Chapter 8
CHAPTER
EIGHT
James: Let’s do something this weekend. You need a break.
Sarah: I need something *tongue out emoji*
James: There’s a new rock-climbing gym over near Rockville. You game?
Sarah: How can I say no to that?
Sarah had been working nonstop now that we were in the thick of the semester. One of my buddies told me about the rock-climbing gym—coincidentally located in Rockville—and I remembered Sarah was from Colorado. I wondered if she had ever done any climbing. Figured it wouldn’t hurt to ask.
She drove to my house and rode over to the gym with me. She fully admitted she was feeling nervous because it’d been so long since she’d climbed. I tried to reassure her there was no pressure or competition—this was purely for fun. If she wasn’t having fun, she could quit anytime.
Sarah was one of those people who was good at everything she did. Not just good—expert level. I imagined it was difficult for someone so accomplished to attempt something they didn’t feel completely confident about. But I loved that she was willing to try.
She was so smart, so strong, so absolutely beautiful inside and out. No wonder I had fallen for her—
Fuck, did I just admit that out loud?
By the time we reached the summit on one of the easier courses, we were both laughing, and I was duly impressed by Sarah’s strength and stamina.
She wore a proud smile. “Not bad for an old chick, huh?”
I patted her on the shoulder. “You’re not old! Don’t be silly.” She grinned when I asked her if she wanted to try the intermediate climb.
After we finished, I helped her out of her harness.
Squeezing her tight to my body, I kissed the top of her head as she buried her face in my chest. It was nice to be out with her in public, doing something fun.
We spent so much time in bed when we were together.
I shouldn’t have been surprised by how much I enjoyed her company when we were fully dressed, but part of me still was.
Didn’t mean I wasn’t looking forward to getting her alone. “Wanna come to my place for lunch?”
“That sounds great.” She beamed, her gorgeous smile sending a surge of chemicals through my body.
Did she have any idea how much sway she held over me? How difficult it was going to be to leave her in a few months when I deployed to Afghanistan?
When we arrived at my house, she thanked me again for inviting her to go climbing.
“I have a conference in Denver next month. Maybe I’ll go climbing there if the weather is agreeable.
You never know how spring will be in the mountains.
There could be a foot of snow, or it might be sixty degrees.
Hell, I might see both in the five days I’m there. ”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “Yeah, I remember that from when I lived there as a kid. Or how about when it’s eighty degrees in the Springs, but it’s thirty and snowing up on Pikes Peak?”
I started stripping off my clothes as I made my way through the house, leaving a trail behind me. Sarah giggled but dutifully followed, picking up all the clothes and depositing my pile of sweaty laundry into the hamper in my bedroom. She deserved a reward for touching my gross clothes.
I started the shower, and by the time she joined me, steam had filled the room. She stood in the bathroom, her eyes roaming my naked body. “And just what do you think you’re doing, Dr. Lynde?”
She couldn’t seem to find any words, but a flush spread across her cheeks and chest.
“Get naked and join me, woman,” I commanded.
Without uttering a single syllable, she stripped off her clothes, letting them fall to the floor. Her lush curves instantly made me rock-hard. With a soft smile, she stepped into the shower, and I angled the spray to beat down on her shoulders.
“That’s more like it.” I wrapped my arms around her, brushing my lips against hers while the water beat down on us.
I squirted some shower gel onto a loofah, squeezed until it was covered with bubbly foam, then whipped her around.
Scrubbing down her back, I left bubble trails as I nestled my cock in the cleft between the globes of her voluptuous ass.
She groaned, arching back against me. It wasn’t long before I was bending her over, spreading her legs, and driving my hardness through her soft, soapy folds, seeking the wet, slick heat inside.
“James…oh my god, yes, fuck me!” She grabbed on to the ledge, trying to brace herself as I relentlessly drilled my cock in and out, my fingers barely able to hang on to the slippery flesh of her hips.
I reached around her, the water sluicing down into my eyes as I found her swollen clit and rubbed. She bucked wildly against me, chasing her release as I tried to hold mine back. There was something about the water, the steam, and her wild moans that ramped up my need.
