“What are we going to do about Rob?” I asked.

Michael’s brow furrowed and the muscles in his jaw tightened.

“Well I think we can all agree that we now know he’s in real trouble,” he said.

“But if he won’t talk to any of us, and we have no idea what actually happened to him,” Adam said, “then how in the world are we supposed to figure out what kind of trouble he’s in? It’s not as if we can infiltrate the police station.”

“We have to keep going with our previous plan,” Michael answered. “We need to look for the place that he marked on the map.”

We had all the supplies we needed to be able to venture out into the wilderness of the mountains again. We had at least enough to last us for a few days, and since it was almost evening and Michael thought it would be best to try to keep our trekking during the daytime hours when it wasn’t so frigid, we decided to head out first thing in the morning. As much as Michael and I both wanted to breathe a sigh of relief at the discovery that we don’t have anything standing in the way of being intimate with each other anymore, all three of us decided to sleep in the living room on the couch after an evening of packing up supplies and brainstorming all possible ideas that we had about the current situation. Adam started a fire and Michael and I cozied up under the blanket on the couch.

As soon as Michael wrapped his arms round me, I could feel his chest heave out an exhaled sigh that I felt inside my bones. The feeling of his arms around me and my body leaning pressed against his, was the feeling of pure, unadulterated and blissful home. He pressed his lips against the side of my head and kissed my hair just above my temple as I turned my cheek to nuzzle against his chest. Even if we weren’t going to share a heated and passionate moment tonight—this was enough. Knowing that we had each other, and could still have each other, and being here wrapped up in him, was what I had been longing for ever since this whole needless worrying about our relationship had started.

After the fire was going and the room started to get cozy, Adam came to join us on the couch, and I pulled a corner of the blanket over to share with him.

“It’s going to be cold out there for the next few nights,” Adam sighed as he stared into the hot flames. “Might as well soak up all this cozy warmth while we can.”

The three of us laid together and between the heat in the room and the relaxing sound of the crackling fire, we were all soundly asleep within a matter of moments.

I wasn’t surprised when I had a dream about Rob, especially not after my interactions with him earlier in the day, and the fact that he was the main focus of our current worries. But I was a little surprised about the context of the dream.

In my dream, Rob was fully decked out in his police gear, except not the normal daily cop gear. It looked like he was wearing some kind of riot gear with a thick bullet-proof vest and the kind of helmets with built-in microphones that cops sometimes wear when they’re getting ready to raid a place. I tried to talk to him, but he was too busy talking into his headset to hear me.

It was strange, because I didn’t see any imminent danger. No bad guys or guns or even a house that was getting raided. Instead, we were in the middle of the forest, standing just outside the mouth of a small cave. There didn’t seem to be anyone else around aside from Rob and I, although I could hear muffled voices coming from out of his headset. Rob kept turning back to look at the cave as if he was expecting someone or something to come out of it. Or maybe he was trying to protect something that was inside of it. I was getting ready to put my hand on his shoulder to try and get his attention and ask him again what was going on. But as soon as my fingers touched him, I woke up from my dream without any answers.

I could tell that it wasn’t morning yet by the darkness that hung outside the windows of the cabin. Michael and Adam were both still comfortably asleep, and I must not have jumped at all when I woke up because Michael’s arms were still wrapped around me. As much as I knew I should get more rest before morning, and as much as I tried to go back to sleep, I just couldn’t. So instead I laid there with my eyes wide open and mesmerized in a sort of zone-like trance by the dwindling fire.

When morning arrived, and the guys woke up, I was exhausted but ready to go.

When we set out, the sun was shining through the treetops and making the snow on the ground look like it was glittering. It was a thick layer of snow that covered the floor of the forests and crunched under our feet, making my boots stick in the holes that my footsteps made. It made the hike longer and more tedious as we fought to pull each step out of the snow. The trek was long and marking the way to the spot on the map was difficult. Fortunately, Michael was great at navigation, and Adam was somehow able to decipher the little symbols on the map. Together they made a pretty good team of keeping us on track. When the sun started to go down, we all started to get cold and hungry and weary.

“Let’s set up the tent here for the night,” Michael suggested as he pointed to a clearing up ahead. “We’ll make camp, start a fire and cook some food. Then we can get some rest and continue on in the morning.”

Adam nodded and we all tossed our backpacks on the ground once we reached the clearing. Michael set up the tent and Adam unpacked some of the food we brought and started the fire.

“Not that camping with you guys isn’t fun,” I teased, “but it is getting a little old spending so many nights in the cold winter with only a tent and blanket to stay warm.”

Adam chuckled. “Yeah, I much prefer the roaring fireplace to this pile of sticks.”

He got the fire started and then set off to find some larger pieces of wood to keep it going through the night.

“Don’t get lost this time,” Michael taunted.

