Take Me Higher by Pamela Clare
Chapter 15
The next fewdays were too busy for Megs to read to Mitch. According to Dr. Schwartz, he was progressing rapidly and was now in a confusional state. He was conscious enough to know that something was wrong, but he couldn’t yet understand what was happening. This made him a handful.
Megs had stayed overnight two nights in a row because the nurses said Mitch was calmer when she was there. He hated the ventilator, and more than once, she’d been forced to hold him down while the nurses sedated him so that he couldn’t interfere. It broke her heart to see him so distressed.
They’d reached the point this morning where Dr. Schwartz decided they either needed to give him a paralytic and morphine to restrain him—or they should try to extubate him. Given that he met most of the criteria for ending intubation and that the paralytic would surely be traumatic for him, Megs had pushed for the latter.
Now she sat in the ICU waiting area, watching the clock, while Mitch’s medical team did one last trial, which would hopefully end with them removing that damned vent. She tried to distract herself by checking email and sending a few text messages, one to Rain to update everyone in Scarlet and one to Gridwall. Then she noticed the date on her calendar app.
October 2.
October already? Her birthday month.
It had been eight days since the accident, eight long days since she’d heard Mitch’s voice speak her name or seen that teasing glint in his eyes, eight days since she’d taken for granted that her future would include him.
It seemed much longer than that.
Megs was beginning to understand what Dr. Schwartz meant by preparing herself for the long haul. Mitch hadn’t returned to full consciousness yet. He didn’t seem to know where he was, sometimes looking about his room with wild eyes, as if the place were filled with monsters the rest of them couldn’t see.
Almost an hour had gone by before Kim came to get her, a broad smile on her face. “He’s breathing on his own.”
Relief rushed through Megs, bright and sweet.
“Thank God!”
“We sedated him, but he should be coming out of it soon.” Kim explained that being intubated could affect a person’s ability to speak and often left their voice sounding rough for a time. “Of course, a brain injury can also affect speech.”
Megs found Mitch asleep, oxygen mask on his face. She rested her hand on top of his, and for a time, she just watched his chest rise and fall.
It felt like a miracle.
Megs sent a quick text to Rain and Gridwall.
He’s breathing on his own.
Rain’s reply was immediate.
Thank Heaven!
Gridwall’s came a few minutes later.
That bastard! I knew he’d pull through. I’ll let the others know.
Megs laughed, slipped her phone into her pocket, and found Mitch awake and watching her through tired eyes. She took his hand again. “Hey, there. They took the ventilator out, and now you’re breathing on your own. Can you understand me? Squeeze my hand if you understand me.”
He squeezed her fingers, his lips pressing together. “Mmm.”
Megs’ pulse skipped. “Megs. I’m Megs. Is that what you’re trying to say?”
His brow furrowed, whether from pain or anger, she couldn’t say. “Mmmmeh.”
She laughed out of sheer joy. “Yes! Megs. That’s it. You’ll get it.”
He looked into her eyes, and she could see he was frustrated. “Mmmeh.”
“I know this is hard, love, but you’ve spent the past week in a coma. It’s going to take some time before you’re whispering sweet nothings in my ear, but that’s okay. You’ve fought a tough battle, so just rest.”
He seemed to relax, his hand still holding hers, his gaze fixed on her.
“You don’t remember what happened, do you?” She didn’t think it would hurt to tell him. “A chunk of rock fell when we were climbing on Painted Wall. It missed me, but it hit you. It broke your helmet, one of your cervical vertebrae, and your clavicle, and it left you with a severe head injury. You’ve been in a coma for a week, but you’re … coming out of it now.”
Her throat went tight on those last few words. A week ago, she hadn’t known whether he’d ever wake up again.
“I suppose now is a good time to tell you that I love you. And also that I’ve been reading your journal. I’ve been recording what you wrote and playing it back to you.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “I made you a promise. I told you that if you got off that ventilator, I would read you the sexy parts. What do you think of that?”
She went to retrieve the journal, but he held on tightly to her hand and didn’t seem to want to let go. The journal could wait.
She caught him up on the news from Scarlet—all of the fundraising efforts, the Town Council meeting, the Team functioning well without them. But he’d begun to grow restless, and she thought she knew why. “You’re in pain, aren’t you?”
He moaned, closed his eyes, shifted his legs.
Megs pushed the call button. “We need some pain meds.”
Kim walked in a few minutes later. “Time for more morphine.”
Megs watched Mitch’s eyes drift shut, the strain on his face easing. “You rest, love. You just rest.”
“Speaking of rest…” Kim pinned Megs with her gaze.
“I’ll head to the hotel soon. I just want to read to him first. And, Kim, can you close the door behind you?”
Megs had a promise to keep.
Mitch’s pain lessened,and he floated in a world that was blurry around the edges. He knew who he was. He knew his name, and he knew when people were talking to or about him, though it all seemed far away somehow.
He knew her name, too. He knew that he loved her, needed her, wanted her close to him. But when he had tried to say her name, he hadn’t been able to do it.
Anger. Confusion. Frustration.
