Storm Connection

Global warming was certainly making the weather more extreme. In Darwin we were already getting warnings of another cyclone building up, and it was only days since the previous one, Nigel, had crossed the Northern Territory coast 300 kilometres to the west. Half way to the Western Australian border, in the middle of nowhere, and had fizzled out without doing any real damage.

I'd just had an e-mail from Hank telling me he was having bad weather there too, when the first cyclone warning came over my radio for what was now called cyclone Nanette. I knew Hank's Florida home was under a hurricane watch at the same time. I hoped the weather on his side of the world held. I had never given this global warming discussion much of my attention, but it certainly did seem that the weather was getting more extreme worldwide. What were the chances that both my long-distant cyber lover and I would be facing the same weather problems tonight on opposite sides of the world?

The warnings continued as Nanette grew to a category 3 cyclone. Then on Friday morning she reached category 4, with winds already over 200 kilometres an hour, and the details weren't looking good. I e-mailed Hank telling him things might get bad. He got back to me soon after to say that Hurricane Lloyd had reversed itself in the Gulf of Mexico and was expected to increase from a category 2 storm to a category 3 and to go right over his beach house on Marco Island. I sent him my love and hoped he was safe and warm. And I told him how much I wanted to be making love to him right then. To feel his cock grow under my hand, to kiss down his belly, to run my fingers through his trail of hair, down to the root of his big cock. How I liked to suck his balls then look deep into his eyes as I fucked him. Losing myself inside him as I melted into his heart. All that stuff. Which was making me hard, and as I described all that stuff to him I stroked myself off. Then I switched off the laptop and put it in its bag, in the bathroom with my emergency kit.

We'd all been sent home from work that morning and I was prepared. I'd connected with Hank and now to pass the time I wandered outside and down to the beach. Overhead the clouds were starting to boil, churning insanely and really low down overhead. The air on the ground was calm, there was no rain, and it was silent. Eerily silent. The birds had all gone already, to wherever birds go when a cyclone is approaching.

I wandered back home, restless and worried about Hank. Wondering how bad his storm was likely to be. Whatever was coming my way was big and the day got stiller and the boiling clouds got thicker and lower. As it moved into evening, the warnings and reports were coming over the radio every fifteen minutes and cars were scarce on the roads. I wandered through a silent and almost deserted street to the beach again, and the sea was leaden and broken and wild. And it was getting cold. It was never cold and I hurried home and got my few warm things together and threw them in the bath along with my picnic rug and doona.

And I got out my laptop and sighed with relief and pleasure when I found a message from Hank. Brief, but a connection.

"I melt to you," it started. "Must close up the house, but then, if we still have connection, will let you know how deeply I want you inside me. Stay safe for me."

I got up the US weather chart and the mass of storm clouds moving east out of the Gulf and across to Hank's state looked as bad as our coming cyclone. Such a slender, vulnerable looking state.

I told him that our storms both looked really bad and described how and where I wanted to kiss him. And how I was worried and hoped we'd both be OK, and that I might not be able to reach him if the power went and the phone lines were cut. The idea of not being able to connect to Hank, of not knowing how he was, already had me anxious as I sent him my message. I risked plugging the laptop in again for half an hour, to make sure the battery was fully charged. The storm was coming on though then and I didn't dare leave it longer.

It got quieter as evening turned to night and I slept fitfully in my bed. My house was solid concrete and had survived Tracy in '74 with almost no damage. I felt safe but was ready to retreat to the bathroom when things got bad. The air was heavy and damp. And electric, charged with tension, waiting.

I woke to the sound of the storm beating on the windows. The electricity I found was already gone and I retreated to the bathroom and turned on the battery radio, to find the cyclone warnings were constant now and there was almost nothing else. The odd short piece of music that occasionally cut in for a minute seemed to come from another life. The howling of the wind outside slowly turned to a scream that fought with the roar of the solid wall of rain that was hitting us. And the radio suddenly went dead.

