by Ruthie Knox
He downgraded his assessment of his own condition from maybe a little weird to definitely losing his marbles. Beneath the tray, Kal slid his fingers to his wrist and checked his pulse. A little fast, but steady.
That was fine. Food, wine, sleep, and he’d be right as rain again.
Inside her room, he set the tray on a bench along the wall and sat. The hotel was comfortable for the Khumbu region—tatty if you were a trekker who’d just flown in from Europe, but downright luxurious if you were on your way back out after weeks hiking at altitude. He’d made sure the princess had the best room available, with an en suite bathroom and a double bed.
Plus, the Wi-Fi worked. She’d plugged her phone into the only outlet. It buzzed quietly from the floor.
She stood at the threshold, staring at it.
“Shut the door,” he said.
She obediently did.
“Come here. Take a seat.”
The lights dimmed and then brightened again. She folded her legs beneath her, taking up a perch on a pillow a few feet away from him. Kal took the lid off the tray, revealing an enormous bowl of dumplings floating in broth.
Dumplings. Huh. He didn’t exactly remember ordering dumplings.
Did it matter?
The princess stared at the food, her cheeks and earlobes pinking up.
Kal handed her a spoon. “Dig in.”
“There’s only one bowl?”
“We’ll share.”
With the lid off, the food smelled outrageously good. He wanted to bury his face in it, take a bath in a tub full of dumplings, plucking them out of the water one by one and swallowing them until his stomach became perfectly round and tight as a drum.
Hungry. He hadn’t been this hungry in…he didn’t know.
She fished out a dumpling. It took her forever, the spoon too small, her fingers shaky. Finally she managed it, taking a delicate bite before handing the bowl to him.
When he looked at her again, the entire dumpling had vanished into her mouth, her pink cheeks bulging, her tongue snaking out to lick broth from her lower lip.
Not such a princess.
Amused, Kal tried to corral a dumpling for himself, but his hands were no steadier. He gave up and plucked one from the bowl with his fingers.
Hot. Jesus. He dropped it, picked it up off the carpet, popped it in his mouth. It tasted of brine and ginger, ground nuts and fresh green things. It was the best fucking dumpling he’d ever eaten, and he wasn’t hungry anymore, he was starving.
She held her hand out for the bowl. He gave it back, watched her reach in with her fingers, palm a dumpling, pinch another between her fingertips.
“Classy.”
The lights dimmed again just as she did something lopsided and conspiratorial with her mouth, a smirk that ended in a deep dimple. “Always.”
She shoved another entire dumpling in her mouth.
The lights came back up.
He tried to recall his last decent meal, what it had been or when he’d had it, but he couldn’t, couldn’t remember when he’d sat on a firm surface in a warm room, his body clean, his jaws working, the ground level and firm beneath his feet.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d looked at a woman.
They ate like animals.
“These are so good.” Flushed now from forehead to fingertips to toes, the princess had greasy lips. Kal grabbed the wine bottle, screwed the cap off, poured it out into plastic water glasses. When he handed her one, she drank it like it was water, and he tried not to think about her lips or her throat or how smooth and soft her skin was.
They’d made fun of her beauty routines at Base Camp, the giant bag of toiletries she would unzip, lining tiny bottles up on a flat rock, applying various scented products to her face, her hands, her feet.
Ridiculous princess.
He’d thought so. But she plucked the last dumpling from the bowl and ate it without shame, her gaze traveling over his chest and shoulders, down over his legs and back again. Her skin was the same shade of pink as her T-shirt, and even though the food was gone, her eyes looked hungry.
She cradled the giant bowl of broth in both hands, brought it to her lips, and sucked down the brine. As human as him.
Completely fuckable.
Kal drank his wine and refilled his cup, and hers when she held it out, but the thought didn’t go away. It looped in his head, over and over. He tried to push himself back into a straight line while she unbuttoned the Oxford shirt with steady hands, eased it off, dropped it onto the floor.
“How you feeling?”
She knocked down the rest of the wine in her plastic cup, then wiped her mouth on the back of her hand. “I have no idea. Better?” She held the cup out. He filled it. The cups were small. The bottle was two-thirds empty, and he wasn’t sure if he’d lost a round of drinks somewhere, lost some time, maybe. The clock on the table next to the bed was blinking 12:04. Her phone buzzed again when he looked at it, like maybe he was magic.
How long had he been here?
She shrugged.
Had he asked the question out loud?
“I don’t know.” She opened her mouth to say something more and belched like a lumberjack. Then she grinned, amused and conspiratorial, and his pants started to feel tight.
“Are you married?” His crotch asked the question before clearing it with his brain.
The princess wiggled on the ottoman, then resettled herself, knees together, calves and feet fanned out to one side. “No.” Her arms had been pale when she took off the shirt, but now they were as pink as her neck, which just made him think about how hot her body would be on him, all over him. “Are you?”
She fiddled with her plastic cup, her fingertips circling around the lip of it, rubbing up and down over the ridged sides, dancing across the bottom. Looked at him. Toward the corner. Back at him.
