Cascade Fire
4. Caldera
A few blissed weeks later, an early breakfast and then Callie took me for a hike into the forest and up the slopes of the ancient volcano. We started on horseback. Turns out their horses were exceedingly well trained and mostly grazed in nearby Forest Service backcountry meadows except in winter or around open season when fools with firearms were even more likely to open up at anything that moved. They also had excellent hearing and knew their own names (and a whole lot more, I would learn later), so when Callie loosed a piercing whistle and called two of them, 10 minutes later she was teaching me how to groom and saddle a horse in one of their barns. I’d helped do some of this as a child, but that was long ago, and Callie was undoubtedly better at all of this than anyone who’d ever taught me before.
At 5′9″, Callie was the tallest woman here, athletic and lean, slim hips but an absolutely amazing bottom, a glowing face, as shy as Jess in her way and the most likely to want to work alone. Hazel eyes tending towards green, long straight light brown hair in a ponytail emerging from behind her baseball cap, a beautiful smile that came too seldom but absolutely lit up what some might think was a plain, lightly freckled face. I thought her unutterably lovely.
She was so gentle with the horses, talking to them softly, making absolutely certain nothing would cause a crease or discomfort later, going slowly because she was also showing me and describing everything she did, sometimes guiding my hands to help, which was nice. Both horses were geldings, mine because I was basically a beginner though Callie very generously introduced me to the horse I would be riding as an “advanced beginner”, and geldings were often docile and patient. Her preferred mare was likely to be otherwise occupied now during mating season, so she had a gelding today, too. She saddled her horse first, supervised saddling mine, then fit me with riding boots and a helmet, also packing up hiking boots for later. No spurs, and everything I wore had been purchased for me since my arrival. She also had a rifle in a saddle-mounted scabbard and wore riding breeches. Two knives, one menacingly long, and two long staves. My pants were more generic North Face, and she told me, smiling gently, that I would lose more weight before they would seek custom-fit gear for me.
It was a cool spring day, no rain but there was mud and puddles and streams to cross on the trails, sparsely graveled Forest Service roads in between. Callie spoke to me and to the horses gently throughout, her soft voice so very easy to listen to, the horses’ gently rocking gait and small tinkling bells on our saddles hypnotic. She stopped and pointed out wildlife several times along the way: porcupine, a startled mule deer, several hares, bearsign we dismounted to examine more carefully, a marmot, a pika, so many chipmunks, squirrels, and ground squirrels that she didn’t bother pointing them out except to distinguish chipmunks from the local ground squirrel—both had striped backs.
Drier and rockier as we climbed, then as we could see the trail steepening to the caldera ahead, a smaller cone to our right, we left the road and dismounted for lunch, a stream and forage nearby for the horses. We sat together, side by side, on a blanket made of bamboo fiber, my helmet off. I reached for her hand and she took it, sighing. We breathed together, eyes closed, smelling the high country and the few remaining patches of snow melting and the warming green and brown and tan and gray world around us. Lunch was granola with raisins and banana chips and tart dried cranberries and sweet coconut strips with a little chocolate, dried leathery fruit, sandwiches of housemade bread with my seared chicken sliced thin and smoked tofu and tomato and lettuce and a few nibs of sopressata with a little housemade mustard and mayo, maybe the best sandwich I’ve ever tasted that wasn’t cooked to order at a place that really knew its business. Water and soft cider from apples and berries and ginger and cinnamon. Definitely the best trailside lunch I’ve ever had, with the loveliest woman I’ve ever shared any backcountry with. She sighed again, feeling what I felt, took my hand, placed it above her knee, traced her fingers across its back.
“I haven’t done this with a man, alone, before,” she said softly. “I’m enjoying being with you.”
Me, the newly strong silent type, nodding.
“Can you feel this place?” she asked. “Really feel it, feel what’s going on below, what went on here before, what will happen again someday?” Maybe she meant it rhetorically, but some simple speech was starting to come back.
