by Melinda Minx
I clutch my axe as the announcer goes through his spiel. I’m not listening to him. I look into the crowd and find Elisabeth. She smiles at me and blows another kiss.
It’s just lust, isn’t it? Something is off about this woman. What is she doing at fucking Choptoberfest all by herself? What kind of woman sees that a furniture store is holding a lumberjack tournament, and says, ‘That’s what I’ll do on Saturday?’
Shit, for all I know, maybe she isn’t here alone. Maybe she’s with some guy, and she’s just sadistically flirting with me. Or maybe she really just likes competitive lumberjacking? There must be women out there who are into this shit, right?
I shake my head. All I really want to do is take her back to the hotel with me. I want to win the $30,000, and I want to get my dick wet. Even if she just wants to brag that she fucked the Choptoberfest grand champion, that’s fine with me. As long as I get to fuck her. It’s not like I’m going to date her or something. I’ll go back to Oregon after this is over, and she’ll stay here.
“L-L-L-Lumberjacks!” the announcer shouts in his best Monster Truck announcer impression. “R-R-R--Ready your axes!”
I guess he wanted to save that voice for the final event.
I step up to the first block. The rules say you’ve gotta touch your axe to the first log before the whistle blows. Bunyan is about 10 feet across from me, and he glares at me as he raises his axe to his log. “You’re going down, rookie,”
“I don’t think so, Clarence,” I sneer back at him.
The whistle blows, and our axes explode in a flurry of wood and steel. Bunyan and I tear through our first logs in mere seconds. We both are using the same technique: alternating overhand and underhand chops. As soon as we cut halfway through, we both spin around and alternate to the other side of the log, chopping away again. Back to back.
I’m no longer facing Bunyan, but as my log begins to fall, I hear the announcer shout with excitement that we’re neck-and-neck.
I rush to the second log, and I swing at it even before I plant my feet into the ground. I rip into it, and when I turn around again to hit the other side of the second log, I notice that Bunyan is already taking his first swing from the other side. Fuck. He’s slightly ahead of me.
My adrenaline surges when I realize how close I am to winning--or losing--and I swing into overdrive. I make up for some lost time, and our logs both fall in half at the same time.
We tear away at log after log. By the seventh log, we’re still within a few chops of each other. Sometimes I manage to take the lead for a brief moment, but then Bunyan overtakes me just as quickly. It seems as if either of us could win.
As we reach the eighth log, our furious chops from the first log have become more subdued--more steady and methodical. We’re both drained and running out of stamina, and it’s becoming more and more important that each swing is accurate and efficient.
I reach the ninth log before Bunyan does, getting two swings into it before he gets his first. As I’m about to switch over to the tenth log, my axe sticks into the wood. I have to kick with my boot and press to pull the axe out, and by then, Bunyan has pulled ahead of me. He slays his ninth log and lets out a battle cry as he charges into the tenth and final log.
Fuck! I let out a roar of my own as the ninth one falls. Red-faced, I slam my axe against the final log. Bunyan is screaming now with each swing, as am I. The logs explode into splinters of wood, and my own sweat and spit joins the fray, as I swing with a barbarian rage. My muscles are bulging so hard that my shirt might just pop the fuck off.
I don’t even look over at Bunyan as I take the final swings. I can tell there are only two or three swings left, and I channel every last ounce of energy into those final attacks.
One. Two. Three. The third strike hits with such force that the log flips up into the air. I look over to Bunyan. Did I win?
His axe hits the log--later than mine did--and the log breaks. His last swing hits overhand, and it slams the log to the ground. Mine broke first. I won.
I throw my arms into the air and roar. I look over to Elisabeth, but she looks surprised. Then I notice that everyone looks surprised.
The announcer screams out, “Only the judge can decide now!”
Bunyan’s voice booms over toward me. He’s out of breath and red-faced. “Fucking rookie! I told you I’d win!”
I grab one of the judges by the arm. “What the fuck is going on? I know I broke my log first!”
