Ice Burns

by Lucy Alice

  I’m shivering again, the memory of our first time making my heart pound as I run my hand up my inner thigh, the tip of my thumb just touching my throbbing clit through my panties. I grab my phone and send him a text.

  Me: I can’t stop thinking about you… your hands on me… you inside me.

  Aiden: *groan* Don’t. I’ve just managed to deflate a boner from thinking about flicking your tit with my tongue

  Me: I did like that… but I’m at my desk, touching myself, remembering you hammering the breath right out of me.

  There’s no response for a minute, then it comes.

  Aiden: I’m in my private shower. Tell me about you touching yourself…

  Are we really doing this? Phone sex at work? With a guy I’ve known for less than a week? I don’t recognise myself. None of this is me from a week ago. And I don’t care. My heart is thumping and I just want him inside me again. I go into Mr Marks’ office and lock the door.

  Me: I’m in JM’s office. Alone obvs. I’m lying down, one leg on the coffee table, the other on the sofa. I’ve slid my panties off and I’m running my fingers down my inner thigh.

  Aiden: Oh baby, I’m touching myself, thinking about kissing you all the way down. I’m rock hard for you babe.

  Me: I want to go down on you again, take all of you into my mouth, as far as I can.

  Aiden: Put two fingers inside yourself, and imagine your thumb is mine, against your clit.

  A sudden thought strikes me, but it’s naughty and I don’t know what Aiden will think of it. I’m almost scared to ask, but ….

  Me: I want to see you. No talking because …work, but I want to see you.

  Aiden: fuck.

  I chuckle as I receive his message a moment before his video call notification appears. I answer it and without saying a word, move the camera to my lower regions, held so that he can see my fingers going in and out but with the mic pointing towards me so that he can hear my low groans. It’s a careful balancing act, but he puts the phone down on the towel rack so that I can see him fisting himself and see his face. I’ve never done anything like this, and I’m so turned on I can barely hold myself back. Once again it takes me minutes and I’m there. My body goes stiff as I cum, curling my toes and forcing a loud groan out of me before I drop back down into the sofa limply, panting.

  “Fuck baby, fuck fuck,” he whispers and I move the phone up to my face, where I start licking and finger fucking my own mouth to the same rhythm he’s pumping himself. I taste me, and I love knowing that he is right now remembering my flavour too. As he unleashes himself with a much louder groan than is safe for work, I close my eyes for another snapshot I want to remember forever.

  We are quiet for a few minutes, then end our conversation with promises of more of the same tonight, and I can not wait.

  *AIDEN*

  I can’t remember the last time I was this tired. Amber and I made love - I mean fucked, we fucked - for hours last night, and afterwards as she fell into a deep sleep, I lay next to her, wide awake. The more I tried to settle next to her, pulled her closer to me, breathed her in, the more old demons stopped by. She’s nothing like Lizzy was. Her build is a little bigger, and while she’s still much smaller than me, she’s all real woman, with hips and real tits and her natural hair colour. More than that, though, she has a naivety to her that’s unusual in this city. Or at least in these circles of it. She might work for a big law firm, but she’s not like so many other women I meet now that I live in a penthouse and only have to work because I want to. She was so uncomfortable with the money I spent on her yesterday, and while, fuck, was it Amy? Alice? I still don’t remember - was knocking back Cristal by the bottle, Amber nursed a glass of house red all evening.

  I actually feel like she’s interested in me, not what I can give her, or where I can take her. And that makes me even more crazy about her.

  It also sends a surge of bitter, burning rage coursing through me as my thoughts return again to the last woman who slept naked beside me. Lizzy. I really thought I’d be over it by now, but the hatred I feel for her seems to surge around this time of year. Christmas is just a week away now, and instead of spending the day with my mum and dad, my wife and toddler, as I had expected I’d be doing right now, I’m essentially alone for the day. I mean, there are places I can go and people who’d take me in, but that’s not the point. I have friends, I have Jamie, but the dream is gone. Or it was, till I met Amber, and just the fact I’m even thinking about her, like this… it terrifies me.

  Lizzy’s lies nearly killed me, and they did kill my parents. All because she was greedy. Even though it’s been three years, her deceit still seeps through me, leaching the beauty out of every moment her memory desecrates. I’m twisted up on the inside, but maybe, just maybe, Amber’s warm breath bouncing off the crook of my arm can meander it’s tendrils to the ice around my heart.

  Then there’s the other issue that kept me awake, and has kept me going this morning. Jackson Marks. I want to destroy him, and I’m not too proud to admit that it’s in big part due to his presumption that Amber was just there for his taking. She’s mine. It doesn’t even matter whose she was before, I don’t want to know. Amber is mine and Marks’ time is up. It’s been over 48 hours and I’ve not heard a word from him.

  I look around my desk for my London City University mug and swig back the last dregs of now cold coffee. The movement makes me think of flicking Amber’s perky nipple with my tongue, and I flash back to doing just that, while slowly pushing myself as far up inside her as her body will take me. Was it the fourth time? Fifth? I’m not sure, but, hello, instant hard-on. I might be almost dead on my feet, but I’d drag my rotting carcass across a blazing desert for another chance to lap at her core. I’ve got to think of something else here, anything else. I mean to readjust my cock, but stroke it a couple of times, because thinking of her drives me wild.

