Between Two Promises Read Online Free Page B

parts of Aiden’s body even Aiden had no idea could feel so good when tapped.
    Their sexual positions had been tacitly decided their first time making love in Aiden’s tent, after they had met at Glacier in June. They rarely switched. Aiden enjoyed being close to such a powerful man, a man used to hard labor. Daniel’s moustacheless beard rubbed his skin raw sometimes. But Aiden did not mind.
    Their lovemaking never entailed anything rough, but occasionally Daniel, when in an extra playful mood, teased him with spankings until Aiden would beg for him to stop. Aiden’s struggles would send Daniel into fits of passion. Almost helpless, out of control, he and Aiden would form into oneness, enraptured with each other’s corporeal certainty. Inhibitions tossed aside, far flung, their lovemaking natural and wild, like the Montana backcountry.
    Daniel, innocently masculine, often acted like a man-boy, needing to be led with gentle force, as if the consequences of his desires were out of his hands. Once taken where there was no turning back, he’d be seized with the strength of his manliness, his cravings and needs propelling him like a raptor after its prey. Aiden always detected the passion in his ebony eyes, which would blaze like lignite whenever they made love. The way he would become, not a different man, but more of the man that already breathed inside him. Powerful. Vital.
    Lying in the sticky aftermath of their lovemaking, Aiden snuggled closer to Daniel inside their zero-degree bags, which they had zipped together. Aiden rested his head against Daniel’s warm chest, rising and falling rhythmically.
    “Promise me you’ll never let me go,” Aiden whispered.
    “I promise,” Daniel said, his voice grainy with slumber.
     
     
    S UNLIGHT , casting a green glow inside their tent, woke Daniel. He unzipped the tent flap and sighed contentedly at the new day. The sun nudged above the eastern peaks, and the landscape sparkled from a freezing drizzle that had fallen during the morning twilight. Osprey yapped in the powder-blue sky. Euphoria lifted him as he slipped on his camp clothes and crawled out of the tent into the morning crispness.
    Lowering their backpacks from the tree, he had no doubt life was good. They had the entire two days together to do whatever they pleased, without scrutiny or harm from the outside world. Steam rose off the duff on the forest floor. Dreamlike haze enwrapped him. He carried the water filter to the lake, where a mule deer and her yearling lapped from the shore. Dragonflies skimmed across the water’s surface. With his canister full, he headed back to camp.
    Aiden climbed out of the tent as Daniel was heating a pot of water over the butane stove. He stretched, his fingers reaching toward the crowns of the hemlocks. “What’s for breakfast?” he asked.
    “Whatever you make,” Daniel said.
    “Oatmeal, granola bars, and green tea, then,” Aiden said, chortling.
    “Ach, I can see we’ll need some fish to fill up on.”
    A posse of mule deer followed them down the trail to the lake, where they were going to spend the day fishing. Daniel fashioned homemade rods from sturdy sticks he found. He wrapped the fishing lines around the sticks, cut off about a foot with his Swiss knife at the end of the thinner parts of the sticks, tied tight knots with the lines, and pulled off about six feet, enough for the fish to have some give. This way, he’d explained to Aiden many times, if the line breaks, an ample length will remain on the stick. It was the same kind of rod he’d used as a boy.
    They had used the makeshift rods a few times before with moderate success. Their store-bought rods were better at catching the lake’s hefty cutthroat trout, but they had elected to leave those behind. They baited the hooks with bread balls they’d saved from last night’s half-moon pie crust and tossed the lines into the water. Ripples radiated toward the shore.
    The mule deer stayed close by, nibbling at