On The Edge of Love

Readers, this is another deleted scene that didn't quite fit (or wasn't imagined) when the original series was published. This one involves characters from Robert Brown and Son.

On The Edge of Love

Danger is an aphrodisiac

Grant took a deep lungful of early spring air and looked east across the Piedmont toward DC. He felt like a god climbing up on these rocky knobs, while the leaves were just the faintest of green sprigs on the limbs around them. Macy's black ponytail swung from the back of her MAGA hat. The slim, athletic girl bounced with energy over the loose uptilted rocks ahead of him. The forces that pushed these mountains into a wrinkled pucker on the earth were still at work in other parts of the world; here, the soft Blue Ridge chain was merely the eroded remnant of a giant wall like the Rockies. They climbed in the bones.

Somewhere around two thousand feet elevation the wind picked up and the trees began to shrink, their roots in the bared rocks. There was little soil here to skin the granite, just the wet, mouldering leaves of last fall, all loamy and dark. Snowbells and other tiny blossoms ventured to raise their heads in the chill air. Dainty mosses, like tiny forests if you got down close to look, practically glowed in their electric green.

Below them was Brown's Mountain, his family's heritage and home place. The old log cabin that remained, lovingly restored, deep in the forest, lay not far below them. The trail he'd led Macy on skirted his property and wound to a dead-end a good distance off of the A-T. It wasn't even on the trail maps and barely discernible. But he knew the terrain and guided her to a spot that very few folks knew about with a view from a bare knob of stone that made him especially proud, as it encompassed much of his family's five hundred acres.

"Dad says that humanity's an ant hill," Grant said, watching his footing on the loose boulders when he could steal his eyes from Macy's strong calves and swinging khaki skirt. "We're all just workers and no one's in charge."

Over her shoulder she taunted, "Your dad seems to be more than a worker ant, from what you've told me."

"Well, we've all got our patch to build and defend, but the hill itself just keeps growing."

"Capitol Hill, maybe?" she chuckled, "Like the government keeps growing."

Grant wondered if she was just trolling him with that and the MAGA hat. He was pretty sure she'd understood that Robert Brown and Son didn't care about politics specifically as much as they benefited from the back and forth of the parties and the money that flowed from the whole political enterprise that was DC.

"You and your boss make your scratch the same way we do. Farming the parasites that suck the sap out of the rosebush of America."

"Grant, I'd advise leaving poetry, metaphors and other colorful language to us image-makers." She smiled and pulled herself up a three foot ledge on the trail. It was at its steepest in this section, nearing the bald. It always intrigued him that the squarish tumbled rocks of Appalachia should fall into staircase-like jumbles. It made for a very human-scaled wilderness and so, not so wild. Still it was a climb that winded them both, neither wanting to show the strain as they climbed.

Grant admired her competitiveness. It came out in their wrestling amid tangled sheets, their bodies straining against each other and bringing out each other's best lover. As much as Macy liked being dominated she often went down fighting.

Occasionally they scurried a chipmunk in the leaves. Hawks on their spring migration soared overhead.

"Tell me about your first time with a man," he said.

She wasn't as quick with her retort, but thought a minute. "Well, it was an accident, really," she said between breaths. The trees thinned as they approached the overlook. "It was in college. We were messing around with some guys playing volleyball in the quad."

Grant liked to think of Macy springing for the ball in a crowd of taller guys. "Accident?"

"We were a few beers in and someone decided we should play it like water polo. With the girls on the guys' shoulders."

"Sounds risky," he said, imagining her falling or colliding with other bodies.

"I had to clamp my legs tight to this guy's neck. Can't remember his name... Caleb or Mitchell or something like that." Grant knew the sweet pleasure of Macy's legs clamped around his neck, though more often with his face in her crotch.

"Wait, you didn't ride front-to-front did you?" That would have made for an interesting, if impossible, game.

Macy laughed. "A perv like you would jump to that image. But remember we were just innocent freshmen. I'm sure getting my legs tight around his neck and my ankles in his hands was exciting enough for Caleb. Besides, we were still trying to play a game. Loser had to buy more beer."