  I have a meeting with Mr Anville who’s flown back from Greece to see me, so I make my adjustments and try to concentrate on the meeting instead, when my phone buzzes with a text from Amber.

  She can’t stop thinking, she says, about me, and me inside her. Hello, again, insta-boner. Fifteen minutes and a fucked-up hot video chat later, I leave the private bathroom attached to my office with a promise to collect her when I leave Mr Anville’s office.

  ~ 9 ~

  *AIDEN*

  I had a fruitful meeting with Mr Anville. He’s been kind to me, over the years, so I am not angry at him and I don’t feel a particular need for his firm to suffer, but I do want Jackson Marks to be held accountable. Mr Anville has the leathery tanned skin of a yachtsman, and despite his holiday being cut short, he is friendly and apologetic - I guess someone other than me might have made things difficult for him and the firm over a missing £5mil .

  “Aiden, son, I can’t apologise enough for what’s happened here. To be honest real estate isn’t my specialist area, so I handed your father’s affairs over to Jackson and left it to him and the estate attorney to sort through all the legalities of the timing of the sale and the death… I should have kept a closer eye on it, and I am sorry that you’ve had to deal with this,” he had said. Mr Anville is about as naturally humble as your average middle-aged, yacht-owning, privileged white guy, and I can see this apology is uncomfortable for him. “Please know that he will be dealt with and that his career at the firm is well and truly over.”

  “Thank you, Mr Anville, I appreciate that.”

  “I will be taking steps to make sure that he is disbarred, too, however…,” here he emulates a mute penguin stuck in mud as he drops his eyes and flails his arms around. “The partners… we were hoping you’d be willing to accept compensation in lieu of a formal report to the authorities. We would like to avoid the embarrassment to the firm as a whole. No need to tar all our associates with the dirty brush from a ruined paint pot, so to speak.”

  I’m not opposed to the idea. I don’t really want to have to deal with courtrooms and witness statements
and having to rehash the reasons why I didn’t notice what was going on in public, and given half a chance, the press. I can just imagine the headlines: “So Rich, He Didn’t Notice Missing Millions”. Not how it happened, of course, but it’s hardly like the Daily Whatever cares about the facts.

  “I can live with that, Mr Anville. But I’d have some conditions.”

  “Sure, sure… let's have a brandy and talk it over.”

  *AMBER*

  I thought today was going to drag by since I don’t actually have any real work to do now, but once I guessed the password for Mr Marks’ private folder, things got interesting very quickly. I am more surprised by his arrogance at thinking he could get away with everything he was keeping on his computer than I am by the actual content. He has folders for every woman he’s been seeing going back decades, and many of them names and faces I recognise from the last three or so years. There’s Nicole, who called him 20 times a day until she suddenly stopped. She seemed to like sending selfies of her breasts, making alluring eyes at him. There’s a Natascha and I only looked at one video, and I fear I’ll never be able to unsee that. There’s one for Anna and I’m a little hesitant to open it, since I know her. The one that’s most recently been edited is Elizabeth, and I can’t help myself. I double click and there’s a folder full of pictures, going back over three years. This surprises me as he doesn’t usually keep a woman around that long. I click on the most recent image and in it she’s lying down with her Agent Provocateur bra in sharp focus and her face in the background, out of focus, but key characteristics still identifiable.

  Elizabeth is everything I expected her to be. Petite, blond, beautiful. Alluring eyes, fake breasts. I don’t open any more photos, but I can make out enough in the image thumbnails. She’s perfect in every photo, and even bed selfies show the perfect pout and hair spread out in a pristine halo. Glancing through the pictures of her, I wonder why he even pursues me? Simply because I don’t offer myself up on a plate? Or just because it makes me uncomfortable? It’s all possible with a man like him.

  There’s more in his files though. Correspondence between him and clients. Stuff that should be in the firm’s records but I check, and they’re not. He takes big risks, makes threats, blackmails, and keeps it all on his work computer. It doesn’t make sense for someone who is otherwise quite smart. Was his arrogance such that he truly believed he’d never be caught, or did he think that if he ever was, he’d be able to charm and slime his way out of it?

  My head is spinning with all this new information and I can’t help but wonder how stupid I’ve been, and in his sway, to never have noticed any of it.

  I do what I’ve done with each problem file I’ve discovered since I started this search - make a copy on a removable hard drive. If anything comes of all this, at least I have evidence before he manages to destroy it all. I shut down the computer, turn off the light to his office and leave all thoughts of Jackson Marks behind me as the door to my office opens and Aiden walks in to sweep me away.

