by Krista Wolf
It was unheard of, at least for me. I’d had friends who’d done it — known girls who’d given themselves to more partners than that in a week’s time. It was shocking at first, coming to college and seeing all this apparent recklessness firsthand. Realizing that the morals and standards I’d grown up with weren’t exactly the commonplace norm.
But now I was doing it. I was the one making excuses for my own behavior, when in fact my behavior made absolutely no sense at all.
And yet…
And yet somehow I wasn’t sorry.
Not even in the least.
It made me feel wrong, looking down at the situation as a whole. Wrong and shameful and even dirty. But individually, the way it played out? Everything seemed to make sense at the time. And then I realized something else, too.
I’d wanted it.
Shane and I had sort of fallen into each other out of necessity, the mutual attraction being just too much to stand. And with Jeremy? The two of us clicked on so many levels, socially and emotionally, that physically it was easy to accept him as an extension of Shane.
But Boone…
Boone Silva was a whole different story. Just looking at him was enough to melt away even the most prude girl’s fiercest resolve. And on top of that he’d noticed me. He’d been watching me, all these months, all this time. That fact alone was mind-blowing. Just the idea that—
“What are you thinking about?”
Boone’s voice was deep and melodious. He was still playing with my hair.
“Nothing.”
“You’re thinking about something.”
“Okay fine,” I relented. “I was thinking how surprised I am that you actually noticed me. You, the big handsome alpha frat-boy. Me, the nerdy shy girl. It’s like something right out of a cheesy movie. One of those silly romantic comedies that always—”
“I hate being a frat-boy.”
His words didn’t register at first. When they did, I was stunned. So stunned I actually sat up. “What?”
“I never wanted to be in a fraternity,” he shrugged. “Shit, I didn’t even want to go to college.”
I shook my head in disbelief. It made no sense.
“Then why did you?”
“My father,” Boone explained. “He sent me to UMASS because he went. He practically pledged me to Alpha Rho himself because that was his fraternity. He’s one of the founding fathers of our chapter, actually. I got in automatically. I’m a first-year legacy.”
I looked at him again, almost as if seeing him for the first time. Did he still look like a frat-boy? Suddenly I wasn’t so sure.
“You didn’t even want college? Why not?”
“Because I’m good with my hands,” he explained. “Worked manual labor, all through high school. Still do it. Construction, renovation, odd jobs. It’s my thing. I want my own company someday, and nothing beats hands-on experience.”
“So you’re taking business classes?”
Boone laughed. “Fuck no. I’m an engineering major.”
I could see it now; I’d judged a book by its cover. Placed a label on someone who didn’t want or need one.
“Engineering is great,” I said.
“It will be,” he agreed, “eventually, anyway. Building is one thing. Designing is another. I’ve found a love for both, which is why I’m still in school. And still working, of course.”
If he was attractive before, he’d just doubled my interest. Boone was juggling a lot of balls at once, and handling it all without complaint. I admired him for it.
“And fraternity life?”
My lover sighed beneath me. “It is what it is,” he said. “I like the friendships, the camaraderie. That part’s actually pretty cool.”
“Not to mention the sorority girls,” I teased.
Boone smirked. “Yeah, I can’t complain. That’s definitely a perk.”
I felt a pang of jealousy. A quick stab of envy, just thinking about all the women he’d probably been with.
“Still,” he went on, “this whole alpha beta gamma bullshit your other friends subscribe to?” He jerked his head in the direction of the exit. “Nah, that’s not for me.”
The guilt came rushing back, and the worry too. I wanted to defend Shane and Jeremy. I wanted to go back and see if the storm had worsened, too. We’d been down here for too long. Down here doing nothing…
Well, not exactly nothing.
I sat up and shook out my hair. I still had a radio to fix. A fire to feed…
“Come on. Let’s head back to the lobby.”
Boone grunted as he turned on his side. “Why? It’s warm here. It’s nice.”
“Because there’s still stuff to do,” I said. “Lots of stuff.”
Reluctantly he got up and stretched his arms to the ceiling, pulling every muscle of his body wonderfully taut. I couldn’t help scanning him, top to bottom. I knew his body intimately now. My eyes stopped strategically at all my favorite places.
“Get a good view?” he grinned down at me. “I could turn around if you want.”
I shook my head back and forth to clear it. I had to shake it twice.
“Maybe later,” I said with a smirk. “But right now… show me that garage.”
Twenty-Six
MORGAN
When I was eleven, I was invited to my classmate Kim Balas’s birthday party. I didn’t know her, really. I only knew I was expected to bring her a present. And so my mother took me to the toy store, and I picked out the one thing I figured all eleven-year old girls wanted more than anything else in the world:
A build-your-own radio kit.
It was the greatest thing in the universe, as far as I was concerned. You took all the colorful little resistors and capacitors, mounted them on the main circuit board, installed the oscillator coils, and the next you knew you were rocking out.
