It took a couple of hours of hard trekking through the forest, sometimes following trails, other times heading off-trail when I knew of a shortcut. It was dusk by the time I reached my cabin.
The cabin was…well, I’d used the word “remote” with Liv. But that really didn’t cover it. Unless you had been there with a guide, were well versed in off-trail forest navigation, could hike for several hours on end, and knew how to get there with your eyes closed, you’d never find it. Not in a million years. You could walk right past it and not see it unless you knew what to look for. It had been built at the edge of a little pond, small enough that you could skip a rock across it. There were lots of big, moss-covered boulders ringing the pond, and stumps of old pines stood, like the broken teeth of dead giants, in the water at the far side. All around was forest, deep, heavy, dark, chaotically thick. The pond had no name, unless one of the local tribes had named it, but I’d never heard about that.
The cabin was sort of a family heirloom—the history of it was murky, though. I knew it had been built several generations back on my father’s side—a great-great-grandfather, or uncle. Something like that. The point is, it had been built a long ass time ago.
The logs were mossy and had grayed with age and weather into a color that blended in with the rest of the forest, and the rocks used to make the chimney were equally mossy and aged. The windows, such as they were, were so old and dirty that they didn’t reflect sunlight. Meaning, unless you knew you were looking at a cabin, you’d likely miss it. The chimney was positioned directly beneath the thickest layers of coniferous branches, so even when a fire was burning in the fireplace, the smoke would dissipate before it left the tree cover.
There was an outhouse about thirty feet from the house, and once a year I hauled up lime to maintain it. There was no indoor plumbing, although there was a well pump inside the house, and another near the outhouse. No electricity.
Definitely not for the faint of heart, and it took “roughing it” to a new level.
But it was paradise, for me.
I came up here to recharge, to get in touch out my wild creative bents—as a tattoo artist, I tended to fall into predictable patterns and subjects and styles, and rarely had time to pursue styles and mediums. Coming up here was a chance to flex those other muscles.
I kept all sorts of art supplies up here, and every time I came I would bring up new stuff: oil paints, pastels, charcoal, a manual camera and hundreds of rolls of film—I could block off the already dirty windows and use the cabin as a darkroom. Years back, I’d gone to the effort of hauling up a full darkroom kit, including an enlarger. I had an easel, rolls of canvas that I stretched and framed myself.
I would spend days on end just geeking out in whatever medium caught my fancy. I had bins full of photos, both framed and not, old rolls of film kept in airtight storage. Stacks and stacks and stacks of paintings—pastels and charcoals—some framed, some just the canvas.
When I got up here I did have a tendency to go full artist and just zone into my project, forgetting to eat or sleep for forty-eight or seventy-two hours at a time.
But this time?
This was different.
The entire first four days I was here, I’d stared at my phone and wondered why I’d brought it. It didn’t work out here; I had no charger and no way to charge it when it did die. Why had I felt such an odd pull to bring my phone with me?
It had baffled me the whole way up here.
I had no one to call—Juneau knew I was up here, and she knew the only way to get me in case of an emergency was to just come out here. She was the only person—outside of my immediate family who, never came here—who even knew where the cabin was, or how to get here.
My client list had been postponed indefinitely. My voicemail and website had been updated to indicate my leave of absence. I had plenty of money saved for supplies, and could live off the land indefinitely anyway.
Cassie was back in Ketchikan, and I was just operating under the assumption that either I’d get tired of being up here and go back home eventually, and would figure it out with her then, or she’d come find me.
So…why did I bring my damn phone?
Finally, a week in, I picked it up, turned it on, and…
What?
I had no photos, couldn’t access the Internet.
I tapped the photos icon. I’d brought it to a family get-together last year, so I had a few photos of baby cousins and my parents and shit, but that was it.
But wait.
The “Photos” tab at the bottom just showed the family reunion shots and an album file. Then under albums, I scrolled down. Down, down. To the bottom.
And there, at the very bottom, was a little line— “hidden.”
That was not there last time I looked, and I hadn’t put it there.
