Finally!
After putting the stores away, which needed repeated trips from the car, and opening every window to air the cabin, Deborah saw the prospect of her own time looming. To forget the long year of teaching and Covid and stress, to forget the immediacy of cooking and cleaning, to forget Paul for a while. They had two weeks at the cabin in high summer, and Deborah wanted the great outdoors. The air of freedom, summer joy, night rain. She'd been too pale for far too long. Finally!
Her heart yearned, but she knew not, what for. But she knew she was restless, seeking something more.
"I might go up The Beyonds," she said to Paul, who was down by the lake, content with his easel and brushes. "I think I saw a rise of smoke last night, when we got here. Perhaps someone is renting the Logan Place."
He looked up at his beautiful wife, her eyes bright, her great mane of hair pulled through the opening at the back of her cap. "Yes, love, do that. I wish I could come too, but I couldn't manage the climb." He touched her hand, regretfully.
She leaned down around his neck with a warm embrace, breathing in the smell of him, remembering those days when his hair would smell of smoke from their camp fires. She kissed him tenderly on the lips, her hand on his cheek.
"Don't let the bears getcha," he said, their old refrain.
"I won't," she said, her old reply. "I can run faster than you!"
They both laughed, to hear them both say it.
Deborah turned back to the cabin, where she loaded up a small back pack with two bottles of water, the first aid kit, binoculars, the bits and bobs a well prepared girl always carries. She made up a pack of sandwiches for both of them for lunch, left Paul's on a plate and put hers in the pack. She took the first apple. This was Eden.
By the door, she found her trusty hiking stick, worn smooth from years in the woods.
"I'm off, love," she called down to Paul, who raised a brush in reply. "Back well before dark," she added.
"Run faster," he shouted back, and turned back to an immaculate detail in the painting.
Deborah set off up the little used back path that would take her up to the top of the ridge that separated this valley from the next. It wasn't marked as such on any map, but it had always been The Beyonds. She knew the back of it well.
The first climb was long and steady, putting a stretch in her thighs and back, and she felt the burn of worked muscles. When she got to the top of the ridge the walk was easier, with magnificent views out over the twin valleys below. Even so, as she walked she took off her shirt and tied it about her waist, leaving her arms and shoulders bare in a black tank top.
When she stopped for a breather, she lathered her bare skin with sun-cream, spreading it on her thighs and calves, long legs bare under her shorts. The temperature was idyllic, not cold, not hot, but the sun had a burn. Such a perfect day, it could only get better. Deborah smiled, and went on, her heart pumping from the exertion.
As she walked, easier now that she was on the ridge-way, she found herself softly singing favourite songs.
After a long while, she stopped, turned her head and listened. Yes, it was the crack of an axe she'd heard, and she realised she'd come on near to the Logan Place, walking further than she'd thought. She looked at her watch, she'd been walking for just over an hour.
She changed direction slightly, moving down along a spur from the ridge, to where a clear place looked down over the Logan property. There below her, fifty yards or so away, was a man, a tall man, chopping wood.
Deborah, suddenly shy at meeting someone here, stopped, and went back a little, in under a tree, out of sight in the shadows. But she could still see the man below her, quite clearly.
She slipped her shirt back on, to stay warm now she'd stopped walking, and to protect her back from the bark of the tree. She sat with her back against the trunk and her feet planted on the ground in front of her. She rubbed a thigh where a muscle burned, feeling a tight stretch right up inside her, right up inside her pussy. She arched her back against the tree, stretching like a cat, and watched the man
as he methodically, precisely, swung the axe down onto the wood with a crack, neatly splitting the timber. He was bare chested, beautifully tanned from the sun. Deborah thought he might be older than her by a decade or so, with short greying hair and a silvery shadow on his cheeks
and firm muscles that tightened and flexed as he worked.
She watched, spellbound, as he worked his way through another ten blocks of wood. Then he stopped, swung the axe with a final crack into the stump, and kicked some loose logs together with his foot. He walked over to another stump nearby, where Deborah saw a pack, his shirt, and a wheelbarrow. For the wood - she couldn't be far from the cottage, but she couldn't see it from where she sat.
He sat on the stump and ran a hand up through his hair. Then Deborah watched as he ran both hands over his chest, rubbing over his nipples, then down his sides, as if he were giving himself a massage.
Deborah's nipples instantly thickened, and now she was aware of her body.
Then he reached back to his pack and pulled out a Thermos. She watched as he poured a steaming liquid into the cup, placed the cup on the ground, and reached into the pack again to pull something else out. Deborah smiled as she recognised the characteristic tearing motion of a sugar sachet being torn. She smiled again as he looked around for a stick to swizzle the sugar into the drink. She kept watching as he took the first sip, closing his eyes for that first luxurious taste.
