Wicked Fall (16 page)

That was the truth. Even though we’re approaching the end of June, it’s been known to snow at this time of year, but personally, I like camping in cold weather. Like I said, I expect we’ll be buried in the sleeping bags.

“You want to go camping? Right now?” she asks in disbelief.

“Why is that so hard to understand?”

She chews on her bottom lip a moment before saying, “I don’t know. I guess… I just thought that you and I were only… I mean, you want to go camping?”

My hands come to her shoulders. Callie may not understand what’s going through her head, but I do. We didn’t talk about it last night, but I suppose this is a good segue. “I want to spend time with you, Callie. If you’re thinking that you’re just a fuck, you can get that right out of your head.”

She still seems confused for just a moment, but then her chin tilts up. “Well, what am I supposed to think, Woolf? You haven’t exactly been receptive to my charms in the past, so it’s a little disconcerting that I have your attention now. And let’s face it… you own a sex club. You have a gazillion women at your disposal. Why in the world would you want to go camping with me this weekend?”

I would think that ordinarily, most guys like me would be inclined to clamp down on their feelings. People like me, who have no experience in relationships and what makes them work, would think the safest route is to be non-committal. To keep things close to the vest.

But I’ve never been that type of person. I speak what’s on my mind, and I’ve also learned, at least in business, honesty is always the best policy. And let’s face it… relationships are like business.

So I try to be as truthful as I can with Callie. I try to at least let her know what’s in my head right now. My fingers massage into her shoulders, and I say, “Callie… I’ve known you most of my life… little sister to my closest childhood friend. I’ve put frogs in your bed. When you were seven, you kicked me in the nuts when Richard and I got into a fight and I pushed him down. You offered me your virginity, and you trusted me with it. The reason I didn’t take it wasn’t because I wasn’t interested. It was because I cared about you and knew that I wasn’t the type of man to be given that gift. I’ve always cared about you, and I’m going to go ahead and lay it on the line… I’ve fucking lusted after you for a very long time. I’m finally giving myself permission to act on it because I can’t fucking help myself. I want you too much, and yes… you and I have done an awful lot of fucking the last few days, but that’s not all there is, okay?”

She nods at me, her eyes looking at me in wonder and with a bit of wariness.

“So to answer your question,” I continue on. “I want to go camping with you because I like being around you, I love fucking you, and I could use some time away from the grind. Let’s go saddle up our horses, head out to Willow Bend, and let’s just enjoy each other.”

I think that was a pretty good speech. I think it was honest and hopefully put her at ease. But I’m a bit stunned when she asks, “But this is just sex. I mean… that’s the ultimate goal, right?”

“Um,” I hedge, because damn… now I’m on the spot. “I don’t know if it’s the ultimate goal, but it’s definitely the immediate goal.”

“Okay,” she says with confidence, but I see a little bit of hurt in her eyes. She was definitely hoping for something more. “But as long as you’re fucking me, you are not fucking anyone else. I don’t share.”

“Agreed,” I say emphatically. I wince a little internally because I hadn’t really thought about that. I mean, sure… I was going to follow Bridger’s advice and give this a try. He said start with the awesome sex, so that’s what I was doing, and yeah… if it developed into something else, I’d roll with it. But honestly, I really don’t expect it will because I truly can’t see me giving up that lifestyle for good. And Callie said she doesn’t share, so I think at some point down the road, I’ll have to make a choice if my appetites aren’t being satisfied by just one very beautiful but very vanilla woman.

I look over at Callie, and this is the girl I remember from our childhood. Her dark hair in one thick braid and a straw cowboy hat on top of her head to shield her from the sun. Faded jeans that mold to her spectacularly, a cream-colored Henley, and a gray fleece North Face jacket tied around her waist. A beat-up pair of boots hug her feet as she sits casually in the saddle atop Crazy Izzy, a feisty quarter horse that requires a sure hand, and I think she may be the most beautiful creature in existence. Like me, Callie’s been riding horses since she was a wee thing. She even raced barrels competitively for a while but gave it up when she was in her early teens when her horse broke its leg coming around the last barrel and had to be put down. It broke her heart so badly, she said she was never going to do that to another horse again.

We plod lazily along an overgrown trail about two miles from the main house at The Double J. Willow Bend is a section of a small offshoot of the Snake River that cuts an almost horseshoe-type curve into the land and forms a deep hole where you can swim. We’re not in a rush and why would we ever be in a hurry when we have scenery like this to look at?

No matter where you go on the ranch, you can’t ever escape the shadow of the Teton Mountains. The Double J sits on the eastern side of the range—which runs north to south—where there is a distinct lack of foothills to obscure your view. Instead, the slopes of the mountains rise up sharply from the valley in which the Double J sits and with elevations of eleven, twelve, and thirteen thousand feet, there’s still snow sitting atop the peaks throughout the summer months. In my humble opinion, there is no place more spectacular in the world. It’s why even though I’m CEO of a major corporation and really have no business doing it, I still try to ride range at least once a week just so I can soak in the splendor. It’s almost like my Zen place.

We make it through a long pasture where there’s a border fence that’s locked. I have to dismount to unlock it and Callie does the same, just to stretch her legs a bit. She looks out over the Tetons with a dreamy smile on her face.

“God, I missed this,” she says softly. “I mean, sometimes… I would actually ache with longing for these mountains.”

“I know exactly what you mean,” I tell her as I pull the chain loose and swing the gate open. We both walk our horses through and as I secure it, she hops back in the saddle. I try hard not to stare at her ass as she does so.

“Does Tenn miss it?” she asks as I walk back over to my horse, Vlad. He’s a biter and he’s not happy unless he draws blood, but for some reason, he’s never tried to take a nip out of me. I think he knows I’d bite him back.

