If the café had been crowded everything might have been different. With only a few customers, I saw him when he walked in, and he saw me. Our eyes met for only a moment, but he smiled; uncharacteristically, I smiled back. Traveling alone, I don’t encourage strange men to approach me. Despite my smile, he didn’t.
He took a seat at the counter. Tall, broad-shouldered and masculine in snug black jeans and a black leather jacket and gloves, he probably received a lot of attention from women. His waitress seemed smitten, openly flirting as I finished and paid the cashier for my meal. Outside, I shouldered my pack as I admired the gleaming black Harley he’d ridden in on. A massive bike with optional fairings, windshield, and saddlebags, it was as much a work of art as a means of transportation.
When I reached the two-lane state road, I crossed and headed west again, facing the sparse traffic. Walking and thinking are fine travel companions, and I again considered where my quest might take me.
Perhaps odyssey is a better word than quest; quest indicates a search for something. I wasn’t searching, I just needed to walk. Days after my twenty-fourth birthday I’d given away almost everything I owned, said a tearful goodbye to my parents, my mother accepting my decision but my father understanding it, and walked away, my few necessary belongings on my back. Three months into a journey with no set ending, I was in South Dakota, heading for Mount Rushmore and points beyond. It wasn’t a “bucket list” thing, the faces on the mountain, just something that happened to be in the direction I’d chosen when I began.
My mind roaming freely and randomly, the low rumble of a big Harley didn’t register with me until the sound changed as he slowed on the far side of the road, passing me from behind before making a wide U-turn and rolling back toward me on the shoulder. He stopped forty feet away and turned off his bike, removing his helmet as I approached.
Holding it with one hand, he smiled. “You’re the girl from the café.”
“Did you follow me?”
His smile faded. “No… well, yes, I suppose I did. I saw which way you went, and I consciously chose the same direction.”
“Why?”
“Why?”
“Yes, why?”
“Well, why not? I had to go someplace.”
“There are three other directions at the crossroads there.”
“But you’d taken this one.” He was twice my age, at least, but he seemed nonplussed by my simple questions; nervous, even. Maybe I’d come across as suspicious, but I was simply curious.
I shrugged. “And so?”
He shook his head. “OK, look, I don’t know. I’m sorry… Something compelled me to.”
“Compelled?”
“There’s something about you. I mean, you’re beautiful, but also… there’s this aura, you know? I wanted to know more.”
“An aura?”
“You didn’t know that, that you have an aura?” When I shook my head, he continued, “Well, you do. Something special, an inner beauty to match the outer, but also a sense of joy and melancholy, all jumbled.”
“You sensed that?” I was surprised that he’d so accurately described the way I often felt. “We didn’t even speak.”
“Auras speak in whispers. I feel it more strongly now that we’ve met.”
“Have we, though?”
He smiled. “Ethan Decker. And you are?”
“Emma Wills. Why are you here, Ethan Decker?”
“Destiny, maybe?”
“Hmmm. Do you believe that kind of thing?”
“Usually not. I do now, Emma Wills. Listen, would you like a ride?”
“Where are you going?” Truth was, I rarely accepted rides. Perhaps, if the weather turned bad, or when I was low on supplies and lots of big empty lay ahead. I liked walking; it was my plan, and accepting rides added risk. I was careful, not stupid.
He shrugged. “I’ll go wherever you want.”
“West.”
“That’s it, just west?”
“For now.”
“OK, then.” He took my pack and strapped it on behind the seat, then straddled the bike and told me to climb on. The rear part of the saddle was higher than the front, so my thighs wrapped above his hips as I pressed to his back, an oddly intimate position in which to hold a total stranger. He offered me his helmet, but I refused; he apologized for not having another.
When he started the engine, I knew that the vibration and power of the big machine beneath me and the feel of his firm body between my legs, his scent all leather, man, and expensive cologne, would arouse me. Not a difficult thing in any event, and it had been over a month since I’d had a man, so it was inevitable.
It did, intensely. By the time we stopped for fuel 150 miles further west, in the restroom I found myself wet and humming with sexual energy, my clit hard and tingling when I touched. I desperately wanted to masturbate, needing an orgasm badly, but didn’t. When I walked back out to the pumps my body felt feverish with arousal, nipples hard and pussy eager, and I couldn’t keep my eyes off the bulge in his snug jeans.
