House of Forbidden Desires (Steamy Short Collections)

Emma Falsey, blond, seventeen, five feet seven, slender, shapely, and a high school track medium distance runner, was spending her first summer in the mountains, alone. Her parents were extremely reluctant to allow her to go to the park by herself, but she could not find anyone else interested in this style of camping, and she was determined to do this, if only this once. In her mind, she had envisioned pitching her tent at or near a stream, cooking simple means which she brought along with her, and spending the days running up and down the pathways and terrain. She had read in a magazine for runners that repeated short to mid length terrain running would be the most beneficial training activity for a person in her race category. Emma told herself that she would look for a sloping location near a stream. She could tent at the base, then run up the slope for some distance and use the return walking as her cool down. If she repeated this multiple times throughout the day, by the end of the week, her endurance should be vastly improved. Her teammates thought she was brave, her best friend considered that she was possibly crazy. Her parents were afraid, and Emma was determined. She included in her gear a GPS system with built in locater signal, a can of aerosol mace and at the absolute insistence of her father, a horrific, two fingered ring with four sharpened spear like points in lieu of a stone, the purpose of which was to provide a scratching, disfiguring weapon for Emma to use in case of physical assault. At her father's insistence, Emma promised that she would not remove it from her hand until she returned to their home. There was no question that drawing this ring across any soft skin area, face, neck, wherever, of an individual assaulting the wearer would cause deep, disfiguring cuts, gouges, scars and possibly heavy bleeding, over and above the pain of such cuts on sensitive skin. Emma said she understood its value and promised, once again, that she would not remove it.

Emma had done her homework. She had contacted a trail and guide service, explained her plan and asked for their guidance in selecting an entry point, a trail and potential camp and workout sites. They were extremely helpful and gave her several choices for each criterion. She reviewed them with her parents and narrowed down the sites to a few. They agreed that she would choose between one of those once she arrived, and only those, so that she could easily be located in case something happened. They did everything except give her camping experience, and teach her what poison ivy looks like. Off she went to the live in the wilderness for up to two weeks, gear, food, plans and clothing in her back pack and enthusiasm in her heart.

Emma's first option for park entry had so many vehicles at the carpark that she discarded it as an option immediately. She nearly missed her second entry point because it was so isolated, but she back tracked, parked her car and headed off for the mountain. After hiking up the trail for nearly the entire morning, she came to the clearing that the guide had suggested. She verified the location on her GPS and immediately set about setting up her campsite. The site itself was a meadow-like plain with a stand of trees on the east side, the stream near the west bordered on its west bank for much of the length that she could see by a gnarly looking rock wall. Sloping upwards from her locale was a greenway rising at angles varying from five to twenty degrees and then a more sharply pitched rockway continuing beyond her sight-line. Emma selected a relatively level area of the meadow to pitch her tent and then moved thirty steps away to build her fire pit. She carefully picked all the vegetation in the vicinity around the fire pit, even though most of it was green and she was confident that it didn't represent a fire hazard. When all of the housekeeping chores were complete, she began exploring the area. She found that the stream, at least at this location, was between six and twelve inches deep and that its bed consisted of small rocks and gravel with occasional very large rocks which she could easily see. She spent an hour walking in the stream deciding if it would be safe to run in as a part of her workout. After climbing upwards at least a thousand feet, she left the stream and walked down the greenway returning to her campsite. This was the plan, then. She would run up the greenway to a certain point and then walk back down. She would rest fifteen minutes and then run up the stream to the selected stopping point, then leave the stream and walk back down the greenway again. If she could do at least two repetitions of these runs each morning and afternoon, she would improve her stamina immensely.