Ryan
“Yeah!” I yelled as we crashed down through the rapids. “We were fucking airborne, man!”
Adrenaline surged through my veins, an energy filling my chest to nearly bursting. I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face. This was the Diamond Club at its best: feeling alive! Death-defying, high energy, balls-to-the-wall action and adventure. I ate this shit up. I thrived on it. People who said money can’t buy happiness just didn’t have the money to afford it.
“This river is one big rapid!” Roger yelled, his voice getting lost as the water propelled us airborne and gravity yanked us back down. Our paddles were basically worthless as our raft pounded against the river and it pounded us back. Anytime we got to a place where we weren’t dropping, which wasn’t often, Dylan tried to liven things up by pushing Justin and trying to knock him into the water.
“I’ll kick your ass if I go over,” Justin threatened.
“You’ll be dead if you go over,” Dylan shouted back.
“Don’t count on it,” Justin jeered. He stood up in the raft. “I own this raft!” he shouted. Then he slipped and landed on his ass. I about pissed my pants laughing.
“Okay, guys, we’re nearing the final few curves,” our guide said. He’d been basically quiet the whole time, letting us run the show.
Money buys silence even more than happiness, I thought, and Alicia flashed through my mind. I wondered how her day was going and hoped she was having a good time.
We entered the rapids sideways and flew through the air; I heard a yell and realized it was me. We were airborne for at least ten seconds as my stomach lurched up into my throat, then we landed with a slam against the waves. Somehow we kept the raft upright.
“Whooo!” Roger yelled. “Motherfucker!”
We turned and the water became calmer almost immediately. We rode out the rest of the river, then pulled off at the spot our guide indicated. We were soaking wet, but everybody had the same goofy grins on their faces.
“Another successful, excellent trip, gentlemen,” I said.
We stripped off our gear and tossed everything that belonged to the rafting company into a pile.
“You know what we should do tonight?” Justin suggested. “Let’s keep the nature theme alive and skip sleeping in the lodge. Let’s go camping instead. We can get tents and equipment when we go back to pick up the girls.”
“Hell, yeah,” I said. The idea sounded fabulous, especially when I thought about last night and Alicia running through the woods on her way to the water, stripping off her clothes as she ran.
“Hey, boys,” Tammy called. I looked up and saw the girls walking toward us. They must have stopped back at the lodge because they weren’t carrying any shopping bags. One glance at Alicia’s face and I could tell she was not having fun.
“Hey, yourself,” Justin said. He grabbed Tammy and kissed her.
She swatted him away. “You’re soaking wet, you asshole—don’t touch me. And don’t mess up my lipstick,” she said. “I just reapplied it.”
“You’re not gonna need lipstick tonight, baby. We’re going camping!”
“Camping?” Lori said with a disgusted look on her face. “Why?”
“Because we can, baby!” Roger said, imitating Justin’s enthusiasm and, like Justin, made a grab for Lori. She ducked away from him.
“Don’t,” she whined. “You’re disgusting.”
All the while, I watched Alicia. I felt a stirring of arousal at the sight of her, but also concern. Something was off. She wasn’t smiling and she was standing a bit away from the others, like she was a dog that had been kicked a few times and was learning to keep its distance. I sincerely hoped I was wrong; a bad day with the women was the worst-case scenario.
“How are you, honey?” I asked her quietly, kissing her lightly on the lips. She didn’t shy away from me or crab at me for being wet. Rather, she seemed really happy to see me.
“I’m fine,” she said. “But next time, I’d much rather go rafting than shopping.”
“Oh, baby,” Roger was saying to Lori, “I’ll protect you from all the creepy crawlies in the woods, I promise.”
“Gag me,” Tammy said. “Can we get going? It’s freezing down here.”
As we walked back up the hill toward the lodge, I held back with Alicia. “Seriously.” I held her hand and searched her eyes. “How did today go?”
“It was awful,” she said hotly, and my stomach sank. “I don’t know what to do; I just don’t fit in with these women. Nothing is good enough for them.”
Her voice was getting louder and I shushed her, glancing up to see if anyone had overheard. “I’m sure it wasn’t that bad. Did you find some things you wanted to buy, at least?”