Away, back, away, back, as her fingertips did things to a plastic cup that would be dirty and terrible if she did them on his body.
“No.”
No, he wasn’t married. No, she wasn’t either.
So.
He took the cup out of her hand, placed it on the desk alongside his.
He took a deep breath and tried to think what he knew about her, whether he ought to do what he was almost definitely about to do, but the only thing his mind seemed willing to contemplate was how cold he’d been and how hot her skin looked, how warm and alive.
When he’d emptied his lungs, he stared at the wall for a long time and tried to come up with a reason not to succumb to his body’s demand that he turn back around. Kiss her. Press himself against her.
She touched his shoulder.
After that, it was kind of a blur.
At some point later, in the bed, Kal tried to put together how they’d got there, if he’d made the first move or she had. All he could access was a sensation like antlers crashing together, a kind of fumbling airborne mess of passionate violence against buttons and zippers, his mouth on hers, her teeth biting at his lip, the heat in her hands, the taste of wine in her mouth.
It was insane. They were acting insane.
It didn’t matter.
What mattered was her body, slick and welcoming, the way his hands fit on her hips, the athletic precision of the princess fucking him, her skin glowing, her blue eyes wide open, heart beating against his open palm and rosy pink-tipped tits bouncing, alive, alive.
She tightened and moaned, flailed at his chest until he rolled her onto her back and fucked her hard enough to make her come without mercy, without shame or pride, his own release so intense that it killed him, kind of.
He didn’t move off her.
She didn’t ask him to.
He had just enough sense left, falling asleep, to think how bad this was going to be in the morning.
Chapter 4
Rosemary came back to life slowly.
First, to the pressure in her bladder and the downy softness of the pillow beneath her cheek. Then to the
color of the pillowcase, deep orange, and the striped pattern of sunlight against a textured wall.
Then to the arm flung across her middle, heavy and hot.
To breath against the back of her neck.
A clock blinked on the bedside table, glowing red numbers, 02:04. Blink. Blink. Blink. It flipped to 02:05, and she let her eyes close.
Later, she heard a muffled vibrating from the floor. The clock read 04:17. The vibrating—she knew that sound. Her mobile.
She closed her eyes. Sleepy. It went on for a while, a long muffled bzzzzt followed by a pause. After it fell silent, the blinking clock flipped to 04:18. She was in bed with a man.
She closed her eyes.
Later. She’d deal with it later.
A chime sounded in the hallway, followed by voices moving down the corridor. They got closer, people talking, laughing, louder and closer until they were right outside her door and the rapping of knuckles against wood made her push the man’s arm away and sit up, heart beating fast.
“Who is it?” she called.
The body beside her stirred. “What’s happening?”
“Someone’s here.” Her mouth was packed with cotton, her tongue foreign and hateful.
“Who?”
“I don’t know, someone.” She swung her legs over the side of the bed, wrapped the sheet around her, fumbling, stood. When she took a step, she felt a crunch under her bare foot, something happened to her knee, and the floor lurched up to meet her, barking her shin, burning her kneecaps on the carpet. “Shit!”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” Her shin hurt. Her right leg tingled unbearably, thousands of needling pinpricks that told her it had fallen asleep and given out under her weight. Bloody hell.
Another loud knock. “Just a moment, please!” she called.
“Do you need me to get it?” he asked.
“Yes, that would be excellent.”
“Can I have the sheet?”
She contemplated the request, but it would take days to disentangle the fabric from her body and legs. Also, if she gave up the sheet, she would be naked with wolves at the door. “No.”
He let out a deep sigh. “Okay.” A rustling sound. “Give me a second.”
“Hurry, please. It could be housekeeping.”
“What time is it?” A hint of alarm in his voice.
“I’ve no idea.”
She knew he was getting out of the bed, heard the sounds of his movements, saw him in her peripheral vision as he rushed around the room looking for his clothes, but she didn’t look directly at him. She was too preoccupied with the uncomfortable sensation of coming awake, the pins and needles in her leg remarkably similar to the pins and needles in her brain, which began sending her urgent messages she didn’t wish to receive.
You had sex with a stranger.
That man. That man right there.
Doctor Doom. You slept with Doctor Doom.
You ate dumplings with him. You drank wine. You had sex.
You had sex! With that man!
Her leg hurt. Rosemary shifted to sit on her bottom, dragged the sheet over her breasts, rubbed her hands over her screaming foot and remembered the crunch that could only have been her mobile.
Bugger.
She crawled to the plug in the wall. Followed it underneath the billowing mass of sheets until the mobile dangled from the other end, the screen black, hopelessly cracked.
She pushed the button, but it didn’t come to life.
Bugger, bugger, bugger.
Keys jingled, and a door opened. “Hang on!” she shouted, but no one responded, and then the voices in the hallway fell silent with a thump.
Doctor Doom opened the door to her room, walked out into the hallway wearing only blue jeans, disappeared, reappeared. “It was across the way.”
“Pardon?”
“The knocking. It wasn’t your door. It was across the way.”
“Oh.”
Rosemary tried to think what to say next, but her social training fell down in the department of morning-after pleasantries, and her head supplied a parade of inanity.
