Bedding Down, A Collection of Winter Erotica (19 page)

head, feeling happy. “I came.”

They looked at each other, wondering if that had been it, the

spark of life. And whether it was or wasn’t, they still had the whole weekend ahead of them. Connor couldn’t wait until they

could get the car started, get back home and do it again.

“To think I was so excited about seeing the Flyers take on the

Rangers,” he said.

Kaylie’s hips still rocked gently beneath him, her breathing

steadier now, returning to normal. She didn’t say anything. She just looked up into his face, luxuriating in the sound of his

B
aby,
I
t’s
C
old
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utside

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voice, in the feel of him on top of her, as he talked about hockey and about how little it really mattered in the grand scheme of

things.
I am ready for this
, she was thinking, as if in some hypnotic daze.
The unimaginable mystery of life, of everything love is; I am so ready
for it
.

Connor eased himself out of her and then sat up. “Christ, it’s

freezing,” he said. “We should probably get dressed, don’t you

think?”

“Probably,” she agreed. “We don’t want to catch pneumo-

nia.”

“No,” he said. “We sure don’t.”

They hurriedly got into their clothes and then snuggled back

under the blankets. They did their best to keep themselves warm while they waited for the call to come. They talked about what

they might have for dinner later, about what they had in the

house, or should they stop at the store first before they got completely snowed in. . . . It was just as easy as that, really—without even knowing it, they were making plans for three now.

About Marilyn Jaye Lewis

MARILYN JAYE LEWIS
(www.marilynjayelewis.com)

is the award-winning author of
Neptune & Surf,
a trio of erotic novellas, and the coeditor of the international

best-selling erotic art book,
Mammoth Book of Erotic

Photography.
She has received many citations and awards for her erotic fiction, including being named a finalist

in the William Faulkner Writing Competition and

winner in the New Century Writers Awards. Her short

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arilyn
J
aye
L
ewis

stories and novellas have been published worldwide and

translated into French, Italian, and Japanese.
Lust:Bisexual
Erotica
(Alyson, 2004) represents her collected erotic

short fiction from 1997 to 2003. Other anthologies

she has edited include
Hot Women’s Erotica; That’s Amore!;

Stirring Up a Storm;
and
Zowie! It’s Yaoi!
Her popular erotic romance novels,
When Hearts Collide
and
When the Night
Stood Still,
were reissued in Spring 2008 as
From Hollywood,
With Love
(Magic Carpet Books). Upcoming novels

include
Freak Parade; A Killing on Mercy Road; We’re Still All
That;
and
Twilight of the Immortal.

Northern Exposure

by Isabelle Gray

It started as a game between them in a time when they thought

they understood the meaning of the words, “I love you.”
Ask
of me what you will,
they whispered to each other, breathlessly after making love, softly while lying in each other’s arms the

next morning, hoarsely after a fight. “Ask of me what you will,”

Alana says to Gideon, as they walk through the woods behind

their cabin. It is a cold November afternoon. Their breath is

foggy in the chill of the afternoon and they can hear the snow

beneath their hiking boots. Her hands, red and chapped, are

shoved into the pockets of her jeans, and she walks slowly, with stuttered steps, trying to keep up. “Ask of me what you will,”

she says again, but Gideon pretends not to hear. Instead, he listens to a flock of birds flying south, the occasional report of a deer-hunter’s rifle, the sound of the air. He is in love with November. He does not want her to disturb this moment.

The winters are long in North Country. Snow falls as early as

August, and by November, cold has taken hold of the earth and

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won’t relinquish its grip until late May. It is not the cold or the snow or the mere six hours of daylight that bother her, Alana is fond of saying, but the fact that she doesn’t get to take advantage of her extensive shoe collection often enough during these long winter months. Instead, her feet are trapped in warm, heavy boots sturdy enough to brave the elements, the slippery ground, and more than three hundred inches of snow a year.

It hurts to breathe, but Gideon inhales deeply. He enjoys the

sensation of the cold air bruising the delicate lining of his lungs.

Alana grabs the sleeve of his jacket, pulling him toward her.

“Gideon, do you hear me talking to you?”

He nods, squinting as he stares into the distance. “I hear

you.”

“Ask of me what you will.”

“There is nothing I want to ask of you.” He turns toward her,

brushing her hand from his sleeve. Her blue eyes flash angrily, her chin jutting forth. This is the first time he has asked nothing of her.

Their relationship has always been volatile—hot and cold.

They met in an entirely different place than the one they find

themselves in now. They were seniors at NYU. He was studying

architecture. She was studying musical theater. One drunken

night, after meeting over bingo at a hipster bar in the Williams-burg section of Brooklyn, they stumbled back to her fifth-floor walk-up. She poured them wine in plastic cups and as they drank, Gideon awkwardly kissed her neck and fumbled with her

bra clasp, thankful he had remembered to bring a couple con-

doms before heading out. When they were sufficiently drunk

enough to not be nervous around one another, she sat him on

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the edge of her bed, unbuttoned his jeans, and wrapped her

mouth around his cock, thick and pale, lightly veined. Alana

had no way of knowing at the time, but she was Gideon’s first.

The sensation of her tongue lazily sliding along the length of

his cock, and the tiny sounds she made as she took him into her throat were more than enough for him to swear the rest of his

life to her.

