Now, with firelight dancing in his eyes, it was almost impossible for Sarah to notice anything but Charlie writhing beneath her, pushing her farther, willing her to open and accept his entire length. He made shallow but persistent thrusts up into her core, his eyes locked onto hers until he felt the throb of her walls tightly closing in around him. Then his eyes rolled closed, his lips slightly agape as he reveled in the sensation.
“Take what you need, Beautiful Sarah,” he offered with his eyes still closed. “Ride my cock, baby. Come all over it.”
As the pressure built inside her, she acquiesced to his command, slowly increasing the speed and depth at which she fucked him. In time, it no longer hurt when he reached the very bottom of her. The pain slowly dissipated into pleasure, heightening the intensity of what was surely going to be an incredible display of power. Before she could stop it, her climax erupted through her body like a volcano spewing red hot lava into a cold, black sky.
Six: Aftermath
Sarah wasn’t sure when she’d fallen asleep, but when she awoke, the fire was dead, and the faintest streak of rose was painted across the sky in the east. She had been relocated to the sofa, apparently; she didn’t recall moving there on her own. Charlie was nowhere to be found.
The cabin was eerily silent, and a chill quickly descended upon it without the heat of the fire. She wondered if James had brought any wood in before the snow started. Wet wood and fire didn’t mix. She stumbled into the kitchen, determined to at least get a pot of coffee going. That will help dispel the chill, she reasoned.
She heard footsteps behind her while filling the coffee pot with water, but didn’t bother to turn around. When she felt strong arms wrap around her, she assumed they belonged to James. She wondered where he had slept the night before. But when she inhaled, she realized it wasn’t her husband’s woodsy scent filling her nostrils, and when she glanced down, she saw the skin was dark.
“Good morning, my queen,” the British accent rang out. She whipped around to find Charlie with his eyes darting up and down her still-nude body.
“You should never wear clothes,” he added on, leaning down to press a kiss against her neck right below her ear. She felt her skin prickle with goosebumps, but they might have been caused by the grunt coming from five feet away more so than the kiss.
“Sarah?” It was James’s voice this time. He walked toward her, carrying her pink robe over his arm. As if he expected Charlie to back away, he looked increasingly annoyed when he reached his wife.
Charlie didn’t budge and brazenly pressed a second kiss right below the first. “Don’t get dressed on my account,” he whispered in her ear.
“Excuse me,” Sarah said, wriggling out of his embrace. She turned to her husband. “Where did you sleep? Where’s Zora?” She wrapped herself in the robe as soon as James handed it to her.
He didn’t answer her, though; his blue eyes were frozen over. He gestured with his head toward the bedroom. Smiling calmly, she turned to Charlie, “Help yourself to coffee when it’s ready. I’ll be right back.”
Irritated that James couldn’t muster up some politeness for their company on a frosty morning, Sarah followed him into the bedroom where he shut the door with a thud. It suddenly dawned on her that it was Christmas Eve. Christmas Eve, and the world outside was still a barren white snowscape.
“What is your problem?” she demanded, her patience with her husband and the entire dilemma of being snowbound wearing thin.
He reached his arms out toward her, and Sarah observed red and purple marks around his wrists. Her eyes grew to the size of saucers when he continued with the silent treatment. “From Zora?” she questioned. He looked down at his feet momentarily, then trailed his eyes back up to her until the cold blue of them burned into her pupils.
“What the hell happened?” she asked again at a higher volume, hoping for something resembling English to emit from her husband’s mouth.
“Zora is in the shower,” he answered, keeping his voice low.
“Where did you sleep?” she whispered.
“On the floor. After I came out and dragged you over to the sofa. Then he came in here and fell asleep with his wife in our bed.”
“So?” Sarah asked, incredulous that her husband’s temper was flaring over what she saw as offering gracious hospitality to their house guests.
