Shifter Mountain: A BBW Paranormal Romance (10 page)

He reached between her legs and felt that she was quite wet. He pulled down her panties, and his index finger began to stimulate her. At first, she had no noticeable reaction, but then after about a minute, her back arched again.

He repositioned himself so that he could easily run his lips down her inner thigh with feather
y kisses.  And then he went down on her.

Kay had no idea what she was in for.  It did not happen quickly — she had never orgasmed before, and so her body was learning for the first time how to respond to welcome stimuli — but within two-or-three minutes, she felt an unexpected contraction in her pelvis.  This was not unpleasant, but it startled her.

Jordan felt her body suddenly resist, so he stopped.

"What's going on?" he asked her gently.

She explained to him the sensation she was feeling.

"Does it actually hurt, or does it just feel like a normal muscle contraction?"

Kay blushed a little but with a smile.  It seemed strange to be talking so matter-of-factly with a naked man in her bed.

"It doesn't hurt at all.  But it certainly doesn't feel normal."

"Have you ever come before?  Had an orgasm?"

"I would guess pretty likely not."

"What you're describing is the start of it.  The feeling should increase.  And believe me, you'll know when it actually happens."

Kay lay back down, and
Jordan continued with what he was doing, taking his time, changing his rhythm a little bit. When the contractions started coming in waves, Kay trusted it.  Suddenly she felt an intense, sensational and euphoric spasm.  Her left leg involuntarily stretched out and her toes curled.

A wave of natural opiates filled her body.  Kay would not have known that, but what she felt was
that every achy, sore spot of her was suddenly pain free.  She felt warm and blissful.

She had barely made a sound.  In this regard, she still had held back from him.  But Jordan knew he had been successful that morning. He stretched out beside her, taking a momentary break.

He laced his fingers through hers.

"That was amazing," Kay said, breathless.

"That was just your first time," he said. "Once you get the hang of it, it will get even better."

"What now?" she asked.

"Let's just relax here for a second so you can enjoy the after-effect," he told her. "And then I'm going to show you how to do the same for me."

Chapter 11

Kay went along with the crew back to the holler. A night watch had kept guard over the equipment, and they had been relieved by sunrise.

Most of the shoot went fairly smoothly, until Bob set up an angle whereby he wanted Jordan to be sitting and playing
his guitar on a ledge. At a certain point, Jordan stopped playing for a second, and then he reached back to change his sitting position.  When his hand touched rock, suddenly he began to shift.

Kay was standing nearby and saw it just as Jordon felt it.  His fingers started petrifying. 

The camera's still rolling!
Kay thought. So she jumped into view, blocking the camera's view of Jordan.

She didn't have time question what she thought she was seeing.  She obviously had seen shifters change into animal form quite frequently, but she had never seen a man turn to stone before.

Jordan looked up at her in panic.

"What the hell is happening, people?!" Bob called out.

"I saw a rat!" Kay called back.

"A goddamn rat.  Yeah, that's great for scenery.  Is it still there?" Bob asked.

"I can't tell yet."

She
still kept blocking Jordan so that no one could see what was really going on.

"Can't you move at all?" she whispered.

Jordan's hand was heavy, but after his initial shock at having this happen when he was not gearing up for a fight, he found he still had free will and control over his hand.  When he lifted his hand off the ledge, everything went back to normal.

"What the hell is happening to me?" he asked her.

"I have no idea, but I know who does," she told him.

When that day's shoot
was over, Kay took Jordan back to the general store, where they had first met.

Old Man Cowell was behind the counter, reading the paper per usual.  He looked up when the bell over the door jingled as the twosome walked in.

"I see you're still here," Old Man Cowell said to Jordan.  "I hear you've got quite a scene going up there at Slacom's Holler."

"Yeah, we do.  But we should be done soon, and we'll be getting out of everyone's hair."

"So, what do you need?"

"We're not here to buy anything, Mr. Cowell," Kay said. "We need to talk to you about something."

Old Man Cowell's eyebrows raised with curiosity.

"He knows about us," Kay told him.  "About our kind.  But now that he's here, something keeps happening to him that I haven't seen before.  And I figured you would
have, being the oldest person still alive around here.  You know our history better than anyone."

