Chapter 5

Her blouse, wet from working in the snow, clung to her back and to the curve of her spine and the sharp edges of her thin shoulder blades like a thin veil. River was not prim and proper. Her beauty was of raw feminine form equal to the best fantasies of renaissance poets.

The flames from the fire licked her with a painful heat. Emma rubbed her arm where the heat was unbearable.

River came back with a clean square cloth, a bandage roll, and a chunk of poultice which she moistened by chewing on it a bit and rubbing it between her fingers. Gently, she applied the poultice like a paste into the gash, then wrapped the cloth and the bandage around Emma’s ribs just beneath her breasts as tight as a corset.

“There we are,” River said with a smile when she finished. Emma touched the bandage over the wound. She felt no pain there. She looked back up to River and said, “thank you.”

River nodded. The cabin walls stood sturdy against the raging blizzard. The burning log snapped, and ember sparks spewed upwards into the chimney. They were at an impasse. Words were meaningless. The secret night allowed nothing more but action. Emma dropped her arms to her lap so that her breasts were bared to River.

River responded in the way that Emma anxiously hoped she would. She reached a hand up. A finger floated hesitantly towards the curving skin. Emma closed her eyes and stuck out her chest to signal permission and felt the timid touch against her nipple. The finger grazed the nipple and traced a line. A touch of sexual curiosity – the first that Emma had ever experienced. She gasped at the electric shock of the cold finger against her sensitive skin. River traced the finger along the curve of her breast, then to her face, where she cupped her cheek in the cool palm.

Emma looked to River again and saw in her eye’s excitement and fear, as if she were about to dive from a cliff to the ocean. Emma placed her hand over River’s, to assure her of her action, then leaned in further to bring their faces closer. River leaned in as well, so that their lips paused with only the warmth radiating from their faces and their mouths between them.

The pause served to give a moment to retract and reject as a lifeboat from this frontier if needed, but also to savor the unbearable, momentary excitement before the complete release into the forbidden.

Not able to bear it any longer, Emma plunged, pressing her lips against River’s, clasping her hands against the back of River’s head, twining her fingers with the thick wet strands of blonde hair and, with her lips, feeling the softness of River’s lips. The kiss started nervously but grew passionate with breathless enthusiasm. It was messy and blind. River proceeded to kiss down Emma’s neckline, then her shoulders and started to unbutton her own blouse.

When Emma noticed the shirt coming undone, she pulled back and watched River with suddenly fearing eyes. She went to speak, but no words came out, though she knew her lines. A fierce, prudish thought invaded her drunk mind: this needs to stop now.

Having undone the last of her buttons, River let her blouse come open, revealing her pink breasts and her hard, pink nipples. They filled Emma with a rippling excitement. She wanted them but wanted also to stop herself from wanting them. River sensed this rending battle in Emma’s mind and joined the side she knew to be winning. She placed a hand on the back of Emma’s head, and drew it down so that Emma could taste them. It was all she needed to cast off the lines of morality. She kissed the breast in one place, then in another. River moaned in pleasure from the sensation of the tender wet lips. She arched her back and pressed her hands against Emma’s head to feel her mouth more. Emma kissed it with her tongue. She drew her tongue across the skin until she reached a harden nipple. It was a perfect, motherly breast, she thought as she sucked on the soft flesh.

She tried to imagine the intensity of the pleasure that River must feel as she grazed the sensitive skin gently with the hardness of her teeth and the sucking with her mouth. She wanted to feel what River felt.

When she was finished with one breast, she moved on to the next, and when she was done with that, she moved downwards, kissing with her mouth towards River’s thin midriff. River writhed on the bearskin with every kiss.

When she arrived at the top of the pants, Emma attempted to remove them but fumbled with the belt. River helped her by whipping the belt off with a snap and unbuttoning the top. Emma did the rest, sliding the jeans down River’s legs. She felt the sound that the wet jean pants made as they slid down River’s legs like a searing electric sizzle between her thighs.