I drooled over it on the way to the cash register, begging my mother to buy me one too. When she refused, I begged some more. All the way to Kim Balas’s house I cried and pleaded, begging her to keep it, until I was forced to dry my tears and do the only thing I really could do:
I pulled out one of the transistors and shoved it in my pocket.
If I couldn’t build my own radio, Kim Balas sure as hell wasn’t going to either. Not a working one, anyway. Later that year I’d get the same kit for my birthday, and I’d assemble it perfectly down to every last meticulous detail. All the way to that one extra transistor I still had, from the kit Kim probably threw over her shoulder the moment her party ended.
I learned two lessons back then. One, that I could sometimes be a vindictive bitch. But two, that there were other radio kits as well. Bigger and better ones. Crystal radio kits.
Ham radio kits…
All those hours spent in my room with my soldering gun were coming in useful now. Especially now that I had a multi-tool and a good length of copper wire, stripped from the walls and wrapped into a makeshift loop antenna, to boost our transmission signal.
If we ever got a transmission signal, that is.
“Warm enough?”
I glanced back to where Boone was still feeding the fire. The big lobby was impossible to heat fully, but it was becoming more and more tolerable. Especially at the little table and workbench we’d brought up from the garage and dragged before the fireplace.
“I’m good, thanks.”
Boone stood there before the flames, rubbing his hands together. “I’m gonna check the upper rooms in a few. See if the Hardy Boys missed anything.”
I tried my best not to laugh. In the last hour or so he’d called them Hamburger and Fries, Tom and Jerry, and Dumb and Dumber. He’d also called them the Icicle Brothers, a name I immediately growled at him for.
I pulled out the next resistor and inspected it in the dying light. It looked untarnished but I cleaned it anyway before inserting it back into the circuit board.
So far the storm hadn’t let up. In fact, it was even worse. The once doorway-sized opening behind us
was rapidly becoming choked off by snow. I’d come up with the idea of clearing it every half hour or so, just to keep it visible to anyone outside.
And by anyone I meant Shane and Jeremy.
The longer things went on, the more anxiety I had over their departure. Part of me wanted to think they were just fine. Maybe even better than fine. That they could already be rescued and recovered, maybe waiting for a break in the storm to lead someone back here to help us out of this shithole.
But every half hour I peeked outside anyway, before sweeping the opening clean.
And every half hour I was disappointed.
I can’t believe we’re going to spend another night here.
The thought was depressing. At the same time, we weren’t in any immediate danger. We had heat. We had light. We had… peaches.
The hours ticked by before I finally made some headway. The radio turned on, and although I couldn’t get any channels I could tell it was a reception problem. Likewise for the transmitter. When I depressed the old button on the microphone I could hear it wanting to send. There were just a few more adjustments that needed to be made.
Boone fed the fire sparingly. I watched as he gathered and broke down even more wood than Shane and Jeremy combined. He’d found a few old dressers upstairs and some armoires that had apparently been abandoned because they were too big to move.
It was fun watching him work though. Glancing up from the tedium of fixing the radio to watch the flex of his shoulders and biceps. He even worked up a sweat, setting the larger pieces sideways against the stone hearth before crushing them beneath the heel of his ski-boot. I’m not sure how many hours went by, but eventually he stopped and looked up at me.
“Did you hear that?”
I cocked my head. “No. What?”
“I heard something.”
“Was it a voice? A shout maybe?” I jumped up hopefully and started for the outside opening.
“No,” Boone said, grabbing my arm. His face was drawn with something that almost resembled concern. “I… I thought it came from inside.”
The words kinda creeped me out. Stepping closer to him, I looked around. In the flickering shadows cast by the fire, everything seemed as it always was.
“Inside where?”
“Not sure,” he said. He shook his head a moment later. “Forget it. It was probably nothing.”
Still, I wasn’t going to take the chance. I cleared the opening once more, and poked my head out into the screaming wind.
Almost instantly my hair turned to ice.
“Get in here,” he said, pulling me inside. “I told you it wasn’t from outside.”
“But… But what if—”
“Morgan, trust me.”
I sighed and stretched, almost instantly cramping my legs. I was dehydrated again, I could feel it. My neck hurt too.
“We should crash,” Boone said, almost reading my mind. “It’s gotta be past midnight, and you’ve been working on the radio for five or six hours. You need fresh eyes.”
He took my hand and pulled me in to him. His body was warm and comforting. Right away everything felt better.
“Do we sleep in here, or—”
“Downstairs,” Boone said, pulling me gently from the foyer. “Those embers might stay until morning, but the mineral springs will keep us warm without having to feed the fire all night.”
Twenty-Seven
MORGAN
He took me again in the pile of sleeping bags at the edge of the pool, spreading me open and driving himself deep inside me. I was breathless at first. Adrift in the feeling of being so thoroughly, utterly dominated. It was a whole new experience for me, being possessed this way. Having to focus on the depth and ferocity of every stroke, where penetration rode that exquisite knife-edge between pleasure and pain.
We fucked for what seemed like forever against the backdrop of the rising steam, until I erupted in a cry of agony and ecstasy. When I returned to earth I expected to feel his own release at any moment, but Boone only slowed down and began working me all over again.