The judge shakes his head. “Yours broke first, but the log doesn’t count as chopped until the piece touches the ground. Yours spun up into the air, and Bunyan’s went straight down. We have to look at the replay.”
The replay? Are you fucking shitting me? Did spinning the log up into the air lose me $30,000?
I grab my axe and pace back and forth. A minute or two passes, but it feels like a fucking century. I watch as the two judges talk to each other. They examine a computer screen together, pointing at it. They start to nod, then walk over toward the announcer. They’ve decided. Fuck, I better have won.
The announcer grabs his microphone and begins to speak. “The judges have decided, and it’s conclusive. Bunyan’s log hit the ground first. Paul Bunyan is our grand champion!”
Everyone cheers, and I throw my axe down into the ground.
4
Elisabeth
He lost. Just barely. I sigh.
I don’t know why I really even care. I came here for one reason: to save my sister. Jack may just happen to be one of the hottest guys I’ve ever laid eyes on, but I’m here to steal the ring from him, not to fall for him.
In another world, a world where Aldus didn’t exist and where I had just run across Jack in a bar, I would definitely have been into him. But Aldus has forced me to do something awful, to manipulate him. To steal from him.
Stealing from him would feel awful either way, but I was hoping he’d win the $30,000 grand prize, so that it would at least somewhat soften the blow when he realized his ring was gone.
I sigh. I need to do this. For Jane.
I find Jack with a beer in his hand. He’s with two of his friends, and they’re both giving him a hard time. Even next to his two friends--both lumberjacks--Jack looks massive. His arms are nearly as thick as the logs he chopped through, and his chest is wide as a tree trunk. His dark hair contrasts with his deep blue eyes, and his chiseled cheekbones look as if they are carved from marble by a Greek sculptor.
He smiles wide when he sees me. “Sawyer, Hutch, this is Elisabeth.”
They both eye me up and down, and then they turn to grin at Jack.
“Buy me a beer?” I ask.
Hutch grins, but Jack elbows him. “I got it.”
“Mister big ten-thousand-dollar man,” Hutch says, laughing. “You sure you don’t want Bunyan to buy you a beer instead, Elisabeth?”
“I’m sure,” I say, smiling up at Jack. “I heard his real name is Clarence anyway.”
“Give me 30k,” Sawyer says, “and you can call me Clarence.”
“You two jealous of my big second place not-quite-win?” Jack asks.
“Hell yeah, we are,” Hutch says, chugging half of his beer down and then taking a big breath as if he just surfaced from a deep dive. “But you managed to get us 5k each just for showing up here, Jack, so I’m not jealous enough to try to steal your girl.”
They all grin. I can tell they’re joking--that probably they respect each other enough not to steal from each other.
Shit. Stealing. That’s why I’m really here, isn’t it? The guilt stabs at my insides. Jack isn’t just stunningly, mind-numbingly gorgeous, but he seems like a genuinely good guy. His friends all respect him and look up to him, and it seems he looks out for them, too. No wonder a snake like Aldus hates him so much.
“You wanna get out of here, Elisabeth?” he asks, smiling.
I bite nervously at my bottom lip. I can’t do this. Can I?
An image of Jane, battered and bruised, flashes into m
y mind. I have to do this.
“Let’s drink more,” I say, smiling. “Then we can get out of here.”
I have two more huge one-liter glasses of Bavarian beer. My head is spinning a bit when two of the Canadian competitors come over to join us.
“Buddy,” one says, grinning. “You can’t feel bad about losing to the second place winner, eh?”
“Guess not, buddy,” Jack says, shaking his hand.
“This is Mike and Yannis,” Jack says, introducing the two Canadians to the rest of us.
I try to give a small smile and nod, but my face is flushed from all the beer, and I’m pretty sure that I give a big, dumb, sheepish grin while swaying back and forth on the bench.
“Oh,” Yannis says, smiling. “I know Hutch already, we had a nice close competition together.”
“Fucking Canadian politeness,” Hutch mutters. “You whipped my ass!”
