The Cabin

Sleep overtook her and she drifted off, watching the firelight dancing on the ceiling. In the other room he lay as if poll-axed, snoring gently almost in tune with the wind in the trees outside.

Bang! She was jolted awake by a noise, which penetrated the mists of her slumber. Bang! The wall next to her shuddered, and one of her grandfather's books fell to the floor. It was a scraping noise against the roof that frightened her, until she reasoned that a branch must have come down from the old blue gum behind the cabin.

She got up and pulled aside the curtain, walking quickly across the main room past the sleeping form on the rug before the fire, which had burnt down to a pile of embers in the grate. Beside the front door there was always a pair of dusty rubber boots. She climbed into them, and pulled the old overcoat around her shoulders before opening the door and stepping out into the night.

As soon as she was on the verandah, wind gripped her with strong fingers and whipped her hair around her face. There were particles of ice in the air and they quickly gathered on her eyelashes and melted on her cheeks. Buffeted, she retrieved a flashlight from a pocket of the coat and switched it on. The beam of light caught the tiny flecks of snow on the wind, and she stepped carefully down the broad stairs to the ground.

The wind tugged at her coat, sending icy tendrils around her legs and raising goosebumps on her arms. She found the branch that had woken her, tangled in the guttering of the roof and scratching against the weatherboards outside her bedroom. She pulled on the branch, but it was stuck fast. Another heave, and the branch came down with part of the guttering attached. Shit! That was another job to be done when the weather cleared.

Muttering, she made her way back to the front of the house, climbed the slippery stairs and lets herself in. Once inside everything seemed quieter. She shrugged out of the coat and slipped her feet free of the heavy boots. The room was dark and cool, and she tiptoed past the man on the floor and made her way towards her bed.

She was about to climb in, when a noise stopped her. The man on the floor moaned in his sleep. She moved closer to him, and realised he was shaking with cold under the thin blanket. She felt unable to return to a warm bed and leave them there, but what could she do? The man was a stranger. But, he had seemed so nice and had not intruded upon her privacy thus far. She felt they were perhaps connected in some manner - two people alone and isolated in the storm.

Before she could think more on the matter, she bent down and gently shook his shoulder. He stirred and moaned again. She shook a little harder and he turned his head. Dark eyes searched her face.

'You're freezing here' she said, 'I can't sleep knowing that'.

He looked at her questioningly but said nothing.

'Come through' she said, 'There's room for us both under the covers. I realise I hardly know you, but I can't leave you here'.

'If you say so,' he mumbled, still half asleep. At her insistence he climbed to his feet, pulling the blanket around his shoulders, and allowed himself to be led through the curtain. She climbed into the large bed and moved over to the side against the wall, pulling back the cover and smoothing the sheet where he would lie.

The bed creaked as he lowered himself on to it, and lay down. She drew the cover up to his chin, and lay back herself. She was very conscious of his presence, the closeness of his body and the sound of his breathing. When he moved the mattress shifted beneath her and they almost rolled together in the middle.

'Well goodnight then' she said, and turned away towards the wall, heart racing and every part of the body as wide awake as it could be.

'Sweet dreams' he said softly, and seemed to drift away into the night as his breathing became deep and even.

Who knows how long she lay there listening to the wind outside, and her heart pounding in her ears. She could smell his body and his hair - a pleasant earthy smell of sweat and dust. And something more. Musky and dark.

The covers quickly warmed them, but the mattress had seen better days, and gravity - or was it something else - seemed to be pulling her towards the energy she could feel emanating from his body. He seemed to be deep in sleep. She rolled over and turned to face him, although the room was dark and she could barely make the outline of his shoulder. As if of its own volition, her hand crept across the sheet until her fingers touched his skin. She felt the hairs on his arm underneath her fingertips, and below the skin his muscles and sinews.

Her hand shook as she gently felt her way along his forearm, gliding over the surface of his body, fluttering as she reached the round hard muscle of his shoulder. She told herself that was enough, and she should pull back before he woke, but her heart throbbed in her chest and her head was light and dizzy. Almost in a dream, her fingertips moved across his collarbone and down onto the plane of his chest. Here, his hair grew thicker towards the centre above his singlet, and her fingers traced the hem around towards the other shoulder, before encountering his arm, which laid bent so that his palm rested against his cheek.

