The ice and snow wall struck with the force of a freight train. The cabin quaked, and the three of them were thrown to the floor like rag dolls. Nadia’s shrill screams rent the air, but the sound was swallowed by the roar of the patio door as it imploded. They had nowhere to run.

“Hold onto me!” Perry shouted. Nadia gripped his fingertips, and he flailed wildly for Lincoln’s hand. The white wave of snow powered its way into the house.

Perry cried out as they were pushed across the room. He tried to cover Nadia and Lincoln with his burly frame, but panic tightened his throat as he wondered if he had what it took to keep them all alive.

“No!” he gasped as the walls began to visibly shift.

The firewood stacked near the fireplace came clattering down. A log slammed into Perry, and pain exploded like fireworks in his skull. He desperately clung to his charges. He had only known these two people for a couple of weeks, but they had become his entire world.

He heard the groans of the cabin as the wind and snow hammered it. Perry knew that the odds were stacked against them, but he had to believe they would make it. As chaos reigned around them, he had to stay strong. In the swiftly fading light, he saw deep lakes of terror in both of his lovers’ eyes.

“We can do this!” The strength in his voice surprised him.

Then the world went black. He knew that he was covered in snow and he was aware of a new pain emanating from the side of his head. Numbing cold swept in, bringing with it brutal silence.

“Come on, Perry! We need you.” Nadia pleaded.

They were in the woods. The wolves circled the outskirts of camp. No, Perry thought. They had come out of the woods. The threat that had caught him unawares this situation was not one he could scare away with a gun blast. I can’t get you out of this.

“Perry, please! Oh, my God, I love you so much. Don’t do this to me. Wake up!”

She loved him, and he was in love with her. With both of them. The cold lulled him deeper into oblivion, but her sobs and whimpers pulled him back. A red-hot pain speared through his shoulder blade, completely overwhelming the dull throb in his temple. He remembered. Being in battle. Leaving someone behind. Someone else he could not save. If he gave up now, history would repeat. He had to try.

Perry weakly turned his head and opened his eyes, but he could not see. He felt his legs covered in loosely packed snow. He felt someone desperately clawing away at the pile near his shins. Groaning, he moved to extricate himself the rest of the way.

“You’re alive!” Lincoln’s voice hitched.

Perry gingerly sat up. A soft, warm body launched into his arms, and Nadia’s tearful laughter echoed in the darkness. “You stopped breathing! We thought you were…”

“I’m okay,” he promised. He kissed her forehead. He did not know how they had managed to avoid being buried in the avalanche, but they would not survive for long if he did not do something. He had to find a way out somehow.

Perry rose to his feet with a pained groan. No light penetrated the blackness. Limping to investigate the prison of ice, he let his fingers skim over hard-packed walls of snow and realized there were no more rooms, but one large cavern. They were trapped.

“Are you both alright? Is anyone hurt?”

“Fine so far, what about you?” It was Lincoln who responded.

“A bang on the head but other than that I’m good”

Perry felt his way to them. He took comfort in the touch of Lincoln’s hand on his shoulder. Nadia slid between them, and they wrapped her in a hug. “I think the entire cabin is under snow,” Perry said quietly.

“How long do you think we have?” Nadia whispered.

Perry shrugged. She dropped her head to his chest with a muffled sob. They had only stalled the inevitable. His eyes stung with tears at his helplessness. He cleared his throat and moved away.

“We need light,” he said gruffly.

Righting the fallen escritoire, he pulled open a drawer and felt around for the flashlights Nadia had gathered up for them. When he powered on a torch, the ice cave filled with a cool, otherworldly beam that bounced off the snow. Perry stood the flashlight on end atop the escritoire and looked around.

The entrance to the kitchen was now a wall of white. They were cut off from their meagre supply of food, save for the rucksack Lincoln had packed for the snowmobile trip to town. Perry dug through the bag as his heart thudded in his chest like a slow-motion count-down.

“What are we going to do?” Nadia asked.

“There’s nothing…nothing we can do but wait.” He took a blanket from the sofa—one they had used the night before for their fort—and he draped it around her shoulders.

Perry felt Lincoln’s hand on his back.

“Come get warm,” the actor murmured.

Perry watched him take his sketchbook over to the fireplace and shove pieces of paper into the dying embers. Nadia inhaled sharply. She rushed to the sofa and pushed a hand beneath the pillows to find her notebook. More fuel for the fire. After a moment, tiny flames flickered to life, and Perry stared at it, feeling their eyes on him.

