The Mountains Trilogy (Boxed Set) Read online

  It was as if that was all he needed to hear.

  James pressed Sarah up against the wall next to the bed, his body weight pinning her. He began to devour her, starting with her lips and then moving down to her ears, neck, chest and then returning to the nipples that had captivated him moments before. All the thoughts that had been swirling in Sarah’s mind vanished as blood rushed to other parts of her body. His ravishing left her weak in the knees and unsteady on her high heels.

  In attempt to regain her balance, she opened her eyes to find him staring back intently, waiting for her to meet his gaze. Once their eyes locked she heard him undo his belt buckle and unfasten his pants. She heard the rustle of his pants hitting the floor, his eyes never leaving hers. He took her hand and pressed it against his groin so that she could feel his erection bulging through his boxer briefs. “This is what you do to me,” he told her.

  Sarah slowly dropped to her knees before him and slid her thumbs under the waistband of his underwear, pulling it down to the floor on top of the pants. His thick, rock-hard cock sprung out from the material into her face. She kissed along his inner thigh and testicles, then with agonizingly slow strokes of her tongue, she licked up his shaft and around the head of his cock. She covered every inch of his manhood with her hungry mouth.

  She glanced up long enough to see his eyes roll back in his head as she took him as far as possible to the back of her throat, nearly gagging herself on his engorged flesh. She slid her mouth back up his length and then, after a tortuously long pause, abruptly plunged back down again on him, eliciting a guttural moan. She teased the tip with her tongue until she thought he might come unglued.

  His need had grown so urgent that he grabbed her head and plunged deep into her throat, his hands laced through her hair. She braced herself by grasping his muscular calves as he thrust in and out of her mouth until she could no longer fill her lungs with enough air to breathe.

  He released her head, and she pulled back several inches, stroking him with her hand. She watched his glistening shaft disappear in and out of her clenched fist while glancing up at his lusty eyes. A drop of pearly fluid appeared at the tip of his cock which she savored on her tongue. His thighs trembled beneath her fingers as she took him into her mouth yet again. He was clearly holding back. She had half a mind to suck him to completion, but before she could commit to it, he pulled her to her feet. He ripped the chemise from her body, whipped her around and pushed her down onto the bed face first.

  In seconds, she felt his warm body slide against hers. His hand traced down her spine and gripped her ass cheeks as the other hand held his throbbing cock between her legs. Feeling him so close to spreading her lips, brushing up against them but not quite inside, was driving her absolutely wild.

  Although he had yet to touch her there, she knew without a doubt that she was soaking wet with desire. This is what you do to me, she thought as she suddenly heard him produce a slight gasp. She realized that some of her juices had dripped onto the head of his cock and he was feeling her silky wetness against his hot flesh.

  He continued to stroke down her back all the way to her bottom, caressing and kneading her ample curves with his strong hands. She could barely concentrate on how amazing his hands felt massaging her flesh because all of her blood had pooled in her sex. The totality of her energy was fixated on his hardness being so close to penetrating her, but yet so far away. She pushed back against him, eager to feel him inside her, but the passage was still tight and closed. Eager is an understatement, she corrected herself. I’m fucking impatient. I’m impatient to fuck. PLEASE FUCK ME!!!

  Yet now he was the one in control. Which I asked for, she reminded herself. How ironic. He had found his stride and wanted to make her need him as much as he needed her. He twisted her long wavy locks in his palm and wrapped the thick dark band twice around his knuckles, pulling her head toward him and forcing her to arch her back. With his other hand, he repositioned his cock so that the head rested between her soaking wet lips. She gasped, conflicted over the pain radiating from her scalp mixed with the anticipation burning against her throbbing slit. “Is this what you want?” he demanded, pushing only the tip almost imperceptibly inside her.

  She was silent except for her heavy panting. He pulled back harder on his makeshift rein to force a reply and she cried out, “Yes!”

