“It’ll be fun. I promise.” She blew out a breath. “But if for some reason you don’t like it, we can do the Aquarium.”
Knife had to sign a release form, and then be fitted for shoes and a harness, but she knew who to ask for, so the process was painless.
While April, Tuesday’s cousin, helped him with his harness, Tuesday donned her shoes and harness, and collected his shoes before taking everything they wouldn’t need to a locker. Her padlock was in her backpack, along with two stainless tumblers already filled with ice water. She kept the water and put everything else into the locker.
April was finishing with him when Tuesday returned, and she handed him his water, then demonstrated how to clip her bottle to her harness before checking every buckle one last time.
He did the same, and April told her, “Technically, I’m supposed to handle a quick orientation.”
They’d talked about this before, but Tuesday repeated what she’d already told her cousin. “I’ll make sure he knows everything he’s supposed to. You can keep an eye on us for five minutes to make sure. That’s how long you’d spend with instructions, right?”
She nodded, and Tuesday walked him away from the kiddie beginner walls and showed him someone halfway up.
“He’s on an auto belay. Lets you climb and move around. Doesn’t hold you up or help you, but won’t let you freefall — it’ll take you down slow enough for a controlled landing.”
“Not tonight,” he told her, his gaze on her groin, his voice low and growly, “but another time, you’re going to hang from my pulleys in that harness and nothing else.”
Her face flamed red because she knew her cousin had heard from twenty yards away, but Tuesday pretended he hadn’t said anything and continued with her orientation, explaining the hold colors and what they meant — how one course could give different difficulty levels.
Finally, she talked him through how to hook up, and made him clip in and then clip out a few times before she clipped in beside him.
“I wanted to do this outside,” he said.
She smiled. “We’ll get there. Focus. Remember, colors are important. Stick to medium difficulty for now. I know you’re strong, but walls teach you things bodies don’t already know.”
His first attempt was textbook beginner — all upper body, his arms doing work his legs should’ve been doing, but he muscled his way to the top despite using terrible technique.
He came back down, watched others climbing a few moments, and went up again.
She went up beside him this time, noting he had his legs under him better, and he was reading the wall two moves ahead. He made it to the top and looked over at her with a smile.
“Better,” she said, and she made the trip down.
“It’s more of a challenge than it looks,” he told her back at the bottom. “It’s strategyandstrength. You’re right, this is fun. Thanks for bringing me.”
Tuesday smiled, happy he got it. “Oh, we’re just getting started. Here’s the next lesson.”
She went up the same route fast. Not showing off, just demonstrating how it looked when you knew the route and used your legs properly, letting them support and lift you the majority of the time.
When she landed, he said, “Right. Thanks for that. It helped.”
They worked the medium routes until he’d internalized the basics — weight over feet, hips close to the wall, read ahead, trust the holds that look sketchy because they’d beentested and graded, and a hundred people had stood on them before. He was a fast learner, which she’d expected, and he was coachable, which she appreciated more than she knew how to say.
Doms are control-freaks. They just are. He’d been uncomfortable as fuck riding in her car even before she went over the speed limit simply because she controlled the car and he did not.
And yet, he was completely out of his element here, learning everything from her and what he could observe in others, and he was entirely open to it. No ego, no trying to pretend he knew something he didn’t.
During lunch, she’d explained a lot of Korean food things, but he also taught her a few meat things she hadn’t known. It wasn’t an even back-and-forth, but still, they taught each other things.
But here? He was literally the virgin, and she was the one with experience, but he was fine with it. Was enjoying the learning process, the challenge of it. He didn’t let his ego make decisions his body wasn’t ready for, and she was impressed.
Eventually, she took him to the harder routes, but only when he was ready.
The scale of the outdoor walls changed the problem entirely, but she knew both of their wolves appreciated being under the sky instead of inside the building.
Tuesday had done this long before shechangedfor the first time, so she was already experienced before her wolf came onto the scene. She hadn’t been able to climb for nearlya year after her firstchangebecause her wolf freaked the fuck out at being so high.
Wolves like to have all four feet on the ground.