“I didn’t get lost the last time,” Adam retorted with a shake of his head.

As soon as the tent was up, I unpacked a blanket from my pack, and Michael and I went inside to get warmed up a bit.

“Adam must be freezing out there getting wood,” I said as Michael zipped the tent closed to keep the cold air out.

“He’ll be fine once he gets back and sits by the fire,” Michael said.

“What do you think we’re going to find when we reach that mark on the map?” I asked as I cuddled up against his chest.

“I’m not sure, but whatever it is, I hope it gives us some answers.”

“Me too.”

Michael’s fingers gently swept a wild strand of hair from the side of my face and his fingers trailed down my neck as they lingered. I relished his touch, and the way that the heat of his body felt against my skin.

We heard Adam return and toss more branches and hunks of log onto the fire. The sound of the fire crackled and the sound of Adam sighing as he sat down and popped the top off the whiskey bottle wafted into the tent. It sounded like he was settled out there for a bit—warm between the fire and the whiskey.

I felt Michael’s chest heave heavier breaths with each passing second—breaths that became audible with desire. My hear started to race until I felt myself trying to catch my own breath and steady my shaking thighs. But there was nothing holding us back now. There was no fear of being brother and sister, and Adam seemed content outside the tent for the moment. It wasn’t the physical angst as much as it was the longing that we had both felt when we wondered if we would ever be able to have each other again. I wanted him—badly. More than I could stand. And I didn’t care if we were on the mountaintop in the snowy wilderness. I didn’t care if Adam heard us from outside the tent. I didn’t even care if we were temporarily derailed from our map-finding mission (we were spending the night here anyway until first light of morning).

I turned my body around to face Michael and set the palms of my hands up against his chest. My hands rose and fell as his breathing became labored and his eyes darkened. I shifted my body so that I was halfway sitting against his lap with my hips pressed against him, and I could feel his swelling desire against me. When his lips opened into a slightly parted mouth, I couldn’t control myself. I reached my hands up from his chest to grab the sides of his head and pulled his mouth to mine.

Michael and I had had moments of utterly dire and consuming passion; moments that would make immodest men blush and rattle the stars in the sky. But this was by far the moment that was filled with the most need. The thought that I might not have ever been able to have him again ruined me. It wrecked my heart and tore my soul to shreds. And even though the whole time I pretended as if I knew all along that everything would be fine, and a large part of me believed that it truly would be, it was that small nagging whisper that reminded me it might not be that haunted my mind until I wanted to scream.

As soon as his lips touched mine, his tongue pushed into my mouth and any thought of stopping was immediately abandoned. Michael reached his hands behind my back to hold me and gently laid me down onto the blanket. But his gentleness soon gave way to a primal urge that was filled with a feverish ferocity. We pulled at each other’s clothing and tossed it aside until there was nothing but our bare skin between us. I didn’t feel the cold. I only felt a heated, fervent passion that pulled at places deep inside me I never knew existed before.

But somehow, a tiny voice inside my head that is trying to be responsible, tries to call above the sound of passion that is rushing through my ears to remind me that there is one thing that might halt this moment.

“Michael,” I utter in a barely audible voice as I feel his body come down over mine, and his throbbing and engorged cock press against my thighs. “I didn’t bring my pills with me.”

“What pills?” he asks as he kisses my neck.

He doesn’t want to stop, and neither do I.

“My birth control pills. We were packing backpacks for a reconnaissance mission of sorts, and I didn’t think that you and I would end up making love on this trip, especially not with Adam here, and one tent, and—”

“Lisette, I don’t care,” he whispered as he put his mouth back on mine. “I don’t care.”

I didn’t care either. I wanted him—needed him…now.

He pushed into me as soon as I opened my thighs to wrap my legs around his waist, and I moaned with an intense pleasure that shook every muscle inside of my body. There was no way that Adam didn’t hear that, or that the entire forest wasn’t rocked with the echo of the sound of my yearning and long-awaited satiation.

Michael groaned and pushed up against the inside of my body as far as he could go. He lingered there, savoring that moment as his open mouth moaned against mine and I could feel the quivering muscles in his arms and chest against me. Then, slowly and with a steady force, he moved inside of me as if our bodies were joined in an urgent and life-giving dance that rocked the very mountains that we made love upon.

I wished that it could have lasted forever. But when our love-making had finished, and we both found ourselves wanting more, we had to rein ourselves in. I could see the fabric of the tent billowing in the breeze which meant that the wind on the mountains was picking up and the temperature was dropping. Adam would be freezing, even with the fire and whiskey.

So we reluctantly put our clothes back on and savored another slow kiss, with tongues wrapping around each other and sighs of contentment.

When Michael got ready to open the tent, he reached for the blanket and wrapped it around my shoulders.

“After how heated-up the two of us just were, the air is going to feel extra cold to you now,” he said.