Their gear in tow, the three men moved into the kitchen, where they suited up in their outer pants, boots, scarves, gloves and parkas, their mittens shoved into their pockets.
They walked down the hallway, flashlights at the ready, stopping first at the generator shed. “Guess they'll have to fix that one next summer,” Tuck remarked. Brendan, recalling the bright red blood splattered over the floor and covering half of Tuck's face, suppressed a shudder.
His usual ruddy color had returned. He looked fit, the only evidence of his fall the bandage still covering the stitches. Thank God he was okay. I don't want to leave him. Brendan pushed the thought away.
Tuck moved forward to flick the off switch and the rumbling engine died. Flashlights guiding the way, they entered the lab where Jamie and Brendan had made their first escape, deciding to go with a route they already knew worked.
The pale light of the waning sun backlit the cloud-covered sky. Soon that sun would dip permanently below the horizon for the next hundred days or so, plunging the continent into an eternal night.
The cell phone rang in Brendan's pocket and he pulled it out. “Brendan Aaronson."
"The helicopter will be there in about five minutes. They won't be able to land, but they'll drop a sling harness and airlift you one at a time. You all ready?"
"Yeah, we're ready to get the hell out of here,” Brendan asserted, ignoring the whisper of aching sadness deep in his heart.
They managed to push the window open. A drift of snow fell into the room. Donning their mittens, they brushed the sill clear and climbed out, one at a time, into the freezing air.
Their gear hoisted over their backs, they waded through the snow toward the side of the building nearest the landing strip and waited, no one speaking. Within a few minutes the sound of the chopper was audible and in a moment it appeared against the blanket of blinding white snow that stretched as far as the eye could see.
It hovered overhead, the wind from the propellers stirring up the air and sending sharp needles of icy snow spraying into their faces. The door on the side of the helicopter opened and Brendan saw the winch, on which was wound thick, sturdy cable, a horse-collar rescue sling attached.
"You go first,” he shouted to Tuck, concerned about his bandaged head in the biting cold. Tuck nodded and moved forward. He passed the sling under his arms and gave a signal for them to raise him. Brendan watched him being lifted from the ground, unaware that tears had gathered in his eyes until they spilled, freezing at once along his cheeks. He told himself they were tears of joy.
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Chapter Twelve
"Brendan, you're not listening to me."
Brendan looked across the table, guilty as charged. “What? I'm sorry. I was thinking about something."
"Let me guess, the microbial composition of a deep ice core?” Lynn, like Brendan, was a researcher at the Kramer Institute of Science located in the University District of Seattle. Once engaged, they'd broken it off by mutual agreement the year before. They'd made a point of remaining friends, but since he'd returned from Antarctica, Lynn had been eager to rekindle the flames and Brendan, confused and lonely, had let her.
They were sitting in Brendan's kitchen over a breakfast of homemade pancakes, bacon and scrambled eggs Lynn had destroyed Brendan's kitchen preparing and for which Brendan had no appetite. He smiled distractedly. “Something like that."
"Well, I'd appreciate it if you listen to me when I'm talking. This is a big deal to me. Pratt thinks I'm going to get this grant, but without the proper backing from the NSF, there's no way it's going to happen."
Brendan tried to focus on what Lynn was saying. She was an attractive woman, petite, with thick, dark hair and large brown eyes. He had once thought he loved her, though he'd never, he now knew, connected with her.
Not on the gut level he'd connected with Tuck, where words weren't even necessary and more was shared through one kiss than all the conversation of a lifetime. Jesus, he missed Tuck. He missed Jamie too, he wouldn't deny it. Jamie, with that long hair flopping over into those baby blues, his mouth twisting up into a sardonic smile. He thought about the snake tattoo, the physical symbol of the bad boy behind the earnest research scientist persona they had all worn during the project's duration. Who really knew a person? Brendan hadn't even known himself.
"Damn it, you still haven't heard a word I'm saying. I could be talking to the wall. Now I remember why we broke up the first time.” Lynn's voice, normally a pleasing register, had risen to a piercing shrill.
