Bedding Down, A Collection of Winter Erotica (15 page)
Read Bedding Down, A Collection of Winter Erotica Online
Authors: Rachel Krame Bussel
“I’ve been dreaming about this for so long,” he murmured, pull-
ing out slowly and flipping me so that I was facedown on the
towel. How could I be imagining this? The terry cloth was so
soft under my skin, and when I put one hand off the edge of the giant bath sheet, I could trace circles and diamonds in the sand decorating the hardwood floor.
But who would go to so much trouble? Who would work so
hard to re-create a world for a lover? That was easy to answer.
I
would. Although I couldn’t believe Jeremiah had done all this for me, I’d spent most of the last twelve months doing similar
crazy things for a man. Why couldn’t my own fairy tale come
true?
That was the thought in my head as Jeremiah gripped my
hips and slid into me from behind. Inch by inch by inch.
“Oh God,” I sighed, loving the way his warm skin felt on
mine.
His body found that perfect rhythm, and he slid one hand
under my waist, parting my nether lips with his fingertips, stroking my clit as he fucked me. The sweet pleasure of almost com-
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ing surrounded me. That sensation of being so close, so damn
close, but not quite reaching the finish. Jeremiah knew how to
keep me teetering. He worked his fingertips in my juices, using my own lubrication to twirl and slide in.
“You’re so wet,” he whispered, and I shuddered all over. “So
fucking wet.”
I could hardly breathe from the pleasure, and when he gripped
onto my long dark ponytail and pulled, I came. They say no two
snowflakes are alike, but I’d amend that to say no two orgasms
are, either. This one was earth-shattering, my body trembling
all over, my breath coming hard and fast, as Jeremiah reached
his own limits, as he shuddered hard and called out my name.
“Michelle. My Michelle.”
Ever the conscientious bartender, my new man brought me a
glass of spiked lemonade afterward, then wrapped me in his
strong arms. Together, we watched the snow fall outside the
window. Crisp, perfect, white pristine flakes. For a moment, I
could understand Roger’s nostalgia, his homesickness for this
type of weather.
“It’s not the weather,” Jeremiah said, as if reading my mind.
He drizzled a handful of coconut-scented Tropicana oil on my
belly. “It’s the boyfriend.”
ALISON TYLER, called a “trollop with a laptop”
by the
East Bay Express
and a “literary siren” by Good
Vibrations, is naughty and she knows it. Her sultry
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t’s
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ot the
W
eather
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short stories have appeared in more than seventy-five
anthologies, including
Sex for America (
HarperCollins),
Sex at the Office
(Virgin), and
Best Women’s Erotica 2008
(Cleis). She is the author of more than twenty-five
erotic novels, and the editor of more than forty-five
explicit anthologies, including
Naked Erotica
(Pretty
Things Press). Please visit www.alisontyler.com for
more information or myspace.com/alisontyler to be her
friend. Although she thinks that snow is lovely to look
at, she’s a California girl through and through.
by Marilyn Jaye Lewis
The Philadelphia Flyers had come into the new hockey season
ranked down at the very bottom of the Eastern Conference,
but Connor Moore, a die-hard Flyers fan, knew there was still
plenty of time left in the season for them to get back on top. He was determined to get to the arena in plenty of time for today’s face-off—the Flyers were playing the New York Rangers at five
o’clock. Another snowfall was heading toward Hellertown, but
Connor was undeterred. They would make it to Philadelphia
come hell or high water—or even more snow.
Kaylie Moore, Connor’s wife, was less than a die-hard hockey
fan. She didn’t hate it; she simply didn’t love it. But she did love Connor and after three years of marriage and two years of
steady dating, she’d gotten used to his devotion to the Flyers, to his love of the sport. She saw the home games as a way to
spend time with her husband, if nothing else. Still, sometimes
his fanaticism drove Kaylie a little nuts. Here they were, already getting into the car.
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“Don’t you think that two o’clock is a little early to be leav-
ing, Connor? The game doesn’t start until five. We’re only about an hour away.”
Connor slid into the driver’s seat and pulled the car door
closed. “I’m leaving plenty of time for bad weather and—I
thought I’d surprise you.”
This piqued Kaylie’s interest. “Really? Surprise me how?”
She fastened her seat belt.
“We’re taking the scenic route. I thought I’d take 611 the
whole way instead of the freeway. How does that sound? And
we can stop at that old barn thing you like—that farmers’
market.”
It was a very nice surprise. Kaylie was amazed that he’d even
thought of it—on a hockey day, no less. “I’ll bet 611 will be
beautiful in this snow, but I don’t think the market is open in the wintertime, Connor.”
“Sure they are.” Connor put the car in reverse and backed
down the long graveled driveway to the semirural street they
lived on, Fullerton Way. “There must be something farmers can
sell in the winter. You know, stuff they ship in from California that we could buy cheaper just about anywhere else. It’s the am-biance we’re after here and I’m sure they’re well aware of it, even in winter. Farmers can be pretty shrewd.”
Kaylie smiled in spite of herself. “Pretty shrewd” was her hus-
band’s pat way of describing anyone whose crafts, food, folk art, or furniture were packaged in just the right way to get Kaylie to part with her hard-earned money. The Amish, the Quakers, and
now, apparently, the farmers were all “pretty shrewd.”
“You’re sweet,” she said. “Thank you for thinking of it.”
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“I just wanted to make sure you knew that I wasn’t
totally
self-centered. I know I’ve seemed like it lately.”
“It’s not that, Connor. I don’t think of you as self-centered.”
“As what, then—afraid? Is that how you think of me?”
“Yes, maybe a little afraid.” She was quick to add, “But that’s okay.”