“You fell asleep in his arms,” James answered. Without waiting for her to respond, he walked toward the window, surveying the snow drifts that had blown against the cabin like great white walls.
“James,” she scoffed, “are you jealous? I don’t understand why you’re so upset.”
“And then the way he grabbed you in the kitchen and kissed you like I wasn’t even there,” he said without turning around.
“Really? After all that happened with you and Vanessa, you have a problem with a man who is clearly happily married showing sexual interest in me – and nothing more?”
She hated to bring up the V-word, but Vanessa was the other woman who almost ended them. It was James’s first solo venture into polyamory, and it ended disastrously when he realized she was biding her time until she could squeeze Sarah out of the picture. Since then, Sarah wholeheartedly believed she and her husband had reaffirmed their commitment to each other. Their bond was impenetrable. No one would come between them ever again – not if she had anything to say about it. Their promise to each other was written in the stars that hung over their sky.
Sarah stepped toward him until she was close enough to wrap her arms around his waist. He was wearing plaid flannel pajama bottoms and nothing else, and his skin felt cool and smooth against her body. Her robe had opened up just enough for their flesh to meet, hers warming his. “James, please don’t be mad,” she pleaded. “We don’t have to play anymore with them, but they’re kind of stuck here with us until we figure out an escape plan.”
He whipped around, fast enough for her to lose her grip on his torso. Her arms dropped to her sides in defeat. He could be sullen and nasty when he was angry, and obviously a specific event had triggered this response. She guessed it was seeing her asleep in Charlie’s arms. Damn it, I should have come to check on him as soon as we got out of the hot tub. Figures that Zora was playing Domme, and he was having none of it. I should have interceded.
“You didn’t enjoy yourself last night at all?” she asked, her words butting up against the glare of his icy gaze.
He breezed past her, his eyes now focused on the dresser. He slid the bottom drawer open and yanked out his long underwear. He slid them onto his muscular frame, then followed that layer with a long-sleeve shirt and a heavy flannel, and on the bottom a thick pair of pants he’d packed for when they hit the trails for a hike.
“Where are you going?” she asked, expecting him to reply that it was time to start digging out the truck again.
“I’m going down the mountain for help,” he answered brusquely as he fastened his pants. He retrieved two pairs of thick wool socks from the top drawer and began to pull them on.
“What?! No, James!” She was by his side again in a flash, her hand gripping his arm like a cuff, trying to pull the stubbornness out of him. “Do you really think that’s a good idea?”
“I don’t think I can get the truck out by myself. And my phone has no signal. Does yours?”
She had tried hers again that morning when she found it on the kitchen counter. It still said emergency service only, though even that didn’t seem to work. She was desperately trying to keep from worrying about her baby, who was surely missing her mommy, not to mention the rest of the family, who was expecting them back in the Springs by 4 PM. But her phone with its kiss-of-death screen wasn’t doing anything to alleviate her anxiety.
“Can’t you take Charlie with you or something?” she begged, hating the idea of him venturing out into the frigid temperatures by himself. Even though he’d survived multiple tours of the Middle East, she still didn’t want him trekking through the frozen tundra alone.
<
br /> “No, I’m not taking him. He’ll only slow me down. I’ll take my gun, and hopefully I’ll get into range of a cell tower before too long. I can call work, and they’ll send someone for us.”
“Why are you doing this? Because you’re mad?” she demanded, trying to twist his arm so he’d look at her instead of pinning his gaze anywhere that wasn’t her.
“Yeah, I’m mad. And have every right to be. That man has not respected our marriage, and I can’t believe you’re defending him. You’re being a fucking hypocrite after what you said about Vanessa trying to destroy us.”
The rage in his voice sent a chill down her body. She had never heard him so angry at her. He’d been mildly irritated with her before, and he’d been downright infuriated at other people or situations, but she’d never heard that tone, that seething venom spit in her direction.
“James, he’s just attracted to me. It’s not anything more. It’s just physical.”
