Polar Reaction (4 page)

He’d read of the terror that could overcome men trapped in this kind of situation, blackness falling over an outer world of icy desolation, an inner world of despair. He picked up the bottle, horrified to see his hand shaking as he poured.

Brendan placed his hand over Tuck’s and squeezed. When he spoke, his voice was gentle. “It’s okay, Tuck. We’re gonna be okay. I promise.”

Tuck looked gratefully at Brendan, desperately wanting to believe him. His heart clutched as he lost himself in those gray green eyes. He looked down at Brendan’s hand, the fingers long and slender over his own larger hand, the skin pale in contrast to his.

Brendan, following his gaze, snatched his hand away, his face flushing to a dull red. He drank the rest of his whiskey in a gulp and set the glass down with a thunk against the wood.

Is this how it’ll always be?
Tuck wondered with something near despair.
Each of us dancing on the edge of our emotions, neither with the courage to confront the other or even our own feelings?

Maybe if he said something, anything, to let Brendan know how much he cared. Maybe all Brendan needed was an opening, some gentle coaxing, to rekindle the magic they’d once shared, however briefly.

Tuck poured himself another inch of whiskey and drank half. In a strange way he was grateful for the blizzard, grateful for the reprieve from the very real probability of losing Brendan again. Now at least he had a chance to make his feelings known, something he should have done at the outset of the project.

And then there was Jamie. What the hell had just happened back there? They couldn’t seem to be alone for more than a minute without groping each other. Where did Jamie fit into this erotic stew of confusion?

He stared down at the amber liquid, trying to frame what he wanted to say to Brendan. He didn’t want to pressure him, or embarrass him any more than he already seemed to be. He just wanted Brendan to know how he felt. He
needed
him to know.

“Brendan, I have something to—” he began.

“It’s okay,” Brendan cut him off, jumping up from the table. “It’s none of my business.”

Momentarily confused by the unexpected response, Tuck paused. A noise behind them distracted him and he turned to see.

“Hey, there you are.” Jamie, in fresh jeans, wearing a grin on his handsome face, looked from Brendan to Tuck and then at the bottle of whiskey sitting between them on the table. “Am I missing the party?”

Brendan stared down at his hands, realizing he was holding the back of the chair in a white-knuckled grip. Letting go, he sat, forcing himself to be calm and rational. He surveyed the two men, wondering if this was when they’d tell him they were involved in a homosexual affair. How would he react? Nonchalant? Outraged? Jealous? He honestly didn’t know. Seeing Jamie eye the bottle, he rose and retrieved another juice glass from the cabinet.

“If we’re going to be here more than a few days,” Tuck observed, “maybe we better ration what’s left.” There were only a few inches of liquor left in the bottle.

Jamie smiled slyly. “Happily, that won’t be necessary.”

“Why’s that?” Tuck turned toward him. Brendan saw something flash between them—the secret understanding of…no, he refused to even think it. He looked away.

Jamie continued. “On the bottom shelf of the pantry in the far right corner there’s a box. Inside that box is a special stash. Gordon told me about it—ten bottles of liquor—scotch, vodka, gin, tequila, all kinds of stuff. Said he was leaving it for next spring, when the project resumes. He swore me to secrecy. But I think, under the circumstances, he would forgive us if we, uh, borrowed a bit. We can always buy more later, when we get back to the States…”

The last words seemed to catch and die in Jamie’s throat. The roar of the gale outside, which until that moment had almost faded into white noise, seemed to magnify, its howl menacing.

They were all quiet, listening to the sounds of a tempest raging. Both Tuck and Jamie looked tense. Jamie especially had a wild look in his eyes. Brendan forgot his self-absorbed pondering. He was the lab team leader, the oldest and the most experienced field scientist of the three. Whatever his own personal longings and confusion, he needed to rise to the occasion and offer what support and comfort he could to the others.

“I’m sure he’ll forgive us.” Brendan smiled at Jamie. “Why don’t you select our next bottle of poison?” Turning to Tuck, he added, “How about a game of cards?”

Chapter Four

Jamie found a bottle of vodka and brought it to the table. He was grateful to Brendan for pulling him back from the brink. Faced with the stark realization they might
not
make it back to the States, he’d very nearly lost it.

