Authors: Karen Mercury
Tags: #Romance
Her voice got higher with each word. “Isn’t it always the ones who’ve done it hundreds of times who get squashed or mangled?”
It was Julian’s turn to grab her shoulders and talk to her as though she were a hysterical child. Which she nearly was. “Xandra. I’ve seen thousands of people BASE jumping in these valleys. It’s all right. It’s a really beautiful thing to watch.”
“Beautiful thing?” Xandra nearly shrieked. “Can’t we just leave the beautiful things to other people? Why do you
have
to do this, Nathan?”
Julian answered for Nathan. “Do you want to take away part of who Nathan is, Xandra ? I didn’t think so. I realized the first moment I laid eyes on Nathan. ‘Here’s a man who can never be told what to do.’ He’s already giving up a large part of who he
was
by not working in Africa anymore. You’re just going to have to get used to BASE jumping if you’re going to love Nathan.”
Xandra tore away and went to stand at the deck’s railing. She’d actually never really thought about it before. She’d never had any boyfriend who jumped out of airplanes, much less off the top of a thousand foot spire. But Julian was right—people did it all the time.
Nathan had proclaimed he felt more alive than ever when he soared alone over canyons. BASE jumpers were people who didn’t have enough natural endorphins and by jumping they were on a high that lasted weeks. If this was Nathan’s drug, it was certainly a lot better than meth. As usual, Julian was right. She couldn’t ask Nathan to change for her, to appease some vague fear of heights she may have. The danger of BASE jumping enhanced Nathan’s appreciation of life, he had said.
So she took some deep breaths and turned, surprised to see Nathan standing right behind her. They held on to each other.
“Nathan,” she gasped, “Julian is right. I’m not going to stand in your way. I would never, ever want to take away any part of who you are.” Steeling herself, she inhaled and exhaled deeply. “I will accompany you up Sam’s Steeple tomorrow.”
“You don’t have to accompany us,” Nathan said softly.
“Yeah,” said Julian, crowding in to caress Xandra’s face with the back of his hand. “You can stay here with Cass doing Jell-O shots. We’ll understand.”
“No,” Xandra insisted. “I
want
to come with you. This is part of who Nathan is, and I want to learn about it, so I’m not so damned afraid.”
“Good girl,” said Julian, planting an openmouthed kiss on Xandra’s throat. In return, Xandra scratched the back of his neck and nearly purred with pleasure.
“Are you sure?” asked Nathan. “It really doesn’t bother me if you stay home.”
“Home,” laughed Xandra lazily. “No, I want to leave home for you.”
Home.
It suddenly hit Xandra that the Triple Play Lodge was her new home.
My new home with my two men
. The thought felt natural, part of who she was now.
“
Hooo-wee
!”
Doug Ostrovsky made a loud cowboy sound right behind Nathan’s ear. It was about the eleventh time in the past hour he’d done so. Nathan had nearly gotten used to the annoying jerk after all these months—nearly. But Doug had been making those cowboy noises with alarming frequency ever since Xandra had deeded over the cattle ranch part of her land to him. He’d been wearing a cowboy hat over his cauliflower hair and calling people “buckaroo,” and had even attended a few rodeos.
“I kid you not—that was the finest smoothest descent I’ve ever witnessed! Smooth as a dandelion seed floating on an air current, I tell you!” Doug was enthusiastic in the back seat of Nathan’s SUV.
“It was pretty damned good,” agreed Sol, who sat strapped in next to Doug. It was always funny to see the buttoned-down lawyer bumping around in a vehicle with the wind in his hair, wearing a colorful ski jacket instead of a tie. “I got it all on camera with this new ultra zoom feature. Nathan, you looked like a goddamned astronaut. I had no idea you were going to shoot so far horizontally! You were just hugging the walls of that canyon like you had a rocket strapped to your back.”
Nathan said, “Yeah, I—”
Doug inserted, “You were just buzzing those canyon walls, practically scraping it with your fingernails! Xandra, do you have ice and sandstone under your nails?”
