Bedding Down, A Collection of Winter Erotica (29 page)

him, ears flopping.

“Hi,” she said, suddenly shy.

“Thought you could use a little help, maybe.” He must have

gotten her note then. Something hammered in her heart. Sud-

denly she didn’t want to let him in to see her messy workplace, her fingers blackened from moving scorched wood and reading

her grandma’s books.

“
Um,
I think I’ve got it now,” she said. “Maybe next time?”

He looked around her, into the shed. “Then how come you’re

boiling over and you’ve got your shirt on backward?”

Dulcie looked down at her shirt. It wasn’t just backward, it

was inside out. And her lace-wrapped nipples were obviously

cold. Or something. She crossed her arms over her chest. “Shit,”

240

S
hanna
G
ermain

she said. So much for a good second impression. And what had

he said about boiling over? She turned, and realized that the

syrup wasn’t boiling over yet, but it was so close to the edge that it was going to at any second.

“Ok,” she said. “Maybe I could use a bit of help.”

He didn’t wait for her to answer, just pushed past her. “Swing

that door shut, will you?” he said. “Keep the heat in.”

“Agate?” she said. The dog stopped snuffing the snow and

looked up at the sound of his name.

“He’s a big boy, he’ll keep himself entertained.”

Dulcie shut the door behind her, and felt the heat cover her

again. She hoped Travis wouldn’t stay around long enough to

see her sweat through her shirt. On the other hand, she didn’t

want to him to go, either.

Travis went straight for the grocery bags filled with books.

Dulcie’s face flushed. Now he was going to know that she’d

screwed up the syrup and that she’d been reading about sex

while she did it. “Wait,” she said. “What are you . . . ?”

He unfolded the top of one of the bags and lifted out a pair of heavy work gloves and a bottle of vegetable oil. “Your grandma

taught you how to read dirty books, but not how to use veg-

etable oil?” He had that grin again, those dimples that made

Dulcie’s insides feel like all that sap in the kettle, boiling and threatening to spill over.

Dulcie watched as he spread the vegetable oil around the rim

of the kettle with the gloves. “You’re supposed to do this when it’s cool,” he said. “But I’m guessing this will work. Butter works, too. Keep it all from boiling over.”

“How?” She wanted to know, but she was distracted, too, by

S
weet
S
eason

241

his arms, the bulge of his biceps and the crisscross of muscles along his forearms.

“Don’t know,” he said. “Just does.”

As he pulled off the gloves, Dulcie realized he was right. The

sap was no longer threatening to boil over. It just rumbled away beneath the oil line.

“What else don’t I know?” Dulcie asked.

“Oh, well, being a big city girl and a teacher, to boot, I would guess you know just about everything,” he said.

Had Ada told him about her being a teacher? Had he asked

about her?

She put her hands again on the wooden paddle and started

stirring. It gave her something to do so she didn’t have to look at him, to see him looking back at her. Was it pity that brought him here, she wondered? A promise to Ada? She didn’t dare

ask.

“I feel like I don’t know shit,” she said.

“Well, let me show you a stirring trick.” He put his hands

over hers on the wooden paddle. His hands were sweaty from

the gloves. Calluses on his palm scratched her skin. She could

smell him again, his scent mixed with the sweet sap. It made her head feel light.

“The trick,” he said, “is to alternate. Clockwise, counter

clockwise, across the middle.” He trained her hands in the

strokes, slow and smooth through the liquid. His hip met hers

as they moved. “Got it?” he asked, and his voice, his lips, were right at her ear. She shivered as she felt his hip press harder.

“Yes,” she said, more breath than voice.

“Keep going,” he said, as though she had a choice. He let go

242

S
hanna
G
ermain

with one hand and came around the back of her, so that his arms were on either side of her waist. They stirred the sap, clockwise, counter-, straight across, their bodies moving together, in constant motion.

“Okay?” he asked. And she knew he was asking about it all.

Not just if the sap was okay, but also the way that he was helping her. The fact that he was here now, touching her hands,

holding her, pressing himself against her.

“Yes,” she said again. It seemed she’d lost the ability to say

anything else.

He put his lips to her neck, right at the bottom of her short

hair. They were soft and just a little wet, and she could feel

their touch all the way down her spine. He slid his tongue out, touched her with his lips and tongue together. Soft and warm

and wet. Somehow cool against her overheated skin.

“You taste like sugar,” he said.

“Oh,” she said.

“Stir,” he said.

She kept stirring, his hands guiding her, even as he sucked

the lobe of her ear. Even as he grew hard against her. She leaned back against him, let herself fall into the rhythm of moving hips and his lips on her neck and the spoon through the sap.

“You got it?” he asked, as he took his hands away.

She couldn’t answer, so she just kept stirring. His lips touched back down on her neck and soon she felt his fingers at her hairline, lifting her hair so he could kiss higher. He pressed against her, pushing her closer to the heat of the kettle. Her body was melting. She kept herself upright by stirring, stirring.

He put his hands on her shoulders, slid them down over her

S
weet
S
eason

243

inside-out shirt until he reached her nipples. They were still

hard, despite the heat, and she shivered as he ran his fingers over them.

“God,” he said. “You’re still so beautiful.”

“You’ve hardly even seen me,” she said. It was a protest, but it sounded weak, even to her.

“Oh, believe me, I have,” he said. “In my head. And now, here,

in real life.”

He slipped his hands under her shirt. Sliding them up her

belly strong enough that they didn’t tickle her, he pushed the

fabric up as he went. When he reached her breasts, he wrapped

his hands around them, over the lace, still rubbing his thumbs

over her nipples.

“You’re not stirring,” he said.

“I am so.” But she wasn’t doing more than moving the spoon

in something that sort of resembled a very small circle.

