An Illness, A Duel, A Runaway Horse

?How much further???Not far,? Eliot grinned, hoisting the pack on his shoulder, ?you?re gonna love this. I swear.?I wiped my brow, grabbing a branch as I leapt over another slick dip in the trail. The sun was warm, and the snow was long gone.* But the ground this time of year was still glazed in ice, all pearly and hard as enamel.?You sure you know where you?re going??He stopped, squinting around the dense evergreens, his thumbs hooked through the loops of his jeans.?You know, now that you mention it...?I froze, feeling the color drain from my face.?We?re lost??He let me suffer a moment, then chuckled and tossed me his canteen.?Chill out,? he ran a hand through his hair, ?You know I wouldn?t lead you astray.?Do I, though?*I rolled my eyes and drank.?You?re a real riot. You know that??I threw it back, and he took a sip for himself. I don?t know why I agreed to come with him that morning. It made me nervous, really, being alone in the woods.Don?t lie... The voice in the back of my head whispered,*you know exactly why you came.*I sighed, trying not to stare as he stretched, arching himself in the dappled sunlight as it broke through the branches above.I?d met Eliot two summers ago when I first came out west to work in the stables. He was a trail guide for the hotel?s guests, and taught archery on the side. I, meanwhile, was as a lowly groom. Normally I?d spend a day like this tacking horses for overweight midwesterners who couldn?t tell a bit from a bridle, then shoveling out stalls until my palms were blistered and bleeding. But this was the lull?a rare weekend after the skiers had fled, but before the ice thawed, and the trails were still too treacherous to lead clumsy tourists up a cliffside. The hotel itself was almost empty, and most of the staff took advantage to poke around inside, indulging dreams of Old World grandeur. All high tea and ball gowns and mahogany banisters; birch logs crackling to the twinkle of a baby grand piano.*But I didn?t want to waste the day inside. Even without its Gilded Age hotel, compared to the quiet cottage where I grew up, bobbing in its endless sea of sawgrass, the splendor of this place was like nothing I?d ever dared to imagine. Hidden high up in the snow-pocked Canadian Rockies, kissing the edge of a topaz-blue lake?to me at least, it was love at first sight.*Still the scut of the stables kept me busy dawn to dusk, and chances like this were few and far between.* Not that I minded the work. I loved horses. I grew up with them, and still got along better with Sable Island ponies than I did with most people. And the horses here?they were the most beautiful creatures I?d ever seen.*Well... second most beautiful.*I blushed, stealing another glance at Eliot.He was the only real reason I kept coming back. Of course I?d never told him as much?until two weeks ago, I wasn?t even convinced he knew my name. But like every starry-eyed girl in the valley, that hardly kept me from being in love with him. It was pretty much impossible not to be. His easy smile, and smiling eyes. The way he talked, like a spring breeze rustling through heather. He rolled his own cigarettes; wore a white bandana, and brass spurs on his boots. He played the part perfectly.*But Eliot was no cowboy. He?d gone to school out east, and probably grew up there, too. Something about how he?d drop his*r?s and articulate his*t?s?my best guess was New England. Maybe Ivy League. şehitkamil escort I couldn?t count how many nights I spotted him in the lamplight, scribbling out his endless dissertation on Marcel Proust.Yes, I was infatuated. But silently so, and until very recently, for all my heartsick, puppy-dog pining, Eliot was untouchable.*My bête noire?s name was Anna, and I hated her with every ounce of blood in my body. It was a vague and vacuous hatred, though?one aimed at the sheer inconvenience of her being, more so than whoever she might?ve been as a person. Hearsay said she?d been a guide, too, years ago. It said she and Eliot were inseparable?until one of the hotel?s wealthy widowers made an offer, and she jetted off to take up as his trophy wife.