"So you accidentally climaxed?"

"Yeah, I think it was the danger and the weirdness of it. I'd been working up trying to engineer my first time and decided it would be just that, a first time, not a first love."

"You're a calculating woman, Macy." He looked out east as the view improved and filled his lungs with cool air. The nimble woman was lost in thought. She'd tied her loose flannel shirt up tight under her little boobs. He liked the animal sleekness of her exposed skin, the muscles coiling under the flesh as she climbed.

She said, "So I had my pussy up against his thick neck and it kept flexing, it kept twisting and rubbing and I kept clamping and nearly falling off as he stumbled around chasing the ball."

"Sticky?"

"Yeah, then and now, in fact. Remembering's making me just a little bit more itchy than these hikes naturally do."

"I have plans for you, woman."

"So we were lunging and I was grasping and the sweat and other slippery things were happening between my pussy and his neck and bingo! I suddenly had my first orgasm with a man."

"Did he know?"

"I don't think the poor kid did... I thrashed and clenched for a minute but he probably couldn't tell I wasn't just hanging on for dear life, anyway, which I was. I think I remember pulling his hair real hard."

"So your first time was both accidental and stealthy."

"And dangerous. Which you know still gets me off." She looked at him with the piercing gaze of a woman who wasn't coy. She was elusive sometimes but never coy.

Grant climbed ahead of her on the last stretch to the bald and reached down to haul her up to the bare rock of the outcrop. A long stone rib, the serrated edge of upturned granite ended in a venerable oak, its roots so gnarled into the rock they were almost indistinguishable. No leaves showed yet this high up; its arthritic limbs grew in the shape of the wind.

The couple stood and, looking east, took in the broad roiled ocean of trees, the forest a thickening green shawl over the old mountain's body. He pointed out the boundaries of his acres and felt that familiar sense of command that came from summiting here. The sharp air and wide perspective on that busy anthill of humanity barely noticeable on the horizon always restored his confidence.

"What's that saying about danger focusing the mind?" he asked.

"I think you mean Samuel Johson or Twain about the knowledge of being hanged wonderfully focuses the mind?"

Grant didn't respond. He simply wrapped his two big hands around her bare waist, lifted her up and out over the drop where they stood till she dangled a hundred feet above the jagged rocks. She shrieked, but she held his gaze with just a trace of uncertainty. Her fingers clawed into his forearms.

"I could drop you..." he said calmly.

Macy's eyes smoldered. He saw the lust kindled there and the fear that lay in their depths.

"A gust of wind might be enough to pull me off..." He wasn't lying. He was buffeted. Grant felt the very delicate equilibrium where the balls of his feet rested on the ledge of angled stone. He wanted to grip with his toes. A slinking sense of vertigo crawled up his spine. If he lost balance he could just throw her away from his body and save himself. But they could both tumble out into the void and have a few rapid seconds to cling to each other before splattering.

The MAGA hat blew off and her black hair whipped.

The danger made him hard, too. His heart pounded, his sweat ran inside his shirt. The wind tugged at Macy's skirt, lifting it. It blew up and her naked womanhood qiuvered before him. Her pedalling legs smeared a gloss of slipperiness on her thighs.

"Be still," he grunted, "the balance is so, so delicate." He could feel her body trembling in his hands. Her eyes still burnt like lasers into his. Neither smiled. Both felt the brush of death's silver sickle. Would they fall like blades of grass?

His arms grew tired and he, too, trembled with the strain. The risk increased and they both hung in that moment, toying with death, toying with trust.

"No one would know to look here for your body," he said.

Macy slowly relaxed her grip on his arms and let her hands dangle, surrendering entirely. Her breathing pulsed where he gripped her ribcage. They stared in each other's eyes for a long, long minute, calculating.

"You know what else focuses on contrasts?" she said, feigning nonchalance, "The eyes looking at a portrait. That's how we read other people, where we understand their minds."