So, I tapped it.
Fuck me running.
When did Cassie do this?
Dozens of photos. A hundred, maybe.
All of her.
Ho-ly. Shit.
An array of thumbnails. Cassie clothed was the first one. I tapped on it to enlarge, and just stared. This made me miss her even more.
Only a week had gone by, but I missed the shit out of her.
And here she was…in my bathroom, in my house. So. She’d taken photos of herself, hidden them in a secret album, and not told me.
Hoping, probably, that I’d find them when I least expected to, as a fun, sort of kinky little surprise.
You little minx, you.
God, I loved her.
Whoops. That was unexpected.
But true.
I swiped right: the next one was of her clothed, again, but a different angle. Ripped tight light wash blue jeans, the ones she’d been wearing the last night I saw her.
I swiped through, slowly, savoring.
The next one was of her in jeans and a black bra. Oof—the hard-on seeing that was instant and painful. And it only got worse when I got to the topless shots. Shit, she was perfect. I wanted her, so badly. God, I wanted her.
Those delicate, dainty, pink little breasts, darker pink areolae, brownish nipples. Perfectly round breasts, tight and high, the tips pointing just slightly toward the sky. Plump, pert.
Fuck.
I kept scrolling. Topless again, but without the jeans. Just those lovely little tits and her in a pair of light gray briefs, the kind where the leg holes are cut way up high past her hipbones. God.
Then, ohhhh lordy.
In the last few she was totally nude. In the first, she was tastefully turned to one side, showing me the outside of her thigh, the phone, her breasts, eyes on the camera, platinum hair loose and draped around her shoulders.
The next was less tasteful and more scandalous. Hot. God, so hot. Facing the mirror, hiding nothing. A small smile on her lips. Looking in the mirror and at the camera—at me—as if begging me to come through the photo and make her feel good.
God, if only I could.
In another shot she showed me her ass, high and round and taut. Toned, muscular, with just enough delicacy and softness to make me nuts.
I knew why she’d done this.
It was for me.
Because she wanted me to embrace my sexuality.
Giving me clear and undeniable permission to use her as fodder for my imagination. For my needs.
It wasn’t as good as the real thing, in my hands, but god did I need release. I’d spent the last week in agony, waking up thinking of her. Dreaming of her. Remembering her. Wishing she was here, yet still refusing to let myself think of her like that.
Even though she’d told me to, that I could, that I should, old habits die hard; ingrained resistance is difficult to overcome.
The visual stimuli helped.
A lot. A lot, a lot.
Instead of giving in and letting myself use her as release, I turned to art for expression.
There was only one medium for this—my oil paints. I stretched half a dozen canvasses, ch
ose my palette of paint colors, and went to work.
In the first one I reproduced a photo as directly as I could, going for photorealistic—I started simple, her in those faded ripped jeans, pale skin showing in tantalizing glimpses, shirtless, wearing just the black bra, a full coverage functional piece, showing just enough cleavage to make me hard, make me imagine what lay beneath.
I set that one aside and kept going. Another photorealistic transcription of a photo; in this one, I allowed myself to represent her topless, in just those high-cut briefs.
I spent hours and hours painting, each one taking several hours, and even that was blasting through at a reckless pace, sacrificing technical precision for the passion of just gettin' the paint on the canvas, getting the images out of my head.
I painted for forty-eight hours straight, ate a full day’s worth of calories in one go and then slept—fitful, restless, dreaming of her, seeing her writhing naked on my bed.
I took my canvasses and paints and easel outside, by the pond.
I painted her on a boulder, in a bikini, head turned to smile at me, a sultry, sexy, come-hither grin, hair spilling over her slender serpentine back.
When I lost the light, I went inside again.
I painted her naked by the fireplace, on the floor. Sated, sweaty, on her back, feet pointing at the fire, eyes closed, breasts peaked and nipples hard, a scrim of blonde fuzz around her core. One arm tossed across her belly, the other extended out behind her. The viewpoint was from behind her, standing just above, gazing down at her.