The voice inside her head said, 'Stop, enough', but still her hand moved, downward across his hard muscled stomach. 'No' said the voice, but as if drawn by a magnet her fingers dipped below his belly and spread across his hip. Suddenly, he moved, shuddered through the length of his body and a breath escaped his lips with a sigh. She jerked her hand away, blushing furiously in the dark and feeling like a little girl caught with a hand in the cookie jar. She giggled at the image, briefly remembering her grandfather scolding her for just that situation.

'You're a terror little Miss,' he chided her one day after finding her in the larder, 'if you can't resist temptation, one day you'll find yourself in a pickle'.

'How true' she thought wryly, 'I don't know this man - he could be an axe murderer on the way back from burying his victims!' But it seemed unlikely - he was so warm and there was gentleness in his eyes. She decided to roll over and try to sleep, but as she moved he moaned softly, stretched out his arm and laid it over her hip. She held her breath - she'd spent so much time looking, thinking about and now touching him but it seemed shocking that he would actually touch her.

She laid very still, half expecting, half hoping, half fearing his next move. But his hand remained resting on her thigh, and his breathing returned to its low rhythm - he even began to snore little! She couldn't decide whether to be indignant or relieved, but she enjoyed the warm weight of his arm on her body.

Time drifted on. The wind still rattled the timbers of the cabin and the temperature continued to drop. He seemed deeply asleep, but she felt restless, hot and flustered. She could feel the warmth from his body radiating across the space between them, and finally decided to push her luck.

More boldly than before, she reached across the dark warm space between them, her fingers quickly encountering his chest and sliding across his stomach. She found the gap between his shorts and singlet by the strong curly hairs that escaped from it. She gently pushed her fingers through the tangled forest, and smiled when she encountered the small dried clumps of his earlier eruption.

'I won't go any further, I won't', she muttered to himself, but suddenly her questing hand encountered a solid lump pushing up the material of his bed shorts. 'Oh my...,' she almost moaned as an animal instinct urged her to run her fingers along a surprisingly hard and well proportioned shaft which lay against his belly and jerked in time with his heart beat. The man remained still, his breathing deep and even as her naughty fingers tickled the shape of his manhood through the cloth.

She could feel her own arousal building again - a tightness across her breasts and the fullness in her vulva. She realised she was panting like a cat seeing the bird almost between its claws. Her blood thundered in her ears, as her fingertips encountered a moist patch at the tip of his rod. 'Oh my God! look at you, feeling up a complete stranger in the middle of the night in grandpa's old bed - who would have thunk it?'

It seemed no one else was having second thoughts - the man still appeared to sleep, but his manhood was obviously pleased with the attention it was getting and wide awake.

'In for a penny...' She sighed and gave in to her desire. Her hand found the opening in his shorts, snaked its way inside and encountered a jungle of coiled hair and body heat. She circled his rod with her fingers, and with some assistance from the other hand, freed it from his clothing. It throbbed rampant against her fingers, and wept slippery tears of desire. She could barely wrap her fist around the column of warm flesh, as it jutted across the mattress towards her.

With one hand she stroked his hard cock, with the other she tickled the lips of her vagina through her knickers. In her mind, what little of it was not absorbed by the heat of the organs at her fingertips, she replayed the vision of his penis spraying its creamy salute earlier that evening, and imagined it doing the same inside her own hot tunnel. The sensations, the heat, the visions melded into one. She was slick with juice, both hands coated with a warm fluid of arousal.

As she stroked his fleshy organ; the man - still seemingly asleep - began to undulate his hips towards her, his breathing becoming sharper, more urgent. Unconsciously, he was thrusting his shaft between her fingers, pushing through her tight fist as if penetrating another of her bodily orifices.

Her own sex was blossoming and dripping like an orchid in a tropical forest, her fingers spreading its petals and stroking its stamen until she wanted to scream. She turned her head and sank her teeth into the pillow, a guttural moan surging in her throat and sweat beading on her brow.

Surely he must be awake. How could he be asleep when every nerve in her body was dancing with a wicked heat? Surely he must want her - she felt her mind becoming unhinged, overwhelmed with hot sensations, hot juices and a burning desire for something more.