“Yeah,” I tell her as I swing up into the saddle. “I mean, he loves living in North Carolina. He and Casey have a great place right on the ocean, but you can see it when he gets back here to visit. First thing he does is hit the stable and saddles up so he can soak it all in.”

We’re not too far from Willow Bend and I almost suggest a race to the other side of the field, but she stops me when she says, “What does Tenn think about The Wicked Horse?”

A sharp stab of guilt hits me low in my belly as I admit to her, “He doesn’t know.”

She turns to me and levels a scowl. “What?”

“It’s my business. Completely separate from JennCo,” I tell her in defense, and her frown doesn’t lessen. “But he’s coming in next weekend and I’ve decided to go ahead and tell him then.”

“Why now?” she asks curiously as we walk our horses side by side. Luckily Vlad doesn’t try to bite other horses, just people. “You’ve had this in the works for over a year now and been open several months, right?”

I nod, clear my throat, and then say the words that have only been told to one other person so far, and that was Bridger. “I think I want to back away from JennCo a bit. It’s consuming too much of my life, and I want to run the club full time with Bridger.”

“You’re kidding,” she says with surprise. “That’s your family’s company. Can you just walk away?”

“Tenn did,” I point out, not without a small trace of bitterness in those words. He got out first and left me holding it all. Well, not all. He helps out a bit on the ranch operations, but for the most part, he’s free and clear.

Callie doesn’t say anything and we plod along in silence, no sound but the creaking of the saddles and the hoof steps on hard ground. I consider making more of an argument on my behalf. All the reasons why I want out. All the reasons I want more of the club, but then she says, “JennCo isn’t your passion, is it?”

“No, it’s not,” I admit softly, and it feels good to say that to someone. “I’ve only had two things in my life I was really passionate about. That’s the Double J—that is the ranch itself—and The Wicked Horse.”

“Then you should get out,” she says in affirmation. “Many people aren’t lucky enough to be passionate about their work. If you have the opportunity to be happy like that, you have to take it.”

Relief floods my body, knowing that next to Bridger, I have one other person who is going to be supportive of me if I do this. I think in this moment, my heart might be starting a journey toward being lost to Callie Hayes.

Callie

This is absolute torture.

I thought after an entire weekend with Woolf where we did nothing but have sex, sex, and more sex, I wouldn’t be thinking about it so much today. But here I am back at work on Monday, and I’m at my desk, and he’s in his office, and I can’t stop thinking about him sitting in there.

I am no clearer today than I was last week or eleven years ago as to where I stand with Woolf. But this is what I do know, even if it confuses me.

Woolf is attracted to me.

Woolf likes having sex with me.

And… that’s pretty much it.

He’s said that Bridger encouraged him to give “us” a shot, but in the next breath alludes that it’s just about sex. So I’m thinking it’s no-strings sex¸ but we have agreed that we won’t have sex with others. That seems somewhat clear to me.

I guess.

What makes it more confusing is that although there was lots of sex, it wasn’t just a non-stop orgasm for both of us. We had a great time camping. It’s been years since I’ve been, as camping to Will was having to suffer the second floor of a Holiday Inn. We pitched a small tent, fished Willow Bend, and ate cutthroat trout cooked in a cast iron pan over an open fire. Woolf, of course, had to kill my trout because I couldn’t. He gave me a quick kiss, laughed, and called me a princess, but I didn’t care. He more than made up for it by surprising me with a secret stash of ingredients to make s’mores that he had packed. We talked while we licked gooey marshmallow and chocolate from our fingers, catching up on each other’s lives over the past several years.

Woolf and I had fallen out of touch. Not only did we have the incredibly awkward experience of him refusing to take my virginity but being more than happy to finger me to an orgasm, but after Richard died, Woolf just didn’t come around that much. I’d see him maybe at a major holiday, or we’d run into each other in town if I was home visiting, but it was always just a brief hug and we moved on.

While I was dying to learn more about The Wicked Horse, Woolf didn’t seem to want to talk about it. Instead, he kept up a steady stream of questions to me, trying to stuff eleven years of history into a weekend. By the time the fire was dying down low, Woolf knew a frightening amount of stuff about me, including things I’m not even sure how they came up in conversation such as when I got my period for the first time. I thought I was dying because my mom “forgot” to have that discussion with me. He howled with laughter over that one.

In fact… we laughed a lot this past weekend.

Like when he was fucking me that night, trying to contort our bodies into some type of pretzel, and he got a Charlie Horse in his right ass cheek and had to stop. Or rather, I had to massage the muscle to loosen it up and then he played it safe by just fucking me good old missionary style. I couldn’t stop giggling after.

And sleeping with him all night, snuggled and buried deep in a double sleeping bag. He kept his arms around me all night and even though I had a crick in my neck when I woke up, it was all very much worth it.

Plus, he more than made up for it the next morning by taking the time to leisurely explore my body before he fucked me. I swear, for over an hour, the man stroked and plucked at my body with his hands, tongue, and lips. He made me come twice before he flipped me over on my stomach, raised my hips up, and took me from behind in a primal storm of lust and frenzied need. When he came, he pulled out and shot all over my back, all while cursing, “Fuck, that’s good. So fucking good.”

Just thinking about it… I think he was marking me in some way and that causes a shiver to run up my spine. Leaning back in my office chair, which squeaks horribly, I try to get a peek inside his office. I can only see about half of his desk from this angle and it looks like he has his legs kicked up on it, his booted feet crossed one over the other.

So you see, the Old Callie Hayes had her dutiful sex with Will maybe two or three times a week. I actually thought that was quite an active sex life, but now that I’ve been with Woolf, it seems his standard is two to three times a day, and that makes me realize I have really been naive about it all.