Brendan looked at her again, suppressing a sigh. It had been a mistake to let her back into his life, or more accurately, into his bed. If he were honest, he knew why he'd done it. He had to see, to know if he'd been ruined by...
He wouldn't even let himself articulate the thought. There was nothing wrong with being gay. He'd done nothing wrong by experimenting with the guys. Of course, it would never have happened in a normal situation. It was the backdrop of danger, the possibility they might not be rescued in time, which had lowered his defenses, made him do things and accept things he would never have even considered in a normal situation.
That didn't make him gay, just human.
When he'd returned to Seattle, Lynn had been the one waiting for him at the airport. He'd expected Charlie, his best friend at Kramer, but Lynn, he'd later found out from Charlie, had convinced him to let her go in his stead. She had realized, she told Brendan, when she heard about his being stranded, that she had never stopped loving him and wanted to try again.
He kept her at arm's length for a few days, pleading exhaustion, and she'd been gracious enough. She'd also been persistent, showing up at his place night after night with casseroles in her arms and skimpy lingerie beneath her clothes. In his usual passive fashion, Brendan had eventually gone along, allowing her back into his bed after only a week of solicitous attention and courtship on her part.
At night when they made love and her mouth closed over his cock, he couldn't help but compare her talents to those of Tuck and Jamie. She was technically capable, but the passion, the fierce, lusty joy both men had brought to the task made her efforts seem clinical and even boring.
He knew that wasn't entirely fair. He didn't love her, so the experience had been empty, a mere physical exchange. But did that mean he loved the two men? Could a person fall in love in the space of a few days? No—surely it was just the excitement of something new, something forbidden, that had added the intense overlay of passion he'd felt in their arms.
With Lynn he felt guilty and strange, aware it was the memories of Tuck and Jamie playing through his mind that kept his cock hard in her mouth, rather than any real desire for her. When she lay back against his sheets, her pretty body bare for him, nipples erect, legs spread, he'd moved willingly enough over her, relieved he could still get and maintain an erection with a woman.
That proved he wasn't gay, didn't it?
He'd been right to refuse Tuck's overtures when he'd called the week before, suggesting the three of them get together. He could just imagine Tuck and Jamie, who lived and worked in Monterey and probably had already moved in together, the perfect gay couple. How could he compete with that? Why would he even want to? His life was here; his work was here.
It was better to put the bizarre events of that strange time behind him. He had to move on—return to the real world, focus on his research. It had hurt to hear the pain in Tuck's voice when he had had to explain that whatever had happened between them couldn't be real, that it was better to nip it in the bud. He'd done the right thing.
Lynn stood abruptly, pushing her chair back from the table so it nearly toppled. “I've got to go. You obviously don't give two shits about my grant.” Her voice was ripe with reproach. She glared at his plate, still heaped with the mound of eggs and pancakes she'd placed before him. “Or my breakfast.” He looked up at her, trying to muster some kind of emotion, waiting for the next sentence that was bound to follow, and did. “O
r me."
* * * *
"You're brooding about the phone call, aren't you?"
They were sitting on Jamie's front porch, shaded by tall cypress trees, enjoying the fresh sea air and the prospect of the weekend stretching out before them. Tuck was staring out at the Pacific and Jamie could tell by the look in his eyes he was thinking about Brendan.
"Yeah.” Tuck's voice was sad. “I can't believe he actually spouted that shit about soldiers comforting each other during trench warfare. Jesus. Do you think he really buys his own crap?"
Jamie shook his head, forcing down the irritation he felt. He missed Brendan too, far more than he'd expected, but Tuck's obsession was getting a little old. They still had each other, didn't they? Wasn't that enough?
It had been strange, though in retrospect not surprising, to watch Brendan metamorphose before their eyes back into the straight, uptight, closed-off man he'd been before the blizzard had blown his carefully constructed heterosexual world apart.
All three of them had been discreet, naturally, during their brief stay at McMurdo and their flight out to Christchurch. They hadn't had much chance to interact in New Zealand before being flown back to California.