Doug knew that Xandra wore gloves, of course, while jumping, but Nathan liked that Xandra’s stepbrother was showing support for her. He glanced over his shoulder and told Doug, “I’m going to get her one of those helmet cams like mine, so she can show everyone how close she hugs the wall.”
“Dude!” Doug roared. “That was
sick
when you went sailing over that piñon pine. Thought for sure you were gonna hit it.”
“Yeah,” agreed Julian, leaning over Xandra in the front seat. “And teach her how to do those somersaults off the edge of the cliff like you do.” Julian wanted to jump, too, but someone had to stay behind to do their final gear checks.
“
No thanks
!” Apparently that was where Xandra drew the line—today. “No somersaulting or flipping in midair for me. I was tracking
away
from that damned pine snag as fast as possible.”
“Doing the James Brown,” Doug agreed.
Xandra explained, “I get a running exit and do a swan dive. Nathan just falls
off
the damned side of the cliff, doing half-gainers.” She punched his arm. “Show off.”
Sol said, “We’re going to have to rethink our entire landing strategy if you’re going to glide that far horizontally off-base. I mean, you may as well land on the airport runway if you’re going to fly two miles southwest down the canyon.” Sol liked to wax poetic about the view from the canyon floor rendezvous where he, and sometimes Doug, waited for the couple to land. Sol had also piloted the plane where Xandra had done her first several skydives in preparation for BASE jumping. “You guys looked like bats up there. Black outlines against the snowy canyon walls, like little playing cards.”
“Bat
shit
is more like it,” Doug enthused.
Xandra snuggled up close to Nathan. She looked like a snow bunny in her fur-lined hooded parka, her skin glowing from the icy temperatures and rushing through the frigid air on the descent. “My love, you know what I’d like for dinner? Let’s ask Leif to make us some of those rabbit medallions—”
“
Hoo-wee!
” Doug shrieked into Nathan’s ear. “Now
that
was an epic landing!”
Xandra jumped but gave her stepbrother a radiant smile. “I’m so glad you’re enthusiastic about the sport, Doug. Maybe you’ll join us one day.”
“Me? No, sirree, buckaroo. I’ll stick to my roping and riding, safe down here on the solid ground.”
Nathan snorted, because Doug did about as much roping and riding as Xandra ever had, preferring to leave the nuts and bolts of the cattle operation to Cody, the ranch manager. But he sure liked talking about it. Xandra had given him the ranch portion of the property, feeling guilty that she’d just waltzed in there not even knowing Wanda McQueen Burns, when Doug had worked for Wanda for so many years. Besides, horses and cows scared Xandra.
Xandra wiggled her bosom against Nathan’s arm. Even though many layers of fabric separated them, Nathan’s cock ballooned to life at the vaguest suggestion of her bosom. Of course they’d stripped off most of their body armor once they’d landed safely, but even this brilliantly azure day was a frigid thirty-three outside. Nathan slid his hand between her thighs to keep warm. “I’m going to fuck you cross-eyed, love,” he murmured as he pulled into their cabin’s driveway.
“Hey!” Sol protested. “No valet service? It’s a quarter mile to the lodge in the snow.”
It was only four hundred yards to the lodge, but Nathan was halfway out of the truck as he explained, “Sorry, Sol. We’re in a rush as usual.”
“Yeah,” grumped Sol. “Some people get to have all the fun.”
“I’m going to go rustle up some vittles,” Doug proclaimed, and sprinted off before anyone could corral him to help with their rigs.
Nathan was surprised that his old Washington buddy Adrian was striding up the driveway, waving them down. Adrian had stayed on in Utah since arriving in October to assess their liberty head coin. He was something of an art and antiquities expert, or an expert in stuff people might be liable to steal, thus his value to their company. Nathan suspected that Adrian had some PTSD issues of his own from his overseas tours with their company, and now he actually did more work on the cattle ranch and helping Nathan start his fly fishing outfit, already booming in March.
But today Adrian wanted Xandra. He helped them unload some stuff from the roof, but he told her, “Brooke needs you.”
Xandra’s face crinkled up. “Oh, hell. Is it urgent?” Julian took her parachute container from her, in preparation for the urgency of Brooke’s need. Everything was urgent with Brooke.
“It’s always urgent,” Adrian said.