For the next five years they were inseparable, living the big-

city lives they had always dreamed of. He earned a position at

a successful architecture firm. While his particular work wasn’t that exciting, there was room to grow and the senior partners

were doing truly innovative work. Alana started in the ensemble and eventually landed a leading role in the company of a long-running Broadway show. Every night, Gideon would meet her

at the stage door, waiting at the end of a long line of eager

fans. He walked her home, listening to her talk about how her

performance had gone, which cast member was sleeping with

whom, the things that had gone wrong. When they talked about

his day she listened intently, as if the design specifications of a window in a fifty-story building mattered. Alana would talk so

fast, her face flushed with excitement, traces of stage makeup

still marking the edges of her face. In these moments, Gideon

would look up at the sky, the buildings towering over them,

Alana’s small hand in his, and his heart would pound so hard,

he feared his ribcage would shatter.

Some nights, she would wait for him in her dressing room

wearing nothing but her robe, a gift from Gideon on opening

night, her skin still damp from the shower. Alana would close

the door, lean against it, giving Gideon a
come hither
look, her
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thick black hair falling around her face. “You’re about to fuck a woman who’s going to be a star,” she’d say. She believed in

telling the story until it came true and so did he. She would let her robe fall open, revealing olive skin, the gracefully defined muscles of a dancer’s body, the impossibly long lines of her legs, a little extra thickness in the thighs, her breasts full, set slightly apart, nipples dusted lightly with brown. She would close the

distance between them, straddle him on the small love seat,

and they would fuck until they were both sweaty and spent, her

hands pressed against the wall behind them, his hands firmly

gripping her ass.

But then things changed. Gideon’s father got sick—the kind

of sick that required him to move back home until the inevi-

table. When he told Alana he had to leave, she smiled, chewed

on her lower lip for a moment, then said, “Let’s get married.”

The next morning, with a few of their friends, they went to city hall, got a marriage license, and were married by a justice of the peace. After a tearful good-bye at JFK, Gideon flew to Minnesota, his father and the life he thought he had escaped—not

a bad life, but certainly not the one he wanted for himself. Six months later, when her contract was up, Alana followed. They

left a lot behind—more than they realized at the time.

The
ask of me
game started in the time when they couldn’t keep up with all the thoughts they needed to share with each

other. It started when they wanted nothing more than to do whatever would make the other happy. Now, Gideon wants to

keep his thoughts to himself, because Alana is leaving him. The one thing he wants to ask of her she will not give. A year or two turned in to three or four and she’s ready to get back to the lives

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they left behind. For too long, they hoped that if they pretended that things were normal, they would somehow become normal.

Now, they have stopped pretending. If winter had not settled

in already, she would have left weeks ago. Instead, she’s decided to wait until spring. Things are always easier when the snow

thaws.

She grabs his arm again. “Why don’t you have anything to

ask?”

Gideon grabs Alana by her waist, pressing her against a nearby

tree. He holds her arms over her head and looks down at her. “I was under the impression that we were no longer in the position to ask anything of one another.”

Before she can answer, he covers her lips with his, kissing her hard, the tightness in his chest growing. Her lips are dry, almost chapped. She is reticent at first, struggling to free herself from his grip, but soon, her mouth is open, her tongue playing with

his. Gideon fumbles with his belt buckle, undoing his jeans, then hers. She is warm and sweet and in their kiss he tastes who they were when they first met. He slides his hands under her sweater, squeezing her breasts, then running his thumbs over her hard

nipples. She moans, taking his cock in her hands, stroking until he’s hard. Shivering, he lifts Alana and she kicks her left leg free from her pants before wrapping her thighs around his waist.

Alana gasps as he slides his cock inside her cunt, where it’s

humid, and entirely unlike the North Country. She grabs at his

coat and he quickly shrugs it free, letting it fall onto the snow.

Bracing himself with one arm against the tree, he thrusts until his cock is buried deeply. They stare at each other, until his

breath catches and Gideon looks away. Alana gently clasps the

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back of his neck with one hand, sliding the other beneath his

shirt. She has always enjoyed the sensation of his chest beneath her hands—sinewy muscles over his breastbone and a delightful

softness at his belly. Gideon fucks her slowly, softly, tiny spirals of pleasure blossoming at the tip of his cock and quickly working their way through the rest of his body. Alana tightens the

grip of her thighs and grabs hold of the tree with both hands.

With each thrust, she rises to meet him. They no longer feel

the cold. Instead, it is skin, the cadence of their voices, Alana’s moans increasing in pitch as she nears climax.

After they come, Alana pushes Gideon away and dresses

quickly. As she walks away, toward the cabin, leaving him alone, near a tree with his pants around his ankles, she says, “I’m not staying.” She doesn’t look back.

Despite it all, Gideon is in love with November.

During their first year together, they promised one another they wouldn’t go crazy buying each other expensive Christmas presents. Instead, they would take trips to all those places in the world they had always wanted to visit. That first year, it was

the Amalfi Coast of Italy and three weeks in a small apartment, drinking wine and making love until their bodies were chafed

and sore. Gideon learned how to say
Non posso vivere senza te—
I can’t live without you, which he tells her, on a beach, in the middle of the night because they cannot sleep. Alana covered her

mouth with one hand. There were arcs of tears cresting along

her eyelids. “I can’t believe you’re mine,” she told him. She was wearing a thin sundress, and nothing underneath. Gideon slid

his hand between her thighs, warm and gritty with sand. When

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he slid two fingers inside her, she covered his hand with hers, tossed her head back and whispered, “
Non posso vivere senza te.
”

With his thumb against her clit, and his fingers pressing against the soft doughy walls of her cunt, Gideon made her come over