Tuck had been kept overnight in a medical facility to check for concussion and see to his head wound, which had healed remarkably well. Brendan and Jamie were given separate rooms at the military compound, but they'd shared meals and leisure time together. When Jamie had tried to talk, even in the vaguest terms, about what had gone on between them, Brendan had shut down tighter than a clam, his discomfort painfully obvious.
There hadn't been seats for the three of them to sit together on the flight to California, which was just as well, as Jamie hadn't been in the mood for Brendan's monosyllabic responses and Tuck's wounded expression. He'd slept most of the twelve-hour flight, dreaming of his own bed, blue California skies, the ocean and the carne asada burritos and homemade tortillas at his favorite Mexican restaurant by the bay.
In the airport, they'd said their goodbyes, Brendan stiffly, Tuck with his heart on his sleeve. Brendan had a connecting flight to Seattle and Jamie, by that point, had been glad to see the back of him.
Tuck and he had been met by Landon Smith and Stuart Baker, both high up in the chain of command at Wexler. Jamie had been dropped home first, though he hadn't wanted to leave Tuck. Tuck had climbed out of the car with him and Jamie had almost begged him not to go.
"I'll call you as soon as I get home,” Tuck whispered, hugging him tight as their bosses watched impassively from inside the car.
True to his word, he had called, and came that very night to Jamie's cottage and to his bed. In the two months they'd been home, Tuck had barely returned to his small apartment near California State, where he taught science courses to augment his research salary at the institute.
Jamie could never have afforded his Carmel cottage by the sea on his paltry salary from Wexler. Happily, he had no mortgage. He'd inherited the place from his great uncle who had died two years before. Uncle Frank had been a closet homosexual until his seventies, when he finally came out and admitted what everyone already knew—his roommate of the last forty years was in fact his lover.
At least Uncle Frank, unlike Brendan, hadn't hidden the truth from himself. While Jamie was frustrated and saddened by Brendan's defection, which is what it felt like to him, he was most pissed off because of the way it hurt Tuck. Tuck, who had carried secret feelings for Brendan for nearly a year, was having a much harder time putting the guy out of his mind and heart.
"Let it go, Tuck.” Jamie kept his voice gentle as he touched Tuck's arm.
"Yeah, you're right. He's not worth the energy,” Tuck asserted. Jamie eyed him, aware Tuck hadn't finished expending that energy, but there wasn't much he could do about it. Tuck brightened suddenly. “Hey. Want your present now or later?"
Jamie beamed, warmth spreading through him. He hadn't mentioned that it was his twenty-sixth birthday—birthdays were for children. Nevertheless he felt absurdly happy that Tuck had somehow found out. “You got me a present? How did you know?"
"I'm a research scientist. The first night I came over I researched the driver's license you left on the bureau."
Jamie laughed and followed Tuck into the house. Tuck went to his backpack and took out a small oblong box wrapped in silver paper. He handed it to Jamie. Inside was an inch-long coiled snake of hammered gold.
"Wow, that's beautiful.” Jamie lifted the piece of jewelry from the box and held it up. Its emerald green eyes glittered in the light.
"It's one of a kind. I thought you could wear it on your gold chain. Want to try it on?"
"Sure.” Jamie reached for the chain he wore around his neck and released the clasp.
"Take off your shirt too.” Tuck's grin was sly. “We can see it better that way."
"One track mind,” Jamie teased, though he was happy enough to obey. Sex with Tuck had continued to be fantastic, especially lately. Tuck, rightly sensing Jamie's as yet mostly unexplored submissive tendencies, had become increasingly dominant during sex, with explosive results.
They walked into the bedroom so Jamie could see the effect in the mirror. Tuck stood behind him, admiring the snake that rested against his sternum, a jeweled twin to the snake tattoo on his hip.
"Now you get your second present."
Jamie grinned, assuming Tuck meant sex, but to his surprise, Tuck pulled another, smaller box out of his jeans pocket and held it out. It wasn't wrapped. Jamie opened the lid. Inside was a clear silicone cuff that covered a series of large pearls. He lifted it from the box and raised his eyebrows.
"Is this what I think it is?"
"And what would that be?” Tuck's grin was mischievous.
