“Can I keep you today, for a little while, Elsie, or are you going to run off on me,” John asks her with a hopeful but uncertain tone in his voice. His eyes penetrate her, wanting to lock her in her spot and make her feel how much he wants her.
“Yeah, you can keep me for today, Mountain Man,” she smiles shyly at him as warmth creeps over her.
She’s ignoring her primary instincts to wrap herself up and throw up her walls. Instead she is letting the heat from their attraction melt her reservations, and allowing the timid woman inside of her to feel, to want, and to receive.
“Good, let’s go for a walk after breakfast. There are some really nice scenic trails through the woods here. It’s so beautiful in the morning,” he says smiling from ear to ear.
“That sounds perfect,” Elsie replies and is a little surprised, and humbled, by the innocence of John’s suggestion.
Here is this incredibly powerful man whose mere presence is almost larger than life itself. He exudes raw, primal, strength and heat, the intensity of it almost makes you want to quiver. And he want to go for a walk in the woods with her. This big tough man is such a titillating enigma, everything in Elsie wants to explore each and every single part of him, intimately, thoroughly and very closely.
*
“Come on, Angel,” John begins, as he bends and wraps an arm around her thighs to pick her up and throw her over his shoulder, “let’s go sit outside on the pier.”
He grabs an afghan from the sofa in the family room, as he walks towards the sliding glass doors. Elsie squeals and laughs, while holding onto the back of John’s shirt for dear life.
It’s dusk outside now. They’ve spent the entire day together, walking, talking and sitting quietly, just being together as if time doesn’t exist, and the whole world has melted away.
“Here, Elsie,” John says as he sets her down on her feet on the wooden planks of the pier. The canal behind his house is eerily beautiful, the woods on the other side are dark, hinting at creatures watching from inside the depths. There’s a short pier with a wooden swing overlooking the water and woods. Elsie sits on the swing and John slips the blanket around her shoulders and says, “Sit here, I’ll be right back, I’m gonna go light a fire.”
John’s a paradox to Elsie, strong and powerful yet gentle and caring. And each facet of him pulls her closer, while chipping away at every block in the fortress she’d built around herself, years ago.
She settles herself on the swing, only her tippy toes reach the wooden planks as she begins to rock.
This weekend’s been a fairytale, nothing about it could be real, it was too perfect, she sighs to herself.
John comes back and sits down on the swing next to her. Settling his large body on it, the swing protests with creaks and moans. They both laugh at the complaining structure as they look at it warily.
“I hope it doesn’t come down,” John says.
“It will be perfect if it does,” Elsie chuckles.
“Just like everything else,” John retorts smiling into her beaming face.
“Yeah, Mountain Man, this weekend has been pretty perfect, thank you,” she’s almost uncomfortable with the compliment but she really wants to let him know how wonderful this weekend has been for her. Elsie has never been one to express her feelings so openly, especially with a man, but John has made her feel comfortable and safe, she wants to let him know exactly how she feels.
“I didn’t do anything, Angel, it just was. Thanks for staying today,” he says, pulling her closer so he can kiss her. Their lips linger on each other, softly, gently, tenderly, feeling so much.
They separate and search each other’s face. Their looks say without words how there’s no place they’d rather be than right here, right now, with each other. Elsie rests her head in the crook of John’s arm and sighs contentedly.
“Tell me about you, Angel, where are you from?” John asks her, the words vibrating through his chest. Immediately he can feel Elsie tensing slightly.
Her past makes her uncomfortable, he decides by her reaction to his question.
“There isn’t too much to tell, really. I was an only child, and grew up in a suburb outside of Atlanta. As soon as I graduated from high school, I got the hell out of there and went away to college. I’d never go back if my parents didn’t still live there. What about you?” she rushes through the quick synopsis of the first eighteen years of her life.
“Hah, I guess I’m a lot like you, except I grew up on a reservation in Texas. It was a shithole and I couldn’t wait to get out. When my mother died, I enlisted and never went back.”
Even though it seems like a lifetime since John walked away from there, every feeling is still as fresh as if it were yesterday. Anger, disgust, fear and helplessness flood into him, and he fights the urge to physically shake himself, to get rid of those old painful feelings.
Elsie senses that something’s going on inside him, so she presses her body closer to him, to soothe him
