by Wilde, Leah
I jumped.
# # #
I broke through the treetops heels first. Little branches snapped under my weight as I plummeted downwards. I kept my eyes squeezed shut and my arms crossed over my chest. I couldn’t help but screech just a tiny bit.
I opened my eyes just after I’d passed through the leaves, only to see the ground hurtling up at me. But there, right below me, with his arms spread wide and waiting, was Micah. I slammed into him, but he gauged my speed perfectly, squatting low to make my landing as soft as possible. He caught me around the hips, snatching away all my momentum at once, and then gradually set me back on my feet.
“Told you,” he said.
I was too out of breath from the excitement to answer, but smiled and nodded. He had told me. I’d trusted him. He’d been there. Funny how such a simple little thing could feel so big and overwhelming.
He kept his hands lightly on my waist for a moment longer than he needed to. I didn’t mind, though. After soaring through the air, I liked being grounded by him, connected to him, knowing that I was here and he was there and neither of us was going anywhere without the other.
“That was the hard part. Just around this corner, and you’ll see,” he told me. He grabbed my hand. I twined my fingers between his and let myself be led onto a path that sloped down and away around an ancient, craggy-looking tree.
The second we stepped around it, my jaw dropped.
It was hands down the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen in nature. A waterfall off to our right splashed gently down onto wet, mossy rocks, collecting at the bottom in a clear little pool that in turn fed a winding, playful brook. The water churned past our feet and disappeared into the foliage a few dozen yards down towards the right. Both sides of the river were festooned with lush green trees and bushes, birds twittering from branch to branch, and flowers springing up underfoot. It was like a postcard come to life. I couldn’t believe my eyes.
I felt Micah looking at me and I turned to face him, still stunned.
“Like it?” he asked with an impish grin.
“Like it? I love it. It’s unbelievable. I literally don’t know what to say.”
He ran a hand through his hair and laughed. “It really is something else, isn’t it?”
“How’d you find this place?” I gushed.
“Zeke and I used to come here when we were kids. We had these little dirt bikes—real pieces of shit looking back on it, but back then, we thought we were the baddest dudes on two wheels on the whole face of the earth.” He shook his head as he chuckled at the memory. “We used to go ripping around all over this park, trying to pop wheelies off the top of the hills. You know, dumb stuff. The kind of thing teenagers with too much testosterone and free time do. It’s a dangerous combo.”
I kept looking around in amazement as he talked. Everywhere I looked, something new bloomed or peered out at me. I thought I caught the eyes of a little woodland creature, a fox or something like that, sneaking a glance from the underbrush. I felt like Pocahontas, although I was pretty sure she wouldn’t have arrived here on a motorcycle.
It was amusing to imagine Zeke and Micah ripping around the park on their whiny motorized bikes. I could easily picture them getting into all kinds of trouble, playing pranks on the park rangers and tourists, generally up to no good.
“Here, there’s a great little seat up here,” he said, gesturing for me to follow him. I kept ahold of his hand as we walked towards the waterfall. A natural staircase had formed in the rock, leading up to a big, scooped-out stone sitting right up on the edge of the stream where it tumbled downwards to the pool. Micah held on tightly to my hand and watched cautiously as I mounted the steps ahead of him, taking them carefully one by one. “Easy,” he said with a warning tone in his voice. “These can be slippery. Don’t want you to fall and bust that pretty little ass of yours.”
His tone was gruff, but underneath it was a genuine concern. It made my heart wriggle in my chest. He could be cute without even knowing he was doing it.
I scooted across the stone bench. Micah settled down next to me. His thigh came to rest lightly against mine, sending heat oozing even through the fabric of our jeans. Together, we looked out over the lush alcove. Neither of us said a word for a while, but we didn’t need to. Just being here next to each other felt like it said everything on its own.
“What were you like as a kid?” I asked softly after a while.
“Oh, I was trouble. Bad trouble. You wouldn’t have wanted anything to do with me.”
“So nothing has changed, then, I guess?”
He grinned. “My mom would have agreed with you.”
“Would have?”
“She’s dead now. Although I guess there’s no saying for sure whether that stops her from scolding me. Wherever she is, I’m sure she’s disappointed.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“It’s okay; it’s been a long time. I’m only kidding anyway. She did the best she could have with a punk kid like me. It took a while to straighten myself out, figure out what kind of man I wanted to be.”
“And what kind of man is that?”
Micah looked at me curiously, his head tilted to the side. “You know, I’m not quite as sure about that as I was a few months ago,” he said after a while. “Before I met you, I would have said that I wanted to be the toughest man in the state, the guy nobody dared fuck with. I don’t think that’s changed. But the way I think about that has changed. The reasons I want it.”