My world became nothing but the tiny bathroom and the uncontrollable fury of nature gone mad, raging over me. I turned on the torch for company and wondered why I hadn't gone to a shelter. Company would have been nice. Any company. I thought of Hank, and ached for him physically. And ached just to be able to know he was safe and to connect with him, let him know I was safe, but frightened. I knew my house was safe but I was trapped there now and afraid, the concrete around me felt fragile against the power of the storm.

Soon I could hear nothing but the cyclone. The wind had grown to be a constant scream exceeded only by the occasional crash of debris against the house and the sound of tearing metal as the fence was partially ripped off its posts and the tin flapped and tore at itself. And all the time it was fighting to break through. The constant sharp patter of debris against the windows, sounding like something evil scratching to get in, increasing my fear.

Then it grew quieter. The eye of the storm arrived and the world quietened. I got up and found my house standing intact, the small panes of the windows were broken only in the living room, and water ran across the floor there. I wanted to go somewhere with other people, and shining my torch outside saw my car sitting there undamaged. I grabbed my laptop, put it in a plastic bag, and went outside. But as soon as I was out of the door, I knew I wasn't going anywhere. The road was underwater, now the bed of a metre deep river that was running fast to the sea, and two big trees had fallen across it creating dams that made the black oily water swirl dangerously. I went back inside and turned on my laptop but there was no connection. The lines were out. I wrapped it again and put it away again.

I was aching for Hank, worried about him, frustrated that I had no way to reach him. I lay down on the bed I had made up in the bathroom, alone in the dark and knowing the storm would be back soon.

I was woken by a knocking sound and I imagined the wind was back, but it was still relatively quiet, so I went to investigate. The sound was coming from my front door and when I shone my torch through the glass I could see a figure. I was half afraid and half relieved to see another human being.

I opened the door, and the man who had been standing on my veranda fell inside. It was black outside and the wind was starting again and my torch was shaking as I tried to lift him. And when I touched him he was freezing cold, icy and wet, his clothes drenched and torn to rags. I closed the door and pulled him up, unable to see him properly, his hair wild and his face deadly white and drawn with cold and exhaustion. I half carried, half dragged him into the bathroom, and he collapsed down on the bed on the floor.

"I saw a light. We sank," he stammered faintly, "On the rocks," his voice more like the wind than a voice.

"Are there any others?" I asked.

He shook his head and closed his eyes. His leanness and something about his face reminded me of Hank and my heart turned over in my chest as I worried that Hank might be caught in the hurricane he had been waiting for last time we had been in contact.

I stripped the saturated clothes off my visitor and rubbed him dry, with him trying futilely to help. His whole body was shaking with cold as I wrapped my blanket and doona around him and rubbed harder, but it seemed to do little for him. He leant towards me and rested his icy forehead against my chest, and I wrapped my arms about him, not wanting him to die, wanting to heat him. Make him warm and alive. He moved his cold arms around me, shivering, whispering words I couldn't understand.

He was dry soon and I eased his arms off me, and letting the blanket free I dressed him in warm clothes from the plastic bag, as he shivered. I lay him on the makeshift bed between the bath and the shower, and joined him, squashed behind him, holding him close, the doona and rug pulled over us both. I was giving him my warmth, rubbing him, breathing against his cold skin, but he shivered still and I lifted his jumper and mine and lay my hot chest and belly against his still-icy back. I gasped at the coldness of him, my nipples popping, but I pushed my pants and his, lower and nestled his icy butt into my hot groin. Again I shuddered at the deadly coldness of him and almost pulled away.

But I held him close, skin to skin, and finally felt him began to warm. Then he pulled my hands to his belly up under his jumper, and I felt the cold there and pushed my hands higher, feeling his hard icy nipples, my arms pressing to his chest. He sighed, and wrapped his arms about mine and held them there to him, warming him. I blew my warm breath against his neck and he sighed.

Outside the wind had gone past howling and was screaming again. Debris scratched sharply again at the window panes trying to get in. And my visitor slowly stopped his shivering and his breathing deepened and steadied.

