work.”
Seeing the combination of pain, anger, and pride in her eyes brings my ego down a notch, and I experience a pang of regret for laying into her passion so hard. I just wanted to hurt her the same way she hurt me. That desire ebbs quickly, though.
“How could you take notes on the sex?” I whisper, speaking more gently now. My eyes implore hers. “That was special, Morgan. That was just for us.”
She pauses and her eyes soften, too. “You thought it was special?”
“Hey!” a distant camper shouts to us. Across the quiet, serene wilderness, the words echo, and I realize how audible our entire fight must be. “I’ve got kids over here!”
“Wait,” another camper’s voice floats across the lake. “Was it special, Kai?”
“Speak up!” a third camper’s voice floats across the lake. “They can’t hear you in Canada!”
Laughter tinkles from the far shore and my heart sinks, peering down at Morgan. I don’t care about what everyone else has to say. I care about her. “I would never just take your story and publish it without your consent, Kai,” she whispers.
I glower. That doesn’t make any damn sense. “So, you were going to ask me for permission after you took notes on everything?”
I shake my head and take a step away from her. So close, but not close enough. I pivot and march toward the boundary of the campsite.
“I wasn’t thinking clearly,” she pleads at my back. “Please, Kai!”
I hesitate and sigh, my shoulders drooping.
I turn and close the space between us again.
“I thought I was coming here for the mountain,” she pouts up at me. “But I was coming here for you.”
“Oh, right, I get it. Because I fucked away your writer’s block.” I flourish the lighter for her. I almost forgot. I don’t want her to be stuck here without a fire. As soon as her fingers touch the lighter, I release it and turn, marching away again. I do not want to be here right now.
“I didn’t say that,” she calls after me, promising on top of promises, but my feet keep moving.
Soon the only calls I can he
ar are in the bushes and the trees.
5
Morgan
I watch Kai’s retreating back until he’s gone, and I’m standing alone, in the dark, in a dirt circle with an empty tent. I flare the lighter between my fingers and stoop to stick it in the fire pit, though every gesture feels like slow motion. I’m heavy yet empty as I settle by the fledgling fire, staring into it, thinking about what just happened. It was a lot like a fire, actually. Sudden. Intense. Hot. Then over with a flash.
I wonder if Kai even wants to come back to the tent. He probably feels bound to his gentlemanly promise, forced to let me keep his tent, and he needs a campsite for the night, too. He’s almost forced to be near me when he doesn’t want to be. I’m the one who lost all my things. I’m the one who has no reason to really be here. And, if I was gone, he could enjoy the rest of his night in peace. Damn my guilty conscience.
I root for his phone in his backpack and dial my assistant, Ginny. Her number is still in the list of recent calls.
Ginny answers on the third ring. It isn’t too late yet, so I don’t feel guilty about calling. “Hey, Ginny, it’s Morgan again. There’s been a change of plans and my reservation for the weekend isn’t going to work after all.”
“What? I thought you were all set-up,” Ginny replies. “You said your friend would let you stay in his tent.”
That sentence stings more than every little scratch and scrape on my skin right now.
“Nope,” I force myself to chirp, keeping my tone light. “Change of plans.”
“Oh. Okay… So, do you need me to call you that Uber into town and get you your own tent? Hold on.” I hear tapping in the background. “Okay, I found a store called Mountain Joe’s, and they sell either hiking equipment or coffee. I’m not sure which. They don’t have a website. I’m kind of guessing, because this town is only servicing a population of, like, two thousand. Do you want me to call them? Mountain Joe’s? Reserve a tent? Oh, or should I get you a hotel room?”
“Better make it a motel room,” I grumble. “Yeah. That sounds fine. I’ll take whatever you can find that is cheap and nearby. Then, get me a car out of here.”
“Hmm,” Ginny says. “So, I guess your inspirational hike didn’t go as well as you had planned.”
And the hits just keep on coming. I want to go home and forget about this trip. “It went too well,” I mutter.
“What do you mean?”
“I’ll… I’m not ready to talk about it,” I tell her, certain that I will never share the story of the mysterious stranger with the scarred chest and the night we shared his sleeping bag in a cave. “Thanks, Ginny. Call me back when it’s all taken care of.”
“Will do, boss.”
I guess I shouldn’t keep his thermal underwear on, so I step back into the tent and shuck his warm, soft clothes from my body. I’m saddened as I let them go, as if each piece is a bridge I have to burn. I fold and lay them in his backpack again. It was nice to wear his clothes. I’ll never do it again but it was nice. I felt like a real girlfriend.
Now I’m in the clothes from yesterday, the clothes I arrived in, back when I had the whole day ahead of me and nothing but optimism in my heart. The jeans and tank top are stiff and very dirty but they’ll work. The more I move, the more the fabric loosens for me.
Fully dressed and waiting for my Uber, I settle at the fireside and wrap my arms around my knees. I have nothing left to pack and nowhere to go.
I wonder where Kai is.
I wonder if he’ll make it back to the campsite before my Uber gets here, so I can at least say goodbye.
I should have just told him the truth: I’ve never had sex like that before in my life. Yes, I was inspired. I couldn’t help that. I was excited! I had to write it down! I thought our night could have evolved into my masterpiece. Of course, now that I know he feels violated when he’s in the public eye, the memory will have to die with me.
I guess that’s okay. I can live with that. I just didn’t know.
