by Rachel Kane
This was a dangerous moment, and I knew it. It would be easy to make a mistake here, and do something I would regret. I could reach out for Eli now—now that he didn’t seem to need comfort, now that he seemed more stable after our earlier conversation—but it would change everything. It would break everything. The innocence of our conversation. The budding friendship I felt, in fact the first friendship I’d ever had with someone like me.
Someone like me. How could that be? He was so different. His cheek was so soft, his hands not roughened by a hard life, his eyes clear and staring into mine. We had changed roles at some point, and he had become the man who wasn’t afraid of anything, while I felt so scared.
If I didn’t touch him, if I kept my hands here in my lap, I could go back to normal after all this was over. The rescue would come and I would go back to my old life. I’d take care of Pop, I’d help out Marcia, I’d be good and responsible, and people would be grateful for me. In a way, it was all I ever wanted, to go back to normal.
If I touched him, if I reached my hand over and stroked that his cheek, my entire life would change in an instant. I’d be in uncharted territory. I’d be lost in the woods, with no one to guide me. I didn’t know how to live like that. I didn’t know what would happen on the other side of that touch.
I like predictability. I like knowing what I’m doing. I like being confident and unafraid.
But there was a force inside me that would not listen to reason. The same force that told me to risk death every time I got in that plane, the force that said being in the air, being a bird, taking flight, all of that was more important than any risk.
This thing inside me, like the storm, is not to be denied. It is tyrannous and strong.
I lifted my hand, and my fingertips brushed his soft cheek.
14
Eli
The sensible thing would have been to say no. To say we’re both too shaken up after the crash. To say I’m still feeling devastated and you’re bruised from coming out.
I’ve never been good at doing the sensible thing.
The way he touched my cheek, it was like feeling the flame of tiny candles, I gasped, I pulled away.
He mistook that. He thought I was refusing. I couldn’t have him thinking that. I took his hand and put it back on my cheek. In his eyes was a question, and I knew he was afraid to ask it aloud.
It’s strange to think of a big guy like Jake as being delicate. So big, so tough. Yet he’d shown me another side of himself, and I understood he was like a butterfly, beautiful but breakable, and I had to be careful. If I said yes it’s okay for us to do this, it would’ve been too much for him. He would’ve retreated.
So the cabin was silent as I reached over and stroked his hair. I would not tell him how beautiful he was, and how I had been thinking of him ever since seeing him kneeling in the stream. I wouldn’t tell him how much I needed a break from all the disasters in my life, something simple, something good. But I could stroke his hair. I could trace my fingertip over his cheek, curling down to his lips, feeling the softness there.
I leaned toward him and he took me in his arms, like a reflex, like an instinct. Hold me. His strength, so threatening earlier, now brought a sense of safety. These arms could protect me from everything going wrong. At the same time, I sensed this is what he needed too, to protect someone, to use that great strength. He was a man who wasn’t used to vulnerability or fear, and he’d experienced both today. He needed to return to his protector role to find his equilibrium.
So even though I was the one with experience here, I wanted him to take the lead.
Earlier he had pressed his lips to my throat, and here he returned, when he had pulled me close enough. This time there was no question what he was doing. He moved from my throat, up along my jawline, before hungrily meeting my lips with his own, a kiss so deep it was startling, so full of pent-up passion and history and rage and desire that I was scared to meet it, scared to kiss back, knowing what he would learn about how starved I was for love.
I kissed back. His hands moved up my shoulders, cradling my head, and I felt so needed in that moment.
Yes, I was getting hard. Yes, I wanted him naked in front of me, wanted to climb atop him and give myself totally to him. But I also just wanted to feel this kiss forever. I wanted to feel this communication between us, our mutual hunger, our realization of how much we both needed this. I never wanted it to end. Even as his hands slid back down my spine and he urged me down onto the cot, lowering me carefully, I couldn’t stop kissing him, tasting him, drinking him in.
I knew I couldn’t make a move. The slightest aggression on my part might break the spell, might make him pull away. It was so strange to have to be so passive, so unlike me, and yet the idea enthralled me, to be at his mercy. As much as I wanted to strip him, to continue this kiss with our bare skin pressed together, I had to let him take the lead.
He did. Eventually he did break the kiss. Began working his way down. First my chin, a kiss there, then against my throat, then between my collarbones.
He pushed away my clothes like he was unburying me, like he’d found me in the sand and was brushing it all away. Now he could see me, and I felt a moment’s fear. Although I’d seen nearly every inch of him, I’d kept my body carefully concealed, the way I always do. Call it shyness, call it fear. But the way his face brightened when he saw my bare chest was like the sun coming out from behind the clouds. I pleased him, and it meant so much to me I could not stand it, I broke my rule, I reached out and pulled him down.
His silent laugh shook his chest as he kissed my breastbone. He took his time with me, his tongue making tiny circles over each nipple. Following the ridges of my ribs as they curved into my flanks. He could have been making a map of me, he was studying each square inch so closely. My cock was raging inside my pants, eager to burst out, eager to tangle with his tongue or be gripped by his hands or anything.