“It’s okay because I’m a man, you mean? We’re all afraid of
having children?”
“No, I didn’t say that.”
“Then it’s not the children we’re afraid of, per se—” Connor
drove east on Fullerton Way, past the old filling station that
was now called Rosie’s Bar & Grille. “It’s the
cost
of children, the permanence, the unending responsibility of them; that’s what
we men are afraid of, right?”
Kaylie looked away from him and made sure not to sigh.
Sighing usually made Connor feel guilty and then this never-
changing discussion they seemed to have almost daily now
would morph into an argument, and Kaylie didn’t want that,
least of all today, when he was trying so hard to be a good egg about everything.
“You’re allowed to respond, you know, Kaylie; you don’t have
to sit there and just stare out the window. We can talk about
this, can’t we, without getting into a fight?”
It was such a loaded topic that Kaylie couldn’t help but sigh.
“What?” he said, sounding exasperated already. “I know you
want to have a baby.”
She looked at him. “
We
want to have one.”
“Right.
We
want to have one. Just not—” Connor caught
himself before he said it but it was too late.
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“Just not now.” Kaylie finished his thought for him.
“I didn’t say that.”
“What are you saying then, Connor? Just tell me.”
“I’m thinking about it. That’s all.” Kaylie thought this was either very promising news—that he was seriously thinking about
it, about being agreeable, finally, and trying to make a baby with her—or it was merely another stalling tactic. She decided to
think positive and leave well enough alone for now. No reason
to push him if he was indeed trying to be agreeable. “Thanks,
Connor,” she said. And she thought it would be best to change
the subject for a while. “So how are the Rangers ranked right
now?”
“Third.”
“Wow. This should be a good game.”
“It sure will,” Connor agreed. “I’m excited.” At the flashing
yellow traffic light, he veered left, toward 611 and the Delaware River; it would be the river and trees and then pastoral foothills from here on out, and all of it, except the madly rushing river, was frosted with a light layer of still-white two-day-old snow.
Kaylie loved snow, and she loved taking the scenic route any-
where. She hated freeways. She especially loved taking 611, following the bends in the river. In the early days of their marriage, she and Connor used to take a lot of drives along the Delaware, stopping for picnics or to take hikes along the old canal. They hadn’t done anything like that in a long while. Now, seeing it
all dusted with snow made Kaylie’s heart happy; her perspec-
tive freshened on everything. And it brought back memories, to
boot.
“Remember that time—” she began.
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Connor cut her off. “Yes,” he said, smiling. “I do.”
She smiled back at him. She was feeling her hormones stir-
ring but she didn’t want to say anything about it. She was ovu-
lating; it would be sure to lead to a huge argument as soon as
he found out. Better to change the subject again, but she didn’t feel like talking about hockey. She wanted to have a baby. In all honesty, it was all she thought about anymore.
Not privy to his wife’s thought processes, Connor was still on
the topic of memories. “We were pretty bold that day, weren’t
we? I mean, even for us.”
“I guess so,” Kaylie replied distractedly.
“You
guess
so? Jesus, Kay, that’s understating it. You know, I think about that day from time to time and I still get off on it.”
This took her aback; she thought she’d been alone it that
secret pleasure. “You do?”
“Yeah, I do. That was so hot, don’t you think? I get a lot of
mileage out of that memory. You were such a wild little girl that day. Not that you aren’t all the time,” he added playfully. “You just outdid yourself that time—and in public, no less.”
“It was hardly ‘in public,’ ” she said, suddenly feeling shy
about it. “We were simply outside.”
Connor reached over and squeezed her hand. “Hey, you’re
blushing.”
“I am not.”
“Yes, you are.”
The simple touch of his hand on hers gave Kaylie that spark,
ignited somewhere between her heart and her belly, and the sud-
den clarity of the memory overwhelmed her in its intimate de-
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tail. They’d been walking along the towpath of the old canal
that day; it was late spring, warm enough to be walking without jackets for the first time that season. The sky had been that
perfect shade of blue; the clouds, puffy and bright white. The
air was filled with the scent of the first May blossoms and the river itself had smelled of spring, a thing alive and fresh and full of new promises. It had made Kaylie feel hungry for life—
insatiable for it, in fact. One minute, she’d been kissing Con-
nor; the next, she’d felt ravenous for his tongue. They were
really
kissing then—passionately, right there on the old towpath, out
in the open. She was clinging to Connor’s neck and his hand
was up under her T-shirt. The feel of his fingertips grazing her nipple, even through the lace of her bra, had set her on fire. She’d practically dragged him to the ranger station—a very small, very old clapboard house just off the main path—and thrown him
down onto the grass behind the building.
For a mere moment, she’d confined herself to lying on top of
him in the grass and kissing him like crazy. But it wasn’t long before he had her shirt pushed up, her bra tugged up over her tits and her tits exposed to the air—her tender nipple suddenly in
his mouth and swelling from the intense pressure of how fiercely he was sucking on her.
She couldn’t stand it then. She’d reached behind her and un-
clasped the bra but even that had felt too constricting. She managed to pull the T-shirt and then the bra off completely. It had felt so liberating, she remembered; that was the exact feeling, to be suddenly topless in the warm spring air, with Connor so
eager to devour her nipples. It had become quickly obvious that they were going to have to fuck—there was no doubt about it.
She was too worked up.
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Her hands were at his belt, unbuckling it. Abruptly, his
mouth was off her. “Kaylie,” he said. “What are you doing?”
“You know what I’m doing,” she insisted—hurriedly, as she
fumbled with his buckle.
“Not really.” He was mildly alarmed when he felt his zip-
