by Naomi Niles
“Are you sure about this? I mean, I wouldn’t want to tempt you.”
“I think I can handle it, if you can.”
I thought about it and even though I knew I was lying, I nodded. “I can handle it.”
Wrapping the blankets over us securely and tucking them in on the side, he created a warm cocoon for just the two of us. I leaned into him, careful not to press into the areas that I knew he had been burned. I was in a blissful, warm world at that moment. I had no desire to ever leave it. His arm lay over me and despite his injuries, he made me feel very safe and protected. Snuggled into this secure ambience, I fell asleep.
I was being roused from my sleep by what felt like a hand stroking my hip. I lay very still, gathering my memories to figure out where I was and what was going on. In the pitch black of the power outage, New York City was as blind as being in the middle of the desert without a moon. I could hear sirens around me and knew that the only lights to be found were beams from the cars, buses, and taxis that were still scurrying around like ants in a colony.
My attention was drawn once again to the hand stroking my hip. I murmured a soft, purr-like sound, indicating that it felt wonderful. I wasn’t sure whether Sean had been lying awake the entire time or whether he had just awakened.
“Are you okay?” I asked him. “Do you need something?”
“Yes, I do. I need you.”
My heart began to pound as his words penetrated the sleepy fog that held my brain captive. That same, sleepy fog enhanced each stroke of his hand as it electrified the nerves of my skin. I lay there frozen, although I wanted to turn toward him. He seemed to read my thoughts. His hand reached over me and gently turned me to my back. It now trailed down my leg, to the place where my pajama top and bottom met. He seemed to like the feel of the fabric. I knew for a fact that I did. His stroking was exciting me and my nipples had hardened.
His hand moved upward now, as if it knew that my nipples were responding. His fingertips found the first, the one closest to him. He rubbed tiny circles through the fabric around my erect nubs. I heard him groan softly, deep within his throat. He did the same to my other breast and this seemed to be his undoing. His hand moved to the center now and opened the fabric-covered button that held my pajama top closed. I laid very still, barely breathing. While I was chilled from the lack of heat in the room, the skin that he touched was burning. One by one, his fingers freed me from the confines of the silk, and one more thrust peeled my bottoms off and they disappeared somewhere beneath the heavy covers.
The hand returned, as did the petting, although this time the fingers trailed through the soft hair at the apex of my thighs. This action sent firestorms of desire through me. I knew it wasn’t so much the touch as it was the man who was touching me. It had to be causing him some pain to move thusly, and yet he was doing it… for me. My legs parted of their own volition. His fingertips lost no time in discovering this and began to penetrate the petals of my womanhood.
I reached out, my hand on a quest for hardness. It lay against my hip, willing and throbbing for attention. I folded my fingers around its diameter, my touch seeking his most sensitive areas. With only the barest of touches, my finger stroked these spots and the result was that I felt his body stiffen and heard him groan. We lay that way, side by side, for a very long time. There is a special quality about the sense of touch when the world is blind to you. You navigate entirely by instinct, attuned to a breath or the gentle jerk of a muscle that tells you that you have discovered treasure. We explored one another’s bodies and there was considerable contentment in this.
Sensitive to his injuries, I didn’t want him to strain himself. I felt the tip of his penis and the beginning of his cum. I coated my fingertips with it and then dipped those fingers into my own honeypot. The combination was a sweet liqueur of our own fluids and I tasted it with my lips and tongue and then shared it with him. This seemed to awaken yet another sense, a primal desire that is triggered by taste shared between two lovers. I heard him beginning to pant with need. I kissed his fingertips once more and then began to slide my way beneath the covers, downward toward his feet.
Despite the chill in the room, I emerged from the bottom of the blankets and turned to face his feet. I took one in each of my hands and massaged his soles, and then with my fingers, the knuckles of his toes. I sucked on those digits and then began running my tongue up the inside of his legs. They parted with invitation and I continued upward. My breasts lay against the tender skin on the inside of his legs. I kissed the backs of his knees, each in turn. I continued my upward movement until my hands were at his hips. My finger feather touched his skin there and then pressed into his flesh and gripped his hip bones. I pulled him downward, down to the foot of the bed and then took his hands so that he sat upright.
With languor born within desire, he cooperated and sat looking down at me in the darkness. I could feel his breath and tilted my head upward so that I might breathe his own air. With tenderness, I parted his legs gently and whispered to him, “Watch me.” Even though he could barely see the outline of my head, I knew that he could see me with his memory of what I looked like. Slowly as I might, I lowered my head until the tip of my tongue touched the tip of his penis. He groaned again and whispered my name. I pulled back slowly and then lowered my mouth upon him again, this time taking him deeply into my throat. I could feel his back strain as he wanted to lie flat, but I shook my head and whispered, “Stay with me.”
His hands reached for me, wanting to touch my flesh as I sucked upon his. He reached for my breasts and although they were full and high, he was so consumed with what I was doing to his penis that he couldn’t focus on touching me. I reached up and patted the back of his hand, telling him to just sit still and enjoy, not to worry about me. I believe he needed that because he leaned back using his arms to support himself. I realized he was still hurting greatly. For this reason, if for none other, I would make love to him this night.
