Cabin Fever (16 page)

She looked up and squinted a smile at him, partially blinded by the sun that hung behind his head. “Hello,” she said simply. At the moment there were no other words in her head, but there were feelings and they were beginning to crest like a wave driving hard toward the shore.

“Sarah!” he said, surprised, and laughed. He came up beside and her and crouched down so that their heads were at the same level. “I was just thinking about you.”

“And I was thinking about you. Writing about you too, as it happens,” she said, closing the laptop and setting it beside her. “What brings you to this neck of the woods?”

He glanced around at the trees that surrounded them. “I like it up here. It’s quiet. I get a lot of thinking done.”

“And what are you thinking about right now?”

“Right now? Right now I’m thinking about blue eyes, and blonde hair, and two lips that I haven’t kissed in way too long.”

And then they were kissing, as they had the night before on the couch, but this was a different sort of kiss. Last night’s had been gentle, tentative, exploratory. This kiss was hungry, and it grew more hungry with each moment that they spent pressed against each other. Sarah’s hands were on Brad’s back, marveling at the power of the muscles she could feel beneath her fingers. She kneaded his back, her hands venturing up to run through his hair and down to brush against his butt. Meanwhile his hands were behind her head, pulling her into the kiss, pressing her so strongly into him it was if he hoped that they might merge.

In time they came up for air and pulled just far apart enough to look into each other’s eyes. “Are we doing this?” Brad asked, and Sarah had to fight the incongruous urge to laugh at the pine needles in his hair.
 

“I think we are,” she answered, and leaned in for another kiss. It felt like he was enveloping her, like his arms would pull her into a warm place where she could curl up and sleep. Her head lolled back, his mouth still strong against hers, and she leaned back to draw him with her to the ground where a blanket of pine needles served as their mattress. She felt crushed beneath his muscled bulk, wonderfully pressed between the hard ground beneath her and the hardness of his body above her. If she still had the capacity for thought, Sarah might have objected -- not here, not now, not this way. But all she could do in that moment was want with a desperate, yearning hunger that cried out for more.

Her blouse was open now, though she did not remember when the buttons had come undone or who had released them. Her own hands were beneath the sturdy cotton of his work shirt to caress the hot flesh of his back. With a groan Brad raised himself to his knees and tore his shirt off over his head before diving back down to claim her mouth again. Sarah reached up impatiently to draw him down, and some small part of her was ashamed at how ardently she was grinding her body against the growing package in his tight jeans.

"This is happening," she thought, "this is really happening," as she surrendered her blouse and arched her back to give Brad access to the clasp of her bra. Their tongues intimately intertwined, they pressed together with a heat that threatened to grow dangerous if left unchecked. Everything in Sarah's character and upbringing might have led her to slow down, to stop, to object. All that was so far forgotten, it was as if it had never been. Instead she released her hold on Brad to reach down, unbutton her jeans, and work them down past her hips. Brad used the opportunity to bend and take her now-exposed nipple into his mouth. Sarah moaned, louder than she had intended, then urgently rolled over on top so that she could speed the clothing-removal process. She wanted to be naked. She needed to be naked and feel Brad naked against her. This was all moving so fast, and yet it was not nearly fast enough to suit her.

Her bra joined her blouse on the ground, and soon was joined by her jeans, shoes, and socks. Sarah was now wearing nothing but her panties, and in a small way she was still aware that they were entwined with one another next to a trail that led to a parking lot that was not too far away through the trees. She might have worried about the prospect of someone coming across them, if it weren't for the sight of Brad's prodigious erection jutting up from beneath the thin cotton of his underpants. It took Sarah's breath away and captured all of her attention. She reached out reflexively like a baby reaching for her bottle. It was all she could do to keep from yelling, "Mine!"

There was no time to waste. Sarah moved forward to sit on Brad's knees and slipped her hand into his shorts to take his long rod in her hand. Brad let his head drop back and released his breath in a long whoosh. Sarah smiled crookedly. Brad was so strong, so powerful, and now she was in control. She had his joystick fully under her control.

