“Blake Jensen,” I muttered. “What kind of fucking name is that?” Blake sounded hoity-toity, which was exactly how he looked. Looking all cute in his fancy duds and that cherub-like face of his. Preppy and boyish were two of my favorite features on a guy, and the snotty man somewhere outside had that look down to perfection with his fancy clothes and slender build. I would’ve preferred a better view of his body under all those layered clothes, but his personality seemed wrapped tighter than his gear so I doubted I’d get that wish.
“Fuck!” I hollered, noticing the deck rail was covered ten or more inches high with snow. Flipping off the interior lights so my eyes could see into the forest, I studied the surrounding woods. White. Everything was white with the exception of the dark undersides of tree branches as they bent to support the weight of such a heavy snowfall. The sight would normally be incredible to behold but I knew there was a person a quarter of a mile away who had come into the woods severely unprepared.
To make the situation a million times worse, he was the kid of my boss. My training said I should use the satellite phone and call headquarters, but it was Memorial Day weekend and only emergency responders would be available. Essentially, that was me. I was the emergency responder at this elevation and this far removed from the closest city big enough to have a qualified rescue team.
Pulling on a hoodie over a sweatshirt to fight the freeze, I pulled the door in and noticed a foot-high wall of snow at my feet where the door had been. The flakes were coming down and showed no signs of diminishing any time soon. The previous year was a dry year and the snowpack had disappeared before I arrived for the summer, but this season had been cooler and much wetter than then.
The Cascade Range was known for measuring snow in feet, not inches. As part of the Pacific mountain system of western North America, the Cascades extended for more than seven hundred miles from Lassen Peak in northern California, through Oregon and Washington, and into southern British Columbia, Canada. Many peaks exceeded ten thousand feet high including Mount Rainier at more than fourteen thousand feet and located just south of Seattle. That was why the surrounding areas that bordered the west side of Seattle for miles north and south had several ski resorts.
This storm was packing, the way I liked my men, and three or four, hell, maybe even six feet of snow, wasn’t out of the realm of possibility this time of year. It was late spring but we were far above freezing level, and the massive rainstorm that had Seattle socked in for the holiday weekend was in the form of snow where I was located.
Leaning out the door I tried to swipe at the thermometer to clear the face. Even if I could reach the metal circle with glass face, I wasn’t close enough to read the temperature, so I retreated and shut the door to keep the snow out. Two pairs of snow boots were on the other side of the perfectly square room, unused thus far since my arrival a few days ago. I hadn’t thought there’d be an occasion to need them this close to summer, but here I was sliding my bare feet into a pair.
I trudged back to the door, grabbing the binoculars on the way. The temperature read eleven degrees. “Jesus!” I exhaled, feeling my training beginning to kick in. “You won’t survive this, Mr. Friendly,” I whispered, focusing my binoculars and scanning the land below me. I knew he was in a clearing about a quarter of a mile to my south side. The usually visible trail had long ago disappeared by foot-high frozen powder but I knew the tree line well enough to locate him if needed. If needed? Get dressed, mister. It’s rescue time.
CHAPTER ELEVEN: Blake
Ifelt better wrapped in the tarp and was certain I was warming up, but I noticed that I was getting drowsy as well. Was it my body reacting to the cold or exhaustion? I felt the symptoms of both. The day had certainly been long with the drive up and the hike, so just being tired was possible. I assumed things were looking up for me after the shivering ended and a deceptive warmth I couldn’t figure the source of invaded my body. I tried to wiggle my toes but couldn’t tell if I was succeeding at the task. I tried again. Nothing. My hands were trapped at my sides because I’d rolled myself into a nature burrito and couldn’t reach my toes.
I knew the symptoms of hypothermia, but for some reason wasn’t alarmed even though my fingers felt fuzzy like I’d slept on them. I fumbled with my hands to wake them up. One, two, three, four, and five, I counted, tapping each fingertip against my thigh where my hand was lodged. Now the left one. Nothing. Try again, Blake. I decided to rest a bit more and check again later. Where was I? How’d I get here?
“Wrap your arms around me, Mark,” I mumbled. “I’m cold, baby.”
“I am,” he spoke. I sensed him behind me, snuggled against my back, the place I loved him to be. Big spoon to my little spoon. “You get out of bed this time, baby. It’s your turn to turn the heat higher,” I whined.
Suddenly Mark was staring at me from across the room. I startled and jumped at seeing him there, white eyes glowing through a fog in the room. I focused on the skin on my back, trying to sense him. He’d just been there, hadn’t he? “Baby?” I asked, stretching my arm out to him. “Come back to bed. I’m cold.”