I haven’t even had good sex—let alone great sex—since my ex-boyfriend five years ago, and before that, it was all cheap, brief flings. I could never find that one man who was the perfect blend of capability and sensitivity. They were all unemployed sweethearts and high-power douchebags.
Well, shit.
I grimace and take a pen from Kai’s pack, then extract my notepad and write him a quick note. I tell him that the single night we shared will always mean a lot to me. He doesn’t know this about me but I’ve been shackled to my computer desk too long. I was starting to get cobwebs between my legs, I joke. I tell him that I’m sorry if he feels violated and that I will never use the notes I took. I wasn’t thinking clearly when I wrote all that stuff down; I was just excited to feel desire and romance again. He doesn’t understand how it feels to be the creator of entire worlds of sensuality and lust, all while being single and celibate yourself. I thank him for showing me that the stuff my stories are made of does still exist.
When I’m finished, I pin the note beneath a rock near the fire pit, so Kai will see it and read it as soon as he returns to the site.
By then, I’ll be gone.
6
Kai
I’m not sure how far I walk. It’s the dumbest decision I’ve made this entire hike, dumber than climbing into an unfamiliar cave, dumber than sleeping next to a stranger after having unprotected sex with her. I walk aimlessly through the nighttime woods, begging a startled elk to come charging at me.
I come to the river Morgan and I already crossed once before. Eight miles high on the mountain, it was originally a deep and narrow stream. She was writing her notes by it.
“Hey,” I greet her, certain that I sound and look surly. “What are you doing?”
“Got inspired,” she answers vaguely, barely looking at me. It’s pretty hot. “Sleep well?”
“You know it. Thanks for doing all this while I slept in.”
“I couldn’t bear to wake you.”
She looked beautiful at that moment. She didn’t look conniving. She didn’t look like an opportunist who had used me to jar her writer’s block.
I approach the river, wider and shallower now. Jagged rocks overtake either bank, but I climb and cross them—like an idiot, probably passing over western rattlesnakes and black widow spiders—and come splashing down onto a narrow, grainy shore, mostly composed of tiny rocks and shells. It’s beautiful. The wide river is black and swift, reflecting the waxing moon like a funhouse mirror. But the sound is always comforting.
I crouch by the water and cast the image of Morgan from my mind. I don’t want to think about her. I haven’t been with a woman in a long, long time, because I have rigorous standards. I’ve been hurt before. A woman like Morgan—so beautiful and talented, strong and clever… if not downright stubborn and dangerously daring—is dangerous to a man like me. One look into those golden eyes warned me.
A woman like that can cut a man like me real deep.
Strange leaves pepper the river’s current, and I perk, realizing that those aren’t leaves; that’s paper. Those are pages… from a book.
I lunge forward and get drenched from the knee down but I snatch up the page and squint at it hard. Shit, I can’t read it. Someone’s book is drifting down the river.
Still clutching the single page in my hand, I squint upriver and see a shadow that appears to be bleeding these particulates.
I trudge upriver and then cross, forced to douse myself up to the waist to reach the item when it reveals itself to me: a hiker’s backpack.
It’s been torn open, and one of the items—a paperback novel—is losing its pages down the river.
I snatch it up and examine the cover, which is still intact, though badly frayed.
UNTAMED #17: Wild Rose
There’s a man on the cover, with long, chocolate-colored hair, down to his nipples—which I know for a fact because he’s not wearing a shirt, naturally.
Not that I can talk. I haven’t worn a shir
t much since meeting Morgan, either.
He gazes across a sprawling field of wheat—which you can’t find on Blackridge Mountain, actually—and the name M. Lewis is scrawled at the bottom.
I reach down and scoop up the backpack, bringing it with me to the opposite shore. There might be something here to bring back to her. Even though I’m not supposed to care, I go through it, scavenging for salvage. There’s nightclothes and a sleeping bag and a dozen plastic-wrapped instant foods… and a pink plastic dildo, very realistically portraying a broad, veined cock. I pull it out and my lips kinks sideways.
That’s my girl.
I don’t mean to think that thought, but that is the thought I think.
I swallow and shove the dildo back into the backpack. Everything is soaked and probably ruined but I’m going to bring this to her anyway. I shove it over the outcroppings of stone and then climb myself, scoop it up again, and head toward Diamond Lake, soaking wet all over again.
As I walk, I tell myself that it isn’t just my temper, set off by a surprise; I am legitimately angry with Morgan. She did invade my privacy by even considering me—and anything I said to her—as fodder for a character.
Even if she did think of me as a hero… which is kind of hot.
But it doesn’t mean she can just sulk up at me and blink those haunting topaz eyes and draw me back in! Damn, I’ll bet she’s good with words, too. She’s gonna win every fight.
Or think she does, anyway.
When I get back to Diamond Lake, I go to her site and my tent. The dying embers of the fire and the quietness of the grounds alert me to the possibility that no one is here anymore. It wasn’t as if I left Morgan in an environment where she felt comfortable. People were yelling things at us. She doesn’t even have anything of her own to use. She was wearing men’s pajamas all day.
I know that she’s gone before I even see the letter. I know it in my bones, in my heart, and I throw the backpack down onto the dirt like it betrayed me. I scoop the letter up to read it by the fading firelight. She confesses that she’s been lonely for a long time; our night together will never be forgotten. Shit. She apologizes and promises. I believe her. She says it was more personal than I realize; she was inspired because of how she felt, and she just wanted to write it down. She says she’s leaving for a motel in town. She’ll be gone by the time I read this. She thanks me and apologizes again.