Ice Burns

by Lucy Alice

  “Amber, you can’t stay here with it this cold.”

  “I’ll call someone out today, but… it might take a few days.”

  “Then stay with me till it’s fixed?” I want to say “stay with me forever” but I don’t want to go there again. Keeping it light, today, Mr Blythe, thank you very much.

  She lifts her head and peers at me through one bloodshot eye. “Okay.”

  “Okay.”

  She’s lying with her body pressed against mine, and I begin lightly running my free hand up and down her thigh. “Maybe once you’re there, I’ll just keep you there.”

  “As long as I can keep using your jacuzzi bath, I’ll be a happy hostage.”

  I snort a laugh. “I thought kittens didn’t like to bath?”

  “Maybe I’m no ordinary pussy?” her eyes are closed and she’s half smiling, but I wonder if she means the double entendre.

  “No, Kitten, you aren’t.”

  She snuggles in closer to me, and we lie quietly for a while as she drifts in and out of sleep.

  Amber gets up, eventually, and rushes around the house with exaggerated movements, packing a few things, emptying the dishwasher and hanging a load of laundry out, and by the time she’s done and I’ve deposited the overnight bag in my car, her teeth are chattering.

  I turn the heating on in the car and put it on full blast, and soon it’s nice and toasty. The sun might be merely for decoration, but with the hot air blasting from the dashboard, it almost feels like a summer’s day, and I fancy going for a drive. We stop for coffees and breakfast muffins and set off again.

  We’re really just driving with no destination in mind, but before long I realise that my autopilot isn’t that adventurous - we’re just a couple of miles from the farm. I don’t want to go there, and my mind is frantically searching around for other options.

  “Oh, isn’t this near where the Ice Ball was held?” She suddenly perks up.

  “Yeah.”

  “So we’re going to your farm?” She looks at me and I can see excitement on her face.

  “Uhm. Did you want to?” I’m hesitant. I don’t mind the barn so much, but I haven’t been to the cottage in three years.

  “Yeah! I’d love to see where you grew up, even if it isn’t quite the same any more.” She looks really excited now, and I don’t want to deny her. We could probably avoid the cottage anyway, and I can just show her around the grounds.

  “Okay” I say, and cottage aside, I feel a little spark of excitement too, at showing this beautiful woman around my childhood world. How I wish mum and dad were there to meet her too.

  We pull up at the giant barn we met in last week and it strikes me how this land continues to influence my future. What are the odds of me meeting the girl of my dreams in the same place I used to help my dad milk cows as a lad?

  The car pulls to a stop and Amber hops out straight away. She inhales a deep breath, and I can’t help notice how filling her lungs pushes her perfectly round breasts out. I have to fight back the urge to plunge my face between them, and instead I pull her coat closed and do up the top buttons.

  “Don’t want you to catch a cold,” I wink as I lightly kiss the tip of her nose.

  I take Amber’s hand and we walk towards the barn, which is currently mostly empty, since the décor for the Ice Ball has been removed during the week. If I recall, the event company are setting up for a massive new year’s eve party next, so I suspect there’ll be someone around shortly to find out who we are and what we’re doing poking around.

  Amber’s eyes have gone big and sparkly again, as they do when she is totally mesmerised by what she’s looking at. I tell her some of the plans my dad had for the barn - community dances, fund-raising events, somewhere kids could have camp out parties, a place for Scouts and Girl Guides to have their meetings - just generally a safe, natural space for the people who’ll be moving into the thousand or so homes a prospector will probably build on what was our farm.

  “Your dad sounds like he had a big heart,” Amber says quietly, squeezing my hand.

  “He did.”

  “What about your mum?”

  I laugh lightly. “I think she was just happy to be downscaling, you know? Not having my dad out in the fields from noon till night with a never ending list of jobs. She was looking forward to being able to travel and spend time with her grandchild”... the words are out of my mouth before I even think about them, and I stiffen. Amber notices, and turns her body into mine. Her free hand cups my cheek and she kisses me lightly on the lips.

  “We can talk about it when you’re ready. Whenever you’re ready.” She kisses me again, and this time I pull her into me and make the kiss linger.

