Bedding Down, A Collection of Winter Erotica (21 page)

turns away for a moment. She slides her yoga pants around her

ankles. Underneath, she is naked, and the sight of her pussy,

covered in a neatly trimmed pelt of black hair, excites Gideon.

Placing her hands on Gideon’s shoulders, she pushes him onto

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his knees and leans back against the doorjamb. Gideon sighs,

slides her threadbare NYU T-shirt up just below her breasts,

rests his cheek against the bare flat of her abdomen. They stand like that for a long while, Gideon listening to her breathe, the steady beating of her heart, the strange, intimate sounds her

stomach makes. Alana runs her fingers through Gideon’s hair—

it is one of her favorite things about him—wild and curly, refusing to behave.

Gideon draws a thin trail of saliva from Alana’s navel to just

above her pussy. She continues to play with his hair, occasionally massaging his scalp with her fingertips, her eyes closed. Gideon places his hands between her thighs. She shivers, but follows

his direction, widening her stance. With his thumbs, Gideon

spreads Alana’s pussy lips and leans forward, lightly flicking his tongue against the spot just above her clit. His cock throbs, aching for relief. He leans back against his heels, slides one hand around Alana’s body, taking firm hold of her ass. He traces the outer edges of her pussy lips, which quiver ever so slightly at the touch, and then he blows lightly, letting his breath fall against her. Alana pulls one ankle free from her pants, perching it over Gideon’s left shoulder. Gideon slides his left hand up her body and slips two fingers into her mouth. His wedding ring presses

against her chin. It is a bittersweet sensation. She takes hold of his wrist, and, looking down at him, she swallows his fingers

into her mouth until her lips reach his knuckles. Gideon rests

his forehead against her mound, the soft hairs tickling his skin, enjoying the sensation of her mouth working along his fingers.

When they are thick with wet, he pulls his hand away and

slowly slides the moist fingertips inside her ass. Alana gasps qui-172

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etly, her stomach muscles tightening. Gideon waits, slides his

fingers deeper.

“Put your mouth on me,” Alana whispers. Gideon wraps his

lips around Alana’s clit, hard and swollen. He hums with his

lips, and the curious sensation sends sharp shards of pleasure up Alana’s spine. With his tongue, he suckles insistently, increasing the pressure as Alana’s breath quickens. When he senses Alana

is about to come, he stops, slides his tongue between her pussy lips to her cunt, thrusting his tongue in and out, exploring the mysterious folds just past her entrance. His fingers work deeper into her ass, the tight muscles clenching around him. Alana covers her mouth with her hand, trying to stifle her moans. Her

heel digs deeper into his back, her thigh muscles straining as she tries to resist the intense waves of joy and sadness washing over her. Slowly, Gideon pulls his fingers back until her ass puckers around the fingertips, penetrates again, allows the rest of the world to fall away.

All he concentrates on is Alana—how she tastes and smells

and responds to his mouth and his fingers. When she can control herself no longer, Alana pulls Gideon’s head back slightly, and rocking her hips back and forth, grinds her clit against Gideon’s tongue. He submits, allows himself to be used. Her gasps grow

louder, her thigh muscles tense further, a burning sensation settling around her hips. As she comes, Alana allows herself to

groan loudly, just once, her body shuddering, her legs rubbery

and weak. Gideon thrusts his fingers hard, deep into her ass one last time, then pulls them out, the thin membranes reluctant to relinquish their grip. She accidentally slams her head against

the doorjamb and winces. Wiping his hands on his pants, he

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falls back and stretches his limbs, staring at the ceiling. Her pussy juice covers the lower half of his face, quickly drying into a fragile, thin layer. Alana slips back into her pants, then lies down next to him, licking the palm of her hand before sliding

her hands beneath the waist of his jeans. She brushes her thumb across the tip of his cock, and carefully wraps her hand around the shaft. She strokes him from base to tip. Seconds later, he

comes, with a violent thrust of the hips, his cock spasming in

her hand. She licks the silvery strands of come from her fingers, rolls onto his chest, and kisses him deeply. They taste each other on one another’s lips and wonder, as they have for the past several months, if this will be the last kiss they share.

“I’m sorry,” she finally says, rolling away and sitting with her knees pulled up against her chest.

Gideon rolls onto his side, leaning on his elbow. “What are

you sorry for?”

Alana studies the antique ceiling fan above, admiring the

intricate detail on the woodwork and the Tiffany glass dome.

“For all of this. Us. Your father. He’s not getting worse but he’s not getting better. I know seeing him like this hurts you.”

“Seeing us like this hurts more,” Gideon says.

Alana presses her forehead against her knees, rocking back

and forth. “It hurts me, too,” she says softly.

Four evenings a week, Alana gives voice and dance lessons at

a small studio she rents in town. The space is not so much

a studio as it is a large, poorly lit room with a piano and a

wooden floor, but it’s something. The work gives her something

to hold on to, she says. And it helps keep her in shape for getting
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back to her life in the city. When the last of her students have left, she’ll often stay in the studio by herself, working through old sheet music or practicing dance routines. Before one or two years became three or four, Gideon used to arrive early to pick her up. He loved watching the ease with which she moved her

long dancer’s body and the pure joy radiating across her face.

But then, he stopped watching because it was plain to see that

there was neither as much joy nor as much ease in the way her

body moved from one corner of the room to the other because

her heart was no longer in it.

On Valentine’s Day, Gideon is at home, studying blueprints

from the last project he worked on before he left New York.

Alana is at her studio. She left early in the morning, with a

note on the refrigerator that she would be gone all day. At the bottom of the slip of paper, she scribbled, “Happy Valentine’s

Day.” Gideon crumpled the note in his hands and watched

it burn while he stood in the backyard smoking a cigarette.

