Mountains Wanted

by Alexander, Phoebe

  Later he led her to his bedroom and they laid on their sides on his bed facing each other, continuing the conversation from the dining table. James was finishing up his tales of the holiday and his trip to Ohio. He took out his phone and showed her the picture of him holding his newborn niece Marianna. Sarah had never seen a sweeter picture. There is something intrinsically moving about seeing strength subdued, harnessed into a gentle tenderness, she observed.

  “Oh, you’ll make such a great daddy someday,” Sarah remarked, her eyes a little glassy after seeing the picture.

  James beamed, “I hope so.”

  His eyes were a little distant. Sarah had wanted to tear his clothes from his limbs the moment she saw him, but the tone had changed. She saw an opening. “So why is it you’ve never married and started a family?”

  James hesitated, looking away for a moment, and then back into Sarah’s expectant eyes. “I was married a long time ago,” he said with no inflection.

  Sarah internally gasped. How can I just be learning this? she wondered, calculating the length of their relationship at five months. All the nights of them lying beside each other, all the pillow talk, and this never came up? She was shocked but didn’t vocalize it. She bet that James could read from her expression that more elaboration was required.

  “Well,” he began to explain, “I went to Alabama for boot camp fresh out of high school and that’s where I met her. She followed me to Florida for EOD school.”

  Sarah’s eyebrows raised, “EOD?”

  “Explosive Ordnance Disposal,” James explained. “I was there for nine months, then I got orders for Iraq.” He paused, searching for the right words, wondering how simple of an explanation he could get away with. “I kind of freaked out, to tell you the truth. All I could think about was not coming home. And even if I did, not having someone to come home to.”

  Sarah could feel the tension growing in his voice as he struggled to stabilize his pitch. She felt the memories creeping up on him, threatening to ambush. “So you married some chick from Alabama?”

  He nodded. “Her name was Becca. She was very cute, very manipulative, and very crazy.”

  Sarah laughed at his description. “How so?”

  “She was insanely jealous. I’m off fighting a war and her only real concern was whether or not I was fucking anybody else. Cause you know, a middle eastern war zone is the best place to pick up chicks. Oh!” he exclaimed, a memory snagging hold, “How about this for crazy: she stopped taking her birth control pills so she could try to get pregnant without me knowing! Fortunately that didn’t work.”

  “Oh my god, James, really?” Sarah asked, incredulous. “And you still married her?”

  James shook his head, “Hey, I was 19 years old. Give me a break.”

  Sarah could see that talking about Becca had riled up some other memories. His hands were just slightly trembling as his eyes searched the wall behind her. She instinctively placed her palm on his knee and squeezed, hoping he wouldn’t clam up, hoping he’d feel her trust.

  “So what happened?” she asked softly, hoping she could get him to continue opening up.

  His limbs stiffened under her hand and she could see the memories rock through him like an earthquake. “It’s a pretty long story,” he bristled, unsure if he wanted to invest the emotional energy in reliving tales of his deployment. He’d long ago laid those demons to rest and when he was honest with himself, not having to dredge all that up again was one of the reasons he didn’t like letting people get too close.

  Sarah didn’t want to make him uncomfortable, but she did feel like she needed to push just a little. She felt he was on the verge, right on the edge of letting his guard down, showing her his vulnerable side. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” she assured him, “but I would like to hear about your experiences over there. I’ve never heard about war firsthand...and, well, I think it would really help me understand you.”

  If he wants to be understood, she thought, realizing that a man like James who was so capable of compartmentalizing a person was probably even more adept at compartmentalizing feelings and memories. His response to my invitation will tell me a lot about his trust in me and his willingness to invest in our relationship. Her heart was pounding realizing how pivotal of a moment it was.

  He nodded and breathed deeply. She could almost see the box marked “Iraq” open up in his mind. “I had a couple of close calls,” he shared, looking away again, “and I lost some friends.”