He played with her nipples, rubbing and pinching them

through the lace of her bra until she felt ready to pass out. She was leaning on the spoon more than she was stirring.

When he reached the button on her jeans and undid them,

she wanted to put the spoon down, to reach around and touch

him.

Travis seemed to know what she was thinking. He reached

out and put her hands back on the spoon. “Stir,” he said. And

then he slid her jeans off her hips and down to her thighs, kissing her along the way. Normally she would have been embarrassed

standing there in nothing but a T-shirt and underwear—thank

God she was wearing decent underwear—but his murmurs,

his kisses, and the way he trailed his tongue along the backs

244

S
hanna
G
ermain

of her knees didn’t leave any room to think, much less to be

embarrassed.

He had her step from foot to foot so he could take her jeans

off. “Is this like patting my belly and rubbing my head?” she

asked.

“Yes,” he said. “Although I think it’s the other way.”

And then when her jeans were off, he folded them and draped

them over the arm of the rocking chair. She knew it wasn’t pos-

sible, but the air behind her, where he’d left, felt chilly.

When he moved back against her, his erection was harder.

It pressed against the soft skin of her ass: rough blue jeans and his cock underneath. She’d never seen his cock; they’d been that young, that innocent, when she’d left, and now she couldn’t help but imagine it. The way it felt, the length of it, the taste.

He got on his knees behind her and slid her legs apart. “Don’t

try this at home,” he said. “This is the work of a trained expert.”

She had only a moment to feel jealous, to wonder who’d been

training him, and then his tongue was against her, lapping at

her so gently that she didn’t know if she imagined it. The sen-

sation of it from behind was something she’d never felt before.

She’d had guys go down on her, but always while she was lying

down.

And then he used his tongue harder, just the tip, so that she

wanted to press herself against him. He spread her wide with his fingers, slid his tongue inside. She was so wet already. Usually it took her so long, or she had to get herself started. But the way he used his tongue and fingers together, she could barely stand.

The heat from the fire licked her face and her belly.

She looked down and saw his hands there, so close to the

S
weet
S
eason

245

heat and the fire. The sight of it, him on his knees behind her, leaning between her legs to lick and touch her, was more than

she could stand. She felt like she, not the sap, was in danger of boiling over and getting scorched.

“Travis . . . ,” she said.

He stopped licking her, looked up at her with his big brown

eyes. She would have been embarrassed if he wasn’t doing that

thing with his fingers . . . she leaned on the wooden spoon, glad it was so sturdy and long.

And then her grinned at her. That goddamn grin. “If you

don’t stir, it’s going to crystallize and you’re going to waste all that sap,” he said.

She was trying. She was. But the things he was doing to her

made it impossible.

“I can’t,” she said. “I can’t.”

And then she was, somehow, stirring and coming, and they

were the same motion. She felt the orgasm slide up her body

with the smooth sweetness of liquid heating up, coming to a

boil. The paddle and her legs wouldn’t hold her anymore, and

she was afraid she was going to fall into the kettle, but Travis stood up and held her from behind, letting her lean back against him until she could breathe again.

“Sit,” he said, after.

He was still behind her, holding her up. She’d dropped any

pretense of moving the spoon. “What about the—?”

He pushed her carefully toward the love seat. “You ever see

Ada stir like that?” he asked.

She sat, putting her sweatshirt on and pulling it around her.

246

S
hanna
G
ermain

Her skin felt shiny and soft, her body liquid. “No,” she said. She never had. “What was that? What did you?”

Travis pointed at the full sap pails that Dulcie had piled in

the corner. “These next?”

Dulcie nodded. She stirred, watching him as he bent and

lifted the pail full of sap. He poured the fresh sap into the

kettle, replacing what had boiled away. His erection still bulged his jeans out, and she wondered how he could work like that.

She hadn’t known if he was still interested in her like that; now she knew for sure. She had every intention of helping him with

that bulge, but not just yet.

“You didn’t answer my question,” she said.

“The ‘what was that?’ one, or the ‘what did you?’ one.”

“Yes,” she said.

The fire crackled as he filled the kettle back to the top with

new syrup and then sat next to her on the love seat. “It seemed like a good way to keep you busy,” he said. He swallowed, looked away. “I was afraid, coming here, because I knew if you turned

me away again, it would be the last time. I wouldn’t be able to ask again. I thought if you were stirring . . .”

“Afraid?” She touched his face, where he was still shiny from

her. “Didn’t you get my note?”

“What note?”

Dulcie moved forward and touched his lips with hers. “Not

important,” she said, against his lips. Their first kiss, all those years ago, in the heat of the summer and the cool sweet of ice

pops. And now, their second. In the cold of the winter and the

heat of her grandma’s syrup shed. She liked his lips, liked how he opened them for her and touched her top lip with the point

S
weet
S
eason

247

of his tongue. He tasted like her, kind of salty and sweet. She was humming, not just the way her body felt, but literally making noise.

He kissed her full-on, tongue and lips, making her ache.

They came apart and she touched the top of his eyebrow, the

shiny scar that cut through it. He sat perfectly still and let her explore. More wrinkles now around his eyes than when she’d

last touched his skin here. And this time, she wasn’t crying and he wasn’t bleeding.

She looked over at the fire. “So you’re saying that this batch of sap can just boil away and it doesn’t need to be stirred at all?”

“Well, you have to stir it a bit.”

She leaned over him, letting her sweatshirt fall open. She

leaned down until her mouth met his hard-on through his jeans.

“But not right now,” she said.

“No, not right . . . now.”

“Good.” She worked the button of his jeans with her teeth,

prying it open. She couldn’t get the zipper down fast enough

that way, so she used her hands, sliding it down until she could grip his cock through his underwear. He lurched against her