If he’d had his choice, he would rather climb into the one of the beds with Tuck and just have sex until they were rescued, but with Brendan around that wasn’t much of a possibility.

Or was it?

He wiped out the juice glasses with a paper towel and set them in a neat row beside the bottle. He watched Brendan shutting down his laptop and sliding it into its case and recalled the look of longing he’d seen Tuck flash Brendan’s way the night before. Was something there? Was it only on Tuck’s side, or was it returned? Was Brendan one of those bi-curious guys, the type who could be drawn out with some liquor and patience?

The thought intrigued him. Imagine the fun they could have if two became three. He could barely suppress an evil grin at the thought of all the delicious possibilities and combinations.

Tuck retrieved the cards and returned to the table. He began to shuffle the deck. Brendan was watching him. None of them had showered or shaved that morning, in their effort to conserve water and fuel. A sexy blond stubble showed on Brendan’s jaw and cheek. Jamie’s cock ached with appreciation.

“What should we play?” Tuck asked. “Not gin. Jamie’s too damn good at remembering every card.”

Jamie had a better idea. “Let’s play Blackjack. Only let’s spice it up a little. Blackjack Truth or Dare. Except instead of a dare, if you don’t answer the question, you have to drink a shot of vodka. We’ll play face up, since we’re not betting. Whoever wins gets to ask the question to whoever he wants.”

“Oh, I don’t know—” Brendan began, his voice wary.

“Sounds like fun,” Tuck interjected eagerly. “Come on, Brendan. You chicken? Got some secrets in that closet of yours you don’t want us to know about?”

Brendan flushed and Jamie held his breath, waiting for Brendan to nix the idea. To his surprised delight, Brendan flashed one of his gorgeous smiles. “What the hell. Let the games begin.”

Tuck dealt two initial cards to each player. Jamie had a ten and a five, Tuck a three and a seven, Brendan a king and a two. “Jamie?” Tuck nodded toward him.

“Hit me.” Jamie tapped his cards. Tuck dealt him another five.

“Not bad.” Tuck frowned appreciatively.

Jamie put a hand over his cards. “I’ll stand.”

Tuck turned toward Brendan, who nodded. Tuck dealt him a nine. “Whoa, twenty-one in the first hand. Way to go, Brendan.”

“Pure luck.” Brendan shrugged but looked pleased.

Tuck dealt himself a two. “Twelve. I’m feeling lucky. Let’s see what I get.” He flipped over another card. It was a queen. “Busted. So Brendan gets to ask the question, right?”

“Yep.” Jamie nodded, curious who and what Brendan would ask.

“Since Tuck lost, we’ll start with him.” Brendan shifted so he was facing Tuck and seemed to ponder the question. “Okay. How old were you when you lost your virginity?”

“That’s easy. I was seventeen. It was in the back of my parents’ car with a girl I’d been dating for a few months. It was basically a disaster.”

“Details,” Jamie blurted, intrigued. Was Tuck truly bisexual or had he just been experimenting with a woman, as so many gay guys did before they recognized or felt free enough to admit their true orientation?

“Hey, you’re not asking the questions.” Tuck laughed. “Asked and answered. Let’s play another round.”

“Oh, come on,” Brendan urged, surprising Jamie. “Tell us the details.”

Tuck poured a shot of vodka into his glass. “Okay, but I’ll need this to get me through it.” They laughed and Jamie found himself relaxing for the first time since Tuck had held him in his arms. Even the wind outside seemed calmer. Tuck tossed back the alcohol, winced and shuddered. “That’s rough.” He made a face.

“Bet the second one will taste better,” Brendan offered.

“And the third one even better,” Jamie added.

Tuck grinned and leaned back in his chair. “Okay. You guys sure you want to hear this?”

“Quit stalling,” Jamie teased.

“Okay, okay. Let’s see. It was the dreaded senior prom. The dance was in full swing. We slipped out to the parking lot to smoke some weed. She produced a condom from her purse and said, ‘Happy anniversary.’ We’d been going out six months or something and we’d yet to go all the way. I wasn’t terribly excited about the idea of my first time happening in the back of a car, but on the other hand, I was seventeen and being offered the chance to lose my virginity. So I seized the moment, as they say.

