Home · Stories · New In Retreat, Never Surrender by Jim
Chapter 1 — Group Map
The morning air still carried the damp of the overnight rain. I adjusted the strap of the company daypack and fell into step with the others as the guide finished the safety briefing. Ahead of me Brent walked with Yuan and two of the regional managers, his posture exactly the one he used in boardrooms—upright, attentive, already calculating the next interval. I kept my eyes on the path and matched the group’s pace.
We had done this before, in smaller ways. A late elevator. A conference room after the others left. Never in the open like this, never with Jane only a few meters behind me and the board member’s voice carrying clearly through the trees. The knowledge sat low in my body, familiar and carefully contained.
The trail narrowed. Someone passed a water bottle hand-to-hand to avoid stopping the line. When it reached me I took it, drank, and held it out toward Brent as he glanced back to check the rear of the group. Our fingers met around the plastic. Neither of us released it at once. The contact lasted a full second longer than the transfer required—long enough for the heat of his skin to register against mine, long enough for me to feel the exact pressure of his thumb before he took the bottle and turned away again.
I let my hand fall to my side and kept walking. The surface of me stayed ordinary: the competent secretary in practical boots, listening to the guide describe the next checkpoint, offering a brief smile when Jane made a remark about the mud. Underneath, the quiet awareness that had lived in me for months simply noted the moment and filed it. The woods were larger than any office. The schedule was fixed. The distance he was keeping in front of the others was deliberate and necessary.
Still, the place where his fingers had rested against mine remained faintly warm.
The guide raised an arm and pointed to a fork in the trail. The main group would take the left path toward the first observation point. A smaller contingent would cut right to mark the secondary route. Brent’s voice, calm and official, began assigning names. I watched the set of his shoulders and waited to hear where he would place me.
Chapter 2 — Checkpoint Delay
The secondary route proved longer than the map suggested. A fallen pine blocked the marked path, forcing a slow detour through denser undergrowth. By the time we cleared it, the main group’s voices had faded. Brent checked the GPS, then the radio. Static answered first, then Jane’s clipped report that the others had already reached the observation point and were moving on to the next sector.
“Catch up when you can,” she said. “No rush—Yuan wants a full group photo at the lodge before lunch.”
The radio went quiet. We were alone between the trees.
I stepped closer under the pretext of looking at the device in his hand. The map screen glowed between us. My shoulder met the front of his jacket and stayed there. I felt the solid wall of his chest, the slight rise of his breath, the warmth that came through the fabric. I did not shift away. The contact was deliberate and still. He held the GPS steady, but I sensed the exact moment his attention left the display and settled on the place where we touched.
“Corporate bonding,” I said, voice low enough to stay between us. “Nothing like getting lost with the boss to build trust.”
The corner of his mouth moved. Not quite a smile. I let another second pass before I eased back, just far enough that the pressure ended. The air between us felt altered, charged with the knowledge that the group was now ahead and the schedule had given us an unplanned margin.
I adjusted the strap of my pack and started walking again, slower than before. He fell into step beside me. The path remained empty. The radio stayed silent. I kept the surface of my voice light when I spoke, but underneath I was already measuring the length of the delay and the distance that still separated us from the others.
Chapter 3 — Unmapped Ground
The root was half-hidden under leaf litter. My boot caught it cleanly. Pain flared sharp and immediate through my ankle as I went down hard on one knee. Brent was beside me before I could push myself up.
“Don’t move it yet.”
His hands were careful, professional, assessing the joint through the sock. I watched his face while he worked. The CEO expression was still in place, but the isolation of the trees had already begun to loosen something behind it. When he looked up, the careful distance he had maintained all morning was gone.
“Can you stand?”
I tried. The ankle took partial weight and then buckled. He caught me, one arm solid around my back. We were suddenly too close, my weight against him, the scent of the woods and his skin mixed. The radio remained silent. No voices reached us from any direction.
I did not step away when he steadied me. Instead I turned slightly, bringing us chest to chest against the broad trunk of a beech. My hand found his wrist, guided it downward, and pressed his palm between my thighs, directly over the heat that had been building since the moment on the trail.
I held him there, letting him feel exactly how ready I was—the warmth, the slight dampness already present through the fabric of my leggings. His breath changed. I kept my eyes on his and spoke only loud enough for him to hear.
“We’re not going to catch up, are we?”
His fingers flexed once against me, an answer more precise than words. The woods around us stayed empty. The radio gave nothing. Rescue, if it was coming, had not yet started moving. The borrowed time had begun, and I had just placed us both inside it.
