Chapter 4
After an early morning start and three hours of hiking, Erica pushed through a thicket of laurels to step out into a clearing surrounded by basalt cliffs tinted green with olivine and pyroxene silicates.
The sunlight caught the embedded minerals, making them sparkle like jewels set in the dark rock.
The three men stopped beside her to scan their surroundings, Dario and Pascal bracketing the prince as they had all morning.
Raul tilted his head to squint at the top of the cliff. “Is this what we’re climbing?”
“After we rest and hydrate,” Erica said, pulling out a water bottle.
“ Madre de Dios, I’m going to be too waterlogged to climb anything if you keep pushing fluids on me.” Raul scowled at her. “Is this because of the medal ceremony?”
Erica took a swig of water and mentally cursed Queen Eve. “My father taught me that when you’re exerting yourself at altitude, you drink every chance you get.”
Raul looked unconvinced, but he yanked his water bottle out of his backpack’s pocket and took a couple of gulps.
“We will wait here while Pascal scouts the area,” Dario said.
The two bodyguards had been on high alert ever since they’d found the abandoned campsite. As grateful as Erica was for their presence, their level of vigilance was exhausting to be around. She even found herself flinching at shadows.
“Are we camping here too?” Raul asked.
“Yes, but we’ll set up camp later so you can get more climbing in while it’s light. Now we’ll have an early lunch.”
Pascal reappeared out of the trees. “This area is safe. You can get lunch going while I go up the cliff.”
Erica dropped her pack on a flat rock and started to organize the site for a light meal. Raul had gone over to watch Pascal prep for his climb.
“ Hostia!” Raul exclaimed several minutes later. “Erica, you have to watch this!”
Pascal was already halfway up the rock face, free climbing without any ropes since there weren’t any preset anchors on this cliff.
“You know he travels all over the world to climb, right?” she said, coming to stand beside the prince as they both stared up at Pascal in awe. “He’s done the Matterhorn, Yosemite, the Dolomites, and a bunch of other places that I wouldn’t even attempt.”
The route Pascal was taking was the one she had shown him when they had met the day before departure. It was a cakewalk for someone of his skill level, and it would be the first climb she guided Raul up. She envied Pascal his freewheeling trip up the rock face.
“I knew he climbed on vacation, but I had no idea he was this expert,” Raul said. “He looks like one of those lizards with sticky feet…a gecko.”
“Yeah, he’s really good.”
Pascal clambered up the last several feet of cliff and hauled himself over the edge of rock, disappearing again.
A few minutes later, he reappeared. “Clear,” he called down. “I’ll anchor the climbing rope and stay up here to keep an eye on things.”
In other words, he wanted to make sure no one tampered with the rope the prince was going to use.
Butterflies of anxiety unsettled Erica’s stomach since she would be the prince’s belayer, but she pasted on a smile. “Let’s eat!”
“Wouldn’t it make more sense for Dario to belay me since he’s heavier?” Raul asked as he watched Erica strap on a harness.
Irritation flashed in her eyes, but her tone was smooth as she replied, “First, he is not as experienced as I am. Second, he needs to keep his attention on our surroundings, not on you. And third, he will be acting as my backup, so you don’t have to worry that I’ll drop you.”
“For the record,” Raul said, smiling at her hint of pique, “I was worried about you getting slammed into the rock if I screwed up and fell hard. Not that you would drop me.”
“You will fall, because this is your first time, but I would be a lousy belayer if you took a whipper. That’s climbing jargon for a long fall.
” She had spent lunch drilling him on the proper terminology for communication between the climber and belayer.
She pulled a sack out of Dario’s backpack.
“Okay, here’s your equipment. Let’s get you suited up. ”
He changed into the climbing shoes with their sticky soles and stood. Erica held out his harness.
“You can just step into this,” she said. “Then I’ll adjust the fit and do a safety check.”
Raul had climbed on indoor rock walls a couple of times, so he knew the basics of the harness and belaying. But those places had thick floor mats to cushion a fall, as well as colorful handholds and footholds that were easy to find. This was a different story.
He looked up at the hundred-foot sheer rock face, and his heartbeat sped up. The cliff seemed to reach up to the sky.
He slipped the waistbelt and the leg loops of the harness up on his body.