We got snacks and drinks, and he asked me questions about what I was doing and why. I told him the why was complicated, but what I was doing was seeing America. I’d given myself a year, perhaps longer, to see everything I could, and wanted to experience it all. So, I walked. I eschewed big cities, instead choosing small towns and rural places, meeting people, hearing about and seeing the things they loved.
I also avoided all “chain” things – hotels, restaurants, etcetera, choosing local eateries and, occasionally, small local motels. Mostly I slept in my tent in fields or forests or campgrounds, or, in terrible weather, asked a farmer if I could bed down in their barn. Nobody had yet said no, and I was often offered a spare bedroom by these good people, which I politely declined. I bathed in streams or lakes, showered at truck stops or campgrounds, occasionally splurging for the rare motel room.
Ethan asked many questions, which I answered, mostly honestly. When I asked his plans he said he was just riding. He loved to ride, and he too had set out to see America. He had the money, and, at age forty-four thought he’d do it while he could still enjoy it. His travel was more random and his Harley gave him the ability to cover far more miles, but otherwise, we seemed kindred spirits in our journeys.
Back on the road, my body still buzzing with arousal, I cupped my hand over the bulge of his masculinity, not fondling or stroking, just enjoying the heat of his body and the firmness of his manhood. We stopped that evening at a small motel, where he booked a room with two double beds, offering me one.
I chose instead to set up my tent in a nearby park, but I did take him up on his offer of the bathroom and shower, and his invite to dinner at the attached restaurant, figuring I’d be back on foot and my tight budget the next day. I’m sure he was confused, considering I’d ridden wrapped tightly to his body with his sex cupped under my hand for a hundred miles.
After I was set up, I walked to the motel and found he’d left his door slightly ajar for me. I heard the shower running when I walked in and I sat on the bed to wait my turn… but not for long. My arousal and my curiosity overcame my better judgment and I stripped naked and walked into the bathroom where he was showering in the tub, behind a white curtain, singing softly to himself. I quietly pulled the curtain aside. He stood facing the shower, the spray hitting his face, water running in rivulets down his muscular back and between his powerful glutes, and when I touched his shoulder, he jumped.
“Jesus!” He rubbed the water from his eyes and turned, his eyes roaming my body. “Wow… I was a million miles away.”
I smiled. “I thought you might like your back washed.”
“Yeah? You sure?”
I nodded and he handed me the soap. I lathered his back, the feel of his smooth skin and firm muscles making me tingle. I like men, and I love sex and see no need to pretend otherwise, so when I’d soaped his back and ass, I slid my hand between his legs and cupped his balls, which were heavy and exhilarating. When he groaned, I slid my other hand around his hip and wrapped my fingers around his shaft, which was already firm, thick, and still growing.
He reached back and rested a hand on my hip as I fondled him, and when I released his heavy sack and slid a soapy finger into his ass, he groaned and leaned forward, his other hand on the shower wall.
I pushed deep. “You like that?”
“Fuck… you’re going to make me come.”
“That’s OK.”
“But I’d rather…”
“I wasn’t planning to stop with one.”
“Oh. Well then…” Minutes later, now with two fingers stroking his prostate, he came hard, his thick cock throbbing sensually in my hand as he spurted onto the wall. When his spasms ceased, he turned and dropped to his knees, burying his face between my legs as water sluiced over me and down onto him. He eagerly devoured me, his tongue assaulting my erect clit. Already horny, the sensation of his throbbing orgasm fresh in my mind, I came quickly, grinding my pussy against his lips and tongue.
He stood up and we finished our shower, hurriedly, frantically shampooing and rinsing, and as we stepped out he scooped me up and carried me to the bed he’d turned down, still dripping wet. He immediately began to explore my entire body with lips and tongue, his lovemaking eager, skilled, and generous, and after he’d again brought me to climax with his oral talents he rose above me and entered me, his big cock stretching me open and sliding deep, my pussy burning deliciously around his girth and the tightness of a huge orgasm building in my lower abdomen.
We moved together naturally, as if we’d been together for years and knew everything about each other, and not long after, I came a second time, a huge climax, I felt his body tense as he thrust and held, his beautifully thick, rigid cock pulsing as he emptied himself deep inside of me, and I clung to him, tears of joy running down my face. Dinner forgotten we took a short break later to grab snacks from the vending machine, his cum trickling down my leg beneath my robe as I made my choices.
~~~~~
Maybe we both knew then, at that moment, that we were meant to be together, because we remained that way for the next five-plus months, going when and where a whim or the breeze and his Harley took us. We saw many wonders, camped, hiked, enjoyed small towns, experienced kindness and generosity, and made new friends all over.