He was warm now, his body softening and his breathing even. I pulled him closer, wanting to keep him warm, part of me woozy with exhaustion and imagining he was Hank. I was feeling myself growing and embarrassed to be like that with a man, a stranger, whose life I was trying to save. But he reached behind and stoked my thigh and pulled my hand down to his cock. He was filling too and I felt the heat in his crotch and between his thighs now.

Turning his head his lips found mine and we kissed a deep slow kiss. I moved my hips, dry fucking him between his thighs as I stroked his engorging cock. His body seemed to become warmer as I stroked him and I was soon sweating with the heat of both of us, pressed tight together under the covers. He came with several jerks and for a few minutes we lay still as his breathing slowed. Then he reached between his thighs for my cock and bending his knees up, positioned it at his entrance. He turned his head back to me and we kissed again, a hot strong kiss of lust. He stroked my leaking cap over his rim himself as I moaned, unheard in the noise of the storm. Then I entered him.

When I bottomed inside him I felt the heat of him burning against my skin like a fever. He was so hot I felt as if I was melting into him. He held his cock and stroked himself up again, in time to my stroking inside his hot tight channel, and he moved with me as if we had the same mind. I pulled him tighter to me. My arm about his chest, the other about his hips, his hand still working that hard cock. I was drifting somehow in and out of the roaring of the storm and the pressure of his now warm and vibrant body against me of us melding and joining.

I stroked deeper inside him, feeling as if I was reaching his core, his passage still gripping me hard. His hand still stroking his throbbing tool. I came with a massive surge as the wind reached a crescendo in its screaming roar around us. And I shot my hot seed inside him, and he came at the same time, spilling cum up his chest to my hand wrapped tightly about him. He cried out and I cried out too with him. Our cries lost in the storm. I shot again, along with him and we emptied ourselves, me inside the heat of his body, him across his own hot body and my hands. I stayed inside him as I wrapped my arms tighter about him shaking and weak, spent but not wanting to let go. My fear gone, my mind and body calm.

I mast have slept like the dead as when I woke it was light and the wind was gone. All that remained was the steady low roaring from the roof as the rain poured endlessly on to the corrugated iron. The air was heavy with moisture, and cold. And my visitor was gone. I pulled the blankets around me and felt the empty space before me where my lover had been the night before. The dried cum on my hands and body.

I lay alone in the pale grey of day listening to the rain for a while before I got up and pulled out the laptop and fired it up. There was no signal, the lines were dead and I put it carefully away and lay back down. And I ached for Hank, to be able to restore the connection between us. To know how he was, if he was safe and warm. My aching for him was a deep longing that reached to my core, but I was calm too, filled with a soothing warmth, the residue of my visitor from the storm.

That afternoon I went outside and looked about me. The road was still a river, but narrower and shallower than when I had seen it in the night, and apart from the fallen trees there was little obvious damage. Though hardly a leaf was left on any tree and my garden was covered by a thick skin of sodden already decomposing leaves and debris, already smelling slightly of decay.

Further along the street neighbours were emerging from their houses to stand on verandas. We were all survivors, wondering at being alive and amazed at how little damage there was to our homes.

And I wondered where my visitor had gone. How he had left without waking me, but I didn't shiver when I wondered if he had ever really been there at all. I was too grateful that he had chosen me to be his lover for the night, to warm him and give him life. And remind me of Hank.

* * *

The lights flickered, and I went into a panic. There was just so much that I wanted to say to Sean this morning—over the thousands of miles that separated us. Our one year anniversary was coming up and I was in heat. And I needed to connect with Sean. I needed him inside me, and not just inside my head, where he now resided nearly full time. He was just an electric signal in the ether, but he possessed me fully now. I had opened to no one as I had to him—I opened my mind and my heart and my thighs to him. Who would have ever guessed that a cyber lover could be so satisfying . . . no, so necessary to life itself.