"So what keeps happening, young man?"

Jordan took a moment before speaking.  Then he looked Old Man Cowell dead straight in the eyes.

"I'm turning to stone," he said.

Old Man Cowell looked at him with amusement.

"Just like your daddy," he said.

"What?" Jordan said incredulous. "Just like my daddy?  You said you didn't know any Lawless!  Not that well, anyway!"

"I said that because I wanted to see what happened to you first," Old Man Cowell said.  "Your daddy was the last one, and when he died this whole thing would have passed to you, but you've been away so it never took root in you."

"Goddamn it, am I a skinwalker?!  I'm not turning into some kind of animal, but I'm turning into something!  And, is it dangerous? Am I dangerous?!"

Kay gasped.

"Jordan, why would you think you're dangerous?"

"I don't want to turn into my father, Kay.  He just said that now I'm just like him, whatever the hell that means!"

"It means whatever you want it to mean," Old Man Cowell said. "Your daddy was in charge around here, and now you are."

"In charge.  How?"

"Why, son, you're the mountain."

"I'm the what?"

"You...are...the mountain," he told Jordan.  "The very mountain itself.  You are the Man-in-the-Mountain."

"How is that even possible?  I mean, skinwalking itself is
a pretty wild concept to grasp, but a mountain isn't even alive."

"S
ure it is!  Everything's alive!" Old Man Cowell said. "You have shifted into the very being — the very life force — of this hunk of rock that rises almost 5,000 feet above sea level called Scopes Mountain."

Jordan turned to Kay, who was equally in shock.  When she looked into Jordan's eyes, she realized he was really scared.

"What does this mean?" Kay asked. "Will he fully petrify like rock?  Is he doomed in some way?"

"Oh no, girl.  He'll be just fine. He and the mountain now are the same, that's why every time he touches a piece of it be turns into it.  But he will learn how to control it. "

"That's a relief," Jordan said.

"And it means you are in charge here.  We all live on the mountain, and the mountain takes care of us. But the mountain also dictates our lives.  Everyone living on Scopes
Mountain has to obey the Man-in-the-Mountain."

"God help anyone who had to obey my father," Jordan said.

"Your father was a tough son-of-a bitch, it's true.  But, you can be the Man however you see fit. You want to rule with a fist of iron, that's fine.  If you want to rule with a velvet hammer, you can do that, too."

"Rule?" Jordan asked.  "You're not kidding about that?"

He turned to Kay.

"That's why Cephas had to back down then," he said to her.

There's just one thing, though," Old Man Cowell warned.  "You can't ever leave Scopes Mountain now."

"He can't leave?" Kay said. "He has to leave.  He has a whole life outside of here!"

"Not anymore."

Now it all made sense to Jordan.  How his mother had gotten away from his fath
er.  If his father was the Man-in-the-Mountain, he was trapped.  So she escaped, knowing he would never be able to come after her.

"This is awful!" Kay exclaimed.

"Hey — hey — it's okay.  We'll figure it out," Jordan told her.

"There's something you should see," Old Man Crowell said.  "You got a truck?"

"Waiting outside."

"I'll lock up."

Old Man Cowell closed up the general store and told Jordan to drive them about three miles around the base of the mountain.  Then they ascended a ways.  Around a hairpin turn, suddenly they came upon a breathtaking view of the south side of Scopes Mountain.

As they drove, Old Man Cowell explained the story of the
Man-in-the-Mountain.

"Scopes Mountain ain't the only peak in Appalachia with skinwalkers,
" he told them.  "And it ain't the only one that is alive. 
The Man
goes back before White settlers came, and it goes back even before the Cherokee and the Chickasaw Indians.  And who knows who was here thousands of years before even
they
migrated?   The legend goes that thousands of years ago a man felt into a ravine and his soul got trapped.  Sounds simplistic, I know. People started seeing his ghost emerge from the rocks, only he could pick up things and touch people.  Then he would disappear back into the rocks."

"But that sounds like someone would have to die first in order to become the
Man-in-the-Mountain" Jordan said.  "Specifically, someone would have to die while on Scopes Mountain."

