She reversed their positions pinning Jackie to the smooth face of the rock. She didn’t waste any time on kissing her, but went straight for the luscious breasts that had tormented her thoughts during the eighteen-minute ride to the top of the mountain. She licked and sucked her way around one large breast, then the other without touching the erect nipples. Jackie grabbed her hair and pulled her closer.

Shannon concentrated on evading the tempting peak and slid down her body planting hard kisses and quick nips on the exposed flesh. She was tempted to linger and tease Jackie’s clitoris, but when she realized that her entire pubis area was fully exposed, she could not stop the overwhelming desire to bury her tongue in the pale flesh.

Jackie willingly spread her legs allowing Shannon the access she wanted. She opened her eyes and looked up. Jackie’s hands were on her own breasts, her head thrown back as if worshiping the sun riding high in the cloudless sky. Shannon’s own desire sparked again as she devoured the scent and taste of Jackie. In a matter of minutes, Jackie grabbed the back of her head and shuddered against her mouth.

Shannon tasted the orgasm and with her own trembling hand brought herself to climax again.

• 24 •


Descent

ChaPTER ThREE

Caroline woke in her own bed with only a vague recollection how she got there. It was still dark and she sat up to see the clock. “Three a.m.? Oh God.” She flopped back on the hard mattress.

Her mouth tasted like tissue paper, and when she climbed out of bed, the muscles in her normally flexible legs talked back to her.

Paula? Paulette? Pauline? Caroline struggled for the name of the woman who, over the course of more hours than she could remember, had fucked her senseless. She stepped over her dog Max and stumbled into the bathroom. She didn’t know what she needed more, to pee or take two aspirin. Necessity and Mother Nature forced the former and she tried to push the aching muscles to the back of her mind.

She had started riding as a way to lose weight when she was in her early teens and had fallen in love with the freedom she felt careening down the mountainside. She missed the early days of riding simply for the sheer joy of it. Exploring bike paths, making her own trails in the deserts of Phoenix, the mountains of Moab or Monument Valley. Every ride was an adventure, an investigation of the terrain, the challenge to her body. And it was her body that reminded her that she had been taken on a very different physical adventure yesterday afternoon.

Paulie, yes, that was it. Paulie had quickly agreed to a game of pool, a drink, another drink, and an early dinner. Caroline was dessert.

Or was it Paulie that was dessert? She certainly was a tasty treat even without the whipped cream she offered to pull out of the fridge. They had spent the remaining hours after dinner and before midnight doing almost everything imaginable to each other. At least Caroline thought

• 25 •


JuliE CaNNoN

it was everything. She knew what went where and why, but Paulie had surprised her a few times. She would have to remember those moves for future reference. Not with Paulie of course; that was definitely a one-time thing. But she would keep that technique and new skill in the back of her mind for when the right opportunity came up.

She dropped back into bed for the few more hours of sleep she needed and when her alarm went off at six, she cussed at it. She shuffled into the shower and under the hard, hot spray. She racked her mind to remember what she had to do that day. Riding was a given but there was something she needed too. Note cards! That was it. Her supply of note cards was getting dangerously low and she would have to stop off at OfficeMax on the way to the library.

Caroline was in the final stages of preparing to defend her dissertation on supernova-driven interstellar turbulence and she found that by outlining her main research points on large index cards, she could better organize her thoughts. She knew the data like she knew every bend and dip on her favorite downhill trail, but she was nervous.

This was the big time. Her future would be set when she received her Ph.D. in astrophysics. She was going to work for NASA. It was a dream she had since the first time she looked into the sky with the cheap telescope her father bought her for Christmas. Now, after almost twenty years of school, the last seven at Columbia University, everything she had ever worked for was within her grasp.