Gripping the shaft firmly but gently she stroked slowly up and down, tracing the path between his balls and his head. Brad was leaning back, his eyes closed and his breath coming in quick, shallow puffs. Her eyes locked on his face, Sarah pulled his shorts down so that she could wrap her other hand around his shaft. She was finding this moment to be intensely erotic. There would come a time, really soon, when he would be touching her, but as much as Sarah longed for that touch she had a hard time imagining that it could be any better than this.

But still...she wanted attention. She gave Brad's shaft a gentle squeeze, and then another one that was not quite so gentle when he didn't immediately respond. When his eyes fluttered open, she gave him a smile. "My turn," she purred, and rolled backward, off his lap and onto her back.
 

"Tease," Brad muttered, but his eyes were smiling as he leaned forward, took a firm grip on her panties, and pulled them off over her legs. Sarah smiled and closed her eyes, relishing the feeling of being naked on the forest floor. She had never done anything like this before. She had never imagined that she would do something like this, and somehow that made it all the more delicious. As Brad's strong fingers began to stroke their way up her legs, Sarah spread her arms and legs and arched her back.

And then his questing hands arrived at her core, and Sarah's eyes popped open. "Oh," she said despite herself. And then she murmured "oh" again as his curious fingers probed deeper, gently, tantalizingly. Sarah might have imagined that such a strong man, an athlete, might have been rough and demanding at a moment like this, but Brad was so gentle in his manipulations, so sensitive to her needs that it was as if he knew her body better than she did.

In time – both too soon and too late – he gathered her into his arms for a breathtaking kiss. Sarah draped her arms around his neck and found herself up close and very much personal with his rather alarming erection. Brad pulled back a bit and shifted to fumble in his discarded jeans, eventually extracting his wallet and pulling a foil condom package from inside. Abruptly the wave of boldness Sarah had been riding was gone and she felt her old, tentative self again. This wasn’t a fantasy. This was no tawdry romance novel she might read in the bathtub. This was actually going to happen, and the reality of it all was a little overwhelming. Breaking the kiss, she rested her hands on Brad’s shoulders and looked deep into his eyes. She felt on the point of bolting, running, making her apologies and driving back to San Francisco that very afternoon.

Instinctively Brad seemed to recognize what was going through her mind and wrapped one strong arm around her shoulders in a gesture that in part felt comforting but was just as much an expression of ownership. Holding her eyes with his, he used his teeth and his free hand to tear open the package and work the condom over his member in movements that were almost too practiced. He reached down to her core to test her wetness, and when he was sure she was ready, he guided his shaft inside of her.
 

At first he felt too large, and Sarah thought she must surely be split in two on top of him. She needed this wildly, though – she needed it desperately, and so she clung to him and pulled him close and farther into her depths. Seated in his lap she was impaled on his manhood, and the feeling was exquisite. She was beyond speech, beyond utterance of any kind aside from a series of pants and groans. Everything she had gone through, everything she had experienced, was worth it if it had helped bring her to this moment.

“Mmmm, my God…” Brad muttered as he shifted her onto her back and, holding his weight on his arms, began slowly moving inside her. Sarah clung to his neck as if she was drowning and he was her life vest. She circled her legs around his hips and began thrusting against him.
 

His pace intensified. The sound of their wet flesh slapping together filled the forest. Sarah had never felt anything like this before. She had never felt so full, and yet she had never experienced need so intensely. This wasn’t love-making like she had imagined when she was a girl. This was fucking, this was dirty and nasty, and she loved every minute of it. Oh, how she loved it!

Brad pushed up on his forearms and pulled his head back, his eyes tightly closed, but his hips continued to piston into her. “Oh shit, I’m close. I’m too close,” he said, breathing hard.
 

Sarah’s hands moved down to the beautiful muscles of his chest. The feeling of the sweat on his skin pushed her over the edge, and she could feel her climax building. “Oh … oh … oh,” she moaned, her voice rising with each syllable as she was transported by the incredible sensation of this man filling her so completely. Sucking in a deep, shuddering breath, she arched her back and exploded.
 