“I see the way he looks at you, Sarah. That fucking fake accent. Fucking snake!”
She would have laughed if he weren’t so scary-pissed. In a tiny corner of her mind, seeing him so enraged with jealousy was exhilarating. He’d shared her with other men before, and he’d never taken issue with any of them. He’d met Pawel, her Polish lover, on several occasions when he’d come to the States to visit, and they got along beautifully. She never expected him to have this kind of reaction to another man, to see him as legitimate competition. James was not the jealous alpha type. Or at least she never thought he could be. What was it about Charlie that brought out this side of him?
“You really think Charlie is faking being from London? It’s all just an elaborate scheme – that Zora plays along with, mind you – to get into women’s panties?”
“That woman is psycho,” James fired back. “You should have heard some of the weird shit she said to me last night. She fucking tied me up, Sarah. And tried to do all kinds of things to me.”
“Oh really?” Sarah volleyed. “And you, who are roughly twice her size, just laid there and took it because you’re too much of a gentleman to say no, or what?”
“I didn’t let her do everything she wanted, but yeah, I was trying to be a good host,” he retorted. “You know, I learned from the best!”
Now he was shouting, and that last remark stung. Sarah heard the water in the shower shut off. Zora was finishing up. Her eyes bulged as she put a finger to her mouth. “We can’t fight like this in front of them. It doesn’t send a good message.”
“So that’s what you’re worried about? Sending a good message?” he asked, shaking his head. “Not about the fact your husband is pissed you fell asleep in some asshole’s arms without even thinking of checking in with him? Not about the fact that these people are crazy and trying to start shit between us, but about whether or not they can hear us discussing our marriage?”
She felt a rip shred through her. “What are you saying, James?”
“I’m saying I’m getting out of here before I get any more pissed off.” He stomped toward the door.
“Please don’t leave like this!” she called after him, but he didn’t turn around. Moments later, she heard the front door of the cabin slam shut. She swore she could feel the swirl of arctic chill sweep over her even from two rooms away.
Long after James’s figure had disappeared from view, Sarah watched at the window, his earlier words burning a hole in her heart. She couldn’t believe how mad he was, especially considering she thought they were on the same page about the Foxes. She reviewed all of their prior communication, looking for an indication he was unhappy, and all she came up with was the slight sense he was uneasy about something. But it seemed at the time to be more about Zora than Charlie. Zora was aggressive, way more aggressive than James was accustomed to, and Sarah worried that perhaps James didn’t think it was masculine for him to be too aroused by it.
She even played back all the conversations from dinner and their rousing game of Cards Against Humanity the night before. As much as she’d brushed it off at the time, Charlie did pay her an extraordinary number of compliments. But Zora didn’t seem to notice or be upset by it, so I didn’t think James would be bothered either.
But maybe James is flustered by all of Charlie’s compliments – he praised my sense of humor, my breasts, my eyes, my hair – things I don’t hear very often from my husband. Not that he doesn’t love those things about me, he just doesn’t typically express them verbally.
After she realized she was growing cold by the window, she heard Charlie enter the room. “Is everything alright? Zora said she thought James was angry about something.”
Great, Sarah thought. That’s exactly what I was hoping to avoid.
She took care to stretch as genuine a smile as she could muster across her face. “He’s just frustrated that we’re still here,” she answered. “He went for help.”
“He should have let me go with him,” Charlie observed. “It’s not safe to be out there alone. If the wind picks up again, it’s going to be white-out conditions like yesterday.”
Sarah was annoyed at his insinuation that James wasn’t suited to the task. “My husband is a combat veteran. I know it’s snow, not a desert, but I’m sure he can hold his own out there.”
Charlie’s face softened as his brows unstitched. “I didn’t mean to imply – Sarah, is he angry about something that happened between us?”
She instinctually shook her head, not even entertaining a different response. There was no way she could admit that James felt threatened. In fact, she was still surprised to see that side of him. After all, it was ridiculous to think Charlie had intentions of anything untoward. He was obviously very much in love with his wife.
