All for one. One for all.

The climb.

She climbed above him, tormenting him with what he could see of her lower body, needing his help, leading him on to certain destruction, and he did not care.

Heeding her earlier caution, David put his light on only when they reached the first metal ladder set into the side of the brickwork.

Le-an couldn’t reach up to the first rung. Her muscles could not deal with jumping to reach it, also lacking the upper body strength to pull herself up once she did, and she was tired.

He stood behind her, moving the coat aside from her body behind her so that he could lift her. He put the end of his flashlight in his mouth, pointing it at the wall, and lifted her by holding her upper legs just below her hips, and boosted her to get a grip on the rungs. His hands might have slipped had he tried to lift her with any fabric between his hands and her body.

The flashlight shone closely up into her, revealing her in excruciating, maddening detail as she stretched with his help to reach that first rung with her foot.

He held her there with one hand under her thigh, holding her with one hand, pushing her other leg up with his free hand, to start her foot on the first rung so that she could climb for herself. How he did not drop her he was not sure, looking up at her the entire time, seeing everything mind-shatteringly personal about her that he’d touched earlier and had got to know so intimately in their first overtures of love but, hopefully, she did not know the full extent as to how he’d got to know her. He could see a smudge of blood between her legs where he had damaged her.

He watched her climb, seeing that she was exhausted both emotionally and physically, having difficulty so he wasted no time following her, staying close behind and just below her, not afraid to help where she needed it. The first ladder was not the longest, but was the most difficult.

She was tired enough that she constantly needed his help to reach the next rung. It had been one thing to come down it but was another altogether to go up it.

He was aroused by what he could see of her body from this angle, barely able to control himself, but she needed his help, not his interference. He kept telling himself that. If he did what he wanted so much to do, then she would never forgive him.

Focus. He had to keep telling himself to ‘touch only what, and where you need to touch, and not where you would like to be touching.’

They could talk about this later.

She was tired, and he dare not trust her ability to manage by herself, so he stayed close beneath her and helped her where he could, no longer afraid to touch her familiarly, and it was all so alarmingly familiar.

She paused often on that first ladder as each succeeding rung up that ladder was a stretch of almost eighteen inches to discourage young climbers. He came up close behind her and held her steady each time she paused until she was ready to proceed again, when he would lift her leg to the next rung.

There was a notice somewhere on the wall saying something about being disciplined if you climbed these, and that if you were found on the roof you would be expelled.

No one that he knew of had ever been expelled for that. The threat of expulsion was usually enough to keep students off it but he’d not been affected by that.

No one would choose to climb it after dark as he’d sometimes done. Not intentionally, or without a good reason; unlike this time.

Le-an kept going with a sense of urgency, no matter what he did to help her, and she would not be stopped.

He would stay close under her going both up and down each of the ladders seeing things about her that no man should ever see of any woman upon such short acquaintance unless they were just about to divest themselves of everything and make love.

He knew that they had some awkward climbs over the lower roofs. He’d done it himself to go up onto the topmost roof after his days’ work, to see the stars, while the girls in the dormitory below slept their innocent, or not so innocent sleep.

The way the ladders went up and sometimes down as well, there was about a hundred feet in total climbing the way it was laid out, going from roof to roof, with a couple of down trips too almost to ground level again, but all within the bounding enclosure of the school. Whoever had designed it must have been a student of Escher, or Rube Goldberg, giving no thought to utility or the bigger architectural picture.

He shone his light up to give her some impression of where the rungs were in the play of light on the building wall and followed her closely, pulling himself up onto the next rung as she climbed slowly just above him with him close enough to touch her, wanting to touch her, even to kiss her, but knowing that he must not and likely to distract both of them, except if he must touch her to help her.

The light shone up under her coat and between her legs, unavoidably-so as she climbed, revealing enough of that reddish hair, and far too much personal, intricate detail as she paused after each step to breathe, and relax to make ready for the next rung, then stretching for it with him constantly ready to help, climbing up with her, his head, no more than six inches from her hips as she presented him with just one aspect of her to look at, and look he did; not wanting her to get too far ahead of him in case she needed his help.

Then she stretched again with one leg to the next rung, opening herself up to be closely observed yet again. He ached to reach up and touch. He might die of frustration before they got to the top, and this was only the first ladder.