“No,” he whispered. “You come to me, Blake. Things are beautiful here, and I want to show you everything.”
“I miss you,” I murmured, hearing my voice echoing from a faraway bright light.
A hand reached out to my extended one. From somewhere beyond my view, Mark’s soft voice kept repeating the same words. “Come closer, baby. Come closer.”
CHAPTER TWELVE: Dirk
Iwasn’t exactly sure how I managed to get the unconscious man up more than a hundred steep steps that were covered in inches of snow. I’d found Blake Jensen immobilized in his blue tarp, looking like a bright-blue human popsicle. At first the snow-covered lump resembled a fallen log, but a crumpled-up sleeping bag hanging from a low branch proved he was near. After unrolling him and finding him naked and practically catatonic, I did my best to wrap him in my jacket, lifted him over my shoulder, and began the hike back to the fire tower. I’d rest at the base of the steps before attempting the journey to the top.
His light-brown hair had crystals frozen to clumps of strands, and his lips were damn near as blue as the tarp he’d wisely wrapped around himself. This man was an experienced hiker if he’d known enough to attempt that lifesaving trick. The question though was why would he put himself in such grave danger in the first place? He had to have known about the threat of a spring snowstorm. No qualified outdoors person ever went to these locations without being armed with a weather report and backup provisions. He came with no provisions from what I could see and it was clear that he had no backup plan either.
Once at the top of the tower and inside the warmth of the cabin, I wrapped him in blankets, laying him on the bed. He was too thin. Slender hips and lean legs supported a narrow waist and torso. He still had the definition of a man who’d worked out in the past though. His chest was small but had the slightest of pectoral muscles still visible. An eight pack was unavoidable by this point with him being so skinny. He did have biceps but they were harder to make out considering his nonresponsive state.
There wasn’t an electric blanket in the cabin and giving him warm liquids was impossible in his current condition, so I stripped down naked and moved behind him and inside the two blankets, my arms encircling him in a bear hug. I kept moving my legs and arms over his bare skin to invigorate his circulation. “I’ve got you,” I whispered, cradling his head with one hand.
My unconscious guest was small and fit into me perfectly. I liked having him curled up in a fetal position and wrapped in my protection. The urge to be that for him came out of nowhere, and the guilt of feeling my urges and emotions was embarrassing. Pushing the sexual thoughts from my mind was automatic, but still I’d noticed them. How long had it been since I’d felt anything resembling attraction? This was not the time for longing. Had he been conscious, and knowing how he’d been earlier when I met him, he’d be horrified at me being so close.
I gazed at the nonstop snow as it drifted past the many windows in the tower. A reflected glow was bouncing from the ground and back to the clouded sky, returning to the earth and repeating the endless cycle throughout the night. The storm was a quiet beauty that continued to pile feet of snow around us. Blake’s breathing had become deeper and slower as his body relaxed the war it had been waging when he warmed. He was motionless and very still, but with my rescue training experience I was convinced I’d found him before frostbite and other symptoms like memory loss and neural damage had set in.
Our embrace felt natural and comforting as our breathing synched. I shouldn’t have been joking at a time like that but I preferred Blake Jensen like this. I was close to dozing off when his hand moved to my wrist, encircling it as he pushed backward against my flaccid penis. He moaned and his entire body tremored involuntarily until his movement subsided once again. My once flaccid cock had sprung to life and it was all I could do to force myself to remember he was under my care and not capable of a sexual response. The immediate feeling of disgust for myself caused a quick deflation of the violating organ.
Like him, I fell into slumber, moving further and further down sleep highway.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Blake
Blinding laser beams of sunlight reflecting off of glass woke me. The arm I’d placed across my eyes was no longer keeping the daylight invader away. There was maybe a thirty second window of time while my eyes adjusted to the incredibly bright surroundings. I mentally accounted for both of my arms before realizing a third appendage was under my neck and a fourth strewn across my waist, holding my stomach in a gentle caress.
If it was a physical possibility in the least, I swear I jumped completely out of my skin in shock. I sucked in a quick lungful of air and yelped as I scrambled to disentangle myself from something, someone. “Oh, fuck,” I yipped, falling out of the twin-size bed and finding myself naked on the floor, scrambling for anything to cover my flesh with.
“Huh? What?” a slumbering giant of a voice mumbled. “Huh?” he repeated, kicking blankets from his bare skin. I sat up just in time to spot morning wood that was attached to a body I normally would have jumped back into bed for. The erection was of the sort that any red-blooded homo wouldn’t have been able to look away from.