She moved to her own riding skirt. Neither had yet spoke, and both were breathing hard, as if to touch each other’s bodies was precious fresh air.

Failing at the buttons of the skirt, Emma simply ripped the buttons loose and the buttons fell with a plucking ripping sound from the top of the skirt. The skirt fell loosely around her hips.

Her undergarment came next. River pulled it down over Emma’s hips and the ensemble came crumpling down to her knees to reveal her pale tufted vulva.

River reached out and with her fingers, touched the skin of her inner thigh. The cool touch caused Emma to whimper. As the finger raked upward, Emma tightened her legs together. The fingers arced around the edge of her vulva to the top and down into the pubic hair and then, into the top of the slit to touch her swollen clitoris. Emma gasped and flinched as River gently rubbed. She rubbed it with her thumb and her forefingers plunged gently into her.

She squeezed her arms against her breasts and her hands clutched at her hair, and she bit her bottom lip in overbearing pleasure as River rubbed. She moved her hips with the rhythm and closed her eyes to extract the most pleasure from River’s fingers.

She broke the hot silence with a breathless whisper. “I never…”

River responded, also in a whisper. “Yeah. Me neither.”

Emma looked down at River. Her coffee-brown eyes flickered with the spitting flames deep with lust. Her lips were wet apples. Her hair turned auburn in the red-orange glow like autumn maple. A woman from the garden put there by the Lord. Emma moved her hips to feel the warmth of her hand against her clitoris, and inside her vagina, deeper, to rub against her inside, rubbing until the desire to taste her and to feel her skin against her skin flooded her like madness.

She fell atop River on the bear rug. Their breasts squeezing against each other, their midriffs and their mons pubis rubbing. Their legs entwined. Hands grasping. Their lips touching. Their faces touching. Saliva glistening on cheeks as they held each other so closely that their bodies were one.

Emma kissed down River’s neck, and then her shoulder, causing releases of moans. She then went down. Below the breasts. Below the navel, towards the tufted mound, and opened her mouth to taste the forbidden fruit. River moaned louder and spread her legs to open herself to Emma’s incursion. Emma went straight to the clitoris with her tongue. River clawed at the back of her head with desperate hands for more of her tongue and Emma gave her more. She slid her fingers into the vagina and felt the muscles squeeze in pulses around her fingers.

“Oh god!” River cried and her thigh muscles and her abdominals tightened. This encouraged Emma to continue. She plunged deeper with her fingers, and sucked harder on River’s sweet, sticky flesh until River erupted and screamed, and pushed hard in a moment of extreme ecstasy, and then relaxed all her muscles at once, sinking into the rug.

When it was done, Emma thought only to stand up to drink water. She was thirsty and the water flask was singularly on her mind. She stumbled trance-like to the flask hanging by a nail on the wall of the cabin. She quenched her thirst then stood unsurely and naked above River while River quivered restlessly on the bearskin from her aftershocks. Spotting the whiskey bottle sitting lonely on the table, she drank from that as well. The whiskey went down her throat in a cool, cleansing burn and she savored the bitter flavor. It paired well with the taste of water, and the taste of River.

“What now,” she muttered.

River answered, “you just stand right there,” and she got onto her knees and crawled to where Emma stood to place a multitude of quiet kisses on her abdomen.

“Turn around,” River whispered.

Emma obeyed again, placing her hands on the table.

She felt first the warm breath and River’s warm, wet hair against her soft skin, then the wet touch of River’s mouth on the fat of her thighs.

Her knees weakened as she felt River’s tongue reach in between her thighs and between her labia and she yelped at the sensation. It was like nothing she had ever felt before. No one had ever explained to her the pleasure of another woman’s touch. No one had explained raw pleasure. But they warned her for years of carnal sin. She acted sinful now, and it felt like heaven.

She collapsed downward onto the table and grasped onto the whiskey bottle for balance as the earthquakes of passion surged through her. Sweat dripped from her forehead onto the tabletop. She screamed as she felt River’s tongue divide her. The rapturous wave came at her unrelenting like the snowstorm against the cabin, squeezing her on all sides, wanting her to burst like a ripe fruit. She wanted River to taste her for all that she was worth squeezing. Her face scrunched with excruciating pleasure.