“That’s it, fuck…oh, god, James, I’m gonna come,” she announced in a breathless rasp.
I held still, my cock plunged balls-deep into her pussy as she exploded around me with such unexpected force, I didn’t even get a chance to thrust again before she milked the seed from deep in my balls.
It rocketed up my shaft as I pulled out.
The thick streams of cum that landed on her ass and back were immediately washed away by the shower spray.
After drying off, we lounged on my bed. I was running some lunch options through my mind when I noticed Sarah was about to doze off in my arms. Guess the rock climbing wore her out. Or maybe it was the shower sex?
A question popped into my head, pushing out of my mouth before I had a chance to stop it: “You’ve been married before, right?”
Sarah jack-knifed into a seated position, spine straight and eyes wide. “Why are you asking?”
My fingers stroked down her back, trying to calm her.
I felt guilty for waking her so abruptly.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you. I’ve just been thinking about marriage lately.
No particular reason, but, you know, why some last and some don’t.
And I realized I don’t really know what happened with yours.
I mean, you had two kids together and... then what? You grew apart?”
“First off,” she corrected, “Abby’s father was my college boyfriend. I didn’t meet Owen’s dad until Abby was two.”
“Oh, okay.” She might have told me that before. I had just forgotten.
She sighed, seeming to consider how to answer. Then she crossed her legs and leaned back against the headboard. She told me about working as a waitress when her daughter was younger and how a charming customer swept her off her feet.
I listened with interest, continuing to stroke her back to relieve the tension created by speaking of her ex-husband.
“Daniel was one of those men who always had some sort of plan, some sort of scheme,” she continued.
“Always had a new business venture. It’s not that things weren’t on the up and up; he just didn’t have nearly the connections or capital to leverage that he thought he did.
But I didn’t realize that at first. At first, it seemed like things came easy to him.
We were always getting new stuff: houses, cars, boats, clothes, jewelry.
He wanted me to have a baby right away. We married, and Owen was born the next year.
He was absolutely thrilled to have a son.
It was like a status symbol for him.” Her voice wavered with emotion as she spoke.
“But you weren’t happy?”
“I was numb,” Sarah admitted. “I was going through the motions. I decided when Owen was one that I wanted to go back to school for a PhD, which meant moving. Daniel wasn’t particularly supportive. I had finally decided what I wanted to do with my life, and he just thought it was ridiculous.”
I put an arm around her shoulders and pressed her to my body. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“He finally conceded. My mom moved with us to help with the kids. She’d always had bad vibes about Daniel. She tried to tell me so many times, and I was completely blind. I loved him...”
Her voice trailed off as if the scab had been scraped away, re-exposing the wound. She shook off the pain and shared more, “So we moved. I started my PhD program, and I saw Daniel less and less. He was always away on ‘business,’ and that was when I started doing my own thing.”
“Your ‘own thing’? What do you mean by that?”
“Well, I’m not stupid. It was pretty obvious he was cheating on me.
And not with just one woman. Little things didn’t add up.
I looked at emails, phone numbers; I found receipts.
He had three or four women spread all over the country.
I stopped having sex with him because I was afraid I would get an STI. ”
I nodded. “I don’t blame you for that.”
“And I started hanging out with Rachel more,” Sarah explained. “I knew she and her husband were into some...unconventional stuff, and she invited me to come along to a party one weekend. So I went.” A tiny smile curled her lips. “I didn’t look back after that.”
“Wow, that’s awesome.” Based on what I knew of Rachel, this checked out.
“I started researching. I was looking for a dissertation topic, so I started looking into alternative lifestyles and interviewing different groups of people. I found that couples in open relationships scored higher in almost every measure of internal happiness and happiness with their partner. I tried to broach that with Daniel once, but he flat out refused to listen, denying he ever cheated on me, the bastard...”
Almost every measure of internal happiness and happiness with their partner… “So, then what happened?”
“My plan was to keep doing my own thing, finish school, and wait until I was making good money before divorcing Daniel, but when I was nearly done with the program, he up and left me for one of his mistresses. When I was hurting most financially—that is when he chose to leave.”
“Wow, he sounds like a great guy!” I rolled my eyes. “What about the kids?”