- Hard Fall (28 page)

"I packed it: climbing gear, extra set of clothes." He tossed a small duffel at me, hard. I caught it against my chest.

"Figured I might need it all." Then he hauled his climbing pack out. "Either you'd be in a good enough mood that I'd get some or I'd be talking you out of a voluntary screamer off your roof."

I glared at Nadia. "Y'all planned it didn't ya."

"Nope, all his idea. I'm innocent as pure driven snow." Like a little girl, she stuck her tongue out at me and made me laugh. "Oh go on," she pushed at my back, "celebrate a little," and walked on around to the driver's side of the cruiser. Looking back over her shoulder, she popped the door but paused before climbing in. "Bring him back 'round in a couple days, when you come help me."

She may not have planned Kabe's deal, but something was up with her as well. "Help you?"

"Yeah, stuck a bunch of stuff in storage." She leaned with one arm over the door and the other canted on over top the car. "You can come help me get it all out and unpack. Come on, it'll keep you busy," dropping her voice to a wavering 253

Hard Fall

by James Buchanan

mockery of her normal strong southern drawl, she played up the joke, "help this poor decrepit old lady out."

"If you're old and decrepit," I snorted, "I'd hate to see what you were like when you were young and spry."

That got me a laugh back. "I'd have run you into the ground." She slid into the seat and shut the door. Through the open window she added, "Come by around lunch time day after tomorrow, Sugar." I couldn't do more than shake my head as she drove off. Might have lost myself one social circle, but somehow I'd picked up another without really even thinking on it.

Kabe stepped close and frowned. "You are whipped and you're not even getting any of that."

"What are you on about?"

"Nadia, she's wrapped you around her finger." He shook his head like he couldn't fathom why. "She says 'jump,' you say 'how high?'"

I smacked the back of his head and headed for my truck.

"You just don't know how to be neighborly."

"Love thy neighbor." As he fell into step next to me, Kabe's face went all sour. "Unless, of course, he's gay?"

I tossed his gear in the bed of my pickup. "I ought to whip your butt for that one." I ought to beat his butt for near a thousand things he'd done just today alone. Then it hit me I ought to just whip that pretty boy ass just to see it go all red and him all hard and wanting. Thank the Lord I stood right up near my truck. Nobody'd get an eyeful of the hard-on that done sprouted up in my shorts.

254

Hard Fall

by James Buchanan

Kabe smirked. I guess he'd caught sight of my wood. He slid by me, rubbing his hip into my crotch and I did a quick glance 'round to make sure there weren't anyone around to see it. As he clambered up into the cab, he purred out, "Any time you want." If that weren't an invitation, I didn't know what was.

[Back to Table of Contents]

255

Hard Fall

by James Buchanan

Wind whipped over me, tugging at my clothes, licking the hair on my arm and the back of my neck. It thrummed the ropes, making the gear clipped to my harness jangle. Warm, red stone caressed my hands. All of yesterday's hate, courtesy of Pete, worked itself out of my joints as I climbed.

I'd taken Nadia's motherly advice, or command depending on how I looked crosswise at it, and headed out with Kabe in tow. Behind, below and around us the world spread out.

Folding rolls of pine covered mountain and bare swept plains of rock marched off beyond where my eyes could even follow.

God's country.

One of my secret spots, know a few, the kind I never tell other climbers about 'cept for a few I got to climb with. They ain't all that dangerous or high up on the Yosemite Scale, but they usually have decent enough pitches to get my heart rate up and put me through a workout. Mostly they're pretty and out where no one else is gonna mess with you. On a known wall, you might have to wait while someone finishes the last leg, rappels down or share their protection going up. I don't like climbing in rush hour traffic.

This place I called Flattop. Not the most poetic of names—

no Angel's Backbone or Candy Mountain—but it fit. All the way up I got to listen to Kabe bad-mouth the face. "It's shit rock." He grumbled. "The holds are manky." He'd moan. "I could do this pitch in my sleep."

256

Hard Fall

by James Buchanan

"Wait for it." I kept telling him. "Gotta be patient." I knew he wanted a challenge and here I was forcing him through kindergarten for rock junkies. Sometimes you just gotta wade through the manure to find the pony.