“It was kind of awkward. She was wearing this evening gown thing with lots of extra slips and stuff, but we finally got it hoisted up around her waist. She had on stockings and a garter belt, I remember that. I was in a rented tuxedo of some color not found in nature. We kind of made out for a while and groped each other. I must have made it in about one inch and then I came. It was all over in like three seconds.”

Jamie shook his head and Brendan laughed. “Wow, that’s even worse than my first time.”

Tuck grinned. “We’ll have to find out about that. I’ll deal another round.” He dealt the cards and this time Brendan came up the loser and Tuck the winner. Tuck, predictably, turned to Brendan. “Okay. So tell us. When and how did Dr. Brendan Aaronson lose his virginity?”

Jamie expected Brendan to hem and haw, but he launched right in. “I was barely nineteen. She was twenty-two.”

“An older woman.” Jamie raised his eyebrows.

“Yep. She was a grad student. I was a freshman. She was tutoring me in French and well, one thing led to another and I found myself in her bed. We weren’t lovers, we weren’t in love, but she was eager and I was a nineteen-year-old guy, which of course is synonymous with horny. I probably lasted a full three minutes longer than Tuck, though.”

Tuck dealt another round, and as if it were planned, this time Jamie lost. Tuck was again the winner and he turned to Jamie. “Okay. Your turn. Spill the beans.”

Jamie hesitated. Did they really want the truth? Obviously Tuck could handle it, but what about Brendan? What the hell. What was life without risk?

“His name was Jordan. I was eighteen. He was twenty.” He stared at Brendan, daring him to react. He couldn’t read Brendan’s expression. He glanced at Tuck, who nodded and smiled encouragingly. “We’d been hanging around together for a while. I met him at school—he lived on my floor in the dorms. He had his own room and I had the roommate from hell, so I was always in his room.

“It started in that most typical of ways—a back massage.” He glanced at Tuck, who was, he saw, watching Brendan. What was it between them? Closing his eyes, he forced himself to focus on his memories. He hadn’t thought about Jordan Decker in a while. Jordan had gone to Africa the semester after they met to do volunteer work and Jamie had lost touch with him.

“It was my freshman year. I hadn’t come out at that point. That is, I knew I was gay, but I hadn’t told anyone. He was openly gay. I mean, flamingly flamboyant.” Jamie laughed at the memory of his eccentric first lover. “He wore the most amazing getups. He would shop at the thrift stores and show up in red plaid pants, a white silk pirate’s shirt, a long, brightly painted scarf slung over his shoulder, black boots and a fedora. He managed to pull it off, though. I was always in my uniform of a T-shirt and jeans. I guess we were a strange couple, but it worked for us.

“He introduced me to all the delights of male-male sex. He was slow, deliberate and gentle. I was really lucky, in retrospect. He was a great lover. I nearly failed that semester, though, as I recall.” He laughed and was pleased to note not only Tuck, but Brendan laughed with him.

“To first times.” Tuck poured them each a shot. Jamie drank and grimaced. Tuck was right—it was pretty vile, with no crushed ice and orange juice to mask the taste of the pure grain alcohol, but the accompanying warmth spreading quickly through his bloodstream made up for it.

He closed his eyes, remembering. Jordan used to suck his cock for hours, drawing him nearly to climax over and over. Jamie spent every spare moment naked on Jordan’s bed, his cock in Jordan’s hot, eager mouth.

It was several weeks before they worked their way toward anal intercourse. Jordan was a top, never on the receiving end of anal sex. This was okay with Jamie, especially as Jordan kept him on the edge of orgasm for so long that by the time Jordan had lubricated and entered Jamie, it only took a few strokes with fingers and cock to make him shoot everything he had. Over time he came not only to tolerate, but to crave the penetrating invasion of Jordan’s cock snaking its way inside him.

“I’m hungry.” Tuck cut into Jamie’s musings. “What time is it, anyway?”

Brendan looked at his watch. “It’s seven fifteen already. How time flies when you’re having fun.” His tone was dry, a sardonic grin on his face. “How about something extravagant, like more canned soup and some peanut butter on a spoon? We ate the last of the crackers at lunch.”

Jamie giggled and realized he was drunk again—for the second time in a day. Not that he had any particular reason to want to remain sober. If marathon sex wasn’t in the offing, maybe a weeklong binge, or however long it took for the weather to abate, was the next best option.