"A cock ring?” He squeezed it, feeling the hard pearls trapped in the rubbery silicone.
"You got it. It'll keep you nice and hard while I fuck that hot ass of yours."
Jamie's cock rose at once to the challenge. “Hey, I'm game."
"I knew you would be. Not that you have a choice in the matter. It's what I want."
Jamie felt the hot, slow surge of blood ripple through his veins. This always happened when Tuck assumed his Dom persona. Colors somehow became brighter, sensations more intense, desire heightened.
He stepped out of his jeans and underwear. Tuck held out his palm and Jamie dropped the cock ring onto it. Tuck knelt before him and gripped Jamie's erection in his large hand. “Since you're already hard, we'll just slip it over the shaft for now. Later I want to try it behind your balls."
Tuck tugged at the cock ring, pulling it wider. “That's the cool thing about this ring. It's stretchy, so it can fit over an erect cock. ‘Cause that's your perennial state, isn't it, Jamie?"
"Around you it is,” Jamie admitted with a grin. He watched as Tuck slipped the beaded ring along his shaft. When he had rolled it to the base, he let it go. The ring's grip was snug but not painful. It forced his cock to point straight out from his groin, the trapped blood engorging it even more than normal.
"Very nice.” Tuck stood back to admire his handiwork. Unable to resist, Jamie stroked his shaft, which was taut beneath his fingers.
Tuck leaned forward and slapped his hand away. “Uh-unh. That's my cock. You can look but you can't touch. Put your hands behind your back and don't move."
Jamie pretended to pout, though he loved every second of it. Tuck, so easygoing most of the time, was masterful in the bedroom. Tuck knelt in front of him and lovingly took him into his mouth, stroking his balls as he worshiped Jamie's cock until his knees threatened to buckle.
Tuck pulled back. “Don't you dare come. Not yet. I want to fuck you first.” He led Jamie to the bed. “Lie on your back so I can see that sexy cock ring and the look in your eyes when I shove my cock up your ass."
Jamie obeyed, his cock pointing straight to the ceiling.
Quickly Tuck shucked his clothing and slipped a condom in place on his own cock. He crouched on the bed between Jamie's legs
and pushed them up until Jamie's heels were touching his ass. He scooted down, spreading Jamie's ass cheeks.
Jamie sighed with pleasure as Tuck's tongue rimmed his asshole in a slow, sensual circle. After a moment the tongue was replaced with fingers made gooey with lubricant and after that, the head of his thick, long cock.
Tuck leaned up over him, balancing his weight on his hands as if he were going to do pushups. He moved forward, pressing his girth into Jamie's willing body, not stopping until their balls touched.
Lowering himself, he kissed Jamie on the lips as he thrust forward, deep in Jamie's tight passage. Jamie groaned against his mouth. His cock was massaged by Tuck's body as he moved back and forth inside of him.
At first Tuck fucked him slow and easy, lulling him into an erotic trance. “Feels so good,” Tuck whispered. “So good inside you. Yeah...” He began to move faster, his head back, the tendons on his neck standing out. Though it was only sixty degrees outside, the air in the room felt hot, Tuck's body like a furnace over him.
Tuck picked up the tempo, slamming into him, forcing a grunt from Jamie's lips with each thrust. He loved the feeling of being so full, so possessed by another person. It was especially intimate to have Tuck facing him, the angle permitting deep penetration.
He brought his arms around Tuck, pulling him closer. He bit Tuck's muscular shoulder to distract himself from ejaculating before Tuck did. Tuck began to tremble, his body covered in sweat, his breath a pant. Jamie could feel him coming inside him and he clenched his muscles as best he could from his position, milking Tuck's cock as he climaxed.
Tuck fell heavily against him, his cock sliding out of Jamie's ass. He pulled himself up over Jamie and then rolled beside him, using a tissue to remove and toss the spent condom. Turning back to Jamie, he grabbed his stiff erection. The ring at its base gripped him tight and his cock was nearly purple and very sensitive to the touch.
"Poor baby,” Tuck murmured in a low, sensual voice. “Your cock looks like it's going to explode if it doesn't get some attention."
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