Colorado Game - 5. Chapter 5

After I was done doing the dishes, I quickly shot on my ski boots and went over to the other chalets, telling the beginners there to get ready and gather in front of our chalet at the agreed time. Then I went back and upstairs, to change into the ski outfit that I had bought on the first day. It was entirely black save a neon-blue section on my torso. The same blue could also be found back in the tips of my boots. I was just about to put on my jacket when Ross came in to also get changed and I told him that I'd wait downstairs. The others had all left the chalet by now, on to more difficult slopes. When I got outside, my kiddy group came walking up to the house just then. We waited for Ross, who took his sweet time but when he finally came outside, he seemed a bit surprised seeing fourteen of us. I frowned and walked over.

"Is there something wrong?" I asked. He shot me a quick smile and shook his head.

"No, no... it's just... I thought it'd just be the two of us. But this is fine. We'll make a party of it." He pulled on his boots and up we went.

If I remembered correctly, there were several slopes for beginners, apart from the kiddy slope, and quite a few for the more experienced skiers. So we went up to about half the mountain, where a few more challenging areas were located. There we started the day.

"If I break a leg, you're on nursing duty," I threatened him, which he answered with a grin.

"Sure. Come on, you can do it. It looks a lot worse than it is. Bend your knees a little more; that's it. Yeah... now slowly push off... I said slowly! Mark!"

By then, it was a bit too late for that advice; I'd pushed off with a little too much force and was off, gathering more speed as I went. It was fun though. The cold mountain air was gushing past my face; trees were zipping past my eyeline. I was going a bit too fast for my taste so I tried to break like I'd been taught in kiddy class. To my satisfaction, I slowed down.

"Jesus, you almost gave me a heart attack," Ross's voice sounded, coming up behind me. But he smiled and nodded. "You're doing pretty well! Wanna try to slalom a bit? Otherwise you'll keep breaking until you either run out of speed or hit something down there."

"Could you please not say the words ‘you', ‘going' and ‘hit' in the same sentence?" I quipped, "That's like yelling ‘incoming!' in a submarine."
He smiled and got past me.

"Okay, follow my lead. We'll try it slow first." He started out to the left and I closely looked at what he was doing, trying to mimic his movements.

Behind me, a few of the others from my class mimicked me. All in all it took us three trips back and forth before I got the hang of it. I fell more times than I could count and by the time it was noon, I imagined my calf and thighs to be black and blue when we'd get back to the chalet. But we had a lot of fun with the entire group, the climax being a jumble of ten people at the bottom of the slope. To a lesser extend for me, since I was the first to go down and got at least six heavy guys on top of me, but it was fun nonetheless. We tried a lot of stuff, with one of the women even achieving a little jump. I tried it, only once. I ended up flat on my face. That's when I started to get a little annoyed with Ross because it looked like he was hovering after that. I couldn't go anywhere or he was there, and pretty much ignoring the rest. I told him repeatedly that I was fine but it didn't help all that much; he stuck around no matter what I said.

We had lunch at a place nearby, where we had fries, cokes and warm coco. Then we went back in and pretty much spent the entire day on the slope. Around 3pm we were joined by the more experienced colleagues and went down one final time, conga style. Everybody filed behind each other, fifty plus people. Even some complete strangers joined the line.

When we finally arrived at the chalet, and I had to take off my skis, it was beginning to get dark. When the skis were off, I almost fell flat on my face again because I hadn't walked for hours. Luckily I wasn't the only one and we got a few laughs out of it before I went upstairs to take a, in my opinion, well deserved bath. All that falling and using muscles one normally doesn't use had been pretty tiring. The bath was already running and I sat on the bed, stripping down my pants, making ‘ouch, ouch' comments until they were off. I was just lying on my back on the bed, resting from that ordeal, when the door opened and Ross came in.

"You alright?" he asked, taking off his own jacket.

"I'll be fine," I replied, groaning as I sat up and covering myself with the ski-pants. I was practically naked, wearing only my shorts. "I think my backside is black and blue. I'll be as stiff as a board, tomorrow. But it was great; thanks for taking us."

"You're welcome," he said, throwing the jacket on the bed. He looked in the direction of the bathroom. "Are you running a bath?" I nodded and got up. It would be close to ready by now.

"Mark?" he said, just as I got to the bathroom. I turned around and looked at him, raising an eyebrow. "Your backside looks fine to me."

I felt the color rushing to my cheeks and went inside, closing the door, and hearing his soft laughter as the lock clicked.

**********

The stiffness didn't wait to come in the morning. Instead, it came when we were all downstairs. I wanted to get up, to get a few drinks, and I almost couldn’t move! The others started laughing when they saw me struggle to get up, but those laughs quickly died out when at least five of them also made a face when they tried to rise from the couches.