I fed off his hard manhood, letting my tongue and the roof of my mouth become a temple for his throbbing. He was making me hot and wet at the same time. I reached down and fingered some of my own juices to coat his flesh dagger with. His hips were gently moving from side to side and this caused him to rotate within my mouth. In and out at an ever increasing pace, I sucked him until I heard his breathing rapidly increase, and with a cry that came from somewhere deep in his chest, he exploded into my mouth and down my throat.
It was honey to my senses. When it flowed no longer, I licked him, cleaning him with the sponge of my tongue. His hands were reaching for me, the rest of his body needing the warmth of my skin, and so I crept upward, careful not to touch him unduly. Eventually I lay against him and he reached toward me with the intent of pleasuring me. I gently shook my head in the negative and whispered, “There will always be time for me. Tonight was for you, my hero.”
The next morning, the sun awakened us. There was frost on the windows and the wind blew snow into tall drifts against the back of the building. They looked like waves, an Arctic version of Waikiki. We still had no power and were cold, despite one another’s body heat. While Sean wore a cape of heavy blankets, I put on layers of clothing and three pair of socks. I even wrapped a warm scarf around my neck, trying to prevent the loss of heat from my body. Sean dressed downstairs and then called to me to join him. I followed his call and rapidly ran down the steps, trying to generate some heat within my body.
“I think I’ve got this figured out,” he told me. “There is this old, clawfoot bathtub that we were going to haul away. It’s made of cast-iron and will make an excellent fire pit. We’ve got plenty of lumber here from the walls we were building. I’m going to start a fire after I drag the tub into the center of the bay. If you want to give me a hand, I think it will take the two of us. That thing is pretty heavy.”
It did, indeed, take the both of us. In fact, at one point we had to put a thin block of wood beneath each of the feet so as to make it slicker to drag over the c
oncrete floor. Our combined efforts worked smoothly, however, and as Sean stacked lumber and lit a fire, I ran back upstairs to grab a couple of cans of soup and a large saucepan. I also took bowls and spoons and the rest of the coffee that had sat overnight in the coffee maker. When I got downstairs, the fire was already warming the room nicely. Sean found a grate that had covered one of the service vents and laid this across the top rim of the bathtub.
Excited, I ran back upstairs and brought down more pots and coffee cups. We warmed up the soup and the coffee and felt as though we were camping as we sat close together before the fire and sipped our food and drink. I was really glad that I had just stocked the kitchen. I thought about the people at the mission and how there was never a surplus in reserve for them. Would they even open the mission? Would those people find anywhere to get out of the cold? I felt selfish for having all the space, a man who was clearly in love with me, and enough food to last us a month. Other than the darkness at night, there was almost no alteration in our normal routine, except for the fact that my computer was useless without a charge.
We talked about Sean’s life leading up to the point he had come to New York City. He had already shared some of it with me but there was so much more about the boy who became a man that I needed to know. I craved him, like an addiction. I wanted to know everything about him. He seemed to feel the same way.
He asked me about my mother and what my family had been like growing up. “I suppose, with the exception that we lived in a very big city, it’s pretty much like anyone’s family when you’re growing up. My mother never worked, but stayed home and her job was raising me and looking after my dad. There were many tense times when he was working and we would see or hear about fires and know that his company was responding. My mom used to invent a game when dad was in these situations; she would bring out paper and crayons and encourage me to draw pictures of places and things that I loved. It was her way of reinforcing the positives in the middle of tense and emotional times. At one point, I began writing words beneath the pictures. That was when I first realized that I like to tell stories. When at last my dad would come through the door, I would show him my stories and he would praise me and take me into his arms for a hug.
“The older I became, the more involved I was with journalism. I didn’t just watch the news; I really watched the reporters and listened to how their reports were constructed. It was well beyond the five W’s; and more importantly, there was an integrity to telling the truth and reserving their personal opinion so as to tell the story in an unbiased manner. To me, that was the mark of a true professional. Nowadays you have bloggers, people who are nothing more than amateur writers who think their opinions count for something. They do no research beyond the Internet itself, so in a sense, the Internet is nothing more than a huge echo chamber of words. I wanted more for myself than that.”
“I read everything you wrote in that series about the firemen. It was good. Really good.” Sean lavished praise on me. “I knew when I read it that you were doing what you were meant to do. If everyone could make a living doing what they were meant to do, the entire world would be filled with very happy people.”
“I agree. But that’s a hard thing to find, especially if there are others trying to convince you that what you want for yourself is not good enough. Most people are focused on money. Money doesn’t mean anything except more troubles if you’re not happy.”
He hugged me, wrapping the blanket from his shoulders around the both of us. “I’m glad we see so much the same. Are you sorry about last night?”