  _-_

  It’s pitch black when I open my eyes, which this time of year could mean anywhere from 4pm to 8am. We got back to his house around 9pm. Freezing from the icy rain, Aiden filled his jacuzzi bath for us to share and we sipped a sweet sparkling wine while we talked, and fooled around, kissed and talked some more. We talked about my family, my dad dying when I was very young, my mum living with her new husband in Spain. We talked about his family, his childhood, his life. We talked about everything, up until university, and meeting his wife, when he became vague, distracting me with kisses on my neck, with his hands on me, in me, with unadulterated pleasure. Aiden took my body to the edge numerous times, and I willingly fell over time and again. It must have been midnight when we finally made it into his bed, where we spent another hour, at least, making languid, slow, beautiful love.

  I find it disconcerting not to know the time so I start fumbling around for my phone. Aiden is breathing deeply next to me, and I don’t want to disturb him. I remember my handbag is in the living room, and quietly pad out of the room.

  I quickly locate my phone. It’s 6:37 - too late to try and go back to sleep, so instead I grab the blanket off the sofa and curl up in a little ball on the windowsill overlooking Hyde Park and far off Christmas lights.

  Friday morning. One week. I’ve known Aiden for one week today, but it feels like I’ve never not known him. He is under my skin, in my head, my heart, the very marrow flowing through my bones. It feels magical, like a fairy tale, like the kind of thing that happens to girls in made-for-TV movies. It also feels dangerous. I’ve done things with Aiden, in just one week, that I have never done before, and never would have thought I would. Sex in hotel rooms, very public displays of affection, skimpy dresses. None of these are Amber from last week. These aren’t things that safe Amber, don’t want to get hurt Amber, just getting by on my own Amber, would do.

  There’s a shuffling from the next room and a moment later Aiden appears in his bedroom door. He looks confused, then relieved.

  “Are you okay?” he runs his hand through dishevelled hair, roughing it up even more.

  I smile at him standing there naked and unabashed.

  “Absolutely fine. Just watching the world come to life.”

  He walks to the kitchenette and flicks a switch on an expensive looking coffee machine, before coming over to join me. He kisses the side of my neck, moving the blanket down to expose my shoulder as he continues kissing his way down.

  “I thought you’d left.” His cheek brushes the arm, shoulder and neck he’s just been kissing and his morning stubble sends shivers down my spine. “I didn’t like the feeling.”

  The gruffness of his voice, his words, cause a flutter in that special area just behind my pelvic bone, and I immediately want him again.

  “I was just in here, I woke and couldn’t get back to sleep.”

  He pushes the blanket further down so my upper body is exposed to anyone who happens to look up here. Fortunately the streets are still quiet.

  “Don’t leave me.” I can’t decide if he means now, or today, or ever, and while I am sure it’s way, way too soon, I silently promise that I never will.

  Aiden pulls me to a standing position and turns me to face away from him. He gently runs his hand down my spine, tracing his fingers with his lips, laying kisses all the way down till he is on his knees. He pushes me forward, towards the windowsill and without warning his tongue is on me and I’m on my tip toes, with my legs spread, making room for him. I gasp as he licks me, and fingers me from behind, hitting my g-spot with precision. He torments me till I’m soaring up, up above the apartment, the park, London, higher and higher until I break some invisible surface and I come hard, shouting out his name just as the buzzer on the coffee machine lets us know it’s done, too.

  Aiden rises his beautiful body up again and I lean against him, waiting for feeling to return to my body. He gives me a minute to come down, then lifts me so that I’m kneeling on the low windowsill. He spreads my legs with his hands, grabbing onto my hips and wordlessly enters me from behind, leaning into me so that I’m sandwiched between his hard, warm body and the equally hard, cold window pane, my skin on a sensory knife edge. He slowly moves inside me, each thrust pushing me into the glass, planting kisses wherever his mouth can reach, whispering beautiful words as the sun breaks over the horizon and I free fall deeper in love with him.

  *AIDEN*

  Shit and fuck and other stuff. When I woke this morning and Amber wasn’t there my heart plummeted. My world crashed. I felt sick. I walked out of the room and saw her nestled on the windowsill like a fragile pot plant and relief washed over me. I actually felt shaky, like my voice was going to crack if I said another word, so I slipped into the kitchen and switched the coffee maker on. I stood there willing myself to take deep breaths, to man up. This is ridiculous. How can I feel this way about someone I’ve known for mere days. What is it about her?

  I walked back to where she was sitti
ng, looking out of the window. I couldn’t stop myself, I needed to feel her, to touch her, to taste her. I asked her never to leave me, and she didn’t answer. Why would she, we barely know each other. I still needed to feel like I have her though if only for a moment, so I fucked her slowly against the window, with her tits pressed against the glass and her pussy exposed to the dawning day, letting all of London know that she’s mine, that I can’t let her go.

  It hasn’t escaped me, though, that maybe she isn’t the fragile one after all.

  *AMBER*

  I’m worn and tetchy. I came into work feeling wholly unsettled, like something passed between Aiden and I this morning, and I only noticed after it left. I’m really ready for a break, and the Christmas holidays can’t come soon enough. I want out of this office, out of the shadow of whatever the hell Mr Marks has been doing here. I want to know what’s going to come of that, and if I have a job to return to in January. I want to know what this thing is between Aiden and I and I really really need a girls night with Sarah. I’ve been avoiding her a little since the weekend, and I know that any moment now…