The Snowbound Cabin Where We All Crossed a Line

My name is Adrián, and I want to tell you something that happened to me last winter, one of those nights you know will hardly ever come again. I still find it hard to believe it happened, but it did, and I’d rather write it down before memory softens it.

We went up to the mountains for a few days as two couples: my wife, Carla, and me on one side; our friends Rubén and Noelia on the other. We were all in our forties. With Rubén and Noelia, we’d spent half our lives having dinners, taking trips, and sharing confidences, the kind of friendship where there’s no pretense left, no need for caution. Two solid couples, four friends who knew each other far too well.

We rented a country house in a village in the Aragonese Pyrenees, planning to go hiking and do a couple of routes famous for being pretty and easy. We set off on a Thursday at noon, each couple in our own car, and arrived in the mid-afternoon. They gave us the keys, we unpacked, and we went down to the nearest supermarket to buy whatever was missing.

We knew the weather might turn bad. What had been forecast as a few flakes was now being announced as something more serious, but we were keen and decided to take the risk. We had dinner without making much of it, went to bed early, and at dawn the surprise was waiting for us.

The snowfall hadn’t been epic, but it had been enough to cover the streets. The real problem was another one: a truck had overturned on the only access road, spilling its load all over the asphalt. Until the experts arrived, not even the snowplows could get in. The result: we were trapped in a village of barely a hundred inhabitants.

Rubén and I were gutted: we’d been looking forward to trying out our snowshoes. Carla and Noelia, on the other hand, immediately took it in stride: we could always fire up the barbecue, stretch out lunch the way we used to when we were younger, and rest, which we badly needed.

Seen that way, the plan wasn’t so bad. We ate something and went out to stretch our legs around the village, to take in the snowy landscape. It was a sight we weren’t used to, and we enjoyed it.

Around noon we lit the fire in the grill area, nicely sheltered under a little roof. While it got going, we opened a good red wine and made ourselves vermouth, chatting about stories from other years. We grilled pancetta, chistorra, and a few lamb chops, and for dessert, torrijas, ice cream, and coffee. To finish, a local liqueur. Before we knew it, it was nearly five in the afternoon.

With the first pacharán, which was delicious, the conversation started to go off the rails. We talked about love, sex, and relationships. The four of us thought pretty much alike, and that led to long, conspiratorial debates. Before we knew it, it was nine o’clock. We made use of the leftovers and a potato omelet Carla had brought, and since we were at it, we made ourselves a gin and tonic.

That was when the subject came up of a couple we knew who had just split up, both of them unfaithful, each in their own way. I said the love was still there, but boredom had set in; Rubén said the love was gone; Carla said they’d looked outside for what they couldn’t find inside. And then Noelia surprised us all.

“I get it,” she said, shrugging. “I don’t think it’s a reason to get divorced.”

That sentence forced a second round. According to her, a whole life with the same person had to be unbelievably boring, and it was normal to want other bodies. Rubén took that like boiling oil.

“So you’d go off with someone else? Or have you already slept with someone?” he blurted, half joking, half not.

“No, silly, I haven’t slept with anyone,” she replied, calmly. “But I’d like to.”

The calm with which she said it was the most unsettling thing of all.

“Sorry?” Rubén was stunned.

“I mean, I wish we’d been raised differently and these things could be done without anyone feeling betrayed. The problem with cheating isn’t sex, Rubén. It’s the lies, the secrecy, the trust that gets broken. I wouldn’t mind if you tried other women, as long as you told me.”

“I agree,” Carla said before anyone else could, leaving me speechless.

“Not again, for fuck’s sake,” I said.

“What the hell did you put in this gin, Adrián?” Rubén joked, and all four of us laughed.

The conversation carried on from there, increasingly loose. We agreed that the problem lies in burdening sex with a weight it doesn’t always have, in assuming that physical acts are always tied to feelings, and that it was a shame to limit something so powerful to the narrow confines of the couple.