  She squeezed his knee again and when he turned toward her, she saw that his eyes were illuminated; they glistened with emotion as he began to spill the contents of that box at her feet. “I saw a lot of the country during my time over there, but most of it was spent in the north around Mosul. This was the area where many foreign fighters came through and also was a main corridor for smuggling weapons. One of my responsibilities was to detonate weapons caches that were discovered.”

  Sarah was trying to listen neutrally, but she was afraid her eyes were growing too wide to disguise her concern. Her empathic sensibilities were bracing herself for whatever he had to share, but she wanted to listen without judgment so he would feel at ease. She repositioned herself slightly so they were no longer touching and pretended she was hearing the story from a stranger. Thinking about him...fighting a war...at age nineteen...my god. She couldn’t even fathom how scared he must have been.

  “One night I was called out to detonate a cache that was buried under the floor of a house where IEDs were being made. The bad guys knew that the weapons would be detonated if found so they started to booby trap the weapons caches. One of the less experienced guys asked to go in my place. He was full of piss and vinegar, very ideological and patriotic,” James smiled as he conjured up the image of his fellow soldier. “Yup, that was Will. He’d take a hill single handedly with only a Swiss army knife if asked to do so.”

  Sarah smiled with him hesitantly, but inside she was afraid of where this story was headed. Nonetheless, she urged him on with her eyes as she could feel all his energy being released, like his words had a need to be spoken, a story that must be told. He continued, “It was a small cache and I was nearing the end of my tour so I agreed to let him go. So Will gets to the site and probably due to his excitement and lack of experience, he ends up setting off the booby trap. The trap was likely designed just to harm the person entering, but the bad guys aren’t exactly experts. They were inconsistent in their practices and unpredictable.” He shook his head for a moment, his eyes fading into the distance, transporting his brain back to the desert.

  He continued, beginning to sound monotone, like he was narrating a documentary. “In some ways, this is really the most difficult type of enemy one could encounter. The small explosion ended up setting off the rest of the cache which roughly consisted of the material equivalent to 2 VBIEDs designed to take out Iraqi Police checkpoints.”

  Sarah shrugged at the unfamiliar acronym. “Vehicle Born Improvised Explosive Devices,” he decoded.

  She nodded in understanding. Is the story over? she wondered. He had drifted away and she felt like she had lost him. Suddenly he felt present again in the room and he finished his story, matter-of-factly, his own Auto Pilot kicking in. “Will died. His folks were really religious. There weren’t enough of his remains to send home.”

  There were tears stinging at her eyes thinking about a mother who would never see her son again, dead or alive. She was unable to watch war movies or witness the portrayal of other tragic events because the emotion would well up inside her so strongly, wrenching her heart, overwhelming her. She didn’t have that switch that could shut off the effects of tragedies that were not her own reality.

  “Another kid was badly injured but lived for a while, and a third who was the first to respond to the blast and tried to pull Will out...they both ended up dying from inhalation of chlorine gas. Chlorine is an additive sometimes used in IEDs …it’s cheap, plentiful and deadly,” he explained, his
voice unwavering.

  Sarah was wiping away the tear that had slipped down her cheek. “It could have been you,” she said so softly it was a whisper.

  He nodded. “It was supposed to be simple. Textbook.” He shook his head again. “But over there, things have a way of getting complicated.”

  “Are you okay?” Sarah questioned.

  “Yeah,” James answered, “of course. It’s my job. It’s what I signed up for. I have to be okay. Although if I’d been there, I would have probably gotten the job done right...because I had more experience...but it’s just the way it worked out. Other shit happened too...while I was there for that deployment...I did another a few years after that. But that sticks out. I guess because I still see his face sometimes. And if it hadn’t been only a month till I came home, I probably would have gone in his place.”

  She wasn’t entirely convinced he had come to terms with it all, but she wanted to know more. Like how did that experience factor into his marriage? “So what happened when you got home?”