I bit my lip, unsure of what to say. There was so much I wanted to ask him about it, but I still felt the thinnest membrane between us, separating us. Almost all of me was tumbling head over heels for the man to my right. But the tiniest little portion sat back. Still unsure. Waiting. Watching.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Sorry? Don’t be sorry. Don’t ever be sorry, Paris. I don’t say things like this often, but I’ll make an exception: I’m glad I met you.”
My eyes and heart were equally full as I looked up at him. Something about the nature around us made everything Micah said seem so much more profound, like there was an extra force of gravity working hard here to give his words more depth and weight.
“I’m glad I met you, too, Micah.” I felt like my words were pressing hard at that last layer left between us, poking at it to find the structural flaws and make it give way. So much tension, so close to the breaking point.
“Are you?” he asked. He was studying my face closely. His eyes tracked from my lips to meet my gaze and back down again, roving in search of some sign that would tell him whether I meant what I said.
I tried to put as much confidence as I could into my response. “Yes,” I said firmly. “I am. I thought this was going to be, like, my last thing, you know? All doors closed? My daddy had worked so hard to keep me pinned down that I was sure he was using you to make it permanent. Maybe he thought that, too. But it hasn’t been like that, not at all.”
“What do you mean, pinned down?”
“I mean, ever since my mom died, I could barely go five minutes without him checking on me, keeping close tabs, like I was on a leash and he was never going to let any slack out on it. He made me live at home while I was going to school, never let me go out to parties, or have very many friends. Definitely never any boyfriends. The only tastes of freedom I ever got were behind his back. And every time he found out I’d done something he didn’t approve of, his stranglehold just got a little bit tighter. I guess I just assumed that’s how my life would always go.”
The more I talked, the more the words seemed to pour out of my mouth, just like the waterfall at our feet. I didn’t realize how much I’d wanted to say, or how good it would feel to say all this to Micah. He watched, not saying anything or interrupting, but taking it all in with a serious smolder in his eyes. His frown deepened the more I spoke. By the time I finished, he looked angry. Furious, even. Like he wanted to break something badly.
“Listen to me, Paris
,” he said. His voice didn’t rise above a whisper, but it was taut with a dark, pulsing energy that gave me no choice but to offer him every ounce of my attention. He drew me in with his tone alone. “As long as you’re with me, no one will ever do anything like that to you again. Not your father, not me. You’re mine, but you’re your own person, too. If you want something, you go get it. I’ll do everything I can to help you. I’m your husband, Paris. Not your prison guard.”
Our eyes were locked together. Micah was all I could see. His jaw was stiff with pent-up anger and passion. His mouth a straight pink slash among the furrows of his dark beard. His neck ringed with veins and tendons stretched tight like cables on a bridge. He was my warrior, my guardian. My husband.
“I need you to tell me you understand, Paris. It’s not enough for me to see you nod. I have to hear it come out of your mouth.”
“I understand, Micah.”
“Again,” he commanded. “Make me believe you.”
“I understand.”
“Again.”
“I understand.”
He nodded, satisfied for the moment. I saw him leaning forward inch by inch. His mouth drew closer to mine until his breath was hot on my face and his smell filled my nostrils, rich and deep, drowning out the leafy scent of the wildlife around us. I was sure he was going to kiss me. I wanted him to do it, like it would seal in everything he’d just said and make it real, make it realer than real.
But the membrane was still there. I could feel it and I knew he could, too. We weren’t quite there yet. A little bit was left to go before we could fully trust each other.
He looked into my eyes, then drew back again. “Look down there,” he said softly. “Zeke and I used to do this thing every now and then. We’d pretend that if you looked closely enough at the surface of the pond, you could see the future, your future, playing out like a movie on the water.”
I followed his pointing finger. The pool’s surface rippled slightly from the force of the waterfall puncturing it from above, but it was still enough at the edges that I could start to see a reflection swimming into place as I squinted. I leaned over. There, I could see myself, almost, the blurriest outline of my head and shoulders peering down from where we were sitting a few yards above.
“You have to really look,” he said solemnly, “but I swear, sometimes you can really see stuff.”
I leaned forward an inch more, staring intensely at the surface. I came a little more into focus the harder I looked. But then the wind picked up a spray of water from the waterfall and sent it a little bit farther beyond its normal path, scattering across my reflection and ruining it.
“I don’t know,” I said, staring to straighten up, “I don’t think I can—”
I saw only a flash of Micah’s wild grin before he scooped one hand under my legs and another under the small of my back and tossed me high into the air over the pond.
I screamed as I flailed helplessly all the way up to the apex of my flight path. I heard Micah’s booming laughter, then I started to descend. The way down was quick. I had only a tiny chance to swallow a huge breath and squeeze my nose shut to keep out the water before I plunged below the surface.
It was frigid. I was chilled to the core immediately. I sank like a rock, spearing a yard or two down. The pool was deeper than I would have expected. I bumped gently into the rocky bottom before finding my feet and turning my gaze upwards. The light sparkling through the surface of the water was beautiful. It looked like it was dancing for me.