Had she been a stronger climber and was not so emotionally overloaded, he would have let her get farther ahead of him before he began to climb, but she needed his help with her already being tired, and dressed in that heavy coat, with it constantly getting in the way. He did not want her to fall, so had to stay close.

He almost fell himself, seeing her struggling against the confines of the heavy great-coat to make the steps, until she opened it up more from her body. He had to help her more than once on that first stretch, reaching up and pushing against her to lift her to the next step, and helping her foot find the rung, or coming up close behind her, wrapping his arm around one leg as he lifted between her legs, feeling the hair between her legs on his arm as he boosted her.

It was the help that she needed, even though his arm burned into her where it touched, just as she burned his arm.

Damn that coat for being in the way most of the time!

It was a good job she had that coat on, though there were occasions where the coat did not come between them as he lifted her with his hand where it should not have been. She did not complain.

She was too beautiful in every single place about her for words to express. Had he really been so stupid as to almost blurt out that he thought, that she was beautiful? Yes, he had, but at least he hadn’t continued with that set of thoughts.

She was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen in his life. And he had violated her, had gone into her body right there where he was looking. He wanted to reach up and touch, to revisit that memory. Unbelievable!

Getting down had been easier for her with nothing to catch at her legs, and gravity helping her, but even that had taken its toll on her.

She could be leading him into hell and he would have happily followed her. He would have followed her anywhere. He’d have to think about that later. These peculiar emotions he was feeling, were leaving him breathless with anticipation.

He took her hand again and led her across one of the intermediate roofs, threading their way around obstructions that would bruise and cut legs, and had done her damage on the way down. He helped her more after that, putting his mind and emotions into neutral as much as he could as he followed her more closely, or led her, helping her more often, no longer afraid to reach out and touch where he needed to touch.

When she paused for a few seconds to catch her breath, he paused and moved up close behind her, supporting her with his own body firmly under her, one step below her, and his arm around her waist, or holding under her breasts.

She needed his help more often now as she tired more. It was always exciting for him, still following close beneath her, still not trusting that she would not miss a hold or put a foot wrong. She was tiring faster the closer they got to the top. Guts and determination drove her along, but it would catch up with her later.

There was some distance to walk between the ladders, across mostly pitch-black roofs with him holding her hand, as they steadily rose from ground level to the upper roofs, all of them flat between the rising peak roofs on either side, and then on to the last one, the highest roof over the dorms.

The climb on that last ladder, up to where her sister was, was almost forty feet straight up, taking its additional toll on her muscles. She paused more often on that one as she grew weaker.

He stayed even closer under her for that one, not afraid to let her feel his shoulder coming up against her, or his head beside her as he helped her, or with his arm supporting her around her hips. He was standing only one rung lower than her when they got to the top with his arm around her, steadying, supporting her, sliding to her upper legs, and then to touch her as she crawled out onto the roof away from him.

Once they were up there, he knew that the strip of flat roof between the sloping drop off on both sides was only about twenty feet wide. It was out of bounds for a reason.

He was almost completely unhinged by the time they got up the last ladder, having followed her so closely and the way her coat had opened up from her, and with her never more than two feet above him. His hands often arrived on a rung just as her trailing foot was leaving it, sometimes touching her to let her know where he was, relative to her, and then progressing gradually higher than that, holding onto the side of the ladder as he got closer up, and under her.

If she’d stopped he would have happily kept on climbing, rising up into her body to become one with her, giving her his strength through that other constantly aroused part of his, but that was a dangerous thought, and he risked becoming distracted and lost in the promise of what they knew and felt about each other.

He was able to see everything about her with him below her, staring up between her legs in the beam of his flashlight, seeing where he’d just left her—wanting to go back into her there again—and with her breasts swaying from side to side as she climbed. He’d touched those too. She’d invited and allowed him to.

Everything about her protected life had changed in less than an hour with Sarah falling, and with this man entering her life, and going into her body as he had.

She was out of breath when she got onto the roof, gained her feet, and walked unsteadily across to the edge just as he got to the top behind her, reluctantly leaving her, following her to make sure she did not stumble in exhaustion, and injure herself more; always ready to grab her.