Her orgasm was answered a moment later by Brad, who leaned down to kiss her mouth quickly and roughly before throwing his head back to release his pent-up breath in one explosive burst. For one endless moment he was like a great beast of the forest, snorting and thrusting, and she was his mate, she was his willing victim. He thrust deeply one more time, and deeper still a second time, and then he collapsed on her.
 

Later the two of them lay in the shade of the trees, looking up at patches of blue sky and feeling the sweat drying on their skin. Brad had gathered their scattered clothing and fashioned a makeshift blanket on the off-chance that someone would come down the path and discover them lying there. There would be no question what the two of them had been up to – Sarah’s tousled hair alone was proof enough of that – but at least there would be a minimum of visible nakedness. In more modest times Sarah might have hurried to put her clothes back on, but she was currently using Brad’s chest as a pillow and the sensation was too wonderful to waste.

She sighed. “That was…” She trailed off, searching for words that would do the memory justice.

“Incredible. Intense. Unbelievable,” Brad finished for her.

“All of those things and more,” she replied, reaching her arms up in a languorous stretch that turned at the last moment into a caress of his cheek. She could feel the stubble of a few days’ beard on his chin. Somehow she hadn’t noticed that while they were kissing. She liked the way it felt. It was real.

Brad’s arms encircled her. “I was hoping that this would happen last night, but I’m an idiot and it wasn’t until this morning that I put a condom in my wallet. When I was driving out here, I was thinking about how much I was looking forward to this, and what I was going to do today to try to get you into bed. It turns out, all I needed to do was find you.”

“You did. You found me,” Sarah said, feeling as if the words were true and held a meaning that lay just beyond her reach. “I was thinking about you all day. Thinking about you was turning me on. And then there you were, like magic.”

He hugged her tighter. “Magic. I like that. I want to be the magic in your life.”

She twisted in his arms to look up into his eyes. “Why Brad, that almost sounded romantic. Are you sure you didn’t misspeak?” she teased.

“For you, I can be romantic,” he replied, and leaned down to kiss her lightly on the nose.

She laid her head against his bare chest and listened to the dull thumping of his heart. This all still seemed like a dream to her. It was what happened to other women, not to her. She was afraid to close her eyes, because when she opened them again she might be back at her father’s cabin, alone.

They lay there for what might have been an hour or more before muscles began to cramp and forced them to sit up. Sarah gathered her shirt and held it against her breasts, fully aware of how foolish it was to hide her naked body from the man who had just helped her remove her clothes. A question was nagging at the back of her mind. “You don’t usually carry a condom with you?”

Brad looked at her quizzically. “What do you mean?”

“You said that, when we were together last night, you wanted to … do more with me, but you didn’t have a condom in your wallet. I didn’t think about it at the time, but I’d expect that you’d always have protection with you.”

His eyes sparkled in amusement. “Because I’m such a powerful sexual being that I’m liable to have sex at a moment’s notice?”

“Well … yeah. Don’t you?”

“Have sex at a moment’s notice? Maybe once, when I was a kid and new to the league and a little amazed at the money I was making. I did my share of partying, but lately not so much.”

“What changed?”

“I got a little older, and maybe a little wiser. I got tired of waking up next to someone I didn’t know and maybe didn’t even like. I got choosy.”

Despite herself Sarah blushed a little bit. “And you chose me?”

Brad leaned in to plant a kiss on her nose. “I choose you.”

After that there wasn’t much talking, though they let the contact of their bodies speak for them, the words passing from skin to skin. They got dressed slowly, and then they cuddled together under the trees, knowing that the moment they had shared was past but neither ready yet to put it behind them. Brad sat behind Sarah, his arms around her waist, and she rested her head beneath his chin and slowly stroked his arm with her hand. He was so much larger than her, and so much stronger. She felt like a little girl in his arms, and she was surprised at how much she liked the feeling. That confident career woman from San Francisco seemed a long way away right now – she was still there, inside Sarah’s chest, but she was prepared to wait while the little girl had her fun.