It was a furious time—hours spent painting becomes days, days become weeks, and I was running out of paint. Running out of places to stack my drying works.
I couldn’t stop, though.
I was obsessed.
It was frantic, a frenzy. A need to paint her, see her, a way to put my mental images of her out into the world. Express my need for her in a visual context.
I lost track of time. I ran out of paint. I made the trek into town to resupply paints and canvas materials.
Hunted for meat. Fish. Hiked the wildest places, clearing my head, thinking.
When I got back to the cabin I started working on a new piece right away.
How many portraits have I done? Ten? Twelve? I was barely eating, barely sleeping. When I was exhausted and fried, I would pack a bag and head out for more hunting, more fishing, more trekking through the forest, recharging my mind and soul and body.
Finally, I just literally passed out on the floor of the cabin. I was beyond exhausted, emotionally burned out from putting so much energy into feeling her, seeing her, painting her, wanting her, needing her.
Cassie…
Where are you?
Cassie
I can feel him, the closer we get.
Juneau, Remington, Ramsey, and Lucas were all with me. Guiding me. I’d never felt so much like a helpless city girl in all my life—we were miles from the nearest trail, dozens of miles from anything like civilization. I’d peed in a bush, wiped with a leaf. The mosquitoes were the size of crows. The temperature was cool, but I was hot.
I had no clue where we were. If Juneau and the boys left me now I’d die, for sure. Juneau led the way, marching unerringly…recognizing specific landmarks, individual trees. She would touch a tree, stroking a trunk, as if recognizing an old friend. We would pause in a clearing, at a boulder or a downed tree, and Juneau would examine them carefully, looking for clues. At one place she smiled as she overturned a huge rock, finding a small cache that included a small hide bag that had a knife and a flint inside. She looked at everything and then replaced it, simply telling us we were heading in the right direction.
She glanced at Remington, at one point. “I haven’t been up to the cabin in a couple years. Funny how the old landmarks jump right out at you.”
Remington nodded. “Go somewhere enough, it gets ingrained.”
“I need to come up here more. Ink and I used to make trips up here all the freaking time. Then life got busy and I just…stopped.” Juneau sighed, a sound somewhere between relief and joy. “I feel more alive, being up here.”
He just squeezed her shoulder and we continued on deeper into the wild.
Further, deeper. Wilder.
Then, suddenly, we were in a clearing, and there was a small cabin and a pond. I barely saw the cabin at first, as it was well camouflaged to look like part of the landscape. The pond was tiny but lovely, a pastoral scene of elegant, wild beauty. A crow perched on the stump of a dead tree poking up out of the water, cawing. A dragonfly flitted across the surface, pausing and darting in unpredictable patterns.
I glanced at Juneau. “This is it?”
She nodded, grinning with pure giddy joy. “The Isaac Retreat.” A sigh, gusty and happy. “For a while, this was my home away from home.”
Lucas glanced around, nodding. “Quite a place. Looks like it’s been here a while, huh?”
Juneau shrugged. “Since the seventeen or eighteen hundreds, we’re not sure.”
“How far around does the property go?” Ramsey asked.
Another shrug. “I dunno. I don’t know that we actually even own anything. It’s just always been here. We come up, we hunt and fish and hike and read and relax. We don’t harm the forest, we don’t leave anything and we don’t take anything we don’t need. We leave it stocked and unlocked, and if you know about it and are in the area and in need, you’re welcome to it. Just respect it, and the land.”
Ramsey nodded. “De facto, grandfather clause sort of ownership.”
“Yep.”
“He’s in there,” I whispered, staring at the cabin. “I need to see him.”
The men and Juneau all exchanged glances.
Juneau bit her lip and said to the guys, “Um. If you guys are game to keep hiking, I know of a great spot for a picnic on the way back to town.”
A chorus of agreements and goodbyes and, within moments, they’d all trooped around the far side of the pond and up the hill. Leaving me alone in the forest, breathing slowly, raggedly, summoning my courage.
I walked up to the door of the cabin.