So Xandra traipsed off with Adrian and Sol, Nathan yelling after her, “Tell Leif to make those rabbit medallions!”
The men secured all of the equipment either in the cabin or in the cabin’s storage shed. Julian obviously knew Nathan was pumped up on endorphins from the jump and would be raring to go, but they were always careful with the BASE rigs. They couldn’t just chuck it into the shed, much as they would love to. Nathan hoped to hell Julian was in the mood to bottom.
“Is that it?” Julian asked, standing in the cabin’s foyer and rubbing his frozen hands together.
“That’s it.” Nathan rushed his lover. With an arm extended like a board, he slammed the front door shut behind Julian. In the same movement he crushed Julian to the door with the force of his entire body. His center of gravity was somewhere in his pelvis as he pinned the game warden to the door and smashed his open mouth to his.
Heaven, heaven
. Nathan had been getting better at dominating both his partner and his new bride. He now knew Julian was capable of taking rough handling and not breaking or dying, as Rory had. In fact, their relationship had done a sort of one-eighty since their first meeting on the mesa when Julian had so rudely jacked him off while he lay there submissively. Or the same day, when Julian had forcibly sucked him off in the shower as he passively took it.
No, the tables were turned a bit now. Nathan was discovering that, like with Rory, he enjoyed taking more than his turn at roughly handling this delectable ass. It turned him on to brusquely manipulate another macho son of a bitch like Rory and Julian. It would not have excited him to have a passive, thin, milquetoast fellow who adored being abused. It was much more fun to swat the muscular ass of a fellow who at least pretended to protest.
They licked each other’s mouths greedily, Nathan with the lust of a man who had just leaped off a thousand-foot cliff. They’d been discovering higher and higher diving boards lately, some frustratingly inaccessible due to snow, but a few were scalable. Words couldn’t describe the rush of free-falling into a snowy abyss before spreading one’s wings to soar on the air currents. Nathan liked to execute somersaults and lately Xandra had even been allowing him to mirror her as they zoomed down the cliff face nearly side by side.
In a flash Julian had tossed Nathan’s jacket on the ground and his nimble fingers worked Nathan’s shirt buttons. “You are just sinfully good,” Julian gushed devilishly, slurping at Nathan’s mouth. “You’re savage, brutal, hot, just the way I like my men. How am I going to satisfy you today? Do you want to wait for Xandra?”
Tearing himself from Julian, Nathan wrenched his lover by the arm. “Never mind Xandra.” He needed to take Julian
now
, and he didn’t even want to waste time getting to the bedroom. It wasn’t necessary. There was a heavy pine sideboard backed up to the leather couch, and Nathan belligerently flung Julian there, so his palms slapped up against the wood. This poor sideboard had seen rougher use than Nathan had planned right now—he didn’t plan to last long at all—so there was a handy bottle of oil secreted in a box decorated with one of those corny southwestern flute-playing figures.
“What are you doing?” Julian asked, trepidation in his voice.
Nathan slapped the denim-clad ass. “You said you like me brutal and savage.” In between slaps, his fingertips strayed between the outspread thighs to tickle and admire the full ball sac that strained against the fabric.
“That was just a figure of speech.”
Nathan tore the T-shirt from Julian’s torso. Julian’s eyes flashed with false indignity as his ponytail was messed and Nathan slid a hand down his abdomen. Nathan bit and gnawed at the side of Julian’s throat while capturing his hip between his thighs. He humped him brazenly, chewing on Julian’s earlobe, his fist encircling Julian’s long dick. “You don’t have much choice now, do you,” he snarled.
Julian jerked this way and that, but he was captured fast between Nathan’s powerful thighs. “I have choices,” Julian snarled back, but he’d never been very good at feigning protest.
Nathan slapped his ass harder now, scraping his fingernails against the bulging testicles. But Julian didn’t bring his feet together to prevent Nathan from reaching between his thighs. One hand on each side of his partner, Nathan simultaneously fingered the rounded balls and squeezed the steamy trunk of Julian’s delicious cock. He liked the way Julian hissed in air when he spanked his butt. But Julian made no move to wrench himself away.