Chapter 6: Day 5 - The issue with Drama
The cold was a living thing. It seeped through the tent fabric, through the insulating pads, and settled in the marrow. But within a sleeping bag, a different ecology thrived. Julie slept deeply, a profound, exhausted sleep she hadn’t known in years. Her body was turned away from him, curled in on itself, her breath a steady, shallow rhythm in the absolute dark.
Mark lay awake, listening to her breathe, to the distant moan of the wind in the morning. The memory of her, of the sounds she’d made, was a brand on his mind. He was hard again, a persistent, aching throb that had nothing to do with the hour and everything to do with the woman beside him. The scent of her, of sex and sweat and something uniquely Julie, still hung in the confined air.
He moved with glacial slowness, careful not to wake her. He propped himself up on one elbow. The faintest hint of grey was beginning to define the shape of the tent, outlining the curve of her shoulder under the bag. He found the zipper of her sleeping bag first, a cold metal tab. He pulled it down, the sound a hushed rasp. The cold bit at the exposed sliver of her back. She didn’t stir.
He found her hiking trousers, still bundled around her ankles from the night before. He hooked his fingers into the elastic of her leggings and her underwear together and began to tug them down, over the swell of her ass, down the length of her thighs. The fabric caught at her knees. He left it there.
He eased his own shorts down just enough to free himself. His cock sprang out, stiff and eager in the frigid air. He spat into his palm, a crude lubricant, and slicked himself. Then he shifted closer, spooning the length of her body. He draped one arm over her waist, his hand splaying across her lower belly.
With his other hand, he guided himself to her. She was soft, warm, and still swollen from him. He pressed the head against her entrance, which gave way with a wet, yielding readiness that made his guts tighten. He pushed forward, an inch, then another, burying himself into the incredible, sleeping heat of her. A low groan escaped him, muffled into her shoulder.
He began to move, a slow, deep, rocking rhythm, his hips working in a lazy, possessive grind. He fucked her in her sleep, his hand on her belly holding her tight against each thrust. It was profoundly intimate, borderline violating, and it sent a dark current of electricity through him. He was claiming a part of her she hadn’t consciously given.
Her body responded before her mind did. A soft, sleepy sigh escaped her lips. Her hips pushed back minutely, seeking more friction. He increased his pace slightly, the wet, rhythmic sound of their connection becoming audible in the quiet tent.
Then her hand came down, not to push him away, but to clamp over his on her belly, her fingers lacing with his. She was awake.
“Don’t stop,” she whispered, her voice thick with sleep and desire.
He didn’t. He drove into her harder now, his rhythm becoming purposeful, jagged. She reached back with her other hand, grabbing the meat of his hip, her nails digging in, pulling him deeper with each stroke.
“Fuck me just like this,” she breathed, arching her back, presenting herself to him. “God, yes. Fill me up.”
The crude words in her sleep-roughened voice undid him. His control shattered. He pounded into her, the tent poles shuddering with the force of it. The sleeping bag was tangled around their legs, constricting, adding a layer of frantic struggle. He buried his face in her hair, his breaths coming in ragged grunts.
“You feel so fucking good,” he snarled against her scalp. “This tight, wet cunt. Mine.”
“Yours,” she gasped, her own climax coiling, spurred by his words, by the raw, grinding angle of his thrusts. “Make me come.”
He slid his hand from her belly down, through the coarse hair, finding her clit. It was hard, swollen. He circled it with two rough fingers, matching the punishing rhythm of his hips.
She came with a choked, shuddering cry, her internal muscles clamping around him in a series of violent, milking spasms. The feeling tipped him over the edge. With a final, brutal thrust, he slammed home and held, his body locking as his orgasm ripped through him. He spilled into her, a hot, pumping rush that seemed to go on forever, sealing them together in the messy, perfect aftermath.
They lay frozen, entangled, breathing in shattered unison. The cold began to reassert itself, creeping into the sweat-damp space between them.
Slowly, tenderly, he pulled out. He reached down and tugged her clothes back into a semblance of order, then zipped her sleeping bag shut around her, tucking the fabric under her chin. He arranged his own before drawing her back against him, her back to his chest. He just held her.
“The porters will be bringing tea soon,” she whispered after a long silence, her voice small.
“I know.”
“We have to climb a wall today.”
“I know that, too.”