Carla, to my surprise, brought up liberal couples, swingers, increasingly fashionable. Open relationships with their own rules, in which each couple decided how to live their sex life, sometimes including other people.

“So, basically, cheating and nothing happens,” Rubén summed it up bluntly.

“There’s no cheating if the two of you know and agree to it,” Carla clarified. “Sometimes they bring a third person into the bed. Other times they do it with another like-minded couple.”

“Like in porn?” Noelia asked, genuinely interested.

“That’s one way of looking at it. Sometimes they don’t even touch between couples: each one with their own, in the same room, watching.”

“Oh, look at that, that actually sounds good,” Noelia surprised us again.

“Well, aren’t you the modern one!” Rubén said, amused.

“I’ve always found that idea interesting,” Carla added.

“Honestly, I’d never really thought about it, but seen that way it doesn’t look bad,” I said, laughing. “Though maybe it’s the gin and tonics. I’m going to make myself another and see if I like it even more.”

Everyone was in. I don’t know if it was the gin, the accumulated fatigue, or our usual chemistry, but that night a door opened onto topics we’d never touched, onto possibilities that were there without us ever having looked them in the face.

“I don’t know if I could see my Noelia with another man,” Rubén tossed out.

“It would be hard for me, no point lying,” I said.

“Well, seeing you enjoy yourself turns me on a lot. I think I could,” Noelia said.

“I think the same,” Carla added.

“What I do think is that seeing another couple right next to us would be nice,” Rubén admitted, and he pointed at Carla and me between laughs. “In fact, I just imagined the two of you and I even got aroused, you know?”

“Well, I didn’t have that idea, you pig,” I shot back to tease him. “Though thinking about seeing your wife naked does have something going for it, I’m not going to lie.”

“Hey, show some respect, we’re right here!” Noelia protested, laughing.

“Exactly, macho men,” Carla added. “Maybe the ones who don’t want to see you naked are us, and we’d go looking for two hotties.”

“And what’s this about you not minding being watched?” Carla asked me, one eyebrow raised. “I didn’t know that about you.”

“Well, I had thought about it once or twice,” I admitted.

“Then now we could check,” she pressed me. “I’m sure Rubén and Noelia won’t mind.”

“On the contrary, I’d love it,” Rubén said quickly.

“Thanks, friend,” I said with a mock grimace.

“Me, for seeing Carla, you know. I know you too well.”

“Well, I don’t know you,” Noelia jumped in, “so it’s fine by me too.”

Rubén’s face changed for a second, but he immediately laughed again. The living room helped: large, with two big sofas facing each other and an electric fireplace imitating flames.

“It’s never going to be easier than now,” Carla told Rubén.

“But you’ve got a lot of clothes on for that, don’t you?” I joked.

“If that’s the problem, I’ll fix it,” she said boldly.

“Fix it, fix it,” Rubén said.

“You shut up and stay out of it,” Noelia ordered him, though she was smiling.

“Exactly, shut up,” Carla added. “Or you might have to help me take it off.”

“Whatever’s needed, I’m here to help,” the bastard offered. “If you don’t mind, darling.”

“I don’t mind, if Carla wants to,” Noelia conceded.

“I do,” my wife answered.

“Then go ahead, I want to see this,” I said, convinced it was just bravado and would amount to nothing.

I was wrong. Carla stood up without hesitation, crossed the living room, and planted herself in front of Rubén. Noelia, to put him even more on the spot, came and sat in the space my wife had left beside me. There was a silence. I thought that would be the end of it. But Carla took off her sweater and, without pausing, her T-shirt, until she was left in her bra.

“Oh, my dear, I think you’re in a spot of trouble,” Noelia teased when she saw her husband’s face.

“Serves you right for being such a big mouth,” I told Rubén, still certain it wouldn’t go any further.

“Are you going to help me or not?” Carla said, lifting one boot onto his knee.

“That’s what happens when you run your mouth,” Noelia added fuel to the fire.