And we made love. Ethan proved an incredible man, an extrovert, smart and funny, quick to smile or laugh and open to adventure, and we couldn’t get enough of each other in life or in bed; the time passed quickly, filled with wonder, joy, and beauty. But when the day came and it was time for it to be over I knew, and, after making slow, sensitive love one last time, I rose as he slept and wrote him a letter, folding it and leaving it propped by his phone before quietly sneaking away, my pack on my back, once again on foot, knowing he’d read my words in the morning and hoping I hadn’t hurt him too badly:
Ethan,
I’m so sorry to leave like this, but it’s time. You were never supposed to happen, and while I don’t regret anything, not one minute, it might have been better if we’d never met.
Exactly one year ago today, my fiancé, a beautiful, amazing man, was killed by a drunk driver. About three months later I was told I have inoperable cancer which will kill me eventually, likely sooner if left untreated. I’ve chosen to use my remaining time living well rather than sickened by useless treatments, and I’m so grateful that you’ve helped me do that.
You’ve allowed me to see so much and do so many things that wouldn’t have been possible otherwise, and I’ve loved every moment. I love riding with you on our travels, your eyes, your smile, your scent, your touch, and your sounds when we make love. The way you feel inside of me, the feel and taste of your orgasm in my mouth. I know I’ve never said it, but I love you. I didn’t expect to love again and didn’t want to. I shouldn’t have allowed it to happen, it’s so unfair to you, but once I found you, I couldn’t seem to walk away.
Again, I’m so sorry.
I can feel myself growing weaker, and I know it’s time to get on with dying. It’s selfish, but I hope you will understand and not hate me. Live your life; find an amazing, incredibly lucky woman to share it. You deserve happiness. If you choose to remember me at all, remember my love and the good times we shared, not this.
Be well; enjoy the wind and the sun and the sky. Ride. Be happy. Know that you’ve given me more than I can express in words, more than I had any right to hope for. You’ve allowed me to live, to laugh, to forget for a moment, to love again.
Em
I’d left, slipping out as silently as the tears sliding down my cheeks, and it was still dark when I crossed the highway out front, just beginning to get light when I hitched a ride with a passing truck. I didn’t want a ride, but I also didn’t want Ethan to find me if he came looking. Eighty miles on, the trucker turned south toward Cheyenne, and I was back on foot, aimlessly wandering westward where something seemed to ever beckon me. I missed Ethan terribly.
I was tired now, no longer able to cover the twenty or more miles per day that I often had when I’d started out; I was lucky to make half that distance now, my illness draining me. I rested often and ended my days early. I worried less about my safety, as it no longer seemed to matter.
It was four days, maybe five, after the trucker had dropped me off and I was trudging slowly along the left side of the road, ever westward, my mind wrapped in illness and pain and sadness and only dimly cognizant of the sparse traffic passing me when a big charcoal gray van pulled over perhaps a hundred feet ahead.
I stopped, exhausted, staring dumbly at it as my weary mind tried to deal with a potential threat. The driver’s door opened and a man got out. Closing it, he stood and looked at me.
“Emma, thank God!”
“Ethan, oh… how did you find me?”
“I looked. I kept looking; I wasn’t stopping until I did. Thank God there aren’t many roads out here.”
“Where’s your motorcycle?” He was walking toward me as we talked.
“I sold it. Bought this.”
“Oh, Ethan, you love that bike.” I felt like I was in a fog, not knowing whether to be happy, sad, or angry.
He strode up to me, touched my face and took me in his arms. “I love you more… besides, it’s time for me to grow up.”
“I didn’t want this, didn’t want you to look for me. I don’t want to put you through this. You shouldn’t have to watch me die… I don’t want you to grow up, Ethan, not for me.”
He kissed my forehead, tears on his face. “Emma, I’ve missed so much of your life already, and I begrudge every moment I missed. Please don’t ask me to miss another minute of it.”
“Oh, Ethan…”
“C’mon, let me show you our new ride. It’s an RV, Mercedes. This baby is plush, you’ll love it. Fit for a queen.”
“You need to let me go.”
“No, I don’t... I can’t. We still have places to go and things to see. Laughter to share, and love. I understand you’ll be going, OK, you’re dying. I hate it but accept that, and when you do it will be in my arms. With this, we can live and love a little longer; as long as we can. That’s all that matters.”