“Yes!” she screamed like the shrill winter as she felt tongue inside of her. Her grip tightened on the bottle as the rumbling ecstasy came through her to gush outwards. She screamed once more with her quaking eruption and she crumpled down to her knees and onto her back to meet River on the soft bearskin rug.

They held each other in their rapture. Squeezing each other. Running arms against each other.

Never had Emma felt closer to anyone. Not even to Percy. Percy was her love eternal, of course. But this was something more. It was a primal closeness.

River scraped a hand across her naked leg. Emma sighed and watched the calm fire spin. They scrunched into each other. For once, it seemed, Emma’s mind was an empty shell. It was a good feeling because often her shell felt filled with busy nervousness. And now it was clean and empty. The storm outside calmed like a dog at the end of the day curling into warmth and sound sleep.

River kissed Emma on the back of her head and hugged her tight. The fire hugged them both.

“What now,” Emma asked with a wavering voice.

“Bozeman by Christmas,” River responded.

That was not what she wanted to hear, Emma thought at first, but then she thought, with a coldness brought on by the vanishing whiskey spirit within her: that’s what she ought to hear. So, she closed her eyes, and put a smile on her face, and pressed her back against River’s body. Worried thoughts shot through her mind like hurried, inconspicuous fish for a long while, but eventually, she drifted deep into River’s warm security and slept dreamlessly.

The next morning, Emma woke in River’s arms. She was sober and without a hangover. Her head was clear, and her body rested. They were both wrapped in a wool blanket, which River must have pulled over them in the night. It itched her skin, but she was comfortable there feeling River’s body tightly against hers, and feeling her breathing, and her heartbeat.

The fireplace glowed with ashen embers, and the smell of pine smoke filled the room. Sunbeams snuck through cracks in the boards that they had nailed to the shattered window.

The sexual adventure of the night came to Emma in vivid pictures. It occurred to her that it should have been calamitous to her life, but with the morning soberness, no emotional outburst came. She found her impartial reaction odd at first but thought that perhaps the emotional outburst did not come because of how apparent it was that the night could be buried. That she could carry on with the rest of her life because River would not be in her life again after today, just as she wasn’t in her life before yesterday. She only wondered whether she could bury that part of her soul as well.

But then River would be gone from life forever. The thought hit her like a heavy weight to the chest. She turned to face River to watch her sleep. There was a peace on her face. She watched until River opened her eyes and yawned and smiled at her.

“Good morning,” she whispered.

Emma smiled back weakly. “Good morning,” she replied.

“Quite a night,” River said.

River sat up and stretched out her arms then stood up slowly. She seemed unshaken. Emma watched from the rug as River moved about the room in the nude. Her firm thighs rippled as she walked. She stoked the fire and placed another log in, then when the fire came alive, she opened the cabin door.

A fresh layer of snow hung half-way up the door. A bright blue morning illuminated the cabin with a pale, smokey light from the doorway.

River breathed in the fresh mountain air. “The storm has passed,” she declared.

“Will we be able to make it to Bozeman with all that snow?”

“Sure. It ain’t too bad.”

Emma secretly hoped that River would say no that they would have to stay longer in the cabin, that they would be together for another night.

River pushed against the top layer of the snow in the doorway with her hand. “It’s a dry snow. It’ll be easy to travel through, I reckon.”

“I see,” Emma replied.

“Alright, I’m gonna go check on the animals, and then put some breakfast on. Go ahead and get dressed, and we can be on the trail before midday, and in Bozeman by sundown at the latest.”

River and Emma dressed. Breakfast was warmed biscuits drizzled with a thick chestnut honey and dried summer berries softened in melted butter over the fire.

The sun heated up the day. Steam came off the top of the fresh snow and snow fell from the pine boughs as River and Emma fixed their saddles onto the horses. When they were set to leave, Emma turned to River and said, “River, about last night…”