This wasn’t right. He couldn’t say why, but it wasn’t. He was trapped in a strange place, and he didn’t know how to get out. He had questions but no answers.
But when she held his hand, when she smiled at him, when she told him she loved him and read these stories that he somehow already knew, things made sense for a while.
Mitch pouredhimself a second cup of coffee, his breakfast eaten, camp waking up around them. “And then what did I do?”
“You kissed me with your tongue—down there.”
Sweet Jesus.
Wouldn’t he just love to do that?
This was how every day started now. Megs shared what she’d read in that book of sexual fantasies or, worse, shared her fantasies about him. It was her revenge for his making her wait until her eighteenth birthday.
But Mitch would not let her break him.
He took a sip of coffee, waited until he could speak with clinical detachment. “What does that mean—kiss you with my tongue?”
His question caught her off-guard, as he’d suspected it would. Yes, she had learned a lot, and she could make herself come. But reading about sex was very different from the actual event, and she had no real experience.
She stammered. “I … uh… It means you gave me oral sex.”
He put a thoughtful frown on his face. “Oh, I get that. I’m just not sure what exactly I did with my tongue.”
“Well, I guess you did what you’d do with your dick.”
“So, I thrust my tongue inside you?”
She nodded. “Then I came.”
Who was he fooling? She was killing him.
Well, two could play at this game, and he had more experience than she did.
He finished his coffee and set the cup and empty plate inside the plastic tub they used to wash their dishes. “That’s not how I would do it.”
She cocked her head, a look of confusion on her face. “It’s not?”
“Nope.” He took her empty plate from her hand, set it in the tub, and drew her onto his lap, his hands on her hips. “First, I would push your knees back to your chest. I’d want a really good look at you.”
Her pupils dilated.
“Then I’d run my tongue over you, taste you.”
She frowned. “What if I don’t taste good?”
He couldn’t help but laugh. “Oh, you will. You’ll taste exactly how you’re supposed to taste—like musk and heat and sex.”
She shivered, her nipples pebbling against her halter top.
“When you were used to the feel of my tongue, I would use it on your clit. First, I would stroke you and flick you until you started to moan. Then I would suck on your clit, draw all of you into my mouth, let my lips stroke yours. After that, I would slide my fingers inside you and thrust hard.”
Her hips moved in a circle, proof that he was turning her on. “Then what?”
“You would come. My lips would be covered with your wetness, and your taste and scent would be all over me. Then I would bury my cock inside you and make you scream.”
She circled her hips again, a look of pure sexual frustration on her pretty face. “That’s not fair. Now you’ve got me all hot.”
“How is that not fair?” He laughed. “Haven’t you heard? Turnabout is fair play. Maybe you need some time alone in your tent.”
She glared at him, a smile tugging at the corners of her lips. “You’re a mean, hard man, do you know that?”
“I’m definitely hard, thanks to you.” He stood, helped her to her feet, adjusted himself—and saw her look. “I’ll wash the dishes while you think about what you want to climb today.”
“I want to climb you.”
Satisfied that he’d won this round, he carried their sauce pot to the water spigot, filled it, then brought it back and set it on the camp stove to boil. Megs sat on a nearby log, looking at a topo map, her blond hair spilling around her bare shoulders.
It was only mid-August. How was he supposed to last until October 24?
Here he was in one of the most beautiful places on earth, being paid to do what he loved, and all he could think about was Megs. She filled his head during the day. She made his blood run hot. She hijacked his dreams at night.
God, he wanted her. He wanted her so bad it hurt.
Mitch poured the steaming water over the dishes and added a few drops of dish soap. Then he fished their sponge out from the bottom of the bin and washed the dishes.
He’d been planning. Of course, he had. He wanted to make sure their first time together was as perfect as it could be. It would be her birthday, too, so it needed to be extra special.
He’d bought a box of condoms from a pharmacy before coming to Yosemite. He’d also gotten her a few birthday presents—a new book of poetry, flowers, and a new internal frame pack from François’ company. But he hadn’t yet decided where they should stay that night.
He didn’t want her first time to be in a tent or the back of his van. That wasn’t classy or romantic. At the same time, he wasn’t sure if it was legal for unmarried couples to get a hotel room together in California. He knew it was illegal in some states. Hell, having sex outside of marriage was still illegal in some states.
It was 1974, but some people still lived in the Dark Ages.
He also worried about Megs. She’d been molested as a younger teen. He didn’t need a degree in psychology to know the experience might affect her more deeply than she realized. The last thing he wanted to do was dredge up bad memories for her.
He wanted her first time to be perfect.
Megs looked up from the map. “Why don’t we check out Middle Cathedral Rock? Gridwall and the guys put up a few first ascents there last year, but I’ll bet there are more. Let’s see what we can find.”
“Sounds good.” He finished the dishes, and they pulled their gear together and piled it in the back of his van.
Megs shoved her backpack inside. “Just so you know, I’m grumpy.”
“It’s called sexual frustration.” Mitch didn’t bother to hold back his grin. “Now you know how I feel.”
Her lips turned down in a perfect pout. “But you’ve already had sex.”