"Jesus, you guys look like shit," Joey said, grinning wide. He had a reason to grin, though. About an hour earlier, he had come to me and told me that he'd asked Janice out for a few drinks. Shy as he was, he also seemed to look forward to it.

"Oh, shut up. Don't you have to get ready for that twenty-something stuff with Janice?" I replied, sending him a wink. He blushed and mumbled something. "I need something stronger than beer; anyone else?"

**********

That evening, about five of us were left behind while the others were out for drinks, joining Janice and Joey, much to Joey’s chagrin. Obviously he'd had something else in mind. Those who stayed behind just relaxed downstairs, watching TV, reading or playing cards. Then Joe got the idea to play a game of Monopoly. We set up on the dining table and brought the drinks over from the living room. I was on my third glass of whisky and finally started to feel comfortable enough; my bones and muscles didn't ache half as much as earlier in the evening. Around eleven, two colleagues called it a night and went up. They'd been beaten out of the game anyway, leaving Joe, Ross and me to play on. When it was Joe's turn, I got up to get another drink and swayed a bit. I giggled.

"Woops..."

"Yeah, you ‘woops' right back into that chair. You've had enough," Ross said, taking my glass away and setting it on the other side of the table, out of reach. "Maybe you should go up as well."
I rolled my eyes.

"Yes, dear. Need me to take out the trash? Perhaps walk the dog and then come up for a spank or two because I've been a bad boy? Who are you, my boyfriend?" Joe almost spat out a mouthful of his own drink and laughed
loudly.

"I agree with Ross. You're drunk. Go to bed."

"Oh great, my dad's here too!" I said, shaking my head. "God, you guys are no fun. Right, well... I'm off to bed then."

I didn't notice Ross following me until he prevented me from keeling over. I mumbled a 'thank you' but had to do so at least twice more on the way up. When we arrived at the bedroom, he opened the door and assisted me by the elbow to get me inside. I tried to shrug it off, telling him I could walk perfectly fine, belaying that comment a second later; as soon as he let go, I lost my balance and almost went down, arms flailing. He grabbed my elbow again, this time much harder and definitely painful.

"Sure, you can walk just fine. Don't be such an idiot and accept help. You're a lousy drunk." I snickered at him and he loosened his grip.

"Don't patronize me," I said, giving him a soft push. "I'm not a kid."

"Then don't behave like one. Come on, just a few more steps and then you can sit down."
I told him to fuck off.

"What did you say?" he hissed, squeezing a bit harder. Jesus! Again with the hands! I had to fight the urge to squeal.

"Au! I told you to fuck off. Leave me alone."

We angrily stared at each other for a long few seconds. Then he suddenly moved forward, so fast that he was little more than a blur and I definitely yelped now. His mouth came down painfully hard onto mine, and his teeth bit into the soft flesh of my lower lip. The momentum from this sudden ‘attack' pushed me backward, until the back of my legs hit the side of the bed. It came completely unexpected and there was little I could do except to try and push him away. Had I succeeded, he might have had one shiner of a black eye, me being drunk or not. But it was like I was pushing against a brick wall; the hard muscles in his chest didn't even flinch. His hands handily caught mine and kept them away from him, and he used his body to block me from getting away, pushing a leg between mine and against the bed.

I started to protest and opened my mouth, but he handily took the opportunity to push his tongue inside. It wasn't a nice, romantic kiss or anything like that; it was more like he was trying to punish me for something. His long agile tongue probed deeper as time went by and as the seconds passed, his grip on my hands eased and he eventually let go when I gave in, letting one slip around my middle. The other one went up to my neck, nestling there.

I was still trying to comprehend all of this, and the only thing I could do was try to push him out of my mouth. But I failed miserably because instead of doing that, I was definitely beginning to kiss him back.
When he lifted his head, and I slowly opened my eyes, his had darkened and they stared into mine, holding my gaze. Then he tilted sideways and came closer again. I pulled my head back and he stopped.

"You're drunk," he said. He remained close as I slowly looked away and took a deep breath.

"You're a bastard," I whispered, my anger boiling beneath the surface.
Then I brought up my hand and wiped my mouth with the back of it, while a slow smile crept onto his face.

"Sure I am. I'm the bastard and you're innocent. But you enjoyed it as much as I did."

"Please, get over yourself," I replied, still tasting him on my tongue. "That was the single, most supremely awful experience of these past few days."

"Liar," he retorted, "you liked that. I know it and you damn well know it." Then he left.

Uch, he was intolerable; especially because he was right...