You’re sitting naked on the floor.
You’ve buggered your mobile.
You had sex with that man.
Dozens of people are dead.
The dumplings were delicious.
She covered her ears with her hands, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. When she opened her eyes again, Doctor Doom was sitting on the edge of the mattress, just in front of her and to the side, jeans unbuttoned, feet bare.
His short black hair lay flat against one side of his head and stood straight up over one ear. His face had a sleep crease, his neck a scarlet love bite. His lips were chapped. His black eyes were on her in a way that made her brain supply a memory of exactly what his flesh had felt like against her teeth as he made that first rough thrust into her body.
It had been superlative sex.
You don’t know his name.
Rosemary looked away, clearing her throat. “Well. That’s a bit of relief, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, I didn’t exactly relish finding out who was going to be on the other side of the door.”
“I thought perhaps housekeeping.”
“Could’ve been, I guess.”
“How long were we sleeping?” She directed the question to a square inch of bedcover. Her neck was too hot to keep looking at him. Her body hurt in a number of places, many of them for reasons she couldn’t begin to fathom, but a few of them for scarlet reasons having to do with soft bodily tissues not used to that sort of abuse.
“I don’t know. Last night the clock said twelve, and the sun’s up.”
They both looked at the digital display: 05:07. They’d slept…“Five hours?”
He shook his head. “I’m guessing more like seventeen.”
“That’s a rather substantial amount of time.”
“We were really tired.”
“Yes.”
And randy.
God. She had never been so randy, had never been carried away by impulse in that manner, not since she was very young and very stupid. Rosemary glanced at his face again, startled to realize that in addition to not knowing his name, she didn’t know his age.
He patted the mattress beside him. “Why don’t you come up here?”
“I’m quite comfortable, thank you.”
He raised one black eyebrow. Which left her no choice but to attempt it, dignity be damned.
She rose to her knees, wincing a bit when her skinned flesh came into contact with the carpet. Her back and shoulders were stiff, her hands throbbing. She held one up. Her knuckles were chapped, two of them cracked and raw. Casualties of cold and altitude.
She rearranged the sheet into a more proper sort of shame-toga. He took her hand and helped her to sit. His hands were chapped, too, his fingers ashen from abuse, his knuckles swollen. His wrists were fine-boned, his forearms overdeveloped.
He climbed, of course. Everyone on Everest climbed.
He had the sort of face that was all planes and angles, high cheekbones, clean-shaven. No gray hair. He could be twenty, or he could be older than her.
“How old are you?” she blurted.
“Thirty-two.”
“Oh.” Younger. Young-ish. You had sex with a younger man.
Doctor Doom lifted one evil eyebrow again, and Rosemary wished to sink into the floor and disappear.
“So I’ve noticed this thing happens with climbers on Everest.” He smiled. His teeth were white, a few of them slightly crooked, a small gap between the two in the front. “It starts with telling yourself that you’re tired, but it’s not important. You can keep going. And you’re cold, but it’s not a big deal. You’re warm enough. Right?”
“Yes.”
“Then you get a little higher, and you start telling yourself, yeah, there’s not as much oxygen to breathe, but you’re still breathing. You’re hungry but it doesn’t matter too much, you’ve got enou
gh fuel in your body to keep going. Right?”
This time, she nodded her assent. He had a lovely voice, low and gentle. A generous face.
“You make this shift,” he continued, “where you get so used to overruling your body’s demands that you don’t even recognize you’re doing it anymore. Then you come down off the mountain, kind of numb, going through the motions, but at some point, bam!” He tapped the bed with one fist, which made her notice that his other hand was still trapped in hers.
She’d forgotten to stop holding his hand.
Rosemary let go.
He smiled again. “It catches up to you. You figure out that you’re starving, dirty, cold, tired, all at once. That you’re alive, you know?”
“The id takes over.” She’d observed it after other climbs. The sheer physical relief of having a clean body, a bed to sleep in, an endless supply of hot food. “People make impulsive decisions.”
“Yeah, and when you’ve survived something—like we survived something, the two of us…I’m just saying, it’s normal. What happened. Last night.”
“We needn’t be ashamed.”
“Right. That’s the gist of it.”
“Yes, well, thank you. For saying that.”
“You’re welcome.”
He studied his hands, folded in his lap. Rosemary thought of Beatrice. What time was it in New York? What might her daughter be doing now, what might she be thinking?
“Do they know we’re alive?” she asked.
“Does who know?”
“The rest of the world?”
“Yeah. I mean, everybody who came off the mountain, they’ve got your name. The officials will be talking to the reporters, giving them lists of the survivors.”
Strange to think of herself as a survivor.
Strange to think that she’d been living at Base Camp, climbing the mountain, focused on the summit for weeks, months, and now abruptly it had ended in disruption and death, leaving her a survivor.
They were in Lukla. It had taken her…eight days? ten? to hike the trails from Lukla to Base Camp. But she’d been evacuated in a blink. Lukla was the only village in the Khumbu with an airport. She could walk down the road and be on a plane to the Nepalese capital city of Kathmandu inside an hour.