“Sure.” He shut the van’s doors and pressed his forehead to hers. “But I haven’t had sex with you.”
Megs remembered that day.She had pushed him to the brink, tried to get him to change his mind. She’d known she was making life hard for him. But he was determined at age twenty-two not to be the dirty old man who led the teenage virgin astray.
At the time, it had irritated the hell out of her. But now, she respected him for it. If he’d done what she’d wanted him to do and had sex with her that first summer, she wasn’t sure their relationship would have lasted. By making her wait, it gave their friendship and mutual respect time to grow. It had also given her time to grow as a person. By the time they finally did have sex, the tension had been thick enough to cut with a knife.
Megs couldn’t help it. She flipped forward through the journal, skipping over dozens of pages and many fantastic climbs in search of his entry for her eighteenth birthday. “I hope you didn’t skip it or just write, ‘We balled.’ I want details.”
Not that she didn’t remember what happened that night. It had been magical, a rite of passage, a sexual initiation at the hands of a man who had loved her even then. It was one of her favorite memories, and she wanted to see it all through his eyes.
And then she found it.
She perused the page, then smiled at Mitch, who was awake but drowsy from morphine. “Oh, my. You did include the details.”
When he saw her smile, he smiled. Of course, it might have been a reflex, him mimicking what he saw. Still, the sight of it put an ache in Megs’ chest. They had always had a strong emotional connection. Nothing, not even this terrible accident, had been able to change that.
“Are you ready for this? It’s pretty explicit.”
Megs began to read.
Mitch droveunder the shelter of the cabin’s carport and parked. “Here we are.”
The cabin belonged to François, who had invited Mitch to stay here with Megs when he’d heard Mitch was looking for a special place to celebrate Megs’ birthday.
Megs looked up at him, surprise on her face. “Are we staying here?”
“It’s ours for the entire weekend.”
“Far out!” She opened the door and hopped to the ground.
Mitch drew a breath, anticipation twined with nervousness in his belly. After more than a year of waiting, of wanting her, of burning for her, tonight was the night. He wanted it to be perfect.
They got their backpacks from the vehicle and walked up the steps of a wide wrap-around deck to the front door. Mitch unlocked it, opened it, and let Megs enter.
“Oh, wow!”
He smiled to himself. “Nice, isn’t it?”
He’d had the same reaction this afternoon when he’d dropped off the food, flowers, and other things they would need for the weekend. The place wasn’t a rustic cabin at all, but a luxury mountain getaway.
They set their packs down inside the door. Mitch followed Megs as she walked from the living room, with its fireplace and leather furniture, to the modern kitchen, and then to the primary bedroom, which had its own fireplace, a king-sized four-poster canopy bed, and an en-suite bathroom.
“Did you see that?” she pointed toward the bedroom. “There are mirrors on the underside of the canopy. How silly! Who cares what they look like when they sleep?”
Mitch burst out laughing. “I don’t think that’s why the mirrors are there.”
Megs frowned as if puzzling through this, then her eyes went wide. “You mean they watch themselves when they…?”
“Yeah.” He couldn’t help but find her innocence cute. “Keep looking. You haven’t seen everything yet.”
There was a guest bedroom, a wine cellar, and, outside the back door, a Jacuzzi with a sunset view of the mountains.
Megs played with the dials on the Jacuzzi, starting the jets. She laughed, ran her fingers through the bubbles, the happiness on her face putting a hitch in his chest. “This place has everything.”
“I think you missed something.” He led her back inside, stopping beside the dining room table with its bouquet of roses.
“Are the flowers for me?”
He glanced around. “I don’t see any other birthday girls.”
She found the little card, opened it, read what he’d written aloud. “‘Happy Birthday to the brightest star in my sky.’ Oh, Mitch, I love them—and the card. It was so sweet of you to set this all up.”
She stood on tiptoe and pressed a kiss to his lips.
He drew her against him, kissed her in a way he hadn’t allowed himself to kiss her since the day he’d said goodbye last summer. Oh, she tasted sweet, his blood going hot at the first brush of her lips. He wanted more than that—but not yet.
He broke the kiss. “It’s not your birthday—not until midnight.”
She moaned in frustration. “You’re not seriously going to make us wait until midnight, are you?”
“It’s not easy, but you’re worth it.” He let her go. “I got us steaks for supper. How about we grill them on the deck?”
They made dinner together—grilled T-bones, baked potatoes, and salad, with ice cream for dessert—but Megs insisted on loading the dishwasher alone since she’d never used one before.
“How does this work? Oh, I see. Right on!”
They sat on the deck to watch the sunset, deer grazing in the meadow downhill from the cabin, the scent of fall in the air. Then Megs stood and undressed, exposing her sweet body to his gaze.
“I’m going to try the Jacuzzi.”
Damn.
The breath left Mitch’s lungs, and for a moment, he could do nothing but stare. Her smooth skin. Her small, sweet breasts. The curves of her hips. Her round, athletic ass. Those slender legs.
She stepped down into the water. “Oh, this feels so good!”
Before he knew it, he was on his feet. While she watched, he stripped down to his skin and followed her into the hot tub.