She nodded and gave me a small smile. “Thank you for your card. You didn’t have to do that.”
Even though it had been a necessary move, I understood giving her my card had embarrassed her. “I know I didn’t have to, I wanted to,” I reassured her. “I wanted you to have a good time. Don’t forget, this trip wouldn’t have been possible for me without you. What did you buy?”
“I got these,” she pointed to the top of her head at a bomb pair of aviator shades; the girl had great taste, no question about that. “And I got something that I can show you later tonight.” She winked at me and squeezed my hand.
I felt my cock stir and harden. Alicia was beautiful any way I looked at her, but, when she was happy, her face glowed and her eyes lit up with a sparkle that I’d never seen in any other woman before. She was so genuine and real, no wonder she didn’t fit in with Tammy and the other women.
“You know,” I said, stopping on the middle of the hill and turning to her. “They probably don’t know how to act around you because you’re real. You’re super down-to-earth, which they don’t like. I, on the other hand, find that to be an extremely attractive quality.”
I could tell she was surprised by the compliment and emotionally vulnerable. She’d been hanging out with those women too much. For a moment, I was torn: I wanted Alicia to fit in with the others, but not at the cost of her individuality and personality. I liked her too much to want a carbon copy of the other girls.
“Sometimes I just feel so stupid around them,” she said, and I could tell she was trying not to cry. “I keep doing things I think will make me fit in, but they always backfire and, honestly, sometimes I just want to disappear right into the earth.”
I kissed her and took her in my arms. Even though I was soaking wet, she didn’t care, and her body was warm against mine. “I would be very sad if you disappeared,” I said.
“Today was a disaster,” she sighed, “but I’ll regroup and try again tonight. I’m glad we’re going camping; that’s more my thing. Will you help me out, though? Will you put in a good word for me, at least with the guys?”
“Of course I will, baby,” I said, nuzzling the top of her head. “Of course I will.”
* * * * *
We set up the girls’ tent first. While they got settled in, Roger, Justin, Dylan, and I set up ours just a few feet away.
“Only two tents?” Alicia asked. “What’s up with that?”
“Anytime we go camping, we always have a girls’ tent and a boys’ tent,” Reena explained with a happy flush on her face. “It gives us the chance to sneak around to see each other, like camp when we were in junior high, right? It just makes things more exciting and, well, naughty,” she giggled. She blew a kiss to Dylan who responded by grabbing his junk and blowing a kiss back.
“Classy, man,” I said.
“Hey,” he shrugged. “The woman likes what she likes.”
We had some cocktails and started to get dinner ready. We’d picked up some steaks and fries from the lodge, along with some vegetables, and put it all on the fire as we sat back with our drinks. Dylan and Reena were closest to the flames, and Reena, the known pyro in the group, kept poking at the fire.
“If you drop my dinner into the fire, Reena,” Tammy warned, “I’ll make you eat the embers, I swear.”
Reena dropped the stick she was poking the fire with, and I shook my head. “Let her play with whatever stick she wants, Tammy,” I said.
“Hey, fuck you, man,” Dylan said.
Everyone laughed, and Alicia squeezed my knee. We were tucked together under a blanket, sitting against a fallen tree that served as seating around the fire at the campsite. I knocked my thigh against hers and she dropped her head to my shoulder for a moment.
“How long ’til we eat?” Justin asked.
“Probably about five minutes, from the look of the steaks,” Roger said after inspecting the meat, “maybe seven.”
I felt Alicia’s hand on my leg, then her fingers trailing along my inner thigh to my cock. Hello, I thought, my cock responding to her touch immediately. I hadn’t wanted to wear jeans after the white-water rafting excursion so I’d put on cutoff sweatpants instead. I smiled and cleared my throat quietly as her hand moved from my inner thigh to the waistband of my shorts, and then began to explore underneath.
The blanket was covering us, but that didn’t matter. I looked around and all the couples were pretty focused on themselves. That was typical for our Diamond Club evenings; when we’d been apart all day, it was really nice to come back together with our partners at night, have some cocktails, make out, fuck, do whatever. Absence made the heart grow fonder.
Alicia’s hand was warm and I stifled a gasp as she reached her fingers around my cock, gripping it surprisingly firmly in her palm. She smiled and cleared her throat, echoing my communication to her, and she began to move her hand up and down, stroking me slowly. I closed my eyes as I felt them begin to roll, my legs turning to jelly.