  I want to get out of the barn though, so we do and meander around the property. I show her the lake and she feeds the remnants of her breakfast muffin to the fish we can see just below the surface.

  We carry on our walk to a woodland patch on the new edge of our property. The trees are mostly deciduous, so there’s a thick layer of leaves on the ground, and very few on the trees. The bed of leaves muffle our footsteps and I glance over at Amber to see a huge smile on her face. She is practically beaming, basking in the mottled sunlight. We come across a clearing and before I can stop her, she’s plonked herself down on the ground, lying on her back looking up at the sky.

  I can’t help but laugh at her again, for the third time today. It’s a wonderful feeling, a bubbling happiness in the pit of my stomach. I’ve not felt it in a very, very long time.

  “You’ll get soaked through, lying like that!”

  She glances at me from her kingdom of leaves, but she doesn’t stop smiling as she closes her eyes. Another snapshot, I think.

  “It’ll be worth it. For the rest of my life, I’ll remember this moment, Aiden.”

  I look around a little confused about what’s so special about right now, but she holds her hand out to me and much as I don’t want a wet ass, I join her. We’re lying on soaked leaves like fools staring up at an ornamental sun on a freezing day watching clouds go by from below gnarled, old, empty trees. There’s not a sound around us, other than the odd bird and the occasional shuffles of something in the woods. We’re alone in the world. Alone and together in the one place I’ve belonged all my life. And that’s when I get it, too. This place is a gift. A magical oasis in the midst of life. I look over at the most beautiful woman in the world and I know that I will remember this moment for the rest of my life, too. It’s when I first know that Amber belongs here.

  We lie on the forest floor looking for faces and images in the passing clouds until Amber’s teeth are chattering so much even my arms can’t warm her. We get up and I realise that we are both entirely soaked to the bone, with water actually dripping down the back of Amber’s coat, and I’m assuming mine too.

  I really hadn’t planned on going to the cottage today. The barn and the land is about the limit of what I thought I could handle right now, but we can’t spend an hour or more getting back to Hyde Park in soaked clothes in this weather. Not unless we want to spend Christmas in bed, and if we did… ill wouldn’t be my first choice.

  I make a mental note to ask Amber what she’s doing for Christmas, then we jog back to the car. I have a set of keys for the cottage in there. As we arrive back at the car I see a woman with an “Escape Events” branded shirt heading over to us, so I intercept her to introduce myself and get pulled into a conversation with someone who can’t see my lips going blue from the cold. I eventually extract myself from the conversation and turn back to Amber. She’s on the other side of the car and there’s a song playing on the radio. As I stand watching her, I realise she’s dancing as if there’s no one else around, in complete abandon. I listen and watch for a while, feeling a little guilty for spying.

  The song couldn’t be more apt for today though. It’s Imagine Dragons’ song Demons - she’s singing along to the lyrics:

  This is my kingdom come

  This is my kingdom come<
br />
  She’s dancing with her eyes closed, twirling, swinging her hips, clutching her hair in her hands and she looks sexy as hell. I remember mum dancing with me in the large garden on summer’s days and I can’t help think it again: She belongs to the ground here, and the trees, and the fish, and the barn, she belongs under this sky and this sun; she belongs here, with me. I close my eyes, and capture this moment, like Amber taught me.

  When you feel my heat

  Look into my eyes

  It’s where my demons hide

  It’s where my demons hide

  Don’t get to close

  It’s dark inside

  It’s where my demons hide

  It’s where my demons hide

  It’s where my demons hide alright, but unless I want this girl to catch her death, I’d better get her into dry clothes. She opens her eyes as the song ends and jumps a little as she sees me watching her. She flushes bright red and I smile at her.

  “I’m sorry, I was cold and dancing made sense”

  “You’re beautiful” I say at the same time.

  She beams at me, I dig around the cubbyhole for keys I’ve left in there and tried to forget about. I grab Amber’s overnight bag too and breathing deeply to steady my heart rate, I take her hand and we walk around the back of the barn to where the cottage lies nestled comfortably in a large winter-dead garden.

  As we round the corner and Amber sees what was my grandfather’s home for the first time, she gasps and stops in her tracks. Her eyes sparkle like fireflies on a summer night and she covers her mouth with both hands.