“Oh,” Yannis says, pursing his lips. “I wouldn’t quite put it like that now.”
“Say it!” Hutch shouts. “You’re in America!” He slams his glass down so hard that some beer spills over onto the table. “Say you whipped my fucking ass.”
Yannis grins. “Okay there, buddy. I whipped your ass.”
We all laugh and order another round.
By the time I get in a cab with Jack to go back to his hotel, I’ve drank enough to blast stark reality mostly out of my mind. In the back of my head--somewhere--I know what I have to do, but I’ve managed to 99 percent convince myself that I’m just really into Jack, and that I want him to fuck my brains out. Hell, that’s all true. I am into him, and I can’t wait to let him do whatever he wants with me...there’s just one little bad thing I have to do. And I’ll think about that later. Only when I have to.
“So,” Jack says, taking hold of my hand in the backseat of the cab. “How’d you get interested in competitive lumberjacking?”
Oh, God. I hadn’t even thought of that. The only reason I was there was because Aldus told me he would be there. It is weird, isn’t it, for someone like me to go to a lumberjack contest?
“Well,” I say, smiling and giggling, “I have this Wal-Mart nightstand, and it’s so wobbly that I spilled a glass of water all over my phone and iPad and books in the middle of the night. I got so annoyed I threw the thing into the dumpster in the middle of the night. The next day, I realized it really sucks not having a nightstand, so I went to Ornsley’s, and--”
“Putting a glass of water on the nightstand is never a good idea,” I say. “You gotta use a bottle.”
“Do I look made of money to you?” I say, smiling, “Mr. $10,000!”
“I’m a lumberjack,” Jack says, “not a billionaire. I re-use the same bottle, fill it with tap water.”
“Anyway,” I say, reassuring myself that I wasn’t telling a lie and that this story is actually true, except I actually just went to Target instead of Ornsley’s. Like I said, I’m not made of money. “I go to Ornsley’s, and there’s this big picture with all these buff, jacked lumberjacks on it. I’m sure it was just stock photos, but one really looked a lot like you.”
“So getting the chance to see a lot of hot lumberjacks was enough reason for you to go?”
I smile and nod enthusiastically.
“What do you do?” he asks.
“I work in HR, at some big grey building. Brutalist architecture.”
“Huh?” Jack asks.
“Brutalist! It’s like--come on--your job is sort of related to building construction. Don’t you know anything about architecture?”
“I just chop the wood. Before I did this, I sometimes blew up buildings in Iraq. I never really stopped to admire the architecture.”
“It’s like,” I say, “like--”
My eyes widen. Like Aldus’s apartment building.
“What?” he asks.
“Nothing,” I say. “Just big grey buildings. All concrete, I guess that’s why you don’t know it. You just do wood. I guess it was supposed to look futuristic at one point, but now it can look really dated if it’s not done right…”
“You an architect or something? I thought you said you worked in HR.”
I sigh. “I was trying to be, once upon a time. I went a bit all or nothing on my own firm, and an unfortunate chain of events forced me to get a more secure job.”
Jane’s addiction. Before she became involved with the wrong kind of men, she was hard into drinking. I couldn't get my company running and keep an eye on her all at the same time, so I had to give up my dream to protect my sister.
Jack shakes his head. “I know the feeling. Once upon a time, I had a nice thing lined up for myself. I thought I wanted it really bad, but it turns out I was born to be a lumberjack.”
“How do you figure?”
“Didn’t you hear the announcer?” he says. “Jack the Lumberjack!”
“You really like it?” I ask.
“Yeah,” he says. “I think I’m going to compete again, too. Especially if they hold these things around Seattle…”
His blue eyes start to smolder as he looks at me. I feel my nipples getting hard, and heat surging between my legs. Fuck, I want this guy.
He helps me out of the cab, and we both laugh as we stroll into the lobby of his hotel. I’m not so drunk that I’m clueless or completely out of it, I just feel cheerful and happy. Or maybe that’s just the effect Jack has on me.