“Careful,” I whispered.
“I know what I’m doing,” she whispered back. And that was certainly true. She began to stroke faster. I was pulsing in her hand so I shifted; if she kept that speed up, I was going to come. I groaned softly, but only loud enough for her to hear, as everything but her hand and those fingertips faded from my awareness.
I was close to coming and wanted to warn her, but I was so focused on being quiet, on being still, I couldn’t think of anything else. I didn’t really want to spend the rest of the night in soaked shorts, but it was too late for that now. I stifled a groan as I felt myself come.
“Trust me,” she said. And she meant it; she’d caught the results of my pleasure in her hand. I don’t know how she did it, but I put my hand on my crotch and my sweatpants were dry.
“You’re unbelievable,” I whispered. “In the best possible way.”
She smiled at me. “Is dinner ready?”
I don’t think I’d ever pounded a steak so fast; all I could think about was getting Alicia alone, in a tent, in the woods, wherever—I didn’t give a shit. I needed to have my hands on her, my mouth on her, I wanted to be inside her.
As soon as we finished eating, I signaled her to follow me, and when we were a safe distance from our camp, I went crazy on her. I pulled off her top and pressed against her skin, which was soft and smooth, both cool and warm at the same time. Her nipples were hard against my fingers, and I put my face between her tits and inhaled her beautiful scent. I kissed her breasts and licked her nipples.
“Bite them,” she said quietly.
I looked at her. “Really?”
“Yes,” she said impatiently. “Bite them. I want to feel your teeth on me.”
This was a side to Alicia I hadn’t seen, and it drove me wild. I bit her nipples, I bit her neck, I bit her shoulder, I bit her ear lobe—I bit everything within reach of my teeth, and she loved every minute of it.
“I’m so wet,” she whispered. “I want you to fuck me.”
“I want to, baby,” I panted. “I want to fuck you all night.”
“Listen,” she said, her eyes closed and her voice distant. “I need to know: are you doing this because you like me, or are you just doing this because you need to put on a good show for the others to make it look like I’m your real girlfriend?”
I pulled away. Was she serious? Did she really not know?
“Hey, you—” I stopped when I heard voices, Justin and Tammy’s voices. “Shit.”
“Hey, hey!” Tammy yelled.
Tammy was more than a little drunk and slurred her greeting to us as she and Justin stumbled into the clearing. I handed Alicia her top and stood in front of her.
“What’s goin’ on here, peeps?” Tammy asked.
“We’re just hanging out,” I said. “What are you guys doing here?”
“I think Justin brought me out here to show me which mushrooms are okay to eat,” Tammy giggled, “or to fuck my brains out. Which is it, Justin? I can’t remember.”
Justin grinned. “Looks like you two warmed the spot up for us, huh?”
“Alicia already gave him one hand job tonight, and she’ll probably only do one,” Tammy drawled. “She doesn’t like to do things excessively, do you, Alicia?”
I looked at Alicia, who had yanked her shirt back on. “I’ll see you back at the campsite,” she said to me, her face pale. “Excuse me,” she said to Justin and Tammy as she ran past them.
“Whoa, where’s the fire?” Justin asked, completely oblivious.
“Why do you have to be such a bitch, Tammy?” I asked angrily. “Why can’t you just let one go?”
“I’m just trying to look out for you, Ryan,” Tammy said. “The more I hang out with that so-called girlfriend of yours, the more confused I am about what on earth is going on. I mean, I know how important fitting in is to you, and I’m just worried that Alicia doesn’t fit in with the group.”
I’d had it. “You wouldn’t have anything to do with her not fitting in, would you?” I snapped at her. “Let it fucking go.” I walked past her and said to Justin, “Sorry, man.”
“Hey, no problem,” he said, slurring as much as Tammy. “We’re all friends here, right?”
“Apparently we’re not,” Tammy said, a smile on her face.
“Yeah,” I said, “and that’s the problem.”
The Diamond Club was like my family, and now, more than ever, I could see how dysfunctional it truly was. We needed to come back together, and I wasn’t about to sacrifice Alicia to do it.