They were looking for answers and he had none. Survival was ninety percent preparedness and ten percent luck. There was no way they could have anticipated the avalanche, and their luck seemed to be running out. But he had to give them a reason to hope.

“The snow will act as an insulator,” he murmured. “Like an igloo. It won’t get much colder than this.” Perry stared at his hands in his lap. They were large, calloused hands. Strong hands. Hands that had let them down. He took a breath and steadied his voice. “I love you too much to let myself believe this is the end.”

“We’re not giving up,” Nadia whispered.

* * *

Nadia helped them collect the pillows and blankets that had made it through the avalanche, and they recreated the pillow fort in what was left of the living room. She had no idea how many hours passed or when night fell.

She considered that they would probably not survive and made her peace with the fact. Then, she pushed the line of thought from her mind.

Perry tucked her beneath another quilt. “Warm enough?”

She nodded and smiled. Lincoln gently stroked her hair back from her face. “So, are you ever going to tell us what you wrote in all those letters to Maria?” he asked.

“I told her that I was going through a rebellious phase, but I’m out of it now,” she said.

“Oh, are you?”

His fingers whispered over her cheek and caressed her slender neck. His eyes followed the trail but traveled back to meet her gaze. Nadia nodded as she remembered her response in the woods, that some secrets were to be taken to the grave. Her adrenaline spiked once again as she confronted her own mortality. She swallowed thickly.

“This has nothing to do with rebellion. I’ve never loved anyone or anything the way I love you,” she confessed.

Perry leaned closer. “And I’ve never needed anything or anyone the way I need you,” he whispered. “When we get out of here, I’ll prove it to you. We’ll make that television show together. Everyone will know about Survive Anything.”

Nadia’s laugh was tinged with sadness. Lincoln’s hand dipped beneath the quilt to feel her heartbeat as he added to the fantasy. “We’ll be so successful that Mitch Trepan will come crawling back to beg me to make movies with him. If he can find me, because we’ll buy a big house where the three of us can escape the pressures of fame.”

She threw her head back and laughed. “And my dad will love and accept you both,” she added. Her laughter tapered to a soft sigh.

Perry’s expression changed. He kissed her lips with a touch of sadness. “For now, let me hold you. Let me show you how much I truly need you both,” he said. Perry and Lincoln slipped beneath the covers to join her. They shed their clothes in the darkness.

Perry pulled her into his arms for a soul-stirring kiss. Then, guiding her by a fistful of hair, he led her down his chest. She nipped at his pecs and licked his rippling abs.

She groaned deep in her throat as her tongue swept over his erection, and he growled her name. Nadia took him past her lips inch by thick inch. Halfway down, she teasingly pulled away, leaving a web of spit, and his hips rose to find her mouth again. He rammed deeper, bringing tears to her eyes with the force of his passion. She gasped as she retracted.

“Yes,” she begged. More. She wanted more. She wanted their passion and fury, their helplessness and hope, their fears and dreams. She wanted to give them all of hers as well.

Lincoln parted her thighs and planted his mouth at the apex of her desire. He kissed and sucked her clit, his hot, wet tongue skating circles around her engorged nub. She writhed in amazement. “I feel you throbbing,” he breathed.

Nadia whimpered with desire and reached between her legs to touch herself as Perry brought her onto her side and entered her from behind. She closed her eyes as he eased inside, pressing a silky moan of bliss free.

His lips coasted over her earlobe with an airy sigh. His thighs bunched with tension. She felt Lincoln merge with him, and the three of them languidly rocked together. It was the back and forth of an ageless dance. In the frigid ice palace, the act took on new meaning.

She looked back and saw that Perry’s blue eyes burned. “You’re a goddess,” he whispered. “I want to worship you.” Nadia hitched in a breath as he penetrated deeper. His girth stretched and caressed her. The bulbous head of his cock nudged her higher, and his thrusts were accompanied with quiet grunts of exertion.

“I’m only human, but I’m yours,” she groaned.

She let her head loll back on his shoulder. Perry thrust deeper, and she gripped him tighter. Ever tighter. She vigorously rubbed her throbbing clit as her pussy enveloped his hardness, and her wetness drizzled down her inner thighs.

Perry pounded in her inner grasp, hips bucking with forceful precision as Lincoln made love to him. She felt she would go up in steam from the power of their excitement. Her pussy tightened around Perry, dripping wetter with every stroke of his cock. At the same time, his mouth coursed along her skin with butterfly tenderness, and she heard the slick, wet sound of all three of their bodies colliding.