Just touch me, I don’t care what you do, touch all of me.
He was so slow with me. His hands played over my sides, caressing my belly, kissing it, nuzzling it. I wanted to writhe beneath him but I held as still as possible. At least, until he began unbuckling my pants.
“Oh god…” I whispered.
I could feel his hot breath against me. Everything that touched me felt like fire. I was trying so hard to hold back. To let it happen, to stop myself from trying to control it. He didn’t need my guidance, he didn’t need any help at all.
…or did he?
I lifted my head to look down at him. My pants were open, and my cock strained against my briefs. He was looking intently at it.
Then he glanced up at me.
He was scared.
My heart almost burst to see it. He had wanted this so badly, but now that the moment had come, he was nervous.
I could understand. I was nervous too.
We couldn’t just communicate with our eyes forever. I had to speak.
“Keep going,” I said. “Please.”
“But I…”
Why did his uncertainty thrill me? Why did the cautious look on his face nearly send me straight into coming without a single further touch?
“But you what?” I prompted.
“I don’t know what you like. I don’t know…what to do. I watch those videos, and the guys always know exactly what they’re doing, but—”
I shook my head. “Don’t worry. I’ll tell you what to do. How about that?”
His grin told me I was on the right track, that he wanted to hear me say what I wanted. No longer the delicate butterfly’s wing, he was fighting his nerves with playfulness.
“Take the waist of my briefs, and just pull them down. You don’t have to do it all the way. Just a little.”
He obliged and slowly pulled them down. He gazed down at the head of my cock, newly exposed, with hunger in his eyes.
I took his hand, his index finger, and placed its tip on the underside of my head, this one super-sensitive spot. “Righ
t there is a good place,” I said. “It’s all good, but right there is extra good.”
“There?” he said, brushing the soft skin with his finger.
My hips bucked in reflex and I gasped. “Right there.”
“What about the rest of it, should I—”
I pressed his hand, palm-down, against the length of my cock. I ground my cock into his palm. “You don’t have to uncover it,” I said, “just touch.”
It must have allured him to see my reaction, because he began rubbing me, a slow rhythm with only the thin cotton of my briefs between us. I couldn’t watch anymore, I put my head back and closed my eyes, the whole world centering on what he was doing to my cock.
I grew harder and harder at his touch. I was going to come if he kept this up. I didn’t want him to stop, yet I wasn’t ready for my climax, I wanted this to last longer, wanted his attention fixed on me for as long as I could possibly stand it.
He wasn’t content to keep this up though. He wanted more. I felt him pull the briefs all the way down, felt my cock spring up, felt my tight balls suddenly free.
I kept my eyes closed. I wanted to see him, wanted to stare, to take in the sight, but at the same time wanted him to surprise me with what he did next.
And surprise me he did. I felt his lips against the head of my cock.
I thought you were scared, I thought you didn’t know what to do.
Oh, he knew what to do. He kissed my head, and the shaft, and then drew his tongue the entire length of my cock, from where it met my balls, all the way to the tip.
My cry was wordless, my fingers gripping the edges of the cot.
He licked me with a tongue as slow and careful as his earlier kisses had been. Not an inch of my cock was left untouched. He studied it with an intensity I had never experienced before. I didn’t even realize my eyes were open again, until I saw his face, his concentration. His hand slid around the base of my cock, so that he could have control of it, so he could aim it, look at it, consider it.
“I’m going to come,” I whimpered. “I can’t help it, I want to keep going but I can’t hold back, I…”
When my cock slipped into his mouth, I felt transported. There was no more of this slowness. He sucked me in, and I was shocked at the heat of his mouth, at its eagerness, at his lack of fear. I was on borrowed time now, there was no way to hold it in, not with his tongue ravaging my cock, his lips sliding down my shaft, the ferocity of it all.
I called out and grabbed his shoulders, feeling the muscles tense as he readied himself. Then I didn’t know anything else, nothing but my climax as it crashed through me. I exploded into his mouth, and his mouth was everything, it was the entire universe, accepting me, hungry for me. He was eager to swallow me down, and I let him, I let him devour me.
I don’t even know when I came to. Maybe it was seconds later. Maybe it was years. His lips still on me, my cock softer now, but still throbbing with the echos of my climax.
Realizing he was holding my hand, our fingers intertwined as he softly sucked on me.
Realizing something had changed between us, and I don’t know when, and I could not name that change, just that I wanted to be held by him, and explore him, and repay him for what he’d done for me just now.
But mostly I just wanted to be held.
15
Jacob
Sometimes you mark off your life by how long it has been since something important happened. Four years since you graduated. Ten years since you were hired at your job. Something like that.
We were rescued 15 hours after I sucked off Eli.
It felt weird to think about it like that, but kind of thrilling too. To use a phrase like sucked off. It’s what really happened, but to say it so blatantly, to not hide it… That was a real difference in my life.