The up the wall, set a cam or two, watch Kabe's hang above me and listen to him bellyache dance went on for a bit.

This was supposed to be my party, my getting back to my center little hoe-down. I did not get put in jail and then I get a call from my boss that I'm back in uniform. 'Course, I'd been throwing up like crazy since before my court hearing from just nothing but nerves. Since then, I'd be fine for several hours and then the shakes'd hit. At least I didn't lose my lunch. Last night Kabe just held me till I calmed down some. But I was fine up here.

So, I guess even Kabe's moaning couldn't put me in too bad a mood. At least that gave me plenty of time to watch his butt and think about how I was going to have to smack some of the whine straight out of it; drawn out foreplay at a hundred feet up.

Kabe hauled himself over the lip first, stood to reason as I let him have lead. "Holy fucking shit," drifted down to me and I had to smile even with the cursing 'cause I knew what he'd just caught sight of. Not too long after, I hauled myself above the rim. And there it was, what I'd meant to show him, a playground for Kabe. It sounded damn wrong to my own ears, but what else could I call it.

"Holy Motherfucking shit." Kabe breathed again. He rested on his haunches and stared across a flat plateau 'bout twenty feet across ... not quite big enough to be called a mesa but a 257

Hard Fall

by James Buchanan

heck of a lot more than a party ledge. I knew what caught his eye. That's why I brought him up here. It didn't go far up, but where the rise took off again looked like some giant had upended a tub of building blocks and then melted them all into a lumpy, crevassed jumble. Boulderers' heaven. You could be not more than five feet off the dirt and pulling stunts that people paid good money to watch in Vegas shows.

I walked over to Kabe and slapped his back. "There you go." Then I started the process of unknotting the belay. I loosed my prussic and hung it off one clip so I could get to the rest of the rope.

Kabe looked up at me, shading his eyes with his hand.

"Bouldering?" He said it all snide. His face, though, didn't show nothing of the same spite. "You brought me all the way up here to boulder?" The attitude he gave off was that of a kid who just got the toy they really wanted, but maybe thought they should be too old to be excited about.

"You said you wanted a workout, there it is." Shrugging as I started untangling him from the pro I'd set in the ridge ages ago. My one concession to practicality, two permanently anchored bolts and a chain; too much flat surface to hunt bolting spots each time I came up. "It ain't fancy. It ain't high." Kinda swept my arm absently off in the direction of the rock pile. "But you monkey around on that enough you'll be ready to tackle Spiderfingers over in Kolob Canyon in no time flat."

Oh yeah, he grinned like a kid on Christmas morning.

"Okay." He stood and started pulling, tidying ropes. "You doing it with me?"

258

Hard Fall

by James Buchanan

"Sure." Why not, I needed the practice of getting in and out of tight little spots. People who fell, who by rights I had to bring out, tended to go down in inaccessible slot canyons and crevasses. "I'll do a bit with you."

I played for a while, letting Kabe know I could. There were places where it was all I could do to shove my hands in slotwise. My toes were above my head and I got nothing but two fingers of each hand in a crack and reaching back behind my own butt. And that was me and my chunky form of too big for this kind of climbing. I knew the drill, that my legs counted far more than my biceps for keeping me on a wall, but I wasn't no half-starved teenage gal to wrap myself

'round some of those moves. After a bit of the pretzel routine, I just moved off and watched him.

I don't like spiders, just my thing, but there ain't no other way to describe how he moved across some of those spans. I swear there weren't no finger or toe holds to be had and he's taking the bottom side of an overhang and making it look easy. Kabe, who was all lithe and limber, played around like gravity didn't apply to him. One hand on the side of a boulder, the other latched into the bottom face and he's curling and uncurling between rocks like a length of ribbon wound through a belay.

All through it there's that pained snarl on his face. I call it a climber's grin, 'cause it says I've got my soul invested here, I'm sweating half my weight in water out and I got blister-flaps coming off my hands ... and I'd still rather be here than anywhere else I can think of.

259

Hard Fall

by James Buchanan

I chugged down some water and licked my lips. There's foreplay and then there's waiting too long for what you want.

