Then I pulled her up out of the rain and licked my own juices from her lips. I managed to get my hand between her thighs, letting her wetness pour down over my fingers like the rain outside. Carefully, I maneuvered her over and climbed on top of her, but I was so awkward it felt like it was my first time ever. My ankle howled but I ignored it as best I could, concentrating on pleasuring her.
I tried to move down her body as she’d done on me but couldn’t stop a hiss of pain. She grabbed my shoulders and held me in place while I twisted a little to ease the stress on my foot. I concentrated instead on thrusting my fingers into her, letting them find their way inside her like explorers looking for the source of a new and exotic river.
That was when it hit me: I could almost feel the trees around, and I could feel the rain and earth. We were taking it back, reclaiming what should have been ours from those who wanted to destroy it. I tried to put that in every stroke of my tongue, every caress of my hands. I licked and sucked and nibbled that awareness into my park ranger until Sandra shivered and shook beneath me.
The ankle caught up with me at last, of course. Well, that and the lack of food. I collapsed down on her as she relaxed from her final orgasm. She caught me, burying one hand in my short, wet hair and tilting my face back. “You’re pretty amazing considering the condition you’re in. How’s the ankle?”
I grimaced and my stomach growled louder than the rain outside. I hid my face in her shoulder. “Oops. Guess it’s been a while since lunch.” I could feel her laugh under me, her chuckle working its way down into where our bellies met.
Then she slid me off as carefully as she could and went for her pack again. She rustled around for a minute and pulled out a couple of crumpled energy bars. “Looks like this is it.”
“Don’t they teach you how to hunt and forage in park ranger school?” I took the energy bar she held out. There was food up on my platform, I remembered now. I wondered if I could get up to it.
Sandra was rolling her eyes at me. “Yeah. Hunting and foraging are big. When it stops raining, I’ll go out and track a deer for a day or two, then hit it on the head with a rock. Oh, wait, or I can walk two miles down to the highway and another mile into town, then eat at a restaurant.”
“Point taken. Maybe we could do that sometime.” I was proud of the way I sounded casual and all. Or at least I hoped I did.
“Sure. Right after you get out of jail, and I get out of the doghouse with my department manager over this little incident.” She bit down on the energy bar and stared up at the branches of the lean-to. “At least it looks like it’s going to stop finally.”
Jail? I twisted around and did some staring upward of my very own. Clearly this wasn’t going to be the bonding with the woody goddess of my dreams that I was picturing an hour ago. When I started sitting in my tree, I knew that jail time if they got me down was a very real option, but somehow, it was different when it came out of her mouth. Now I wasn’t just hungry, I was cold and depressed.
It must have been coming off me in waves. Sandra reached out and pulled me up to her, wrapping her arms around me. “Of course, I’ve got a better idea. How about we stay here for a little while longer, then you get dressed and head down into town? I’ll give you my apartment key, and you can wait for me there. In the meantime I’ll go back and tell them I couldn’t find you in the storm. No jail, no manager problems, all good.” She kissed me hard and I kissed her back, savoring the taste of energy bar like never before.
I was hoping that would be enough to ignore the little voice asking, “Then what?” in the back of my head. And for a little while it was. My fingers tingled as I ran them over her skin and I licked the rain off her shoulders. She was smiling when I looked back up; after that, my body decided I’d do my worrying later.
When later rolled around, the wanting had settled down to a pleasant ache, somewhat more intense than my longing for a decent veggie burger. We kissed until she dozed off. I surprised myself by joining her sooner than I expected, what with the cold and ankle.
Of course, when I woke up a little while later, I was freezing. Sandra had pulled away and had tried to wrap herself in the plastic at some point in the night, so I was lying partially on the cold, wet ground. I reached out for my clothes and found a handful of wet cloth. Still, it was better than nothing. I slipped out of the lean-to as quietly as I could so as not to wake her.
Once outside, I could see that it was pretty close to dawn. The trees were shadowy and gray around the lean-to, everything taking on that pearly glow. I pulled myself together and got some clothes on while I thought about what to do next. The offer of Sandra’s apartment was tempting. It wouldn’t be too hard to come up with a story that everyone else would believe. And I’d get me a real-live genuine park ranger in the bargain: not an easy thing to turn down.
I found a slightly drier patch on the ground to sit on while I struggled with getting my boots on. Then I leaned against one of the big old trees and just let the morning flow over me. God, I needed a coffee. And a breakfast sandwich of some sort. But it was beautiful up there on the hill in the quiet. I could even see parts of Sandra, still naked and sleeping, under the branches, a sight that filled me with a warm happy glow that was almost enough to dry my clothes while other things stayed wet. This had been the best accident of my short, clumsy life to date.
From somewhere down the hill, I thought I heard a chain saw revving up. I looked at my tree immediately, then at my harness where it lay on the ground in a muddy bundle. I picked it up, checking to see what of it was salvageable. While I tried to clean it off, I wondered how long it would be before my friends came to bring supplies and check on me. I thought I should wake Sandra soon if the cold and the dawn didn’t do that for me.
Or at least, that was what I meant to do. A few minutes later I had the harness untangled. It looked like I could get a few of the cut straps tied together, and it might support me once I did. I hoped. I relaced my boot around my ankle, tightening it up enough that I thought it would support me.
By the time Sandra woke up and came out of the lean-to, I was halfway up the trunk to my platform. It hurt like hell, but I was getting closer by the minute. “Shit. Get back down here!” was my first indication that my lovely ranger was greeting the day. I thought about turning around, but I didn’t think I could respect myself later, especially if it paved the way to my tree being cut down. I scrambled and grabbed and heaved for another couple of minutes until I finally collapsed on my platform.
Then I turned around and looked down. Sandra had been getting dressed while I’d been climbing. Now she was standing at the foot of the tree, hands on her hips while she glared up at me. She looked so fierce and rangery that if I’d been on the ground in front of her, I probably would have groveled. As it was, I was going to settle for drooling, just a bit. I couldn’t believe she’d gone for me in the first place, even if she was pretty furious with me right now. I tried my best placating smile. “I left my phone number in your shirt pocket.”
She was still glaring as she unbuttoned it and pulled out the little scrap of paper. “So you did.” The way she said it could’ve restored the polar ice caps. I figured I’d blown my only shot at her ever using it and thought about beating my head against the trunk of the tree, just in case it would help.