“Nah, man,” he says without looking up from the computer. “I’m going over last month’s reconciliations the CPA sent me.”

“Alright. I’m out.”

Just as I reach the door, Bridger stops me. “Hey… we’re going to be christening Bacchanalia tomorrow night. I think you should be there as a show of support to the patron members.”

Normally, the thought of breaking in a new cabin would excite me, especially one built for group sex and swinging. It’s probably the thing that excites me the most… fucking amidst the masses who are fucking. Skin slapping, the air filled with moans and musky scents. Wet dream come true.

But for some reason, immediate refusal to participate comes to mind, and I think to myself, What the fuck?

“Maybe,” I hedge as I pull the door open. “We’ll see.”

Bridger laughs hard behind my back and when I turn to look at him over my shoulder, he’s smirking at me.

“Dude… you need to go for it with Callie.”

“What in the fuck does one thing have to do with the other?” I ask him, irritated beyond belief. And there is no doubt in my mind he’s taking my reticence to participate tomorrow night as being directly related to Callie’s return.

“I’m just saying… you might be passing up something amazing, and since when do you ever back down from a challenge?”

“She’s not some stupid challenge, man. You, out of everyone, should know that,” I growl at him and then I stomp out of the office, slamming the door shut behind me so I can drown out his taunting laugh.

She’s not a fucking challenge, I repeat over and over again in my mind as I get in my truck and turn it toward Jackson.

Callie is many things, but she is not a challenge.

Callie is warm and sweet. Innocent. Endearing. She’s kind and beautiful and sheltered. She is every fucking reason in the book why someone like me could never be good enough for someone like her.

I know that.

Hell, even she knows that.

I told her as much almost eleven years ago when I came just a hair’s breadth away from taking her virginity. I had been drinking and mourning the loss of Callie’s brother, Richard. We had lowered him into the ground the day before, and the day after I found myself at a party where I ran into Callie.

Drunk. Bitter. Angry at the world. It was not a good recipe in normal circumstances, but it was a complete disaster when I found myself alone with Callie. She had just turned eighteen two weeks before. She was only a few months into her freshman year at Duke University when we came together again at Richard’s funeral. I hadn’t seen her in almost a year… the prior Christmas, in fact.

And there she was the next night at a party, tipsy from a few beers with big, glistening tears in her eyes. I hugged her and she hugged me back, and I remembered feeling shame that I would think she felt so good in my arms just a day after her brother was buried. Not comforting good, but sensually good. She was willowy angles and soft curves, innocent freckled face seeking solace in my arms.

I wanted to fuck her.

Bad.

It wasn’t the first time I’d thought that about my friend’s little sister. It was only about the hundredth time. I started noticing her when she was about fifteen. I mean, Callie was always around while we were growing up, but soon she stopped being the pesky little sister of Richard and started filling out in all the right places.

And say all you want about her beauty and budding breasts, what started me thinking about fucking her was the way in which she would look at me sometimes. Even at the age of fifteen, she knew she was a woman with desirous feelings. She aimed them at me sometimes with quick peeks from under veiled eyes that would get my dick hard.

God, Richard would have killed me in the most vicious of ways if he knew the way I looked at Callie sometimes. Even in college, as I was fucking my way through the years, immersing myself in kink and debauchery, I often though of Callie. Sometimes… even while fucking a woman, I’d picture Callie as I came.

It was obsessive behavior for sure, but I couldn’t help myself. And the irony isn’t lost on me that I’m a man who likes my sex down and dirty, rough and kinky, and yet I obsess about a woman who is built for soft touches and gentle words.

Everything changed that night when I thought just to hug her, and she looked up at me with tears slipping out of her eyes and asked me to kiss her. I was drunk, I was horny for the woman in my arms, and yet… I still knew better.

I told her “no.”

She pressed in tight to me and said, “Please.”

She begged me to kiss her.

And so I did. I went ahead, gave in to my fantasy, and I let myself get swallowed up by Callie Hayes. I kissed her like I had never kissed another woman before. I kissed her with something that bordered on almost holy reverence for that woman and when she pushed her pelvis against me, my cock responded mightily. It took over… held my brain and common sense hostage, and demanded I do whatever it took to let it get inside of her sweet heat.

I grabbed Callie’s hand, and we made our way upstairs. We were at a mutual friend’s house… and, of course, in our circles, most of our friends lived in thousands of square feet. Just like the Wyoming range, our class of people didn’t like to be cooped up. I fortuitously found an empty bedroom on the first try.

In seconds, I had her on the bed where I was kissing her again. And Christ… the way she moaned and writhed as my tongue worked against hers. On one of the darkest days of my life, Callie tasted like sunshine and rainbows and sweet cream. I could have almost been satisfied with just kissing her, except she made the mistake of taking my hand and pushing it between her legs. She was wearing jeans that seemed to be painted onto her body, but my fingers tingle right at this very minute as I remember the heat that seemed to radiate from her.

Making a command decision, I moved efficiently. I didn’t pause to think. The alcohol made sure I wasn’t going to second-guess my actions. My hands were down the front of her pants and my fingers were on her clit, and when I first felt the bite of her fingernails into my shoulders, I knew I had to make her come hard.

And so I did.

I got her off with fast and practiced fingers while I kissed her deeply to swallow her cries. I was going to fuck her too, but as I pulled my hands out of her underwear so I could grab a condom, I asked her, “You’ve done this before, right Callie?”

She gave me a shy, hesitant look and shook her head.

And just like that, my cock went on hiatus. My blood turned cold. A pain shot through the center of my chest as I came to the realization that what I just did with Callie… that was all it would ever be. Getting her off and watching her come was one of the sexiest things I’ve ever seen, but that was the only taste I would ever have of her.

I was not about to take her virginity. She deserved way better than me for that.

I don’t know if it shames Callie to remember that night, but it actually shames me. I feel slicing guilt when I remember the way she actually begged me to “make love” to her and I told her simply, “I just can’t.”

I don’t know that I’ll ever forget the pain in her eyes that came from my rejection.

I try to shake loose the memories of Callie Hayes and all the things she’s meant to me and how she plays at the top of my fantasy list. Sadly, I call it “The Fantasy That Could Never Be”. The minute I pull onto the town square, I see that Zed’s is jam-packed and I have to park a few blocks over. It’s one of the more popular restaurants in Jackson. They have the best buckwheat pancakes, which are what I’m craving right now.

If I’m lucky, she’ll find a nice vanilla man to make her happy, and I can get back to the way my life is supposed to be.