“Did you want me to make some breakfast?” Sarah asked, shifting her eyes to Zora, who had just entered the room.
“Allow me,” Zora responded with a smile. She looked refreshed, her damp hair hanging to one side of her shoulder and her body covered in one of James’s flannel shirts. “Hope James doesn’t mind I borrowed his shirt.”
“Oh, I’m sure it’s fine,” Sarah forced a smile. “There’s not a lot in the way of breakfast food…just some fruit and a couple of croissants. But we have soup, so we could skip ahead to lunch if you prefer.”
“We brought some oatmeal from our cabin, so at least let me make that. Do you have any eggs?”
Sarah shook her head. “Sorry. I hope we can get out of here soon because we’re going to run out of food.” She tried not to show the first glisten of a tear in her eye as she turned and headed for the bedroom. “I’m going to go take a shower,” she announced. She needed to be alone. She needed to think.
Once the door was securely closed behind her, all the emotion she’d compressed behind her fake smile came hurtling out of her like a meteorite screaming toward the earth. Tears streaked across her cheeks, and her throat became raw with a jumble of hurt, disappointment and panic. How could he just leave me here alone with these virtual strangers? If something bad happens, I won’t even be able to get ahold of him.
She grabbed her phone off the rustic pine dresser near the bathroom door to check it once more. The top of the screen still showed no signal, destroying the one shred of hope she had left. She entered her passcode and opened up the album with pictures of Lynnea’s toothy grin. She was such a beautiful, happy baby. What was she going to do if she couldn’t make it back to her by nightfall? How could she endure a night without James or without her kids – on Christmas Eve no less?
With tears blurring her vision, she stumbled into the bathroom to start a shower, turning the temperature setting near scalding. Hopefully they didn’t use all the hot water, she sighed as steam began to fill the tiny room. As the water began to pelt against her back, she made a decision. Once she was dry and had breakfast in her stomach, she was setting out to take matters into her own hands.
Seven: Down the Mountain
The first ten minutes of James’s journey down the mountain were bea
utiful. The sun was a flaming chariot arching across azure skies, galloping through wispy clouds and turning the side of the mountain basking in its golden glow into a diamond mine. But he couldn’t fully enjoy the beauty because the angry words he’d hurled at his wife moments before still rang in his ears, making his head throb and his heart ache.
He realized almost immediately upon the frigid air hitting his lungs that he had been angry at Sarah, when his anger should have been directed toward Charlie. Who did he think he was, anyway? Waltzing into his cabin with his stupid accent and pretentious plastic-framed glasses. Not to mention the fact he didn’t care if his own wife was a pain in the ass. No wonder he wants MY wife! James stewed as he trudged his way through the thick drifts of snow.
He felt an overwhelming compulsion to get down the mountain, find someone in a massive truck, and rescue his wife. Then they could get the hell back down to their family. He knew his parents wouldn’t worry about him. He’d been through so many deployments where the communication was spotty. He’d go weeks without being able to touch base with his mother, and though he was positive she had extra wrinkles etched onto her face thanks to the U.S. Army, she was his biggest supporter through every mission. And his father was a military man himself. No doubt he was confident in his son’s instincts and skills to survive even near-apocalyptic conditions.
And he wasn’t worried about his step-children, Abigail and Owen, losing sleep over lack of communication. Abigail was a young adult with a life of her own, pulling her farther away from her nuclear family like a tide going out to sea. She popped in, yes, always anxious for a hot meal and a hug from her mom, but she and James weren’t nearly as close as they had been when she was in high school. Back when James was her mother’s on-again-off-again lover. During that time, he’d counseled Abby through the emotional upheaval of reconnecting with her father, whom she met for the first time as a teen. James had served as her father figure until she and her biological father were finally able to reconcile the years that had stretched between them, along with their different worldviews.
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