“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.
I pulled the blanket around me and tucked it against my chest and up around my ears as we went outside the tent. Adam was still there sitting by the fire, and thankfully between the roaring flames and the quarter bottle of whiskey he drank, he didn’t seem very cold at all. I walked out and sat down next to him by the fire while Michael took some of the food from the pack and started to warm it up over the flames.
“Did you eat?” I asked Adam, trying to avoid having to explain why Michael and I couldn’t control ourselves in the tent and left him out here to freeze.
“Yeah,” he said pleasantly. “But I made sure to save you guys some.”
“Thanks,” I smiled.
I was a little shocked at how well he was taking it. I thought that at the very least there would be some sort of dig or sarcastic comment, or some anger and resentment about how he was out here in the cold while we were enjoying each other inside the warm tent. But there was nothing. He didn’t seem upset at all. He seemed buzzed, and amused.
After we ate, and after Adam had a few more swigs from the bottle, he said goodnight and went inside the tent to get warm and get sleep, while Michael and I stayed outside to sit by the fire together.
“This reminds me a little bit of being at the bonfire at the cabin,” he smiled as he held me closely.
“Agreed, except we had all of our fur blankets there,” I said. “And it wasn’t completely in the middle of nowhere.”
He laughed. “This isn’t nowhere. Look.”
Michael pointed up at the sky and I could barely make out some of the twinkling stars between the canopy of trees. It was, actually, extremely beautiful.
“I guess you’re right,” I said in awe as I breathed in the fresh air and tilted my head all the way back until it rested on his shoulder. “The stars are beautiful anywhere we are together, and the flames are just as strong here as they were at the cabin. The only thing that matters it the fire that burns between us.”
We sat together in silence and listened to the sounds of the forest and the sound of Adam snoring softly inside the tent.
“You seemed so sure the whole time that we weren’t siblings,” Michael said as he held me close to him. “How did you know?”
“I didn’t know,” I answered. “God, I wanted to believe that I knew it for sure, but I didn’t. I just couldn’t give power to the idea that we could never be together again. It tormented me every second, so I pushed the thoughts down and focused on the hope that it would get figured out. And—it did.”
I felt Michael’s chest sigh against my back.
“You are much stronger than I am, Lisette.”
I laughed. “Oh please, how can you even say that. I broke down in a hysterical fit of sobbing when Julian died. I ran away and left you all behind when my crazy aunt was after us. You literally held me over a rooftop with my life dangling at your fingertips and I was so consumed by you—even then, even when I thought that I hated you, that I would have let you throw me off that rooftop rather than try to pull away from you. I’m not strong at all.”
“You’re wrong,” he said. “You’re looking at all of that in the wrong way.”
“What do you mean?”
“You sobbed when Julian died like anyone who had just lost their best friend and lover would. But then, you carried on. That is strength. You didn’t run away to save yourself from your crazy aunt, you ran away to protect us. That is also strength. And I think that what happened on the rooftop all those months ago—I think that was probably the bravest thing of all of them.”