Screwing down the cap before I shoved the bottle back in my belt, I called out. "Hey!" It took a couple repeats to get Kabe's attention. When I did, he's squatting like a kid playing at being a frog, knees bent, hands touching the ground between his feet ... 'cept Kabe's upside down, latched into a rock about twenty feet up. "Get over here!"

He uncurled, locked into whatever space his fingers could find, moving his feet to get a different purchase. "Why?" That took balls. Most times climbers wanted to keep three points on a wall. Gave you balance and stamina.

I just shook my head. Kabe wasn't most climbers. "Just get your butt over 'side me."

He scuttled down that wall and let himself swing out from the face and drop down the last five feet. Jumping from boulder to boulder, he headed toward me. "What?"

Crossing my arms over my chest, I glowered at him. "I ain't heard it yet." Hard to keep the grin from taking over though. Lean brown and toned body covered in sweat ...

boy'd dropped his shirt about half an hour back.

"Heard what?" He ran his hand through his hair and grinned. Took his sweet time ambling over. I could tell by the way he moved he was watching me watching him. And liked it.

When he got close, I reached out and hooked a finger into his harness, that big thick belt around his middle, and reeled him in. "Thank you." Lord he smelled good, all that exertion busting across his skin and daring me to taste it.

260

Hard Fall

by James Buchanan

"Right," he snorted, pushing me away like it wasn't nothing, my bringing him here. "Whatever, dude." I got a roll of his eyes on top of it all. "You go ahead and think you're gonna get one. I ain't fucking impressed."

I spun him, 'cause he was off balance, leaning back, and I had a good twist point with my fingers in his harness. Took me all of a second and I turned him over a rock and swatted him hard with my other hand. "I told you about using that word!" I laughed it out. Even through those fancy shorts of his, I felt the burn. I'd meant to just tease him a bit, but hearing the sound as my palm smacked down and Kabe's yelp woke up that same feeling, the one I'd gotten in my cabin that night. I'd thought then it was maybe anger or fear or both. There weren't none of that going on here.

I just liked it ... liked it more than I'd imagined.

He twisted and tried to scramble away. Didn't even think, just latched my hand hard into his harness and drug him back into my reach. Kabe weren't getting away from me.

There was that muscled back, all sweaty and streaked with dust, and it fueled my fancy something awful. Those expensive, tight climbing shorts clung to his butt like a second skin. Kabe glared over his shoulder, sweat damp hair clinging to his face and fight blowing up the green and gold in his eyes. It burned through me in a flash, dropped all my blood south. His legs strained as he pushed against the rock to get away from me. That's where all the body's power lay, but even Kabe couldn't move past my mule streak. 'Specially not when I wanted something.

261

Hard Fall

by James Buchanan

Yanking my prussic off my rack, I dropped the cord down until the knot sat tight in my hand—that knot'd hurt too much if it caught him. Then I hauled off and whacked him with the open loop. The blow caught him half on his belt and half on his back, kinda high up. A red half circle bloomed on his skin.

Nothing ever looked quite so pretty to my eyes. I leaned into his body then, pressing him right between me and the rock,

"Whatever don't cut it, boy."

"Fuck you!" He spit out. Couldn't take it too serious with that wicked grin on his face. Plus, Kabe never used that word against me. He knew I didn't like the cussing. Boy did it on purpose, egging me on. I don't know how to explain the difference, but I knew. He fought
against
me, but he didn't fight
me
. The point of all the writhing and squirming wasn't to get away. Naw, he just didn't want to make it easy on me.

I kept my grip tight, brought that piece of rope up and laid it back down across his back. The sound of rope striking flesh thundered in my pulse. A red half moon appeared right between his shoulder blades and Kabe gasped. I ain't never been gripped by anything like it. Just took over, my blood replaced by this
need
that I didn't quite understand. Reached out with that hand, rope tight in my fingers, and used my thumb to trace it. Kabe's shudder ran straight up my arm and down into my balls. It hit me so intense I didn't even think. I hauled off and belted him again down around his butt and his thighs. Maybe ten times I struck him, each and every one of them amped my senses to breaking. Kabe bucked, twisted and moaned like he was getting balled, pleading my name in a way that begged for the whooping not to end ... ever.