"I'm looking," I say.
She makes a sound that might be impatience. I run both hands up the inside of her thighs slowly, not touching where she wants, and she pushes toward me.
"You've been patient for three days," I tell her. "You can wait two more minutes."
She exhales hard through her nose.
I smile in the dark where she can't see it.
I get my mouth on her inner thigh. The other one. I work my way in slow and she's already wet when I finally put my tongue on her, already wanting it, and I settle in and give it to her properly. Long strokes, then focused, reading her the way I read terrain — pressure here, angle there, and when I find the right place she grips my hair hard and her whole body goes still before it goes loud.
I keep her right at the edge. Back off when she gets close. Return when her breathing levels. She's shaking within a few minutes, her hips moving against my face, and she's past managing the sounds she makes — past the careful version of herself she arrived at the trailhead with three days ago, all of that stripped away by altitude and silence and now this.
"Please."
I give her what she's asking for. Work my tongue against her clit steady and direct until she comes against my mouth, thighsclamped around my head, her whole body clenched and shaking. I stay through all of it. Every second.
When she loosens I kiss my way back up her stomach, her ribs, her chest.
She reaches down and wraps her hand around my cock before I've finished moving. Strokes once, slow, base to tip. My arms lock.
She does it again. Watching my face.
I let her work me. I've got patience built into me like trail muscle and I use it, lying there while she takes me apart — her grip confident, her pace deliberate, like she's paying attention to what lands. She is paying attention. I feel that attention now like a physical thing.
“Fuck,” I grunt. It feels so good. I can’t remember the last time anything felt as good as her soft hand on my cock. When I'm close enough that stopping is an act of will I wrap my fingers around her wrist.
She makes a sound of protest.
"Not yet," I say. “I want to be inside of you.”
I get between her thighs and push them apart and line up and push inside her in one long stroke.
She exhales like something has finally been resolved. I stop there, fully seated, my forehead dropped to hers, and feel it. The specific reality of her. This woman at six thousand feet who told me the true thing about herself at the fire and didn't look away after. Who followed me down the wrong trail without asking where it went.
Long and slow to start, feeling her open around me, and she wraps her legs high around my waist and tilts her hips and takes more of me and I drop my head and work. I find the angle that breaks her breathing and I stay there. She digs her fingers into my back and I feel the pressure of it, the specific wanting in it, and I give her more.
"Right there," she says. "Don't stop. Don't!"
I get a hand between us and press my thumb against her clit and keep moving. She clenches around my cock immediately, tight and getting tighter, and I work her at that angle with my thumb steady on her and watch her face come apart in the thin light. Nothing held back. Just her, open and real and gripping me like she's not letting go.
She comes with her whole body. Thighs locked around me, back arched off the sleeping bag, my name in her mouth like the only word she has left.
I push deep and follow her. Hold there and let it take me apart.
She goes soft and warm afterward. I pull her in and she tucks her face into my throat and her breathing slows, evens, and I lie there in the dark holding her while the mountains hold us and outside there is nothing and nobody at all.
I stay awake.
I think about twelve years of choosing these mountains over everything that wanted to pull me back down to the valley. That choice always felt like the obvious one. The only one.
It doesn't feel that way anymore.
I already know I'm taking the slow route out in the morning.
five
Nyla