Around nine, the phone rings. At first Gideon ignores it be-

cause few people have the number but when the caller persists,

Gideon sets the blueprints aside and looks at the caller ID

screen.

“Hello?”

“It’s me,” Alana says. “It’s a long story but I’ve locked myself out of the studio and the gas line in my car has frozen. No one seems to be around town and I’m freezing my ass off.”

He looks out the window above the drafting table. The night

is still, but he can tell that the air is frigid because of the frost lining the edges of the glass panes. “I’ll be right there,” he says.

Five minutes later, Gideon pulls up in front of the studio.

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Alana is hunched over in the doorway, facing away from the

wind, her dance bag resting at her feet. Gideon turns the heat to high and quickly helps her into the car.

“What happened?”

Alana holds her hands over the heating vents. “Just take me

home.”

Back at the cabin, Gideon quickly starts a fire and sits Alana

in front of it, wrapping a warm wool blanket around her shoul-

ders. He steps into the kitchen and returns with a mug of hot

tea. Alana is shivering uncontrollably, and in the orange glow of the fire, he can see that her fingertips are bright red.

“Take this,” he says.

Hands trembling, Alana takes the tea, cupping the mug with

both hands. Gideon sits next to her, rubbing her thigh.

“Feeling better?”

Alana shakes her head, her teeth chattering.

Gideon slides behind her, wrapping his arms around her

shoulders, trying to share some of his body heat. Alana tenses, then relaxes against him. For a long while they are silent, watching the fire, listening to one another breathe.

Gideon perches his chin over her shoulder. “How did we get

here?”

“I don’t know,” Alana says. “But I don’t want to be
here
.”

“Neither do I,” says Gideon. “But he’s my father. I can’t leave him alone.”

Alana swallows the last dregs of tea and sets the mug down.

“I didn’t ask you to.”

Gideon pulls away. “You’ve made that clear.”

Alana turns and kneels between Gideon’s thighs. When he

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tries to look away, she holds his face between her hands. “There’s nothing for me here.”

“I’m here.”

Alana kisses Gideon softly, then rests her forehead against

his. “I never understood what people meant when they say that

love isn’t enough, but now, I think I know.”

“You are impossible.”

“Put your arms up,” Alana says.

Gideon complies and she removes his sweater and the long

johns he is wearing. She quickly slides out of her clothes and

helps him remove his pants. Lying atop his body, she says, “They say that the best way to help someone with hypothermia is to lie naked with them.”

“You’re changing the subject,” Gideon says.

Alana kisses Gideon along the column of his throat and the

hollows above his collarbone. She slides one hand between their bodies toward his cock and slowly traces each of his nipples

with her tongue.

“What are you doing?”

Alana takes a nipple between her teeth, and mutters, “Stop

talking.”

Gideon covers his eyes with the palm of his hand. Despite

their best efforts, they come back, over and over again, to this place where they make love instead of facing the difficult truths of their relationship. Alana works her way lower, until her lips are at the tip of his cock. She traces around the tip, then inside the slit, already wet with salty silver. With her eyes closed, she remembers the night they first met, and how nervous Gideon was,

sitting on the edge of her bed. She cups his balls in one hand,

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squeezing until he groans. When she feels his hand against the

top of her head, she traces the base of his cock with her tongue, then back along the shaft, tracing each vein and the thick ridge along the underside. Squeezing his balls harder, so hard that

Gideon arches his back, raising his hips to her mouth, Alana

starts working her lips down the length of his cock until her lips are pressed against the base. She gags slightly, then breathes and relaxes her throat. Gideon holds her head between his hands as

she starts to bob up and down, every muscle in his body taut.

Before he can come, Alana straddles Gideon’s waist, pulling

his hands to her breasts. He squeezes them, rolling them up-

ward, then to the side. Without ceremony, Alana lowers herself

onto Gideon’s cock, planting her hands on his chest. Tonight

she is open and slick; his cock fills her easily. Back arched, eyes closed, she pitches herself back and forth, sometimes moving

her hips in a lazy, sensuous circle. Gideon rolls her nipples between his thumbs and forefingers with increasing pressure.

“Yes,” Alana says. “Harder.”

Gideon squeezes harder, bringing Alana just past the brink

of pain, pausing, squeezing harder again. Alana rocks her hips

faster, with shorter strokes. Her hands slide to Gideon’s shoulders, and she claws at him with her fingernails, leaving mean red marks from his neck to his elbows.

“We have to stop doing this,” Gideon stutters, his hips jerk-

ing to meet her with each thrust.

“I know,” Alana says through clenched teeth, continuing to

ride him, clenching the muscles of her cunt tightly.

“I’m coming,” Gideon pants, as the intense pressure between

his thighs erupts and he pulls Alana to his chest, lessening the
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distance between them. His body continues to spasm as Alana

slows the motion of her body, until she is perfectly still.

“I’m warmer now,” she says.

They lay in front of the fire, Gideon pulling the blanket over

their bodies until she falls asleep. He kisses each of her ten fingertips, and carefully extricates himself from her embrace.

“I’m not staying,” she says when he is halfway up the stairs.

“Not because I don’t love you or because I don’t want to but

because I can’t.”

Gideon stops, tries to think of an appropriate response, but

says nothing.

The blizzard comes out of nowhere as Gideon is driving back

from a meeting in Minneapolis in late March. What starts as

light flurries quickly becomes sheets of snow blowing back and

forth across the two-lane highway, wind howling at a distressing pitch. He leans forward in his seat, his hands gripping the steering wheel. There is no visibility in any direction. When he tries to use his cell phone, there’s no signal. A mile ahead, Gideon

spots a truck stop, the neon lights glowing faintly through the thick clouds of snow. He pulls into the nearly empty parking