Of course we didn’t know it was going to be 15 hours. For all we knew, it could be days before we were found.
Yet that night we acted like we’d never been lost at all, like the only problem in the world was how to get the rest of our clothes off. Eli had come hard, and I worried he was just going to drift off, but no, after a few minutes to recover, he was back with me. Pulling at my shirt, yanking at my pants. Shoving me down onto the cot.
This was my first night with a man, and I was so eager to do everything. I wanted it to happen all at once, everything possible, to be fucked and sucked and to return the favor all at the same time.
I remember at one point getting between his legs and lifting them, rubbing the head of my cock against his ass, and he shook his head. “You’re going to have to learn about a little something called lube before you do that,” he said laughing.
But nothing else was off-limits. He took me to the edge of coming, sucking my cock into his mouth, only to slow down, to stop, to tell me how thick it was, how it was so big he couldn’t believe it. I don’t know if he was saying that to flatter me, or if it was just to drive me crazy while I wanted him to return his lips to me, but he kept doing it, again and again, bringing me to the brink and then pulling back, until finally when I sensed he was going to do it again, I shoved myself deep into his mouth and lost myself in coming, listening to him eagerly swallow down every drop.
Even with the fire, it was cold that night, the heat seeping away through the walls into the dark forest. We curled into each other, whispering little jokes about how small the cot was, how he planned to push me off of it in the middle of the night so he could have the whole thing to himself.
You have to understand that I’d never felt anything like this before. I’d never allowed myself to give in to my feelings like this. Ever.
That’s why, as I listened to Eli softly breathe next to me, feeling the weight of his arm over me, feeling his chest move so slightly with each breath, I found myself unable to sleep.
This is wrong, some part of me said. You can’t do this.
Not what I wanted to hear right now.
But you need to hear it.
I rolled over as carefully as I could, so as not to wake Eli. I stared at the tiny dark cabin, lit by the faint orange glow from the stove.
What do you think just happened here? You think you fell in love? In a day? You think that’s what this is?
Nobody said that. Nobody said love. Nobody said anything.
You think he’s going to be your boyfriend now? Like it’s that easy? What are you going to tell Pop? Shit, what are you going to tell Marcia? How’s she going to feel?
Considering we broke up because she found out I like guys, I think it’s safe to say she knew something like this was coming.
Something like this. A one-night stand with a man you’ve never even met. Dreams in your head of where this might go, even though you know it can’t go anywhere.
I blinked. These thoughts were always so persuasive in the night. What had I been thinking? What was going to happen in the morning, when we woke up and had to face each other, knowing what happened tonight?
You don’t even know what Eli thinks about it. He’s openly gay. Maybe this is just what gay men do. You don’t know.
Of course I don’t know. I’m too damned afraid to tell anyone I like men. I’m too afraid of answering my own questions about whether I like both men and women, or just men, or is this just curiosity? I don’t know, because I’m scared to even make gay friends, and I’ve got no one to talk to about this.
That’s what the voice in my head didn’t understand. It was so busy boxing me in, so busy trying to keep me safe, that it kept me from admitting the truth: I’m lonely. I’m a caretaker. It’s what I do. Sometimes I feel like one of those old sheepdogs, raised to care for a flock, except there’s no flock around, so what happens to that instinct to herd, to protect?
My life didn’t make sense without someone to take care of. I mean, I have Pop obviously, and he’s going to need more care as the years go on, but everything’s a battle with him, because as long as he has a little strength left, he’ll want to do everything himself. And Marcia? She was
happy to have me around, and I was happy to move her furniture or go with her to haggle with car salesmen or whatever, but you can’t take care of your ex in the same way, you know? There’s a boundary there.
I needed someone to love. Someone to take care of.
But you’ve known Eli for all of five minutes.
After our experience with the crash, with him saving me, with our time in the woods, I feel like I know him better than I know a lot of other people in my life.
But you’ve got to admit he’s kind of a mess.
Is he? Some people going through what he’s going through would get lost in a bottle, or they’d start fights, or go quietly crazy. What did he do? He went on a quest to mend his family. Maybe nothing came of it, but he tried to fix things. That’s not something you do if you’re a mess.
But you can’t do this.
I’m not sure when I fell asleep, the thoughts rolling over and over in my head, the way you’d roll a marble in your hand. Eventually my mind went quiet and allowed me to slip into fitful dreams.
The morning sun pierced the trees before being softened by the forest mist, engulfing me with light.
I heard the cabin door creak open. I didn’t look over there, too captivated by the light to look away. Eli’s footsteps crunched against the pine needles.
“You’re up early,” he said.
His hand slid around my waist, and then down into my pants. It was a comfortable feeling, and I leaned against him.
“We should go fishing this morning,” I said. “That jerky’s not going to last very long.”
“Mm, practical, I like that.” He nuzzled my cheek.
It was going to be a bright, cloudless day when the mist burned off. The storm of last night had left everything clean, the rich scent of earth filling the air.
“We’ll have to search the cabins,” I said. “Can’t fish with our bare hands.”