Now we both had tears streaming down our cheeks. “Ethan, my god…”
“Come, my love. Your chariot awaits.”
~~~~~
We did our best to continue our travels. When I spoke to my parents on the phone they always asked if I was coming home. I couldn’t do that – again, my mother accepted it but only my father truly understood – but they were relieved that I’d found a good man, happy for my happiness and that perhaps I wouldn’t die frightened and alone someplace in the middle of nowhere. I promised them that Ethan would let them know, as he had promised me.
We made love under a billion stars in the Canyonlands of Utah; high on a cliff overlooking a sparkling river in the valley below us in Colorado, me on my hands and knees and Ethan behind me, neither of us able to say if our love or the view was more spectacular. I sat astride him on a blanket in a broad plain of sage and yucca a hundred yards off a gravel road in Wyoming beneath a three-quarter moon, listening to the coyotes yip and howl, joining their chorus as we climaxed, Ethan filling me with his sweet seed as a small herd of antelope crested a nearby hill, in silhouette for a moment before disappearing.
We visited an ancient Hopi Indian village near the Grand Canyon, stayed a few days, enchanted with the peace and the slow pace of life, and we made some new friends. Their Shaman – medicine man, whatever he was - had an unpronounceable name but told us to call him John, had somehow sensed my illness and after inquiring, offered to do what he could, to try to ease my suffering.
With nothing to lose, I accepted. His ritual involved smoke and incense in a small adobe hut as he chanted and stroked my naked, sweat-soaked body with hawk feathers, drawing intricate designs of clay and ash in my sweat. A foul-tasting potion, which I later found out contained chicken blood and peyote, set my mind free of my failing body, and I flew! God, how I flew! I soared, an eagle screaming into the night, and felt blood on my talons and feathers as I made a kill and feasted on warm flesh. I saw the canyons and plateaus from a thousand feet above, deer and bighorn sheep, rattlesnakes, and Gila monsters below, and it was magnificent!
I found my love in that fever-dream world, Ethan, the man that John had declared to be “as one” with me, although he used a difficult word borrowed from the Navajo to indicate a forever pair bond. I made love with Ethan, in my peyote dreams a dark and wild wolf-like man-thing with an enormous, virile erection and heavy balls, long, sharp fangs which drew blood as we fucked, his teeth and claws scoring my pale flesh. When he erupted deep inside of me, my orgasm was a wild, impossibly powerful, endless thing, my body thrashing and my screams echoing, a living thing that went on and on until the flames of it consumed me.
I awoke, sweat-soaked still, my hair wet and disheveled, exhausted but exhilarated. My body was tingling with arousal, my nipples tender and rigid, my sex throbbing, dripping as if I’d just made love but somehow needy, ready for more. When Mike left, he sent Ethan in, naked and erect, and when he entered me, biting my neck, it was every bit as magnificent as it had been in my drug-induced dream, and I screamed anew.
We reluctantly left there a few days later, and somehow, unlikely as it seemed, I got better. We continued to laugh and to love, and to travel, taking advantage of whatever it was that John had bestowed upon us. It was likely but a brief remission, we knew that deep inside even though we tried to deny it, but we enjoyed every minute of it.
In the mountains north of Steamboat Springs, Colorado, we visited Strawberry Hot Springs, which is a hidden gem off a narrow road. It’s well-known, however, and is an adults-only venue after dark. We listened to the whispers and moans of other couples in the hot mineral pools, the sounds of lovemaking shared in the darkness of the waning moon. We added our sounds to theirs, Ethan taking me from behind, and then lying back and pulling my dripping sex to his lips, an unimaginably, intensely intimate and pleasurable act to which he’d introduced me not long after we’d met.
We couldn’t see each other, much less anyone around us, but with my sounds and unintelligible cries, there could have been no doubt in anyone’s mind that my man was an accomplished and brilliant lover.
We stayed a few days at a campground west of there, far back toward the Continental Divide where two forks of the Elk River flow together into a steep canyon. As he sat on a rock at the confluence, clear, crystalline water roaring and splashing around us, I straddled his lap and guided him into me. We saw a single fisherman well down the canyon, but if he saw us, we neither knew nor cared. The rivers drowned out our sounds, the sun warming our naked bodies in the cool mist coming off the water. I rode him slow and deep, enjoying every inch, every thrust, every stretch, each pulse and tingle, his teeth at my nipples, gentle but insistent, and I came, gripping him, pulsing, squeezing his beautiful cock, biting his neck.