  He was still not satisfied with her answer and left his cock suspended, the tip still buried in the entrance to her pussy. He was winning the battle of their wills. She could not imagine wanting anything more desperately at that moment than she wanted him inside her. He gripped her ass again and commanded her, “Tell me what you want, Sarah.”

  “I want your cock inside me,” Sarah moaned. “Please....please, James, please....”

  Without another word, he plunged hard into the depth of her, causing her to scream out as she bucked against him, impaling herself on his stiff rod as fast as he would allow. Her climax was half-built before his first thrust. Her breathing was ragged and punctuated by moans.

  James continued to grip her by her hair and held steady, letting her push back against his pelvis until he decided he’d had enough and forcibly took back control over her. Without warning, he released her hair from his fist and pushed her face down onto the mattress, forcing her ass high into the air. He firmly grasped her hips, his fingers pressing into her soft feminine flesh, drilling into her relentlessly.

  Even though her sound was muffled by the mattress, he heard her cry out, and the sensation was so overwhelmingly intense that he began to moan as well. Both found their release at precisely the same exquisite moment, and it came wrapped in the same intensity of vocalizations. Their bodies violently shuddered against each other with each spasm.

  As the waves slowly dissipated, he dropped so that his head rested on her back, his heaving chest pressed against her bottom. Their racing heartbeats slowly wound down to normal rhythms as they struggled to catch their breath. She was frozen, not wanting to move and possibly miss the last lingering moments of her climax. He made a trail of gentle kisses down her back which starkly contrasted with the pounding he’d delivered just moments before.

  They shared two more sessions that evening, going late into the night and rendering both parties exhilarated yet exhausted. After the third, she lay with her cheek pressed against his chest, his wiry hair tickling her nose as his ribcage rose and fell with each deep breath. Just when she thought he was asleep, his fingers raked through her dark tresses which had cascaded over his arm. Lightly gripping the base of her neck, he tilted her head up to meet his, pressing his lips against hers and murmuring softly, “Goodnight, beautiful.”

  The way he’d shown the full spectrum of his passion that night...from tender to commanding and back to tender again...Sarah was reeling. He was so much more than she had thought.

  As she drifted off to sleep, a very clear, lucid thought rang out through her mind: This man is going to break my heart someday.

  ***

  The sound of the phone ringing startled Sarah from her slumber. James was still there, spooning her with his arm around her waist and his hand resting near her thigh. Sarah scrambled for the phone as soon as she realized it was Rachel calling. Rachel would never call at seven o’clock on a Saturday morning if there was not some sort of crisis. Sarah’s heart was pounding, her mind busily churning out all the different potential catastrophes that might be afoot. “Hello?” she said breathily, her vocal chords raspy from their workout the night before.

  On the other end, she heard nothing but sobbing: deep, uncontrollable sobbing. Sarah could count on one hand how many times she had heard her best friend cry in the decade she’d known her. James began to stir as Sarah reviewed her options for calming Rachel down. “What’s wrong?” seemed to be the first logical step.

  Rachel’s voice was shaky and riddled with more sobs, “Mark...” came her punctuation-between-sobs reply, “left....me.....”

  Sarah had never heard such anguish from Rache
l: not when her son had had to have emergency surgery, not when Rachel’s husband filed for divorce. Never.

  “Oh my god, Rachel,” Sarah managed, “I’ll be right there, honey. Give me twenty minutes.”

  James sat up in bed and rubbed his eyes for a moment. “What’s going on?” he asked wearily.

  “It’s Rachel,” Sarah replied. “I need to go to her.” She raced to the bathroom, grabbing clothes on her way, and forgetting to close the bathroom door as she started to empty her bladder. Whatever, she thought. He’s half asleep anyway.

  Sure enough, she emerged half dressed, her hair in a lopsided bun, glasses on and teeth brushed, but James remained in the same half upright position, his eyes closed again. Apparently he is not a morning person, Sarah observed. She was slipping on her flip-flops when his eyes flickered open. He looked mildly shell-shocked. Am I supposed to just leave him here or what?