  James laughed, “Well, what do you think happened?” The tension from his earlier story had dissipated and his documentary voice had faded in favor of a more animated version of his normal voice. “That fucking bitch I was married to who was so afraid of me looking at some burka-wearing Iraqi women had gone and gotten herself knocked up. And no, it wasn’t mine.”

  Now Sarah allowed her eyes to widen. “Really?”

  “Yeah, some nerve, huh? I’m off fighting a war and she’s home fucking everything with two legs and a dick. So uh, yeah, we were divorced.”

  He was quiet again for a moment, as if he was still processing all that he had shared. “You know, I grew up that year. I got married, I went off to war, I saw some buddies get blown up, I came home to a cheating bitch and got divorced.” He smirked and placed his hand on Sarah’s thigh. “After that, everything else seems pretty damn easy.”

  She had had some pretty tumultuous years in her life too: getting pregnant right before college graduation, trying to care for a newborn and work full time, her first year of grad school, and she’d had her own experience with cheating spouses. We’re both survivors. We just had a moment of understanding. Sarah stretched back out beside him, placing her head on his chest again. He wrapped his arm around her instinctively. This explains a lot, she thought. Why he seems older than his age. Why he’s so elusive. Why there seems to be a barrier. Why it was hard for him to let her in.

  They laid there for a little bit in silence, their bodies meshing. Then they exchanged more words, something lighter to lift the mood: a recap of dinner in which she generously extolled his culinary abilities; next they shared what was currently on their reading lists. Sarah lost all track of time. Finally, she looked over at the clock on his nightstand and it read 12:37 in bold red numbers. They had missed ringing in the New Year, the Ball Drop, the kiss at midnight. Oh well, she thought, I’m here with him, and every moment feels like the stroke of midnight.

  ***

  She peeled away the covers and perched on her knees between his legs. The expression painted on his face was one of blissful slumber but a body part further south had already begun to stir. It had not escaped her notice under the thin sheet that loosely shrouded his hips and thighs. She moved the fabric aside and stretched before him, bowing to his rising manhood beginning to wave, a little more than semi-stiff with morning wood.

  She brushed the edges of her lips against the tip and felt it instantly swell against her soft skin. She took the head into her mouth as her fingers gently caressed between his legs and around his balls. Soon his shaft was rigid and she slid her mouth down it, feeling it glide to the back of her throat. She glanced up to see if his expression had changed. His eyes remained closed; his arms were stretched above his head so that she could make out the definition of the muscles in his shoulders. The only thing that had changed was his breathing had grown a little heavier.

  Now that his tool was hard and ready despite his seemingly steady slumber, she decided her best option was to take advantage of him before he fully awakened. She straddled him, a thigh on either side of his hips. She reached between her legs, her fingers dexterously encircling his throbbing cock. She teased it against the opening of her sex and gasped at discovering her slit was already dripping with desire, ripe and wanton for him. She’d been waiting to feel him inside her again for two weeks now.

  She guided the head inside the lips of her sex and then very slowly slid her pelvis down to take him deep inside her. She started to rotate her hips, grinding against him ever so slowly at first, her breasts just barely brushing the prickly stubble on his chin with each thrust downward. She moaned at the sensation of the rough hair against her nipples, then gripped the metal headboard as she began to slam her pelvis down to meet his more forcefully.

  He was nearly silent. He'd let one gasp escape as his cock was fully engulfed by her warm wetness and intermittently a moan would find its way from his lips. She was moving faster even though he was still and quiet beneath her. She felt her orgasm building as she sat almost straight up, perched on his cock, her palms bracing her weight against his hairy, muscular chest. She watched his eyes twitch a bit under his eyelids, noticing how long his lashes looked brushing against his cheek. She ran her fingers through his hair, pulling his mouth to her breast. Instinctively his lips parted and sucked her nipple inside, raking his teeth against its firmness.