“With your permission, I would like to secure the buckles,” Erica said as he started to fasten the waistbelt.
For a moment, he was annoyed, but he remembered that his safety was her responsibility, so he dropped his hands to his sides. “Gracias,” he managed to say.
She stepped up close to him. “May I adjust the position of the waistbelt slightly?” she asked, glancing up at him and then back down to the belt.
“Por supuesto,” he said, inhaling a light citrus scent that drifted up from her brown hair.
A frisson of pleasure shivered through him as she shifted the harness higher on his torso, her fingertips brushing over the thin fabric of his shirt. When she smoothed her palms over the fabric that had been wrinkled by the adjustment, heat shot down to his groin.
Then she went to work threading the strap through the buckle on the waistbelt, leaning in so that her forehead almost brushed against his chest. He fought the urge to touch her hair to see if it was as silky as it looked.
She stepped back after snugging the belt around his waist. “Is that comfortable?”
Her cheeks were bright pink, and her breathing was shallow. So she was affected too.
He tilted his body from side to side. “It seems fine.” Aside from his desire to taste her curving lips.
“I would like to do one more safety check.” She hesitated, her cheeks flushing even brighter. “I need to slide my hand between the belt and your waist. Is that okay?”
This was more fun than he had anticipated.
He suppressed a grin and held his hands away from his sides. “Whatever you need to do is fine with me.”
She inhaled audibly and moved in close to him again.
Flattening her hand, she slipped it inside the belt, the heat of her skin setting off little sparks on his abdomen.
Mierda! His cock started to harden. Once her wrist was inside the belt, she clenched her fist and pulled her arm upward, her knuckles pressing lightly into his muscle.
The belt didn’t allow her fist to pull out of it.
“Good. It’s tight enough.” She withdrew her hand at lightning speed and took a step back. Her gaze lifted to his and immediately fell again, probably to avoid the heat he was sure flared in his eyes. “I need to buckle your leg straps now.”
He almost offered to buckle them himself, but he wanted to indulge in the feel of her fingers against him again. “I am all yours.” He injected a tiny hint of innuendo into the words.
The flush spread down her neck, but she bent down and threaded the strap through the buckle on his left leg before shifting the loop up to the top of his thigh.
Her touch so near his cock made him grit his teeth to control his reaction.
When she tightened the loop on his right thigh, he had to dig his fingernails into his palms to fight against an erection.
“Comfortable?” she asked as she backed away from him.
“Quite.” His voice sounded strained, but he was enjoying this. Who would guess that an equipment check could be so erotic?
“Great.” She picked up a small sack on a strap. “Here’s your chalk bag. Wrap the belt over your harness and shift the bag to your back. There’s a ball in it. Reach in and squeeze it when you need to chalk your hands.”
She stood so far away from him when she handed him the chalk bag that he had to lean forward to take it. She was deliberately putting distance between them.
He strapped it on and picked up his helmet. As much as he wanted to lure her in close again, he decided it would test his control. “I know how to adjust a helmet,” he said, fitting it on his head and sliding the clips to tighten the straps.
“I would still like to check it,” she said, her voice a little strangled.
He lowered his head, allowing her to test how closely it was snugged to his skull.
“Good job,” she said, turning on her heel to grab a rugged tablet from the gear bag. “Now let me give you the beta on this climb. ‘Beta’ means ‘information.’”
She swiped at the tablet and then turned toward the cliff. Pascal had dropped the two ends of the climbing rope down as soon as they started gearing up.
“Obviously, you’ll be climbing roughly where the rope is, but here’s the route.
” She moved closer to his side to show him a photo of the cliff with a red line meandering to the top.
There was that temptingly silky hair in easy reach again.
“You start here. Then you move to the right to grab this jug—remember, that’s a big, easy handhold. Your foot goes here on this…”
He focused on her words, but he was also aware of the female scent of her sun-warmed skin.
Her shoulder brushed his upper arm as she pointed to various features on the cliff, her fingers long and slender but showing a tensile strength.
She spoke with an unabashed confidence that he liked because she wasn’t treating him like a prince.
“I don’t expect you to remember all that,” she said. “I’ll be talking you through the route as you go. Remember you can always yell ‘tension,’ and I’ll brace against the rope you so can rest.”
He was not going to rest. Nor was he going to fall. He would not allow himself that failure.