I needed to tell him. I needed to respond to his last message in which he described in minute detail what he wanted to do to me—to my body. I'd had lovers before in the flesh, but there was no one who played my mind and body as well as Sean did in cyber space. And it had been months now since I had lain with a man. I needed Sean. I needed Sean inside me. I read his last message again: " . . . . To feel your cock grow under my hand, to kiss down your belly, to run my fingers through your trail of hair, down to the root of your big cock . . ."

The television was blaring at me. Hurricane Lloyd had taken an unexpected turn in the Gulf. It no longer was headed for the panhandle; it was headed straight for Florida's southwestern coast, straight for me here in Marco Island—this resort community that was less than a foot above sea level at its highest point. And it was increasing in intensity. It would probably be at the 3 category before it hit the coast—right here.

I laughed. It was ironic. Sean was being hit with a strong cyclone at the same time. What was the world coming to? Usually when we messaged it was my night and his day or vice versa and my winter to his summer. But tonight, we were being hit with essentially the same storm. United at last—and by Mother Nature having one of her little menopausal fits. How ironic. Still, it made me feel close to Sean. Closer than ever before. Needing him more now than ever before.

I tried to ignore the blaring warnings on the television. I just needed time to tell Sean what the effect of his last message had been on me, how it had lifted my spirits and aroused me so. But the television wouldn't let me alone. I had to close up the house now. Not a half hour from now, but now.

The best I could do was to send an interim message and hope the connection was still there when I returned from closing the house up.

I sat down at the computer and tapped out quick message: "I melt to you. Must close up the house, but then, if we still have connection, will let you know how deeply I want you inside me. Stay safe for me."

I started to get up. I'd write him later; I could do that even if the connection and the electricity didn't hold. My laptop was new and had good batteries. I could tap out a message during the storm, even if all the power was down, and then send it to him when we were connected again. But I needed to have his message in front of me when I responded. I wanted to make sure that I responded exactly to what he wrote to me. I brought his last message up and punched the print button and headed for the balcony that surrounded my vacation house.

It actually didn't take me long to close the house up. I'd lost the old house in a previous hurricane and I wasn't dumb enough—even though most on the hurricane coasts in the States were—to build another vulnerable house. I'd had pylons sunk way down and a sturdy house built over open carports under the house that would take a whole lot of flooding and pounding. And I had steel shutters on all of the windows and all of the doors. All I had to do was go around the house and pull them down and lock them and the house was as tight as one could be and as invulnerable to all that Mother Nature could send to me. I'd be safe, in a fortress.

Still, I hadn't gotten to this any too soon. I had trouble standing on the balcony that went all around the house while I closed the shutters. The wind was tremendous and black clouds were racing in from the Gulf. Rain had started and it already was nearly horizontal, and knife sharp in its sting.

I saw a group of motorcyclists streaming past on the road from the ribbon of hotels and condos on the island's best beach. They were yelling into the wind and having a great time flying down the road toward the north end of the island. I knew they weren't headed off the island, because there was only one causeway and the street east to that was in the direction from which they came. I wondered if they knew how low the land was in the center of the island. They'd best get back to the hotel strand or off the island soon, or they'd be stranded in the hurricane on the north quadrant, much of which was covered by man-made canals for the vacation homes of the extremely wealthy.

But that was the motorcyclists' problem. They were crazy to be out in this at all.

The battening down finished, I dragged myself back to the last of the glass doors I hadn't covered in steel shutters yet and, with great effort, fighting a fierce wind now and slashing rain, heaved the door down and locked it at the bottom. All of the other openings to the balcony locked from the outside. Only this one locked from the inside. The builder had said that was necessary, as those operated from the outside were stronger than this one.

That left what was actually the main entry, down through the center of the house to the open carport area below. But this staircase was enclosed by strong, cinder block walls as well, and there were strong doors at both the top and the bottom.

I was all alone now in my fortress, and the way the lights were flickering, I knew I had but minutes to bring out the battery-operated lanterns and the storm candles. But first, I was dripping wet, so I stripped down to just my briefs and dried myself off in the bathroom.