  “I’m so sorry I need to go,” she said gently. “You can stay as long as you want. My kids won’t be back till four this afternoon.” She kissed him on the cheek. “See you soon...I hope...” The last words floated in the air as she hurried down the stairs and out the door. Fortunately, James’ truck wasn’t blocking her Toyota. She sped off to Rachel’s, hoping she could console her friend.

  The door to Rachel’s modest blue vinyl-sided ranch with black shutters was ajar, so Sarah let herself in, removing her shoes in the foyer. She headed straight for Rachel’s bedroom where her friend was curled up amongst a pile of fluffy purple pillows and used tissues. “Can I bring you anything?” Sarah asked immediately, thinking of how dehydrating all those tears must be.

  Rachel shook her head but then meekly requested, “A valium?” She almost managed a smirk through her puffy lips and red, swollen, bloodshot eyes. “A shotgun?”

  Sarah sat on the bed and took her friend into her arms. Rachel felt small and childlike in her embrace. The lamentations started again, and Sarah tried to absorb her friend’s violent sobs into her own body, letting her tears soak into her shoulders and fall into the wisps of hair that were slipping out of her haphazard bun.

  She just kept whispering “Shhhh....shhhhh,” remembering that mothers had for millennia quieted babies this way. It emulated the soothing sound of blood rushing through the placenta to which infants grow accustomed in the womb. Finally, like a music box winding down, the sobbing ceased.

  Rachel pulled back and sniffled a bit, blowing her nose into yet another tissue. Her cheeks were streaked by the trails of tears that traced their way down her face. “I can’t believe it’s over,” she admitted, staring out the open window, momentarily distracted by a little wren that had hopped up on a limb near the upper left pane.

  “Can you tell me what happened?”

  Mark and Rachel had been dating, although non-exclusively, for two or three years. They started off as friends with benefits while Rachel’s divorce was being finalized, but then their friendship grew into something a bit more regular and relationship-y, for lack of better terms. But not once had Sarah ever heard Rachel say the “L” word to describe her feelings for Mark, and not once had she ever heard them make plans to spend their future together. It was a very “live in the moment” type of arrangement. Even though they’d known each other for a long time, Sarah was shocked to see the intensity of the impact this was having on her friend.

  “A few months ago he started seeing some chick he met on a dating site,” Rachel began, suddenly seeming clear-headed and detached. “Get this! Her name is Ashley Silver. That’s a porn star name, don’t you think?” She very nearly laughed when she said it. It was good to see the real Rachel break through the storm clouds that surrounded her, even if it was only a glimpse.

  Sarah patted her friend’s back, encouraging her to let it all out. Rachel continued, “So they’d gone on a few dates, and finally Mark told her he was seeing me too. And Ashley got all bent out of shape about it. She just flat out refused to see him again as long as I was in the picture.”

  Rachel paused and blew her nose again. She glanced down at the bed littered with crumpled tissues and shook her head in disbelief. She ran her fingers through her blonde hair and considered her story, as if she was trying to make sense of it as she told it. “I really thought that would be it, you know. Mark has never had any trouble blowing off girls who have an issue with him seeing me...but apparently Ashley is different. He has feelings for her,” she said, her emphasis making the word “feelings” sound like the other “F” word.

  Sarah reflected for a moment on the word “feelings.” That was probably what upset Rachel most of all. She likely didn’t have a problem sharing Mark physically; after all, she’d shared him with the redhead at the club the weekend before and seemed to enjoy it immensely. Rachel hadn’t ever truly believed that her relationship with Mark was in jeopardy, that he wanted to share those “feelings” with one woman, rather than physical intimacy with a variety of women. It amazed her in all the studies she’d done of human sexuality that no matter how good people were at separating sex and emotion, they were still regularly conflated, even by the most well-intentioned parties.