“Yes,” I said, and it was true. Deep down below was heat, a slow quiet pulse between the land and clouds and patches of brilliant blue sky we saw around us and the much greater heat deeper down.
“Yes, deep,” she said, feeling what I felt, “so deep, so ... hot.”
And her maybe not intending it in that way, I got hard, my awareness of that deep heat also increasing.
“No fire,” she said, suddenly urgent, remembering. “They said no fire.”
And my awareness obediently came back up to her, to my hand on her and hers on mine, her soft voice and the smells and sounds and vision of Her and this high, dangerous place.
I squeezed her thigh and she moaned. I leaned into her, turned to put my other hand around her hip, my lips moving to hers. Kissed her, gently at first. Her mouth opened, her soft lips against mine, her breath quickened and we kissed deeper, then she pulled back.
“I want you to induce me,” she said, our foreheads together, her beautiful hazel-green eyes partway closed. “Maybe you can’t say much, but your senses can be inside me, and your body, and all you have to say is “Yes” and “Deeper” and “Good Girl” while you look into my eyes, again and again, and I will be yours.”
I continued turning into her, rolled to my knees, straddling. Her chin in my hands, my eyes deep in hers. She looked up at me, questioning, wondering.
“Yes,” I said, then “Good Girl.” And she shivered, her eyes partway closing, but my hands on her chin brought her back.
“Deeper,” I said, then “Yes,” as her eyes reopened fully, then “Good Girl.” My head moved to one side slightly, slowly.
“Deeper,” I said, her eyes following mine, then “Yes,” then “Good Girl.” She was shivering more, and whimpering. My head moved the other way, her eyes following.
“Deeper,” I said, then “Yes,” and “Good Girl.” Back to right in front of her, just a little closer each time. And again. My extrasense went out, deep inside her, and she was already in trance, and I was in trance with her.
“Deeper,” her whimpers intensifying to moans, “Yes,” my cock as hard as it could be, “Good Girl.”
My eyes still deep in hers in mine, I moved one knee between her legs, then the other, spreading her. Her breeches had a generous fold at the crotch that a finger could part and get inside, and then it was quite a bit larger.
“For Ben Wa balls,” Callie said, gasping. “Oh Goddess yes, come inside me.”
And, my eyes still deep in hers, maybe so deep that I couldn’t have looked away even if it could’ve occurred to me to do so, I slid my pants and underwear down and my oh-so-hard cock sprang free, and she took it in her hand as I came near and guided me, rubbing that head up and down against her parting outer lips through the opening in her breeches and another in her panties, and then up and down from the top of her clit to the bottom of her entrance, slowly, gently and then more firmly, her eyes deep in mine as mine were in hers, and she was whimpering and moaning and I was gasping and groaning and as we neared the bottom of my journey to her entrance I said
“Deeper,” and She drew me inside, and then “Yes,” because goddess it felt so good, and her eyes were just starting to roll back, and then “Good Girl,” and she came hard, tensing all the way around me so I couldn’t go deeper, and those tremors continued, and with my hand around the back of her neck I helped lower her gently to the ground as she convulsed in pleasure and then with new leverage I pushed
“Deeper,” I said, and then I was all the way in, waiting there because that motionless penetration was prolonging and deepening her orgasm, and I put one hand under her amazing ass and said “Yes” and she gasped and shivered and tensed, and then “Good Girl,” and she screamed and came harder.
Then I drew back and just pounded her, the very same fucking animal she and her huntress sisters had conditioned me to be, and her eyes rolled back and she went delirious, and I bore in and the poor girl was beyond words besides “Oh!” and “Yes!” with her eyes half closed and rolling farther back and me getting closer, and the shivering became shuddering and the tensing became nothing and
Our horses were curious. They came closer. All this noise, this fuss, Callie and Bob so close, so joined, so loud, so insensible to everything but each other. And the geldings mourned, envious, both of them, and I knew this caused one giant, orgasmic wave growing, cresting, and ... damped. By me. To just the two of us. Because this wasn’t for every living mammal in line of sight, this for was for Callie. And for me.
And dammit, now I love her.