This time it was different. This time we did it tenderly, holding hands. Stroking and kissing and touching each other, until I was right back at the edge of forever. A tear streamed down my face and he wiped it away with his finger, that’s how life-changing it actually was.
The whole thing was incredible. Boone was unlike any lover I’d ever had, or imagined I’d ever have. When we finally exploded together in simultaneous release I almost passed out from the pleasure. He breathed my name into my mouth, his eyes screwing shut as I felt his manhood throbbing… surging…
Jesus, Morgan…
This time I kept him inside of me. I raked his back, clutching him tightly as he filled me to overflowing with his hot, runny seed. It was the most beautiful thing, in the most beautiful of places. A moaning, screaming release of pent up stress and guilt and sexual energy, after a long, hard-fought day.
Then we passed out in each other’s arms and slept like the dead.
I dreamed, and in my dream I was surrounded by warmth, and heat, and love. Everywhere I reached I found flesh and comfort, a virtual wall of contentment and gratification. Wherever I was, I felt like I somehow belonged. As if I’d earned or even deserved it. For once there was no doubt or guilt or anything stopping me from enjoying the sheer, unbridled pleasure of being deliriously happy.
I woke up drooling in the crook of his arm — not the most attractive part of the whole experience, but I recovered quickly. While Boone still slept, I studied his tattoos. They were dark and flowing, each one seeming to trail into the next. Slowly I traced the outlines with the pads of my fingers, up and down his arm, across his chest to where the sexy silver bar of his nipple-piercing lay dormant. I’d played with that piercing last night, pulling the stud between my teeth while bucking against him and urging him to come. It was by far the hottest, most daring thing I’d ever done to a guy, which in retrospect was a little sad.
He could change all that, you know.
Yes. Yes, he could. But that’s if he actually wanted to be with me instead of just possessing me this one singular time. I was as much a fantasy to him as he was to me, only Boone’s infatuation was built on an image, a mirage. A twice-weekly walk to the campus library during which his mind molded me into whatever he wanted, rather than the reality of what I actually was.
Circumstances had finally thrown us together, but would he even look me up after this? I was little more than a conquest to him. A notch on his very long bedpost. The idea that he’d want to continue seeing me, even after we were rescued was—
THUMP!
At the end of the cavern, something moved. Or rather, a noise floated in… perhaps from the doorway.
I stirred, and there it was again. A bump. Followed by a scratching noise, or maybe—
Shane! Jeremy!
I jumped up, grabbing my shirt and throwing it over me. My panties were already on. Through all our lovemaking, Boone had never even taken them off.
“What is it?”
Boone stirred sleepily, squinting up at me through the lamplight. My God. His body…
“I heard something.”
“Probably just the water.”
The hot springs bubbled at times, with constant condensation dripping from the ceiling almost like rain. But no, it wasn’t that.
SCRRRRRATCH!
We looked at each other. “There! Did you hear tha—”
“Yes.”
He was up quickly, stepping into his boxers with the nimble practice of someone who’d gotten dressed in a hurry quite often. I wondered about that for a moment, and then—
Voices! That’s definitely voices!
“Come on!”
I sprinted past him, through the doorway to bound up the stairs. We stomped past the garage area. Ran through the darkness of the lounge and into the dimly lit lobby where the embers from last night’s fire still cast a dull orange glow over everything.
The opening to
the outside was cleared! Footprints led away from it, all the way to the fireplace where Shane and Jeremy stood shivering violently, the two of them completely covered in ice and snow!
“YOU’RE BACK!”
They turned, and as their eyes settled over me I could see oceans of relief. Shane pulled off his gloves. Jeremy opened his arms… and then suddenly his eyes went wide.
“What is it?”
Each of their expressions changed. They stopped shivering, stopped everything else they were doing. Their gazes were no longer fixed on mine, and all the hairs stood up on the back of my neck as I realized where they were looking…
Morgan!
They were looking over my shoulder.
“What the—”
I whirled, and my blood ran instantly cold. I caught a brief burst of something utterly terrifying…
And then my whole world went to chaos as everything happened at once.
Twenty-Eight
SHANE
I’d been thrilled at first just to see her face; to find her standing before us, still there. She was radiant in the firelight. Every bit as gorgeous as my brain remembered, having forced my wasted legs to somehow carry me back here through sheer willpower alone.
Then I saw her nakedness… or at least she was practically naked. And with Boone Silva standing behind her in the doorway, shirtless himself? That could only mean one thing.
Damn.
My heart sank. It happened in half an instant, because half an instant was all we had. I didn’t have time to feel jealous, or angry, or even forlorn.
And that’s because the bear was already charging.
“UNNNFFF!”
One second I was staring straight over Morgan’s shoulder. The next…
The next she was gone.
The brown bear’s roar obliterated the silence, its huge paw sweeping downward to the spot where Morgan used to be. Jeremy had taken care of that, rushing forward with astonishing speed and quickness, tackling her so violently they both went rolling to the floor.