After dinner they decided to continue their card game in the sleeping quarters. “Let’s put our quilts around one of the space heaters,” Tuck suggested.

“Hey, cool.” Jamie moved toward the light switch. “We’ll turn off the lights. It’ll be like a campfire.”

Brendan glanced sharply toward Tuck, who met his gaze. Was he recalling that night as well?

They settled around the space heater, which cast a red light over them, softening and suffusing as it radiated through the room. Jamie poured them each more vodka while Tuck shuffled and dealt the cards.

Jamie won the first round. “My question is for Brendan. Remember, you have to answer the question and be truthful, or drink a shot.”

It was evident to Brendan from the slur in his speech that Jamie was pretty drunk. But then, they all were, as they’d been drinking most of the day. He stretched out, leaning up on one elbow so his head was near Tuck’s thigh. Tuck sat on crossed legs caddy-corner to him, with Jamie on the other side of the heater.

“Okay, shoot.”

“Have you ever fantasized about being with a guy?”

Brendan felt his face heat, though he’d expected something along these lines. Briefly he considered refusing to answer and drinking the liquor instead, though he knew he’d had enough. He glanced at Tuck, who was watching him with those soulful eyes.

“Yeah, I guess I have.”

“You
guess
?” Jamie laughed.

“I answered the question. Time to move on. Deal us another round, Tuck.”

“Hey, no fair,” Jamie interjected. He too had stretched out along his quilt.

“What’s not fair about it? You asked, I answered.”

“These scientist types are slippery,” Tuck joked. “You can’t put anything over on them.”

He dealt another round. This time Brendan won. The liquor had loosened his tongue. He decided to ask the same question of Tuck. “What about you, Dr. Tucker? Ever fantasized about being with a guy?”

“He’s done more than fantasize,” Jamie chortled. In the uncomfortable silence that followed, he added, “Man, I’m smashed. We’re gonna have serious hangovers in the morning.” He punctuated his remark with a loud slurp from his juice glass.

Tuck looked embarrassed. Brendan cursed himself for asking the question. For a moment he’d actually forgotten the guilty pulling apart from what Tuck claimed was just a massage, and then later the muffled, telltale sounds of sex behind the door. Jamie might be drunk, but Brendan decided he himself wasn’t drunk enough.

“Gimme more a’ that.” He waved his empty juice glass in Tuck’s direction. Tuck poured from the bottle, which was already nearly two-thirds empty. The question hung unanswered in the air—too late to take it back.

Tuck answered. “Um. Yeah. I have. Yes.” Brendan glanced at Jamie. He was lying flat on his back now, his eyes closed, his hands clasped loosely over his flannel-covered chest. His lips lifted and curled into a grin at Tuck’s response. Brendan felt a sudden nearly overwhelming urge to wipe that knowing smile away.

Jesus, what was wrong with him? Was he jealous of them? Of Jamie for already having what, or rather who, he wanted? He turned to Tuck, who was watching him, his expression beseeching.

“What? What is it, Tuck?”

“You,” Tuck mouthed.

“Me?”

Tuck nodded, clutching the vodka bottle. They were all hiding behind and in the alcohol, Brendan realized. So where was the courage that was supposed to come along with the buzz?

A soft snore issued from Jamie’s lips. Tuck and Brendan looked at each other and smiled. Tuck leaned over Jamie, brushing his long bangs from his face. The easy intimacy of the gesture at once moved and hurt Brendan, adding to his emotional turmoil.

Tuck drank deeply from his juice glass and let it tumble to the floor beside him. Screwing the cap into place, he pushed the bottle aside. He held his hands out to the glowing heater. “It’s like before,” he whispered. “Do you remember? Last summer. The campfire?”

Did he remember? Brendan had relived every moment of that night at least a hundred times in his head, no matter how many times he’d tried to forget it. They’d sat so close they might have been on each other’s laps. Tuck’s strong thigh had pressed against his own, their hands shifting over denim, pretending it was an accident each time they touched. Then Tuck’s comforting arm around his shoulders, holding him close, making him feel safe and warm. His skin had burned for days with the memory of Tuck’s touch, his heart aching with a longing he’d refused to permit himself to acknowledge.

“Yeah. I remember.”