Rubén looked at his wife, looked at mine, saw the glass Noelia raised as if granting permission, and something lit up in his eyes. He unfastened one boot, then the other. Carla was left barefoot.

“The belt,” she ordered, with a decisiveness and lust in her voice I’d rarely heard from her.

Rubén obeyed. He undid the button on her trousers, lowered the zipper, and with his hands on either side of her waist, slowly pulled down her jeans. Carla’s ass came into view, with a black thong that fit her like a glove. Those two seemed to have forgotten about us. I, I admit, was enjoying myself; an erection was beginning to make itself known in my crotch. Beside me, Noelia shifted restlessly on the sofa.

“Well, that’s it, then, isn’t it?” Rubén said.

“Do you think she’s still got clothes on, boys?” Carla asked without turning, measuring just how far we could go.

“I still see plenty of fabric. Hurry up, darling, and help our friend,” Noelia anticipated, and without my noticing, she had moved a little closer to me.

Rubén reached for the clasp of the bra. Carla turned to make it easier for him, and I saw her face: I knew it well. It was the confirmation that she would go all the way. When he undid the clasp, she held the cups, turned back, and, facing him, let them fall.

“Fuck…” I could tell Rubén was murmuring.

“Do you like them?” Carla wanted to know.

“Do you like them, Rubén?” I added, fully in the game now. Seeing my wife like that finished stripping me of inhibition.

“Don’t lie, say what you think,” Noelia asked him.

“They’re incredible,” he finally blurted out, with a nervous laugh.

“Would you like to touch them?” Carla went on, completely unleashed.

“No, no, thanks.”

“Come on, if Noelia doesn’t mind and Carla wants it, don’t hold back now,” I cut in. “Right, Noelia?”

“I don’t mind.”

“Just ten seconds,” Carla warned. “You in the back, count them.”

I started counting out loud. Rubén reached for my wife’s breasts and fondled them with care and growing eagerness, always respectfully, though his arousal was now impossible to hide. At ten, Carla, who’s very sharp and hadn’t missed a thing, looked Rubén in the eye.

“Noelia, you can let go now, it was only ten seconds.”

Rubén came back down to earth and searched for the meaning of those words. He found it when he saw Noelia withdrawing her hand from my bulge, which she had gotten bolder and bolder about grabbing over my trousers, squeezing first and then starting something like a masturbation motion. That nearly made me explode on the spot.

“What the fuck…?” Rubén blurted, pretending to be indignant.

“That’s right, Rubén, what the fuck? Equality here,” and without asking permission, Carla stretched out her hand and grabbed his erection over his clothes. Rubén, mouth hanging open, could only manage a sound closer to pleasure than complaint.

“Exactly, equality,” Noelia repeated, standing up in front of me and stripping naked from the waist up. Her breasts were a little smaller than Carla’s, but rounder and firmer, a solid ten in every respect. “Come on, Adrián, yours are ahead.”

I took Noelia’s breasts in my hands, on the verge of exploding inside my pants. She closed her eyes, let out a suggestive sigh, and tilted her head back to focus on feeling.

“Ten! That’s it,” Carla cut in.

“So fast, what a shame,” Noelia complained.

“Good things don’t last long, darling,” my wife shot back.

“This is getting way out of hand,” Rubén tried to restore some sanity.

“I think they’re doing fine, and so am I, not going to lie,” I said, and the three of us laughed while he pretended not to be convinced.

“Well, he’s not complaining either,” Carla added. “You don’t know how hard he’s got it, and how nicely he’s grabbed and sucked my breasts.”

“Sucked?” Noelia and I blurted out at the same time.

“Yes, yes, Mr. ‘This is getting way out of hand’ here, when I grabbed his thing, he took the opportunity to suck one breast. And then the other.”

“Well, well, my little husband, and he seemed like he didn’t want to,” Noelia laughed. Then she took off her trousers and was left only in her panties, like Carla, and collected the four glasses. “What I see here is that we’ve run out of gin and tonics and that there are two half-naked people and two fully dressed ones.”