Chapter 4 — Borrowed Time
He did not speak. He simply turned me so my palms met the rough bark of the beech. The forest floor was soft with old leaves. I felt him kneel behind me, the shift of his weight, the careful tug at the waistband of my leggings. He drew them down only far enough. Cool air touched my bare skin, then his mouth, then the slow press of his fingers.
He stroked me open with deliberate patience, two fingers sliding in, curling, learning the exact angle that made my breath break. I kept my forehead against the tree and let the sounds come. The woods swallowed them. When he added a third finger the stretch forced a low, continuous moan from my throat. He worked me that way until my hips moved without permission, pushing back to take more.
Only then did he rise. I heard the soft sound of his belt, the zip, the rustle of the company outer layer he did not remove. The blunt head of his cock pressed against me, slick from my own wetness. He entered in one steady thrust that seated him fully. The depth drew a sharp cry from me; the angle was new, relentless, exactly as he had chosen.
He held still for a moment, buried, letting me feel every inch. Then he began to move—long, controlled strokes that nearly left me before driving back in to the root. Each time the fabric of his jacket brushed the bare skin of my waist. I reached back with one hand and found the edge of that jacket, gripping it as if it could anchor me. The other hand stayed braced on the tree.
“Look at me.”
I turned my face over my shoulder. His eyes were dark, focused, the careful CEO entirely gone. He kept the rhythm and the depth while he watched me. The pressure built in slow, heavy waves. When the climax took me it was deep and unrelenting, my body tightening hard around him, a broken sound leaving my mouth that was almost his name. He followed a few strokes later, driving in to the hilt and holding there as he emptied into me, the pulses distinct and hot.
We stayed joined until the last tremor passed. I could feel the slight trickle of him when he finally withdrew. My leggings were still tangled at my thighs. His jacket remained on. The radio at his belt stayed silent.
I turned, still unsteady, and rested my forehead against his. The words came without plan.
“I love you. You know that.”
His hand cupped the back of my neck, steady. He did not answer at once. When he did, the voice was low and certain.
“I know.”
Chapter 5 — Extraction
We restored clothing with the same efficiency we used in the office after hours. I smoothed the leggings, checked the ankle brace he improvised from a spare strap, and tested my weight. The joint would hold for a slow walk, nothing more. He re-fastened his belt, straightened the company jacket, and became the CEO again in the space of a few breaths.
The radio crackled at last. Jane’s voice, practical and slightly impatient, reported that the medical team had left the lodge and would reach our coordinates in twenty minutes. Yuan had already begun asking why the delay had lasted so long.
Brent answered with the exact tone he used in quarterly reviews—calm, complete, leaving no room for further questions. Ankle injury. Unstable ground. Necessary to wait rather than risk further damage. The group was instructed to continue; we would meet them at the extraction point.
When he clipped the radio back to his belt the private expression returned for a single moment. He touched my cheek with the backs of his fingers, a contact too brief for anyone else to have noticed even if they had been watching.
“Can you walk?”
“Slowly.”
He took most of my weight on the downhill stretch. We spoke only of the path, the time, the story that would have to be repeated once we reached the others. The residual heat between my legs and the faint ache of the ankle kept the morning’s truth present without any need for further words.
Voices reached us before the figures did. The medical team appeared first, then Jane, then the rest of the scattered group. Hands took my pack. Someone opened a folding chair. Brent stepped back the precise professional distance that the situation required and began giving a clear, economical account of the incident. I watched him from the chair and answered the medic’s questions with equal clarity.
Nothing in our faces or voices would have told an outsider what the woods had held.
Epilogue
By late afternoon the group had reconvened at the lodge. Ice packed my ankle. Forms were filled. Yuan made a brief remark about safety protocols; Jane offered to bring dinner to my room so I would not have to navigate the stairs. Brent remained at the edge of the conversations, visible and appropriately concerned, never close enough for comment.
That night the lodge settled into the ordinary sounds of a corporate retreat—laughter from the bar, the low murmur of next-day logistics. I sat with my foot elevated and replayed the exact pressure of his hand at the back of my neck, the weight of the words we had exchanged against the tree.
Tomorrow the buses would return us to the city and the office and the careful, necessary distance. The line we had crossed would still be there, invisible to everyone else and fully known to us. We had made no plan. We had needed none. The risk remained exactly as large as it had always been.
I turned off the light and let the dark of the room close in, carrying both the memory and the unfinished consequence with me into sleep.