  “Amber? What’s wrong?” Concern floods me and I reach out to her again.

  “Aiden. It’s so beautiful.” She whispers it, as if she’s afraid to startle the quaintness into hiding. “It’s like a postcard or one of those old-fashioned chocolate boxes”.

  I look over at the cottage I’ve seen a million times, and have actively avoided for years, and I try to see it through her eyes. She is, of course, right. It is postcard perfect. The maintenance people have done a great job with the upkeep, and for the first time since my parents died, I think about how grateful I am about that. A week ago I couldn’t ever imagine coming here again, but seeing it with Amber’s enthusiasm I feel all the love I’ve ever felt for this land rushing back in an overwhelming flood. I shut my eyes, and again including Amber, with that look on her face add the second photo to my mental album.

  I take her hand again and head for the cottage. I unlock it and open the door expecting a rush of stale air and dust, but once again, someone has obviously been in recently as it’s dust-free and the air isn’t too musty. I open the fuse boxes in the utility cupboard and switch on the electricity and gas so we can have some warmth. I only intend to stay long enough for us to warm up and to find some dry clothes in my old wardrobe.

  When my parents sold the farm and the house I grew up in, they did up the cottage my grandfather had grown up and old in, so there’s a barely used combi-boiler, electric fireplaces, and a new kitchen and bathroom. My parents had only been in the cottage for a few weeks.

  Amber insists I have a shower first as she’ll take longer with hair to wash so I quickly do and when I emerge warm and dry again, I’m met with the smell of fresh coffee and the crackle of an electric fire. It’s like a punch in the gut because I expect mum to come out of the kitchen intent on feeding me. Instead, Amber has a towel wrapped around her, her wet clothes discarded somewhere, and she’s carrying two steaming mugs of coffee. The moment she sees me she can tell.

  “I’m sorry, Aiden. I didn’t mean to overstep. I just found the coffee pods and plugged the machine in and figured the fire would warm the room up faster than the heating.”

  Her eyes are big and worried and I want to fall into them, to a place where there is no pain and no loss and sadness and heartache. I reach her in three strides and she quickly puts the coffees down, just in time. I pick her up and carry her to the sofa in front of the fireplace, losing her towel along the way and I’m ravaging her, pinching her nipples, biting her throat, tearing my teeth over her lip.

  Her hands are unbuckling my belt and pulling at my hardening cock as I maul her, pulling her hair back with one hand before I’m free of my clothes and I sink into her with no warm up or warning. We both groan and I feel bad for an instant. She wasn’t ready for me and it must have hurt her. I don’t want her hurt but right now I do want her to feel the pain I am. I touch my forehead to hers, my eyes closed, giving her body a few moments to adjust, and when I feel her hips tilt, inviting me, I lift her legs over my shoulders and pull her into me as far as she can go.

  I grip her hips and slam into her again, and again, and again. She’s gasping, moaning and when I look down at her body, one hand is on her clit and the other is flicking her nipple and the sight of it causes a misfire in my brain. Everything goes black around me and the only thing I can see is my cock stroking in and out of her over and over and I just can’t get enough of it. I feel her walls clench around me and it makes me fuck her harder until there’s a scream in the distance, but no me, and no her and no beginning or ending, just the orgasm ripping through me and tearing down all my walls, all my pain, all my joys, all the lost future and the stolen time. I sink down onto Amber’s chest and for the first time since I got that first phone call about the miscarriage three and a half years ago, I sob.

  *AMBER*

  Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit. I thought Aiden was going to rip through me. When he orgasmed he let out an actual scream that frightened the shit out of me. It was like a war cry, like something out of Braveheart and before I could react, he was lying on top of me, his body racked with sobs, crying so hard my internal organs felt like they were being shaken about. Coming out of the haze of my own intense orgasm, I froze, confused, until I realised he was crying, then I slowly put my arms around him and just held him, stroking his back and his hair. We lay like that till the sun passed overhead and started it’s descent over the other side of the valley. We lay like that till my legs were numb from him lying between them. We lay like that till his body stilled and his tears stopped and his breathing became steady again. The fire had made the room mercifully warm, and the world around us was so quiet, I didn’t dare say a word. