The Fury

for Martin...I still remember

I looked out the window at the sky growing dark with storm clouds, and uneasily wondered why my husband wasn't home yet. I love storms, but this one had been called dangerous more than once on the weather forecasts, and the scenes of devastation it had left behind in the areas it had already gone through were frightening. The wind whistled through the trees next to the house, growing louder and louder every minute, starting to become almost a muted roar. I paced, watchful and worried, in front of the big picture window in the living room, chanting, "Come on, come on," like a mantra to to bring him home safely.

Finally, I saw headlights turn into our driveway at the far end. Relief washed over me, almost leaving me limp, and I went out on the back porch as he pulled his truck around to the back of the house. He came bounding up on the porch, soaking wet, and shaking the rain out of his hair.

"I'm glad you're home, I was beginning to get worried! We've got to get the horses in the barn before it gets any worse." I was almost having to shout over the wind howling through the massive oak trees behind the house.

"Okay, babe, give me just a second, and we'll go round them up."

I ducked back into the house, grabbing my oilskin, and then whistled up the dogs to help get the horses towards the barn. Our horses have never liked being cooped up, and I knew that with the weather as bad as it was they would be skittish, and hard to handle. I looked down at my australian shepherd, Taz, and pointed out towards the pasture, "Go get 'em!"

He took off like a shot, ears laid back against his head in the driving rain, and tail up like a flag behind him. Trixie, his female counterpart, took off after him, and I knew it was just a matter of time before I saw the horses topping the rise at the end of the pasture, relentlessly being driven towards the barn by the dogs.

Martin rejoined me on the back porch after grabbing his own oilskin, and we tugged the collars up around our necks as we ventured out into the forty-mile-an-hour winds, and the rain that was coming down so hard it stung when it hit my cheek. The huge pine trees behind the barn seemed to bend almost parallel to the ground, and I started to worry about one of them coming down on top of the old barn. I wordlessly pointed them out to Martin, knowing that my voice would be lost in the roar of the weather around us, and he nodded, but knew, like I did, that there was little we could do to prevent any damage this storm chose to inflict on us.

At the barn, the storm seemed to conspire against me as I struggled to open the small side door, and once I had it open, it was snatched from my grasp by a gust, and slammed back into the side of the structure. It was a little quieter in the barn, but it only served to highlight the creaks and groans wrung from the old building by the storm.

While Martin struggled to pull the door closed behind us, I made my way down the aisle of the barn to the sliding doors, intending on getting them open so the horses could easily come inside once the dogs had them headed this way. I slid the door to the side just in time to see the horses top the hill to the side of the barn at a gallop, head high, nostrils flared, and the two dogs nipping at their heels.

I stepped to the side as Taz and Trixie herded them inside, and turned to see that Martin had the stall doors open, and each horse had headed to it's own stall, snorting and blowing.

"They feel it, don't they?" I almost yelled at Martin as I watched my gelding, Striker, paw at the stall gate, tense muscles highlighted in his chesnut neck.

"I haven't seen it this bad in years!" he yelled back, busy throwing hay into each horse's stall, and checking to see that they all had water.

"Are you sure they'll be okay in here? What if one of those pines comes down on the barn?"

Martin looked out the door of the barn, and nodded his head at a lightning strike that arced out of a sky that had turned a sickly greenish-yellow, and struck the ground perilously close to us. "They need to be in here. Out there, they'll be under the trees, and may get hit. They may not be happy, but they'll be safer here."

I helped him check the last couple of stalls, and then resigned myself to the trek back to the house in the rain. Even though the air was relatively warm, the rain was icy cold, and managed to find it's way under any coat to drench you in seconds. I motioned to the dogs to stay, and nodded to Martin that I was ready.

We ducked out of the side door and it took two of us this time to get it to close. Martin swung the latch closed, and I turned to head back to the house. We both took off at a trot, holding our oilskins closed, and hunching our shoulders against the rain. We made it about halfway to the house when thunder roared right above us, and the crackle of lightning made the hair stand up on my arms. A deafening crack sounded, and I looked up to see half of one of our massive oak trees leaning impossibly.

Martin dived for me, and pulled me to the side as half the oak came crashing down where I had stood seconds before. He yelled in my ear, "Tornado!" and forcibly turned my head to make sure I saw.

I looked towards the pasture and saw a dark finger reaching out of the strange sky towards the ground. It didn't seem real, and I probably would have stayed frozen there to the ground, but Martin grabbed me, and pushed me towards the creek. "We have to get to lower ground!"

I stumbled towards the creek, almost unable to see where I was going through the downpour, and still deafened by the thunder seconds before. Martin pushed me, forcing me to keep up with him, until I reached the short bank above the creek, and fell about three and a half feet to the creekbed below. Martin was right behind me, and he pulled me up against him as we huddled against the small overhang that seemed to be our only shelter for the moment. I was shaking, not because I was cold, but because I had seen the damage tornados can do in a split second, and we now had one bearing down on us quickly.

A rumble started getting louder, vibrating through my body, sounding like a freight train was flying through the air above us, and again I noticed the sickly color of the sky that I could see between ominous, dark clouds.

"Put your head down!" Martin yelled in my ear, and I ducked my head down against his chest, and his arms went around me, squeezing me almost uncomfortably tight. I felt him put his head down next to mine, pulling us both against the steep bank, and the meager shelter it offered. The crackle of almost constant lightning strikes had left negative images on my retinas, and not being able to make sense of the chaos around me, I shut my eyes, and prepared for the worst.

For a moment, it almost seemed that the wind died a little, and I thought for a split-second that we had dodged a bullet. I was wrong. The fury had only taken a short breather, and when it resumed it was worse that before. The noise seemed inside me, making my whole body resonate with the chaos. I could feel Martin's arms tight around me, my anchor to the earth. The rest of me was consumed by the storm.

Time dragged. The scream of the wind seemed about to burst my eardrums, and then it got just a degree quieter. I thought that I had to be mistaken, but after a moment I realized that I was right, the chaos in the air was almost imperceptibly slowing. I finally dared to raise my head and open my eyes, and was greeted with a landscape that was vastly different than it had been when I had last seen it.

The oak that had cracked in front of us looked like something from a war zone. Half of it was still standing exactly like it had been, the other half had been twisted from it, turned upside down, and slammed back into the ground. It had taken part of the barbed wire fence with it, and wire stuck out a weird angles from the tree itself. There were pine trees down in the pasture, looking almost like dominos in the uniform way they had fallen, one right after the other, and the shed where we had kept the riding lawn mower, and yard tools was completely gone. The wood from it was probably two counties away. The rain had faded to a slow drizzle now that the wind wasn't flinging it this way and that.

Martin was gazing around at our reconfigured yard, amazed we had escaped with just a few scratches. He finally looked at me, and asked, "Are you okay?"

I nodded, my mouth too dry from the terror-fueled adrenaline rush I was coming down from. He brushed my hair back from my face, and looked directly into my eyes, "You sure?"

I coughed, and found my voice, finally, "Yeah, I'm okay, just scared, that's all."

He pulled me roughly to him, leaned his chin on my shoulder, and I heard him say, very quietly, "I was scared, too, babe."

Martin kissed my cheek, then moved his lips to mine. He kissed me very gently, as if afraid I would bruise, and then his kiss deepened, and I kissed him back with a passion and urgency that surprised me. The adrenaline in my body came surging back, not in reaction to danger this time, but riding tandem with an overwhelming urge to feel his body over mine.

I leaned back onto the mud of the creek bank, pulling him with me. His lips never lost contact with mine, and he groaned into my mouth with a need that matched my own. I could feel his cock even through all the clothing, hard against my belly. Martin raised up long enough to undo my jeans, and then my hands were with his on my hips, pushing my jeans down my legs, and then off. The mud underneath me was infinitely more welcome than my soaking clothes had been. Then, my hands met his again at the waist of his jeans, fumbling with the button, and then the zipper, in our hurry to be able to reassure ourselves we were alive.

Again, he was on me, his weight a blessing, and his lips on mine. Martin pushed my t-shirt up, and fastened his lips around my nipple, the contrast of the chill drizzle of rain, and the heat of his mouth bringing chill bumps up on my skin. I reached between us, and held his cock in my hand, heavy and familiar, and then guided him to me. It was my turn to groan when I felt him push into me.

He pulled back briefly, and whispered, "Babe, I don't think I can go slow ..."

I hushed him with a finger over his lips, and whispered back, "I don't want you to go slow."

I arched my back, trying to draw his cock deeper into me, and his body answered mine. He sat back and hooked his arms under my knees, lifting my ass up to him, and started driving his cock into me, hard. I held on to his upper arms, trying to find leverage to fuck him back, needing him so badly it was frightening.

He released my legs, and brought one of his hands around to my pussy, seeking, and then finding, my clit. His touch was all it took to send me sliding over the edge of an orgasm, screaming my pleasure to the clouds. He fucked me through my orgasm, and I could feel my pussy clenching tight around his cock.

I heard him groan, "Oh, damn....babe...." and then he put his arms back in place behind my legs and lifted me up to meet his thrusts.

"C'mon, baby," I gasped, "fuck me. Give it to me."

The sound of our wet bodies meeting, hard and fast, was a charm against danger.

Martin threw back his head, letting the rain wash his face, and I felt him get larger inside me. He slammed his cock into me, over and over, until he felt me start to tighten around him again in another impending climax. With a shout, he came deep inside me, and I went with him, a sweet release.

I pulled him back down to me, and kissed him, slowly and sweetly, and then wrapped my arms around him, his weight familiar and comforting on me. He put his head next to mine on the ground, and said, "I love you, baby."

"I love you, too." I answered. Then I felt the gentle benediction of the rain on my face, and knew the chaos had been pushed back, and kept away from me, once again.