“Hurry up, she’s talking about you two,” Carla added, following her into the kitchen. “When we come back, we expect everything to be even.”

And there they left us, the two of us, dressed, facing each other, looking at one another. He with a sour expression; me smiling; both of us horny as hell.

“And now what?” he asked me.

“Now nothing. Whatever they say and whatever flows,” I answered, standing up and starting to undress.

“You must be joking, Adrián!”

“Not at all, Rubén. You only live once. There’s trust, we like each other, and, as you can see, we’re a little attracted to each other. From here I can see you’re enjoying yourself,” I said, pointing to his bulge. “We don’t have to do anything we don’t want to, but we can play and explore the limits, don’t you think?”

“I don’t know… I’m turned on, sure. But I don’t want you to think…”

“I’m not thinking anything. Carla and I know what we feel. Noelia is a friend with an amazing body, but a friend, and your wife. That’s all.”

After a few seconds of reflection, Rubén stood up and undressed too. When they came back, they found us sitting together in our underwear, smiling and expectant.

“Oh, look at them, how nice and obedient,” Carla laughed, setting two glasses on the table.

“They could be like this all the time,” Noelia added with the other two. “But you weren’t sitting there. Back to your place.”

I obeyed. Noelia came toward me, Carla toward Rubén. We chatted a bit to make things clear and toasted to friendship.

“Since it’s clear now, finish what you started, Rubén,” my wife said, standing beside him.

Rubén understood perfectly. With some shyness, he took Carla’s thong off, savoring every centimeter before fixing his gaze on her shaved pubis. Meanwhile, Noelia pressed against me, swung one leg over mine, and slipped her hand into my boxer shorts, where my erection was already straining to get out. It cost her nothing to get hold of it.

“Very good, Rubén, and since you’re at it and we know you like it, be good…” and, wrapping her arms around his neck, Carla guided him to her slit. He let himself be led, and when he felt her tongue, she let out a sigh that encouraged him to give himself over to cunnilingus that grew more and more intense.

Watching that made me rock hard. Noelia, without hesitation, bent down and took me into her mouth, slowly, almost all the way, after an initial lick. What pleasure. A moan escaped me, my wife turned, and our eyes met, complicit, lit up, full of love and lust at the same time. To return the favor, I pulled Noelia’s panties aside and began to caress her. She was as excited as I was: every brush over her clit drew a moan from her and made her hips move, seeking more, while she kept tending to me.

“Come on, you’ve got me doing all the work,” I heard Carla say, as she pulled Rubén’s head away so that, for the first time, he could see how his wife and I were doing. “Your turn to enjoy yourself.”

Kneeling in front of him, she pulled down his boxer shorts and gave him a blowjob that made him forget my cock was in his wife’s mouth. I decided to take part more fully: I laid Noelia on her back and went between her legs with my tongue, giving her back what she’d given me. Rubén, meanwhile, managed to masturbate Carla.

“I need to put it in now,” I heard my wife say. I turned in time to see her sit up, direct Rubén’s cock to her entrance, and drop down on it in one sharp movement. She stayed motionless for a few seconds, eyes closed, while he caressed her ass and kissed her breasts.

“I need it inside me too, Adrián, please,” Noelia asked.

“Don’t tell me that twice.”

I aimed and stroked her clit with the head a couple of times, which made her bite her lower lip, before entering slowly. That was the starting signal. Carla began riding Rubén, first carefully, then fast, then very fast. Noelia, who had a direct view of the scene, got hotter and moved her hips to match my rhythm. The four of us started moaning louder and louder, and the first “I’m going to come”s were heard. I don’t know who came first or who came last, but at some point all four of us overlapped in the same stretch of pleasure.

When it was over, we stayed lying there, exhausted, sweaty, in silence. Without needing to say anything, through some special chemistry, each of us went with our partner to our room to rest.

***

What happened after that night, and during the days we still had left trapped by the snow, is a matter for another story. I’ll only say that none of the four of us ever looked at a storm the same way again.