*I tried to imagine it. To be someone?s show pony. Always sheltered and fed. Clothed, walked, well-groomed. Ready and waiting whenever he wanted his slow, clumsy ride up the pass?never allowed to run wild.But Anna still ran. Even after trading in her riding boots for a pair of Manolos, she and the widower still came back every summer. And while her faceless husband sat at the bar, his head half-hidden in a cloud of tobacco, Anna would steal out to rekindle the ashes with Eliot.I remember the first time I caught them. I couldn?t sleep. I?d been tossing half the night in a cold sweat, tangling my legs in the empty twin sheets. It was Eliot who kept me up?his Cheshire smile fading in and out of the darkness. It was ridiculous.I never knew I could want something so badly. I never knew how horribly that emptiness inside me could ache. Like a deep, blue bruise. Like a wound that wouldn?t heal.*I stepped outdoors to clear my head. I didn?t bother with my jeans. The night was warm, and everyone else was sound asleep. I breathed in, letting the quilted stillness of the north woods fill me. Crickets chirred. Somewhere a snow owl barked in the trees. I breathed out, expelling my heat into the clean evening air, hoping against hope the ache might vanish with it.I?d just turned to head back in when I spotted a light in the stable. I frowned, crossing my arms tight as I trudged up to take a look. There was an odd sound on the breeze. Like snapping twigs, but rhythmic. Evenly spaced. A dark shadow flickered over the window.I froze.*Who?s in there? A swell of panic began to bubble. I grabbed a smooth blue stone from the ground, praying I wouldn?t have bludgeon anyone as I crept my way to the window.It was Eliot. I could see him there, his back to the stall. And down on her knees beneath him knelt Anna?her pillowy lips smoothly encircling his cock. I gasped and ducked down, smothering a yelp as the rock fell onto my toe. My heart fluttered, terrified they might?ve heard me.*But no... I could still hear the soft lapping of Anna?s lips, and Eliot?s low, rumbling sighs. I peeked again, discreetly, and felt my panic supplanted by something else entirely.He was fully dressed still, with just his jeans split open. But Anna was in a far sorrier state. He had her wrists lashed behind her with saddle string. Her blouse was torn open, exposing her ice-pale breasts beneath. Her face was flushed. Her eyes were wide. Her hair, always pulled back in an austere bun, hung loose, with a few flaxen strands stuck to her cheek, plastered there by the glistening sweat of her efforts.*I watched, breathless, as he reached to caress her chest, and felt my own hand slip under my flannel, quietly mimicking his ministrations. Anna moaned, taking him deeper. I bit my tongue to keep silent. Eliot chuckled, his leer just dripping with sin.?You?re enjoying this too much, aren?t you???Mmm-hmm,? Anna nodded, never letting him leave her lips.?You know it?s wrong, don?t you?? His tone darkened, ?A married woman???Mmm-hmm,? she pulled back, letting her tongue glissade along the length of him.I licked my own lips, and felt my hips start to rock against the empty night air.?You know what you need, don?t you??She sat back; a rider?s posture?straight enough to balance both volumes of*The Decline and Fall*on her head.?Yes, sir,? she smacked her lips.Eliot chuckled again, rockier, raspier than before, and grabbed his belt from the edge of the stall. My hand slid lower, slipping beneath the silk band of my panties. Eliot hiked the hem of her skirt, laying bare her ivory thighs, and the cloud-white cleft of her ass.*?Count,? he growled.Anna nodded, sinking herself to the root of him just as the belt cracked across her backside.*I gasped.*Snapping twigs...*The sound echoed in my ears. Anna swallowed her shriek, groaning a muffled*?one?*as she thrust him desperately down her throat. My fingers trembled, grazing along my slickening lips, and the aching tip of my clitoris. My knees quaked. My toes curled tight. The tension was about to take me. He struck her again, burning a crimson*Xacross her cheeks. She shut her eyes this time, and squealed.*And thank the stars she did?for right in that moment my eyes rolled back, and I collapsed, writhing, to the ground.The suddenness left me half-senseless. I laid there in the grass, quivering, panting hard as the ?snaps? and ?slaps? continued, punctuated by Anna?s slurping, sibilant moans. I rolled myself over, staring dazed into the stippled starlight, wondering what the hell had just happened.*I wondered what it was; wondered why I?d stayed there, and watched it. But more than anything else, I wondered why on God?s green earth I had liked it.