4. Shaw
four
Shaw
We meet on time and get right into the hike. We don’t speak much, but the silence is comfortable. Just being with her feels right.
An hour up, I take the fork toward the upper viewpoint. I've brought two people here in my life. Neither of them said the right thing.
She doesn't say anything when we get there.
Walks to the edge of the outcrop and stands with her hands loose at her sides and looks at the whole valley spread below, the river catching morning light, the town small in its ring of mountains, and she's quiet in the way of someone for whom this is enough.
We sit on the rocks. She brought coffee. I have food. We eat and look at the valley and the silence between us is the same quality of silence I have up here alone. I didn't know that was possible with another person in it.
After a while, she asks: "Do you ever get lonely up here?"
I think about the real answer. She's given me that habit. "I thought I didn't," I say. "I think I've been confusing lonely with something else."
She doesn't push, just sips coffee from her Thermos.
"I chose this," I say after a beat. "The ridge, the work, all of it. Right choice. I just stopped questioning it at some point. Stopped checking if it still fit."
She looks at the valley. "I know that feeling."
On the way back down, Lara lets out a breath and wipes sweat from her face. “Any chance there’s a good swimming spot around here?” In hindsight, I missed the tone of her voice.
I stop walking. The question is simple. The pause I take isn't.
There's a bend in the river above town where the water pools deep and slow in the summer light. I've gone there alone for years. Never taken anyone.
The river is cold and green, and the afternoon light comes low through the cottonwoods, turning the water gold near the surface. The sound of it fills everything. We're the only ones here.
She doesn't hesitate. Kicks off her boots, peels her socks, wades straight in to the knee. The cold hits her and she makes a short, involuntary sound of surprise. She looks back at me on the bank with water swirling around her calves and her eyes bright from the cold.
"It's freezing," she says like this is excellent news.
"Always is."
Lara looks at me for a moment. Then she reaches for the hem of her shirt and pulls it over her head in one clean motion, and drops it on the bank.
I freeze.
She reaches back and unclasps her bra and sets it down without ceremony, like she's done this a thousand times, like the river and the cottonwoods and I are all equally unremarkable witnesses. She's just — herself. Completely and without apology.
And she is extraordinary.
Full breasts, the generous curve of her waist flaring out to wide hips, her belly soft and round, her thighs heavy and strong.
A body that is entirely, unapologetically itself.
I've spent fifteen years photographing the natural world and I know beauty that doesn't ask permission when I'm looking at it.
I'm looking at it.
She wades in deeper, the water rising up the backs of her thighs, over the full curve of her hips, swallowing her waist, and she tips her head back and closes her eyes and the afternoon sun lands full on her face and her bare shoulders and the soft weight of her chest above the waterline.
I pull my shirt off. Step out of my boots. Wade in.
The cold is immediate but it doesn’t calm the fire that has been ignited in me.
Lara opens her eyes when she hears me moving toward her. She watches me cross the distance between us without looking away. When I reach her, I put my hands on her waist under the surface and she's warm where I touch her, warmer than the water. I feel the soft give of her hips under my palms.
She tips her chin up.
"Shaw," she says.
I pull her in and kiss her.
She makes a sound against my mouth and her arms come up around my neck. The river runs cold around us as the full weight of her presses against me, and I think: I have been patient my whole life and I have never wanted anything the way I want this.
We get out of the water.
The bank is warm from the afternoon sun, sheltered by the cottonwoods, private in the way outdoor places should be, with the world entirely present and entirely indifferent.
I spread my shirt on the grass. She pulls me down.
I hold myself above her and look. She lets me. Chin slightly raised, dark eyes steady on mine, comfortable under my gaze the way she's comfortable in everything, warm and bare in the afternoon light.
"You're gorgeous," I tell her. Low. Direct.
"I know," she says. Then, quieter: "But, you can tell me again." She giggles.
I get my mouth on her throat first to feel her pulse, the warmth the sun's left in her skin and work my way down.
Her breasts are heavy and full in my hands, and I take my time.
Tongue first, then teeth, then my thumb working her nipple until she makes a sound that isn't a word, and her back comes off the grass.
I do the same to the other side. She gets her hand in my hair and holds on.
"Shaw."
I keep going. I press my mouth to her stomach, open-mouthed, slow, and she doesn't pull back. She arches up into it. Her fingers tighten in my hair and her hips tilt toward me. I take that as the invitation it is.
I put my mouth on her pussy and she exhales and her thighs spread wider.
I learn her the way I learn everything worth knowing: by paying close attention.
What makes her hips move. What makes her go still and grip the grass.
Where the pressure needs to be, how steady, how long.
She guides me with her hand when I'm close and doesn't apologize for it, which is exactly right.
"Right there," she says. "Don't stop."
She's loud. She scatters the birds from the cottonwoods above us and I don't stop, don't slow, until her thighs lock around my head and she comes with my name in her mouth and her whole body shaking hard against me.
I stay with her through every second of it.
She's still catching her breath when I move back up her body.
I run my palm down the full length of her because I want to feel all of it and I am done pretending I don't. She wraps her hand around my cock and I go still.
She strokes me slowly, watching my face, and I drop my forehead to her shoulder and breathe through it.
"I want you in me," she says. No ambiguity.
I get a hand under her hip and push in slowly. Feel every inch of her taking me, feel her adjust, feel her exhale long and low when I'm all the way in. I hold there a moment. Look at her. Her mouth is open and her dark eyes are steady on mine and she rolls her hips once like a question.
We start slow and it doesn't stay slow. She urges me deeper with her hands on my ass and I give her what she's asking for and the sound she makes gets louder and less careful.
Something in me give way. Ten years of quiet.
Ten years of just me and the mountain and the work.
And now this woman underneath me in the open air, the river loud behind us, the cottonwoods throwing dappled light across her skin, and she is meeting every stroke and asking for more.
"Harder," she says.
I give her harder.
She gets her legs up, wrapped around me, changing the angle, and I feel the difference move through her face — her eyes go heavy and her nails find my back and I drive into her and she takes it and wants more.
The sound of it is loud against the riverbank.
Skin, breath, the creak of the grass under us, the river running over rock.
Nothing between us and the wilderness. No walls, no roof, no reason to be quiet about any of it.
I get a hand between us, find her clit, keep moving. She arches hard.
"Shaw — frick! — don't stop —"
I don't stop.
She comes the second time like it takes her whole body to do it, with her hips grinding against my hand, her pussy clenching tight around my cock, her head thrown back and her throat open and she is not quiet about any of it.
Not one second. I feel it everywhere and I keep going, ride her through it, and only when she's trembling and loose and pulling me down by the back of my neck do I finally let go.
It's not quiet. Not careful. I come with my face in her neck and my hands gripping her hips and ten years of solitude in the sound I make.
Afterward, neither of us moves for a long moment.
The river keeps running. A bird settles back into the cottonwoods above us. The sun is still warm on my back, and her body is soft and heavy under mine. I don't have any words for what just happened except: yes. That. I want that for the rest of my life.
I roll to my back and pull her with me. She tucks into my side, her head on my chest, one hand spread flat over my heart.
"You've been alone up on that mountain too long," she says.
"Apparently."
I feel her smile against my skin.
I stare up at the cottonwoods and think about how a man can believe he has everything he needs, right up until the moment he doesn't.