We reach the elevator, and he hits the button. I grab his arm and cling to it. He wraps a hand around my shoulder and squeezes me protectively. “You’re not too drunk to…”
“You never sleep with girls who are drunk?” I ask, giggling.
“I mean,” he says, sucking air through his teeth. “Sure I do, but I’m wondering if maybe this doesn’t have to be a one-time, drunk thing with us? It can be, if that’s what you’re after, but--”
I put a finger to his lips. “One thing at a time.”
The elevator opens up, and we step inside.
The moment the doors shut, Jack shoves me against the wall. My lips part for him, and I close my eyes. He presses into me, squeezes me, and then I feel his lips against mine. Our tongues meet, and electricity surges through me. We’ve barely started to kiss and already my body is on fire.
His hand reaches down and squeezes my ass, and I moan into him even as his tongue fills me. I press my teeth against his lip, and when he doesn’t resist, I bite down. He growls, squeezing me harder with one hand, as the other runs up my side.
The elevator dings.
We snap out of that spaceless dimension that existed only for the duration of that kiss, and we look over toward the opening door.
“Your floor?” I ask.
He nods.
My ears are still ringing from the kiss. My heart is racing and my blood is surging through my veins in warm pulses.
The door finishes opening, and he grabs my hand, nearly dragging me down the hallway. He stops in front of a doorway and then slides his keycard into the slot. The door swings open.
“Woah,” I say, looking the place over. It’s not the kind of room I expected a lumberjack to book.
“I drove a tough bargain with Ornsley.”
“Looks like he got his money’s worth out of you,” I say, squeezing his big, muscular arm.
5
Jack
Elisabeth looks around the room. She seems quite impressed, which is exactly why I made Ornsley get a room this swanky. No woman likes to feel like she’s fucking in a cheap hotel.
I still haven’t been able to get a full handle on Elisabeth. I definitely, 100 percent want to fuck her brains out, but after that? I keep getting this feeling that she could be more than that, but something about her is throwing off all kinds of false signals. Usually I’m really good at reading women. Usually I can see right through them and know what they are after.
A lot of women are into the “big strong lumberjack” thing, but only as a fling. When it comes to really settling down with me, they aren’t into it.
That used to be totally fine with me, and hell, it usually still is.
Only in the past six months or so, I’ve started to think about settling down. Not now, but as some distant possibility. It’s rare that I’ve come across a woman who I would even consider making that type of jump with.
With Elisabeth, I barely even know her. I’ve spent maybe three or four hours with her, but sometimes, when the light hits her just right, she seems like the kind of woman I’d give up my single freedom for. Usually it’s when she’s lost in thought and doesn’t know I’m really watching her that she strikes me this way. Then she turns back to me, and even when she smiles at me, there’s this fucking cold sadness behind her eyes. And it almost looks like that sadness is for me. One thing I can read properly is that she wants me. I know that for a fact, but if she just wants to fuck me and then never see me again, why would she feel so sad about it? It doesn’t make any sense.
But my cock is rock-hard, and it’s pressing against my jeans. I’ve got Elisabeth in my hotel room, and the taste of her is still filling my mouth. I can still feel her porcelain white teeth biting into my lip, nearly threatening to draw blood. And right now, she can feel as sad as she wants, I’ll fuck that sadness right out of her if I have to.
I walk up behind her and wrap my arms around her. I press my hard cock against the small of her back, and I run my hands up her body. I graze my hands over her breasts, but keep going until I reach her neck. I run my fingers gently along the soft flesh of her throat, and then the hard bone of her jaw.
I press my lips against her ear, and I bite gently against her earlobe. I feel her squirming in my arms, and she reaches back behind and grabs at my ass.
“You’re impatient,” I whisper into her ear.
She presses back against me, her body pressing my father’s ring into my sternum. I turn her around to face me, then pull the ring up and out of my shirt. I lift the leather band up off my neck, and I place it on the nightstand.
I see her eyeing it, and I swear that the sadness in her eyes washes over her entire body. She goes almost limp, her shoulders sagging. It’s as if she knows all the tragic history of this ring.