"You think you know my mind?"

"You like your power and your body, Grant. They're both coming into their own now."

"You know what I'm going to come into, little lady?"

"I'm glad it's OK to say retard again... Retard," she smiled through her trembling. The sweat was making his grip on her midsection more precarious. They both knew they were on the brink, dependent entirely on his strength and will to live.

Grant felt that sharp contrast in himself; he could live or die by his next movement. His libido roared.

Slowly he brought her body closer to his and he leaned back, feeling the balance shift, moving away from that edge they'd toyed with. He took a step back and found his footing on the ridged stone. Another step and they were safe. Grant set her supple body down and she quickly untied her shirt, tossing it on the gray rock. He tore off his polo and stripped out of the running shorts, anchoring them with a stone, but not before Macy's shirt blew away into the void, a plaid bird wheeling.

Macy turned to the rough-barked tree and leaned her cheek against it. She pulled her skirt up and pushed her taut ass at him. Naked but for his Nikes Grant stood on the peak and felt the sun and wind on his body. Warm on one side, yet pierced with cold tendrils of air on the other. His cock stood proud, a dog on the scent.

He was more alive than ever, having teased death and awash with the elemental forces in his bloodstream. Finding his footing on the uneven ground he spit into his palm and slicked his cock, being the gentleman his father'd taught him to be, then took her hips in his broad hands and eased himself into position.

Macy reached between her legs, grasped him and rotated until he felt her warm, wet flesh part at the slow insistence of his knob. They were naked and fucking for all the world to see. As natural as God intended, an Eve and an Adam in their own Eden. The wind blew away her sounds. It tangled her hair. It cooled his sweat even as his body heated in their coupling.

He pushed in and she took him, grinding back, her tiny breasts mashed against the tree then, her fingers digging in the creviced bark, her mouth open, eyes closed.

Animals. It was good to be animals. With life and death in every moment. With life and death in his own hands and at his own choice. Grant let the power flow through him as he moved his body deep into hers. He could see them both in the landscape, high on this rock, the safe modern world laid out below them and seeming less real than ever. This, this was real, this fucking against a tree in the sun and the wind, on the edge of love.

Was Macy the woman to measure up to the standard his mother'd set for a spouse and a lover? Every hour with her seemed to point to that. She liked to fuck him as much anyway.

Then his thoughts blew away, too, and his body and hers took over. For long minutes he nailed her to that tree and she quivered to his pounding. There was no lyrical, slow approach to their climax. They both aimed for the orgasmic target. He felt her body wide open to his possession. She knew how her body worked and he was glad to just race for the finish knowing she'd race there with him.

As it approached she keened loud and long. His thrusts wrung the cries from her throat. Someone down the mountain might think of a hawk on the hunt.

Grant felt her body go stiff and her pussy clench. The sperm boiled out of him then, burning from his balls. He went up on tiptoes and clamped her slim body in his hands as his body thrashed against hers. A moment of imbalance again as the convulsions shook them, teetering, stones skittering off and over the edge, his feet slipping. He felt the power flow through, abandoning himself to the vulnerability of the moment and aware of the trust that balanced that, aware that it was this woman specifically who'd got him there. This finely muscled and buoyant woman who lusted after that same exquisite taste of life in the face of death.

The explosions rocked them both until his spunk dripped from her, the strings torn away in the wind and their bodies softened, gravity returned. She clung to the tree and Grant clung to her, finding his footing again, easing back to sit on the gritty rock, pulling her down beside him.

Grant noticed the scratches up and down her chest, the abrasions on her cheek. "You OK?"

She leaned back on her elbows, the little zippers of blood on her breasts bright red. "That hurt so fucking good..."

He offered her his polo. He wondered how far down the mountain they could walk naked, before real life forced them back into their clothes.

The ancient tree, probably older than the country, didn't notice, didn't care what they'd done. He wondered, don't we all grow in the shape of the wind? But then he thought, Fuck that... I'll be the wind.