24. Colton
twenty-four
Colton
K iara glides effortlessly on the snow, carving her path like a pro. Our first run, I let her go in front of me, enjoying riding behind her, where I can keep my eyes and thoughts on her without having any explaining to do. She takes the easy route, down on Avalanche, the main slope leading back to the lodge, staying straight ahead where a fork leads to a more challenging trail. She’s giving us time to get into our riding legs but doesn’t stop once for a breather or a quick chat.
The second run, I pass her and stop mid-slope at a natural outlook. During the day, the view is spectacular here, and I can almost fill it in from memory. But now, it’s even more compelling. Contrasting with the yellowish hue of the snow we’re on, flattened by artificial floodlights, the dark expanse at our feet seems endless, punctuated only by the flickering lights of cars on roads and the occasional farm on a hill.
Balancing on my board, I wait for Kiara to join me. “Tired, old man?” she calls out as she comes to a stop two feet downhill from me.
“Just looking at the view,” I say. I tilt my head up, hoping for a sky full of stars, but the cloud cover is thick.
“Much nicer during the day.”
“Yeah,” I drawl, “my date wasn’t available to come during the day.”
She smiles and shrugs. “Makes for better après-ski.”
I grind my molars. Is that why Kiara suggested night riding, when she didn’t know who she was talking to? So the guy would what—take her home afterward? Jesus.
“Après-ski is only as good as the skiing was,” I answer. Now’s not the time to have a semi-argument with Kiara about online safety. This is a date. The first date, where you want to make the best impression. The one that may or may not lead to a second date. Don’t screw this up, Colton.
She lifts her goggles and lays her gray eyes on me. “Is it good so far?” she asks.
She’s not talking about the skiing. She’s talking about our date, and it affects me deeply. I should be asking her that question, but it’s too soon. I got her to not rip me apart when she found out why I was here. I don’t want to appear like I’m trying to make her admit I was right all along—that we belong together.
But what really catches me off guard and sends me spinning is how she’s asking me how the dating is going for me . Like she’s unsure I’m having a good time. Doesn’t she know what she means to me?
“Just warming up,” I say to answer her question. I push off and hop to skirt around her. “Let’s go!” I take the lead, shredding through the snow so my thoughts take a back seat for a minute.
Before we reach the fork off Avalanche, I switch and ride fakie to make sure she’s still following. Lifting my goggles for an instant, I slow down as my heart quickens at the sight of her smiling at me. “Afraid I can’t…?” The second part of her sentence is lost in the sound of the snow crushed under our boards, but the trill of her laughter rings in my ears. I switch back and at the fork make the turn to the narrower, trickier trail.
The joke’s on me because the moguls are bigger than I’d anticipated. With my longer board, I’m at a disadvantage. While Kiara bobs up and down, using the terrain to switch and curve and jib over the moguls, I stay to the side of the trail, doing kick turns to avoid this mess altogether. She glances at me over her shoulder, and of course her laughter rings through the mountain. She can make fun of me all she wants, if this is the sound I get out of it. It warms my core before lodging itself in my dick.
Count on Kiara to make me snowboard at night with a hard-on.
We take a few more runs, using the gondola rides to warm up. Kiara insists on the moguls again, so I follow her, trying not to break a leg. “Let’s take Devil’s Pass,” she says. “Last run.”
“Gotta be the last. They’re about to close.”
“Look at us! Closing down the mountain.”
Her use of the word us makes my lips tilt up and my dick twitch again. “Real party animals,” I say without thinking. As the words tumble out, the image of Kiara naked under me suggests itself to my lizard brain.
Devil’s Pass is an ungroomed, narrow trail. It’s not as bad as its name suggests—the hardest trails aren’t open to night skiing anyway, and this one is. “Go ahead,” I tell her, relishing the sound of her heaving breathing as she passes me.
Yes, I do like looking at her. Even in baggy snowboarding gear, with her black helmet on, her glow-in-the-dark stickers shining under the less-than-flattering artificial light spilling from the lamps, she’s the only person I want to look at.
She almost loses her balance and shrieks lightly, then laughs as she catches herself. I love seeing her so happy, so carefree.
We’re almost at the bottom, where Devil’s Pass joins Avalanche, when a cloud of snow builds from the ground up as Kiara tumbles, limbs rolling over limbs, the glitter of her stickers the only indication of where her head is.
Panic seizes me as I slow down and force myself to stay calm. Bending low, I manage to grab her snowboard that she lost in the fall without stopping entirely—a massive pain in the neck in ungroomed snow. But when I reach Kiara, I stop downhill from her and lift my goggles. “You alright?” I ask, my voice shaky.
She’s spread on the snow like a starfish. “Ohmygod I can’t believe I fell.”
Thank god. She’s talking. She’s breathing. She doesn’t seem to be hurting. Yet. “But are you alright?” I ask again.
She tries to prop herself on her elbows, but the snow collapses under her and she ends up flat on her back again. “Colt! Why did you stop?”
Why did I stop? Why did I stop? Because for a freak second I thought you might be hurt. Because you’re going to need help getting back up. Because… because… “Thought you might need this,” I end up saying, placing her snowboard gently at her feet.
She lifts her head. “Ugh,” she says, then dramatically lets her head fall back into the snow. “I would have gotten it. You never, ever, stop in ungroomed snow. How are we gonna get back there? And they’re about to close!”
“We’re real close to Avalanche. Maybe two hundred feet. Come on, give me your hands. You’re gonna get cold.” I struggle to maintain my balance, and to stay relaxed as the freezing temperatures seep into my clothes. “You sure you’re not hurt?” We’ll find out when she gets on her board again.
She grabs onto me, her hands feeling tiny even through our two layers of gloves, and gets to a seated position. Dropping to my knees, my board digging into my butt, I scrub the packed snow from her boots as best I can and help her fasten her board. Cold makes our movements slower. “Here’s what we’re gonna do,” I say. “I’m gonna tilt back on my board, you’re gonna lift with me, and we’re gonna try and keep our balance so we can slide down. Worse comes to worst…” I pull on my neckie to unfog my goggles, the cold making me lose all feeling around my nose and mouth.
“Yeah?” she says, her eyes hopeful on me.
Hell if I know. We’ll walk down, snow up to our waist. We’ll hold onto our snowboards like surfboards and belly down the rest of the trail. “We’ll figure something out.”
Her eyes widen, then she starts laughing uncontrollably, her hands sliding off my grip as she clutches her helmeted head.
“What?” I’m torn between laughing with her for no reason and getting a move on to get out of the cold—not to mention the closing mountain.
“Your plan! ‘We’ll figure something out’,” she repeats, taking a low voice and bobbing her head in what I’m assuming is her imitation of me.
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Is that supposed to make me feel safe?” She laughs again, then takes a breath. In the silence that follows, my world comes apart. Is she for real? Does she really think I’ll let her be in any kind of danger? Is she testing me? She’s as seasoned a rider as I am. She could get out of here on her own. Maybe. She clears her throat, a low hum, then sticks her hands out. “Sorry, let’s try this again.”
I pull her up, then bend my knees suddenly and take her in a firefighter hold. Her yelp only makes my dick twitch again. She’s so light on my shoulder that I barely feel her when I jump to get some momentum. “Colton, you’re gonna kill us both!” she half laughs, half yells as we gain speed. “Put me down! I’m peeing myself! You’re pressing on my bladder!”
“Only thing dying on this mountain tonight is your pride.”