Nadia locked around him tighter, as Lincoln gasped Perry’s name again in warning. Both men rammed harder and faster. She looked over her shoulder to see Perry’s eyes roll back in bliss.

“Don’t stop,” she whimpered.

“I’ll never let you go,” he said. He held her tighter. All she needed was to be in his arms to be safe from all hurt, harm or danger. Nadia squeezed her eyes shut and, for a second, believed in that. She had to.

Lincoln was past the point of no return. He cried out in bliss as her core pulsed wildly and, suddenly, her orgasm unfurled, too. Nadia gasped, feeling Perry’s seed explode within her in a hot gush of silky wetness that mingled with hers. They bonded in the cold darkness, knowing tomorrow was not promised, that tonight might have to be enough.

* * *

Lincoln slept fitfully, tossing and turning on the hardwood floor. But, whenever his lovers snuggled closer, he calmed. Their heat flowed into him like a promise of better nights to come. Nadia’s slender leg pressed between his as she grinded against him in sleep. Perry’s hand slid down his side and clasped his hip possessively.

He dreamed of lovemaking beneath a million stars. When he awakened, there were no stars. The flashlight had died at some point. He had no way to know how many hours had passed. The night felt eternal, and Lincoln fought panic as he considered that they were, to all intents and purposes, buried alive.

Lincoln wriggled from the pallet on the floor and ambled to the escritoire for another flashlight. As he powered on the torch, snow sprinkled from the cavern ceiling. He looked up in alarm. Would it hold? He beamed the light overhead in search of evidence of cracking or weakness, but saw none.

“Check the bucket,” Perry murmured behind him.

Lincoln started and turned. “Check what?”

“For water,” Perry repeated.

Lincoln absently moved to the fireplace and pulled the vase from the ashes. The snow Perry had collected the day before was now suitable drinking water. He took a sip and handed the vase to his companion, gesturing with the light. “The ceiling. I don’t know if it’s stable. Should we be worried?”

“What’s going on with the ceiling?”

“It’s…snowing.”

As Perry squinted up, another dusting of snow fell. He placed the vase on the mantel and moved to the center of the room where the ice ceiling was highest. Lincoln listened for cracks in the ice but there was only an eerie silence.

Lincoln thought he heard something else, the whoop-whoop of helicopter blades. He told himself he was only hearing what he wanted to hear, but, Perry had obviously heard it too. Either there was a helicopter or they were both experiencing a matching delusion.

“We have to let them know we’re down here!” Nadia stated as the realization dawned on her too.

Perry dashed to the fireplace and stared up the ceiling. “I don’t see how this could be the rescue team. I pray it is, but I don’t want to get your hopes up.”

“Hello!” Nadia yelled. Her voice echoed through the room and raced up the chimney. “Hello! Can you hear me? Help!”

“Uh, Nadia?” Lincoln gazed up in panic as a heap more snow fell from the ceiling.

Nadia opened her mouth to scream again, but Perry wrapped his arms around her and dragged her away from the fireplace. “I want to talk to them!” she sobbed shrilly. “I have to let them know we’re here!”

She wrestled to break free, thrashing wildly. Her feet came off the floor as she tried to lunge away, but Perry held tight. “Baby, baby! The whole thing could come crashing down around us,” he warned. “You have to calm down.”

“Wait, but she has a point,” Lincoln stated. “The chimney is probably the closest to the surface. Hell, it could even be above the snow. If there’s anyone up there, we have to find a way to let them know.”

“Without causing another avalanche though,” said Perry. Nadia slumped in his arms. He released her when he knew she would not yell again. “Quick, give me another flashlight.” Perry reached for the torch and quickly dismantled it. He removed the conical reflector and raced with it to the fireplace. “Hold the light steady, Lincoln. Hurry!”

“What is it? What are you doing?” Nadia sniffed.

“The light will bounce off the reflector, right?” Lincoln suddenly realized.

“Exactly, and its dark outside so there is a chance that it may be seen, albeit a very slim chance.” Perry tilted the reflector back and forth, while he shone the light. Perry crouched and peered up the chimney.

“Keep doing it anyway,” said Nadia. “We have to try.”

Lincoln held the light, feeling his hand tremble with nervousness. They had faced so many dangers. They had gone through so much together, and every time it seemed they had overcome, they encountered another problem. He wanted to have hope, but he was afraid.

The sound of helicopter blades came back louder near the chimney. Nadia’s giddy laughter intensified as she pointed up. “They know we’re here!”