*I shook my head and shut my eyes. With the afterglow of my orgasm fading, I was far too afraid to stay, and see what was next. And though I went to bed that night haunted by at least a million menacing questions, somehow it was still the best I?d slept in weeks.I?m not proud of this next part, but I kept a very close eye on Eliot after that?his comings and goings, all the odd hours he was missing from work. Infatuation, I knew, was slowly spilling over to obsession. I left my window open at night, listening for the creak of hinges, or the soft swish of footsteps through the grass. Whenever he snuck off to the woods, if I could, I?d prowl along behind like a starving animal, hungry to glimpse his next tryst with Anna.*More than once I was rewarded. From behind a fallen maple, I watched him force her down on all fours, fucking her slowly, savagely, and swatting her backside with his bare palm. I imagined myself as Anna?imagined Eliot doing these same dreadful things to me. My hips writhed against the cool forest floor. I touched myself, wishing all the while it was him violating me. Him, Eliot, thrusting himself deeper and deeper. I bit my arm, holding in the delirious, starburst oblivion of my climax, and watched jealously as Anna?her cheeks aglow in the moonlight?turned to lick the last liquid pearl from the tip of him.*Even deeper in the summer, deeper into the woods, I saw him tie her stark naked to a towering spruce, and whip her with a switch until she screamed. They argued after that one. She worried her husband would notice the welts. He said he hoped so?that he*wanted*him to know; that he wanted her to leave him.And I, for my part, never quite felt the wrongness of what I?d been doing so fully as I did in that moment. I?d spent weeks in a trance; wholly believing that simply to*watch*was harmless. As if they were animals, meeting in heat by a clear mountain spring?and I, a diligent researcher, studying these strange mating habits in the shade a boreal forest. But now seeing them this way?as a couple, as lovers, quarreling over things that ran so much deeper than instinct?it shocked me awake, and I left the woods that night feeling filthy, and ashamed.I didn?t follow him anymore after that. And anyways, the thread unraveled just a couple weeks later. Inevitably, Anna?s husband found out and raised hell. Rumors flew that someone had snitched. It was an ugly scene by the end. Anna in tears. Her marriage in tatters. Reputation ruined. Eliot all the while was nowhere to be found, vanishing before his rival could slap him with the proverbial glove. It really bothered me that he abandoned her?I didn?t know the rest til much later.But that was then. Anna was gone now. And for the first time ever, Eliot didn?t seem so completely out of reach. I still wanted him. Needed him, really?more and more with each passing moment?and on our first night back that next*summer, I thought for certain I?d get my chance.The staff always got together that night, drinking way too much around a roaring bonfire. Someone strummed the obligatory guitar. A few brave souls stripped, and went skinny dipping down in the lake. I sat on a log beside Eliot, our knees nearly touching. The static electricity bristled. Honeybees buzzed in my stomach. In truth, I?d never been so close to him before.*He rolled a cigarette for himself, and one for me, asking how I fell into horses as he struck his match. I told him I?d been riding my whole life. He said something smart, and I smiled. I told him a joke, and he laughed. We both laughed?harder and harder as the bottle of rye evanesced. He slapped his knee, and squeezed my thigh. I teased him for wearing his gauntlets all the time?an archer?s affectation?and he smacked me playfully on the ass as I went to go grab more wood.*My heart stopped dead in my chest. I didn?t know what it meant; if it was just a drunken indiscretion. But either way the sting rippled through me, a vicarious sense-memory, and gave me the nerve to slink over, and slip myself in his lap. We kissed a little. I knew*he might?ve felt me up. But all the rest is bleary, and black.I woke up in his bed the next morning, fully clothed, with a headache that could?ve split granite. His arm was around me. His snores were soft, almost musical. Through his jeans I could feel his hard-on, jutting against the steamy crease of my thighs. My skin sizzled. I felt feverish. With bated breath, I rocked slowly, softly against him, praying he wouldn?t wake. I arched my back, maneuvering my chest into his limp and empty palm. I sighed, feeling the ache unravel inside me. My muscles drew tight. My breath grew shallow. My quivering fingers crept low, ready to put an end to me.But then he yawned, and his comatose arm came to life. I froze, horrified to let him catch me red-handed, and kept deadly still as he rolled over, stretching and rubbing his eyes.