  “So he is leaving you to be with her exclusively?” Sarah summarized.

  Rachel nodded as the tears began to well up again in the corners of her hazel eyes. “I guess I knew in the back in my head this day would come eventually,” she admitted. “He’s 28 years old, after all, never married. I guess I knew he wouldn’t want to be with me for the rest of his life.”

  “Is this Ashley chick going to support him?” Sarah questioned, knowing full well that Mark practically lived at Rachel’s, even though his “official residence” was his mother’s address. He’d bounced between warehouse and retail jobs the past six months, only recently landing a bartending gig at a local bar.

  Rachel managed a little laugh. “Well, Porn Girl is 24 and an even bigger mess than Mark. I think she’s a full time student actually. So, yeah, there’s definitely a negative cash flow there.”

  Sarah patted her friend’s leg, “He’ll be back.” Sarah immediately intuited that Mark would miss the stability that Rachel provided. The problem was trying to convince herself that this breakup wasn’t for the best. Rachel deserved so much more than Mark could give her. She qualified her original assessment: “He’ll be back, if you’ll let him.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Rachel retorted with more than a twinge of defensiveness.

  “Well,” Sarah searched for the diplomatic phrasing required by Rachel’s delicate emotional state, “don’t you ever think about being in another relationship? Settling down and trying it again someday with a man who loves you and supports you? Something more egalitarian than this?”

  Rachel grew a little pale at the sound of the word settling. “I think part of me thought we would be settled someday...,” her voice trailed off as her mind drifted far away. Then: “I don’t think I knew how much I loved him...”

  Sarah’s mind flashed back to an image of James propped up on the pillows in her bed this morning as she was scrambling to leave for Rachel’s. Fuck, what am I doing? she asked herself. Was she setting herself up for the same stark realization Rachel was now facing down the road someday? She wanted to encase her heart in steel, weld it shut with a lock for good measure. She had no desire to experience the emotional upheaval and turmoil she was witnessing.

  She’d grown much too independent to deal with that sort of mess. She spent the last three years finishing her PhD, launching her teaching career, and settling into single motherhood. For the first time in her life, she finally felt like she had control of herself and her future. The last thing she wanted to do was to surrender that control to a man. If she did fall in love again, and she truly hoped it would happen someday, it was going to be with a man equally stable, equally equipped to return her affections, and by all means, someone with whom she could finally have a healthy relationship.

  Despite steeling herself against the bondage of unhealthy attachments, she remember
ed the premonition she’d had late last night as she drifted off to sleep in James’s arms...that he would break her heart someday. He can’t break what he can’t obtain, she resolved. She’d just riveted the lock and hidden the key away.

  ***

  When Sarah returned to her house later that afternoon, James was gone. No note, no text, no trace of him except for the crumpled sheets where he had lain. Sarah felt a sudden pang of sadness stab at her when she thought about how amazing it felt to be in his arms the night before. She felt so safe nestled against his chest with his warmth enveloping her. He had remarked that she seemed to fit there perfectly. Like I belong there, she had added silently.

  It was a scary thought. How could she feel so connected to him when they were together but so disconnected when apart, never knowing what he was thinking or feeling? That had never bothered her before about a friend with benefits, but something felt off here. It was a disconcerting dichotomy and she wasn’t sure she wanted to deal with it. Maybe this won’t work out after all?

  Sarah still felt a little melancholy when her kids returned from their friends’ houses. It was Saturday night, and she had no plans. “Let’s order pizza and rent some movies,” she suggested to the kids who were both in favor. She let them each pick a movie from Redbox, and she stopped off and got a bottle of her favorite wine for herself. After going to that effort, she remembered that she and James had been so eager to devour each other the night before, they’d never even cracked open the bottle she’d had chilling. Just when she thought she’d sufficiently distracted herself from thoughts of him, she felt another punch to her already tender heart.