He came shortly after, and I felt every throb and pulse of his hard, thick cock as he filled me, and I desperately wanted to feel that happiness, that euphoria, forever. It was not to be, however, and not long after the reprieve of those glorious few weeks I felt myself slipping again, my body betraying me.
As I became more ill, our lovemaking happened less often, waning and eventually stopping altogether, but still, he loved me. I couldn’t believe it, how he could, how we’d somehow found each other. What had I done to deserve someone like him, to have my dying time be some of the happiest moments of my life? In place of sex, he held me, and we talked late into every night, perhaps something even more intimate than the sex had been.
I tried to tell him everything, wanting him to know me, to know my life in every detail, but mostly he held me and we talked of our love. I agonized about where I wanted him to spread my ashes… we’d seen so much beauty together and lived a lifetime of love in just under a year and five months, and I couldn’t decide where I wanted to rest forever, all of it so magnificent.
Even that, he understood better than I did, and when I was arguing with myself, indecisive, he settled the issue.
“Stop, Em. I already know where your ashes will go, all right?” When I looked at him, not saying anything, he went on, “I’m going to retrace our steps, everyplace we’ve been, and anywhere we made love is where I will leave a bit of you. A part of my soul is already in each of those places, and I need you to join me there.”
It was so perfect, so… right. Through my tears, I tried to joke. “Every place we made love? You’d better ask for extra ashes!”
He kissed me. “Emma, please. I remember every spot, every moan and cry, your taste and scent, and the way you felt as we came together. I’ll always remember each time you accepted me into your beautiful body and the wet heat and strength of you, the feel of your sweet lips and tongue on me. I know every place we’ve been and where we loved; I’ll visit every one of those places for you, to take you back, and I’ll map it as I go and hire someone to do the same for me when I’m gone.”
He held me then and we cried together and whispered sweet words of love. A few weeks later, as the end drew near, we found ourselves back in the red and buff canyons of Utah, Ethan unerringly sensing where I’d want to be. He took a gravel road, and then a smaller one, and then a steep, rocky trail as far as he could, and then he carried me to the edge of a cliff where we could watch the sunset over the mesas and canyons that stretched for miles below us, so beautiful beneath an orange and purple sky.
As it grew dark, I whispered, telling him how much I loved him, and he kissed my neck and my ears, holding me tight as if to never let me go. I felt the strength of his body behind me, his breath warm on my cheek, his hot tears falling on my neck, and then all the pain and illness simply slipped away.
I soared on powerful, darkly feathered wings, looking down on a beautiful, handsome, amazing man holding the love of his life close, and heard his sobs and his words of love as I rose into the sky.
~~~~~
Somehow, I remained with him; perhaps that “oneness”, the forever bond of which Shaman John had spoken, perhaps in parallel dimensions about which science has speculated… who knows, maybe Heaven, and I was an angel, but whatever it was, to myself I usually manifested as that huge Golden Eagle I’d been in my peyote dream. I soared above him at each stop of his odyssey, watching him move about below as he sought the perfect spot to leave a small bit of my ashes.
I’d scream out my approval and my love for him at each stop; I don’t know if he could hear my calls, but sometimes he’d look up, his handsome face sharp and clear to my remarkably sharp eyes, often with tears on his cheeks, and I hoped he could see me and know that I was with him. And so it went as he wound his way backward on our route, the last bits of ash preserved for where we’d first met.
Near the motel where I’d first slipped into the shower with him, where we’d discovered we were meant for each other, he went to the small creek that gurgled along outside, just below the rear window of the room we’d shared. He placed a small pinch of my remaining ashes into two hollowed-out quartz crystals he’d bought in Idaho, one for him and one for my parents, whom he planned to see next, to deliver my bit of ashes, hundreds of photos we’d taken together, and his memories. He capped each crystalline vial tightly, dropped them in his pocket, and then placed the last of me into a small hollow in the rocks at streamside.
He remained, crying softly, and spoke of his love as I sat on a branch in a tree far above, my broad wings folded. My mind reached out to him and I screamed my eagle scream, and when he looked up I dove, banking near him and fanning him with the kiss of the wind off my enormous wings before rising to the heights. I heard him laugh, and I heard him say, “Oh, Emma, goodbye, my love. Be free, be happy, soar… Wait for me, but soar high!”
I would, and I did, and in my plane of existence, I stayed with him always until we were, finally, again one.