She turned her head slightly, her lips close to his ear. “Last night… and this… it wasn’t just the tent, was it?”
He was quiet for a long time, his breath warm on her neck. “No,” he finally said, the word simple and devastating. “It wasn’t just the tent.”
The reality of it, of him, of what they had just done in the stark light of a new day, settled over them heavier than any mountain peak.
The Barranco Wall was not a wall in the sheer sense, but a thousand-foot scramble up a broken face of volcanic rock. It required hands as much as feet, a constant, calculating search for purchase. The exposure was dizzying; one misstep meant a long, silent fall into the sun-bleached valley below.
The group moved like insects on a monolith, slow and purposeful. The previous day’s intimacy was now a secret burden, a glowing coal in the chest that made the thin air even harder to breathe. They did not walk together. The trail was too narrow, the need for concentration too absolute. But Julie felt his eyes on her like a physical touch. Every time she stretched for a handhold, her shirt riding up, she imagined his hands there instead of the cold rock. Every laboured exhale sounded, in her mind, like one of his ragged groans.
At the summit of the Wall, the world opened up. They stood on a vast, rocky plateau, the infamous Kissing Rock—a leaning boulder requiring a heart-stopping lean over nothingness to pass—behind them. The Karanga Valley lay below, a deep, green scar in the lunar landscape. The real, snow-clad summit of Kibo seemed close enough to touch, yet infinitely far.
Eli gave them twenty minutes. Julie found a flat rock and sat, gulping water, her muscles trembling. Mark approached and sat far from her. The two British ladies were taking pictures a few meters away.
“You climbed that like you were born to it,” he said quietly, staring out at the clouds forming below them.
“I felt like I was going to puke the whole way,” she replied with a weak laugh.
“Yeah. Me too.”
The silence between them was different now. Charged, but not with unsated lust. It was layered with the weight of the night, of his admission in the tent, of the looming, inevitable end of the climb.
“What happens,” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper, “when we get off this mountain?”
He didn’t answer immediately. He picked up a piece of black scree, turning it over in his fingers. “We have the luxury spa retreat and the safari” he said.
One of the British ladies, Margaret, called over. “Julie, love, would you take a photo of us with the summit?”
Julie rose, her legs protesting. “Of course.”
She took the camera, framing the two smiling women with the majestic, indifferent mountain behind them. Through the viewfinder, she saw Mark still sitting on the rock, a solitary figure silhouetted against the immense sky. He looked lost. He looked like home.
That night, camped in the Karanga Valley, the dynamics had shifted. Claire and Tim were gone. The remaining climbers, bonded by shared ordeal, talked more openly over dinner. Laughter came easier.
Later, in their tent, there was no frantic, hungry tearing of clothes. The desperation had been spent, replaced by something more melancholic and fierce. They undressed each other slowly, in the beam of a single headlamp hung from the tent ceiling. They looked at each other’s bodies in the stark light—the faint stretch marks on her hips, the softness around his middle, the bruises and scrapes from the day’s climb. They were no longer phantom lovers from a digital past. They were two tired, aging humans, marked by life.
He laid her back and kissed her, slowly, deeply. He kissed her breasts, her stomach, the inside of her thighs. He worshipped her with his mouth until she was shaking, until she came with a soft, broken sigh against his lips.
Then she pushed him onto his back and straddled him. She took him inside her, sinking down with a deliberate, overwhelming slowness that made them both gasp. She rode him not with frantic need, but with a deep, rolling rhythm, her eyes locked on his. She leaned forward, her hands on his chest, and let her hair fall around their faces, creating a tiny, private world.
“Tell me,” she whispered, moving on him.
“Tell you what?”
“Anything. Everything. What you wanted to do to me all those years. What you think about when you’re alone.”
And he did. In a raw, ragged whisper, he painted filthiest, most exquisite pictures. He told her about imagining her in his office, under his desk. About wanting to fuck her in the train, on the kitchen counter. The words were crude, obscene, but they were poetry. They were a lifetime of pent-up fantasy poured directly into her ear, into her soul, as her body moved on his.
She felt his orgasm building, the tightening of his muscles beneath her. She slowed, denied him, drawing it out. She climbed off, turned her back to him, and looked over her shoulder.
“Now,” she said. “Like this morning. Only don’t be gentle.”
He needed no further invitation. He was on his knees behind her, driving into her with a force that drove her forward onto her hands. It was a mating, raw and final.