“They’ll be here soon,” Ettore whispered, more to himself than to me as I began to scoop water from the trough, “the ash must be dispersing if the sun isn’t as reddish.”
Ettore, I could tell, was knowledgeable about many things: wine, Jin Woo, Renai society. But he hadn’t spent enough time around here to have the key bits of instinct that Oskar and I had.
“Maybe, but not tonight, tonight there’s a storm coming.”
Ettore raised an eyebrow, but I knew I was right. The wind was picking up, and the air felt heavy and tacky in my mouth. We would have a storm tonight. When we made it back down to the cabin, Oskar was already trying to fill the cracks in the wooden walls (my tearing out boards hadn’t been exactly helpful, but we had managed to wedge them back in place).
I didn’t have to tell him about the storm; he already knew.
“When do you think the storm will hit?” I asked him, placing the buckets of water near the stove.
Oskar took a large sniff of the air.
“I think in an hour or so, it’s coming in fast. I sent Jin Woo and Bartosz to gather a ton of wood. But maybe the stormwill clear out some of the smoke and ash, and we'll be able to be picked up.”
We all had the urgency, the feeling that we should be doing things to prepare for the storm, but there was only so much you could do on the island. We finished filling the holes in the walls, brought in probably way too much firewood, covered the water trough with big pine boughs and rocks to make sure that it didn’t get any dirt or debris in it during the storm, and brought the dried sheep meat in. But that was all there was. My fingers itched to do more, so much so that it was almost a relief when the storm rolled in, ending the possibility of any more preparation.
Storms in western Norway were usually sedate, sheets of heavy, but muted rain pounding down and quieting the rest of the world; this storm wasn’t like that. Winds howled; the crashing of waves against the rocks on the beach was loud. I could even hear the creaking of the trees on the island, leaning this way and that, their branches smashing together.
The only light in the cabin came from the bright fire; all five of us were sitting around it, either staring into it or gazing at the walls as if we could see the storm outside if we looked hard enough.
I tossed a stick into the fire and sighed, slumping over slightly.
“This kinda blows. I feel like I, we, should be doing something, but I’m just not sure what.”
The wicked smile on Ettore’s grew wide, the shadows of the fire dancing across his face.
“I know what we could do,” he said, waggling his eyebrows suggestively.
“Horndog,” Jin Woo said, but pushed up until he was on all fours and reached out a hand to grip Ettore’s face and catch him in a bruising kiss. Ettore met him with equal force as hegroaned into Jin Woo, his spare hand reaching to grip my waist, squeezing me with every undulation of Jin Woo’s hips as he began to grind into Ettore.
Like before, the heat began to rise in my cheeks and in my core, my face flushing, my hunger piqued. Jin Woo pulled off Ettore and, without any warning, turned and kissed me instead, just as desperate, but a measure more gentle as he sat backwards, pulling me with him. Apparently, he liked me that way, in his lap, under his purview. Ettore began bite a line down my neck,
“Do you want thispiccola salvatrice?” he said, as he laved his tongue over the stings of his bites, “would you like us, all of us, to worship you like the goddess you are this evening? Would you like us inside you and on top of you?”
He was all business, his light eyes almost glowing in the dim of the cabin.
“Yes,” I said, my voice half-breaking as I spoke.
“Good,” he said, and then paused, “amore, are you on birth control? As much the thought of you bred and full for us is…delightful,” I could feel Jin Woo jerk in seeming agreement under me, “now is not the time.”
“I have an IUD,” I replied, my eagerness causing my words to run together.
“Good," he said again, half humming as he finished the word, “Bartosz, come.”
And he did, in a moment, Bartosz was kissing the other side of my neck, fingers undoing the couple of buttons at the top of my shirt. Ettore and Bartosz’s hands found their way underneath my shirt, Ettore drawing long sweeping lines over my skin, Bartosz cupping and massaging my breasts over my bra, making me press up into his hands. Ettore pushed Bartosz away and pulled me up off of Jin Woo’s chest. In smooth movement, he pulled my shirt over my head, and the fire turnedhis loose curls into licks of flame as he kneeled right in front of the fire.
With a smallsnick,my bra was undone, and Bartosz was pulling it slowly down my arms. Jin Woo pulled me back into him, and I could feel the full expanse of his bare skin, his strong thighs, the muscles of his chest, his cock twitching against me. I rolled my hips back experimentally, watching over my shoulders as his pupils dilated even more.
“Don’t move,” Ettore ordered, and the command was so forceful that both Jin Woo and I froze, looking at Ettore as he sat back on his heels, as he took us in, his nakedfiancéand me, bare-chested, pressed against him.
“I’m going to paint this moment one day, “ he said, reaching out and flicking one of my nipples, causing me to quiver, “I’m going to hang it up in our entryway, and everyone who comes into our home will see the gloriousness of you two.”
A growl rumbled up from the depths of Jin Woo’s chest, and he grabbed my hips and thrust into me. I knew that if my pants were off, he would have speared me, and that knowledge only made me groan louder.
“No,” Jin Woo said darkly, “no one sees her like this but us.”
Ettore sighed but had a darkly contented look on his face.