  Suddenly he bit down and the intense spike of pain reverberated through her core, driving her completely over the edge, sending her pussy into strong spasms around his cock. She suspended her motion to feel each contraction squeeze his shaft and with each one she let out a soft "Oh my god, oh my god," the exclamations becoming further and further apart as the climactic waves gradually faded. She finally opened her eyes to see that a smile had curled across his lips, though his eyes remained closed.

  She dismounted his still hard cock and slid back down his body to inspect it. It was coated in white cream from her pussy which her tongue tingled at the prospect of tasting. She cleaned up his cock thoroughly, taking it deep into her mouth to get every drop of her juices just as he lazily opened his eyes to say "Good morning..."

  “I don’t want to go home,” Sarah whispered, not knowing if he was really awake enough to hear her.

  He drew her close to his body again so that her face was buried in his chest hair. “So don’t.”

  ***

  The happy mountains surround me like an embrace. The sparkling stream is full of liquid crystals and the sky is dotted with birds on wing. The sunrise filters through the peaks and floods its rosy peach glory throughout the valley. I look down at my legs and they are scarred from the previous day’s arduous climb, but the wounds are healing, covered in thick scabs. I’m enveloped in peace and the tranquility is radiating throughout my body, quelling the pain.

  After dozing for another hour or so, this time James woke first. He reached over and smoothed Sarah’s hair away from her face and stroked a finger down her cheek. “Sleep well?”

  “Mmmmm,” Sarah moaned, turning over to face him. “I did. It’s so nice waking up next to you.” She still felt the peace she had absorbed while suspended in her dream.

  James smiled. “So...coffee? Breakfast? What is on tap for you today?”

  Sarah shrugged, “No real plans. How about you?”

  “Hoping to fuck you again directly,” James admitted, winking at her.

  Sarah laughed. “Well, I could always call my mom and see what she has planned...see if the kids can stay a bit longer.”

  “You can stay as long as you’d like,” James offered generously and ran his hand up her thigh, across her stomach and up to her breasts where he tweaked her nipple between his fingertips. Sarah felt the energy surge through her body, traveling from her head and her toes toward her core at lightning speed. “You are incredibly responsive,” he observed, “I love it.” His hand stroked down her stomach, teasing his way toward her sex which was beginning to thr
ob in anticipation of his touch. He stopped short and she sighed with disappointment.

  He laughed at her reaction, but then his normal intensity returned and soon his eyes were bearing down on her as he moved between her legs. She felt his stiff cock press against her thigh as his mouth grazed on the flesh where her neck met her shoulder. She shuddered beneath his weight, yearning to feel his cock sliding into her. She really hoped he wasn’t going to torment her too badly. He hadn’t orgasmed during the episode in which she took advantage of him earlier in the morning...so hopefully he feels a sense of urgency, Sarah sighed.

  As if reading her mind, James shifted his pelvis, repositioning his cock so that it pressed against her labia, parting them slightly and slowly easing its way inside her. Once he felt the resistance diminish, he pushed more forcefully and she gasped as her body struggled to accommodate him.

  “You are so fucking tight,” he remarked, slowly withdrawing and then thrusting into her again.

  “Mmmmhmmmm,” Sarah moaned breathlessly. “That’s cause you didn’t warm me up properly first!”

  “Well, I’m sorry that you’re just too alluring to resist, lying there all half asleep. I had to have you. And besides, didn’t you get warmed up an hour or two ago when you practically raped me?” James questioned, then picked up his speed so that Sarah was too breathless to answer. “It’s my turn now,” he added, beginning to drill into her faster and deeper.

  He had rendered her speechless. She grabbed his ass and grinded her hips into his thrusts, feeling the pressure on her clit and causing her orgasm to build. She felt him tense just then; he slowed momentarily as if trying to hold back his release but quickly realized it wasn’t possible. “Oh, god, Sarah,” he apologized, unable to control himself any longer, which was enough to drive her over the edge as well, precipitating an explosion that reverberated through her body in intense spasms that milked his cock, draining him of all his seed.