"It's a legend.  So who the hell knows what really happened," Old Man Cowell said. "But after that man died, his son started acting strangely.  Lost his mind.  And the next time he saw the ghost of his father, he fought him. The ghost of his father pulled him right into the rock
— both of them disappeared.  But only the son came back out."

"What happened then?" Kay asked.

"Pull off there at that rest stop," Old Man Cowell told Jordan. To Kay he said: "When the son reappeared, he could command anything and anyone living on the mountain, and they were compelled to obey him.  And if they tried to resist, he would petrify himself into hard stone and crush them."

"I'm sorry, but the
Man-in-the-Mountain sounds like an asshole," Jordan said.  "Are you saying that I'm turning into an asshole?"

"You telling me you aren't already an asshole?"

"Jordan's really not," Kay said.

"Now your husband — there's an asshole," Old Man Cowell said.

"Maybe he should be the Man," Jordan snarked.

"We'd all be screwed," Old Man Cowell said. "He'd be even worse than your daddy. "

Jordan parked, and they all got out of the truck.

"Look up at the side of the mountain there.  What do you see?"

"Oh my gosh, you're right!" Kay explained.  "I always thought that was just an oddity!  When we were in grade school we used to tell ghost stories about it."

"The adults knew what it was about, but we didn't like to scare the kids.  Skinwalking was hard enough to explain.  And teach.
  The adults alone dealt with the Man-in-the-Mountain.  And then this one died before you grew up."

Jordan stared hard, but it took him awhile
to see what Kay saw.  But then once he saw it, it was clearer than day.  It jumped right out at him: A two-story high, stony profile of a man jutted out from the side of the mountain.

"Goddamn
.  Look at that!"

"That's your daddy.
Spitting image of him."

"
I wouldn't know.  I've never seen a photograph. My mother never showed me one. Who did that? That's a crazy work of art."

"No one did
it.  The mountain simply produced it.  It's actually a series of four granite ledges, and when you look at them from this angle, you can see the face.  And you can see the profile only from this exact angle."

"So that's what he looked
like?" Jordan asked.

"If you want to see what he really looked like in person, I can show you."

"You've got a photograph?"

"No. Just this."

The air around Old Man Cowell shimmered, and suddenly he transformed into a much younger man.  He looked definitely like he could be related to Jordan now, and appeared to be in his 40s.

Jordan froze.

"I knew your daddy, although I didn't like him much.  But here he is," Old Man Cowell said.

Jordan studied his features, but could not feel a connection to this person — to this thing before him.

"That's enough," Jordan said. "I don't need to see any more."

"Good.  Because shifting gets exhausting at my age.  I try not to do it too much."

Old Man Cowell's features morphed back into his own self.  He shrank in height, his back stooped, and his skin wrinkled and sagged.

"Has this facial profile in the mountain face
always
been here?" Jordan asked.

"
It's been at least since before your grandfather died and your daddy' took his place.  When your grandfather died, your daddy came to this very spot, announced his presence aloud, and the profile changed. Who knows when it first formed?"

"What do you mean i
t changed?"

"This may sound crazy, but you should tell the mountain that you're here.  The mountain already knows, but you should make it official."

Jordan laughed.

"Okay, you know what — that IS crazy."

"What do you have to lose?  You're already experiencing the transformation."

Jordan
shook his head.

"But, what the hell do I
say?"

"You just say that your here!"

"Okay fine, 'I'm here'."

"Not to me, dummy,
tell it to the mountain," Old Man Cowell chided him.

Kay looked up at Jordan.

"Just go ahead," she said.

Jordan sighed.  He felt like a fool.  He looked at his father's pro
filed, studying it.

Jordan cleared his throat.  He looked directly at the
stony profile.

"
I'm here?"

It came out as a question, not a declaration.

"Louder!" Old Man Cowell complained. "I thought you were a big Country and Western singer, boy!  So you should have a good pair of lungs.  No excuses."

Jordan glared at him.  Then he turned back to the profile in the rock.  He took a deep breath, and then y
elled out as loud as he possibly could: "I'M HERE!!!"

His voice echoed thunderously
against the granite backdrop.  At first there was silence.

"What now?" Jordan asked.

"Shh.  Just wait," Old Man Cowell.

"First you want me to yell, then you want me to shush," Jordan said.

Kay grabbed Jordan's hand and squeezed it.