She was scheduled to stand before a committee of the faculty only three weeks after the final race in the championship series. The actual date she had been given was out of her control. The committee had determined the date and she could either accept or decline. By declining, she would have to reapply and if accepted wait an additional year before the committee met again. Her hands were tied and she had to make the best of it. It would be difficult to concentrate on both her thesis and her races, but Caroline was bound and determined to finish both of these chapters in her life at the top.

v

Shannon ripped open the envelope with the familiar return address of Mount Holyfield Academy embossed in the thick white paper. MHA,

• 26 •


Descent

as the students called it, was one of the most prestigious girls’ boarding schools in Connecticut. Acceptance was limited to two hundred each year and it had been widely rumored that the daughters of several presidents had been denied admission. Shannon knew how she had received one of the coveted slots, but hadn’t really thought about her school years in, well, years.

Christian and Virginia Roberts were the richest of the rich in Palm Beach. Christian was lucky enough to be born into wealth while his wife was skilled enough to marry into it. Shannon was their only child and they provided her with everything. Every earthly thing money could buy, that is. Everything except love.

Her parents didn’t know how to love unconditionally. They had not grown up in warm, loving households, but had been raised by a series of nannies and governesses. Her mother had gone to MHA and it was without question her daughter would as well.

Shannon rebelled against the confinement money placed on her.

She hated the parties, events, and vacations she had been forced to attend that bored the ever-living hell out of her. The clothes her mother wore were starched within an inch of their life. The dresses were made of only the finest fabric, and her shoes the latest style direct from the runways in Paris. Elizabeth had dressed Shannon in her image the first four years of her life, but it was on her fifth birthday when Shannon strode into the room in a pair of the most expensive pants she had cut off at the knees. She remembered the look on her mother’s face and wasn’t sure if it was shock for what her child had done or the embarrassment her child caused. Either way, Shannon ceased to be the apple of her mother’s eye.

A crisp invitation detailing her ten-year reunion gave Shannon a paper cut. While she sucked the small slit in her finger, she read the information that invited her to dine, reminisce, and reconnect with her fellow alumni. And cough up money, she thought to herself. At least three times a year MHA tracked her down and attempted to guilt her into contributing money to the school. Her parents had doled out enough of their cash while she was there, and Shannon saw no reason why she should after she left. Her education there was done. She had no intention of attending the two-day event.

The invitation and the rest of her mail still in her hand, Shannon

• 27 •


JuliE CaNNoN

detoured into the spare bedroom she had converted to an office. She’d bought the cabin four years ago and it was pretty much in the same condition as when she unlocked the door after getting the keys. It was small by Big Bear Lake standards. The house itself was only two thousand square feet, sitting in the middle of half an acre of prime lakefront property. She hadn’t done anything to the interior other than hang a picture here and there. The solid wood floors were covered in throw rugs that she had literally thrown on the floor. They were called throw rugs for a reason, she had told one of her many overnight guests.

Two stripped bike frames, a dozen wheels minus their tires, several boxes of components, and a variety of other biking gear created an obstacle course Shannon stepped around before she reached a crowded bookshelf. It took several minutes for her to find what she was looking for—a thin, hardbound book a little larger than a legal pad at the bottom of a pile of other, much smaller books. Shannon loved to read and saved practically every book she had read. Every wall in the room was filled with bookcases containing hundreds of books ranging from lesbian fiction to the supernatural to home repair manuals.

The book weighed very little and just looking at the image of the majestic eagle soaring over a mountain filling the cover brought back memories. Shannon plopped into the worn recliner in the corner and hesitated before opening the dusty cover. She shouldn’t, she told herself. Don’t go down memory lane without a map. Or at least a plan to get back out. Ignoring her inner voice, she opened the book to the familiar page.

The picture of Caroline was so clear it was as if Shannon was looking at the real thing. A baseball cap pulled low on her head partially obscured her face but not enough that you couldn’t see the twinkle of mischief in the dark eyes, the slight scar above the left eyebrow, a freckle just below her right cheekbone. She was laughing, her teeth perfectly straight and blistering white. Shannon knew Caroline’s hair was shoulder length, but in this picture it was pulled back and through the opening in the back. This time the soaring eagle was embroidered on the front of the cap.