But my lungs were starting to burn. I hadn’t gotten enough air to stay down here very long. Driving my heels hard into the bottom, I arrowed back up to the surface.
The sound of the forest seemed loud after the silence underwater. I treaded in place as I took a big inhale, then squealed, “You asshole! I can’t believe just did that!”
Micah was standing above bent over with his hands on his knees as he laughed harder than I’d ever seen him laugh before. There were legitimately tears running down his cheeks and mingling with his beard. As stunned and angry as I was, I couldn’t help but love the sound of it. It was the most purely joyful thing I’d ever heard from him, far lighter and happier than I knew he was capable of. In spite of myself, I smiled.
He tried to choke out words between bouts of chuckling, but he could hardly manage it. “You thought…the future! In the water! Haha…” He descended again into another laughing fit, falling back onto the stone as he wiped the tears away from his face.
“You better get your ass down in here with me,” I warned, “or else bad, bad things are going to happen to you.”
He composed himself and hunched down to look at me. His eyes were twinkling. “No chance,” he said. “I’m not the clown who tried to see the future in a pond.”
I scowled and turned to swim to the edge so I could climb out and start to dry myself off. I was shivering already. The skin on my arms and legs was riddled with goosebumps. I took two strokes, teeth chattering, before I heard the scuffle of boots on rock and then a wild, banshee wail.
I flipped onto my back to see Micah, knees tucked into his chest, leap into the air over the water, mouth open wide in a happy, wordless holler.
I yelped and kicked away hard as he smashed into the surface. A giant plume of water sucked in and shot straight up where he’d landed. Massive waves roiled outwards from the epicenter of his cannonball, swamping me in their path. I bobbed up and down in the current as it started to settle down, watching and wondering where Micah was. I was starting to get a little bit worried. Had he hit his head on the bottom? Did he get his foot trapped below a rock? Finally he emerged, sticking his head above the water before shaking it like a wet dog. His grin was lopsided, goofy, and unbelievably contagious. I felt myself smiling without even trying to.
He took two broad strokes to knife across the water and bump softly into me. He encircled me in his arms. Then his chest was against mine and his mouth was against mine and the last barrier fell away from between us as his tongue swept across my lips before diving in. His kiss was hot, warm, and as wide open as it could have been. It was like he wanted to taste every ounce of me. I wanted the same from him. I wrapped my arms around his shoulders and kissed back, hard and fiery.
We were bouncing up and down, wrapped tightly around each other, as the pool gradually recovered its stillness. His breath and mine mingled in each other’s mouths. Micah leaned forward slightly and kicked, propelling us towards the edge of the pond. I felt the soft, grassy bank bump up against my back. He found his feet and stood, scooping me up with him in an effortless motion before laying me right back down just above where the water lapped onto the shore. He never stopped kissing me.
His body was wide and smooth, all wet, shiny muscle. I peeled his shirt up, breaking our kiss only for as long as it took to get the thing over his head and off of him. It made a sucking noise as I tossed it aside, like it didn’t want to give him up. That was too bad for it, because he was all mine. All of him was mine—his arms, his chest, his soft, brushing lips. The wet curls on his head were mine, and the growing stiffness between his legs would be mine just as soon as I could fight with his jeans to claim it for myself, too, or rather, to let myself be claimed by him.
He kissed me like he wanted the world to know that I was his, and I was glad to let him. I wanted to be his, to be Micah’s. His hand found the bottom edge of my shirt and tried to tug it upwards, but the way I was laying prevented him from pulling it off. I started to lean upwards to let him work it off of me, but he pulled back, frowned, and with two hands tore it clean down the middle.
“You ripped my shirt!” I gasped in surprise, pretending to be angry.
He gave me that cocky smile, the one I couldn’t resist. “Cost of doing business, babe.” Then he descended back onto me, biting and sucking at my lips. I moaned, unable to keep all the tension inside of me.
He pawed at my breasts, bare since I had decided against wearing a bra that morning, and slid down me to t
ake each nipple into his mouth one at a time. His teeth raked tenderly over the sensitive flesh as he suckled at me. After the freezing cold water, his hot mouth was heavenly against my skin. While he nipped at me, his other hand moved down to unbutton my jeans.
As soon as the button was free, he didn’t hesitate to slip his hands down further to cup my mound. The merest touch was already almost too much to handle. It had been such a long waiting game, so many days of my body crying out for Micah while my brain steadfastly refused. Now, though, I had his hands and his mouth and his everything, all to myself in this hidden oasis in the desert.
He let my breasts fall from his mouth and sat back on his heels so he could rip my jeans off. I raised my legs to help him and he pulled them away in one clean swoop, throwing them over his shoulder next to where I’d cast aside his shirt. He didn’t wait long to bring his mouth down to the crease in my hip, biting hard enough to leave a mark before gliding across my waist to the other side.