The door handle was nothing but a small metal lever lifting a latch—I lifted, pulled.
I stepped inside into…a sanctuary of me.
I was everywhere. Paintings of me on every surface. So, so many versions of me. He’d found my little gift, clearly.
I was stunned breathless for several minutes, just staring. The talent…god, the talent. He was a genius. In one, I was at the pond’s edge. Nude. Facing away from him, stepping into the water. I was partially bent, one hand extended to ripple the greenish-brown surface of the water. He’d captured me in motion, somehow frozen an instant in time, a fictional instant.
Another was a close-up, just my bust, a hint of cleavage propped up as I lay on my side, smiling at him with soft tender love in my eyes; tendrils of hair wisped across my face, paused in being blown by a breeze or his breath. My eyes were utterly me. It was like looking in a mirror, writ large. Seeing myself, the way I…the way I would look at him as I lay in his arms in the afterglow of making love.
I teared up.
There were stacks and stacks of paintings. God, he must have been painting me over and over the entire time he was gone, the entire time I was healing and strengthening and giving myself a future.
I moved forward, into the cabin, scanning around quickly. The inside was chaotic—one room, a bed in the corner, kitchenette in another, one wall contained the fireplace which currently glowed with the amber-orange light of a dying fire. The windows were grimy with age, keeping it dark inside. Everything else was art—paintings, darkroom equipment, boxes of film, several old manual film cameras, rolls of canvas and lengths of wood for stretching the canvas, framing supplies, paints, brushes, knives and scrapers and god knows what else. A window was open for ventilation, but it still reeked of oil paints, and Ink.
Then I saw him on the floor, passed out. A palette lay to one side, a brush to the other. Hi
s hair was loose, all over the place. He was…a mess.
He had paint crusted on his hands, wrists, in his beard, on his legs. He was coated in old crusted paint.
An artist, lost in his art.
Lost in his mind. His heart.
Lost in me.
I was filled with tenderness, watching him sleep. A frown furrowed his brow. I knelt, and then sat beside him. Smoothed the frown away with my fingertips, and he stirred. Rumbled wordlessly in his chest. Stirred again.
His eyes fluttered, opened, fixed on me. “Cass.” His voice was so low I could barely hear him, but I felt the sound of it.
“Hi.” I reached for him, and he shifted toward me. I pulled his head into my lap, stroked his hair.
“You’re here.” He wrapped an arm around behind me, cradling my waist.
“You’ve been busy, I see,” I said, letting humor fill my voice.
He snorted. “Yeah. Found your little folder of goodies.”
“I’m not sure what came over me. I’ve never done anything like that before. Never taken a single nude or even a partially nude photo of myself.”
“I’m glad you did.” He glanced over my hip at the nearest painting—a photorealistic version of one of my photos, me in nothing but underwear. Instead of holding a phone and taking a selfie, though, he’d made it so I was just gazing at him, one hand gathering my hair at the back of my head, the other at my side. Sensual, sultry. I felt sexy, in that painting. Looked like…a strong, powerful, lithe warrior goddess. Fearless, bold.
I swallowed hard. “You’re so talented, Ink. You could put these in a gallery.”
He hummed. “Some of them are pretty intimate and personal.”
I laughed. “I mean, maybe not the fully nude ones.” I frowned, my fingers dancing over his temple, through his beard. “I don’t know. I’m not an exhibitionist, but I…they’re incredible paintings, Ink. Truly remarkable.”
He shifted to sit up, facing me. “I couldn’t display you like that.” He got up, pulled one out from the middle of a stack—I was kneeling on a bed, upright on my knees.
Naked. My weight was on one side, as if I was in the act of sliding off the bed. My hair was down and loose, and I wasn’t looking at the viewer, but off-screen so to speak, laughing at something. Joy suffused me. It was an intimate moment, private. It had the air of us, Ink and me, post-sex. I was clearly climbing off the bed to clean up, to pee, wash my hands, whatever. Laughing at Ink. It was just…private.
For A Goode Time Call... Page 22