I waited a moment before answering. “No,” I shook my head slowly. “Not in the way you might think. Being with you was an erotic, sublime experience. I sometimes want to crawl right inside your skin. The only part I’m sorry about is that it took a blizzard and a shutdown of the city to give us the privacy we needed to do that. It seems unthinkable that two adults cannot spend time with one another without consequences. I want to be with you always, Sean. I know I can’t ask you to give up being a firefighter any more than you could ask me to give up my writing. That said, it makes me wonder how our minds work; how we build that hierarchy of the things that we consider most important in our life.”
I saw him nodding in my periphery. He leaned over, picking up another length of 2 x 4 and adding it to the fire. The pine wood burned quickly and I was glad that it wasn’t treated, or we could not have burned it inside without ventilation. Even as it was, the room was becoming smoky. If it weren’t for the fact that firehouses were built to ventilate smoke that had accumulated on their trucks and equipment, it would’ve been difficult to stay in there. The shape of the building itself formed a sort of chimney, with roof vents that allowed the smoke to escape.
At that exact moment, the cell phone in my pocket began to buzz. I pulled it out; it was my dad. I knew if I didn’t answer it he would let nothing stop him from coming over and I couldn’t let that drive Sean out into the cold. I motioned to Sean to be quiet and I answered the phone. “Hi, Dad. Is the power out where you are?”
“Gwyne, are you all right?”
“I’m just fine, Dad. Naturally, it’s a little chilly in here but I’ve got plenty of clothes and blankets and I’m doing just fine. As long as I keep my door shut and stay in my bed, the room stays decently warm. I had just stocked up on food, so there’s really nothing I need. In fact, I might be in better shape than you are.”
“Not really. We’ve got a generator running. Would you like me to send one of the men over to pick you up and bring you here?”
“No, Dad, I’m fine, really. If it gets too miserable, I’ll give you a call and you can send someone over. In the meantime, I’m taking advantage of this to get caught up on my sleep. I even have a spiral notebook and I’m doing some writing. The doors are all locked and I don’t think there are many criminals wandering around in this blizzard anyway. So just take care of the people in your district, Dad, and take care of yourself. I’m just fine, and if I need anything, I’ll let you know. In the meantime, I’m going to turn my phone off to preserve the power that’s left.”
“That’s a good idea, honey. I just wanted to check on you. Turn your phone off now and promise me you’ll call if you start to feel too chilled.”
“Got to go now, Dad. I promise.” With that, I disconnected the line and turned off the phone. Sean quickly checked the power remaining on his own and realize his phone still held a full charge. We were probably better off than seventy-five percent of the people in the city. After all, many of them lived stories above the street and not all of them could climb staircases. The elevators wouldn’t run without electricity and so they were trapped in their little boxes above the street. Perhaps this was theme for yet another series of human-interest stories I could write. But for the moment, I was content to just be with Sean where prying eyes could not see and we were not in danger of being discovered. In my opinion, the world couldn’t get much better than that.
We decided we had better conserve our fuel, saving it for cooking and for the night when the temperature could drop even further. Sean let the fire burn out and eventually we went back upstairs to my apartment and locked ourselves into the bedroom. Sean tacked some extra blankets over the windows to keep out the cold. This also caused the room to be dark and just as I told my father, I crawled into the bed to catch up on some sleep. The only thing he didn’t know was that Sean was sleeping with me.
Not only was he with me, but he was often in me. Our bodies were like magnets, unable to repel one another. We made love for hours, pausing only long enough to nap until we could gather our strength once again. It was pure bliss. By the end of the afternoon, we gathered some more food from the kitchen, primarily from the refrigerator, knowing that these were perishables. We went back down into the bay and built another fire. Laughing, we pretended we were camping and as I fried bacon and two, small steaks with a side order of fried potatoes, we toasted one another with glasses of milk and began to tell ghost stories
around our fire. Looking back, I can honestly say that the night of the great blizzard will always remain the best day and two nights of my entire life.
Chapter 18
The return of power woke us up that night. We had forgotten to turn off the lamps and suddenly the apartment was alive with light and sound. It was as if the entire city heaved a huge sigh of relief. A few people were outside, beating pots with heavy spoons in celebration. The storm had passed and a full moon looked down upon us. This was the time when we were in the better place to be; not in the middle of a lonely desert.
Sean and I finished the night together and then by mutual, yet unspoken, consent, the next morning he returned to his downstairs abode. As I connected to the Internet and began retrieving emails and answering questions, I could hear him downstairs with a hammer and a chop saw. All I could think of was that he was using our firewood. I wanted so badly to run down, to tell him to stop, to turn off the power at the box and let us return to the intimacy of our darkened love nest. Then common sense told me that we couldn’t go there. Yes, we had been safe enough when the city was unmoving. But it was only a matter of time before we were found out.
I dressed warmly, including boots, and set off down the street with my camera. I wanted to write some feature articles about the city and how the storm had affected it. People were huddled together even still as their buildings were slow to heat up once again.
It wasn’t long, however, before the adrenaline-charged atmosphere of survival lost its strength and the city’s people once again became apathetic and competitive. The streets were still clogged with a heavy snow and plows found it difficult to navigate them. There were stuck cars everywhere and I found it humorous that the only vehicles that managed to get down the streets were the police officers who were writing tickets. The city never missed its chance to make a buck.
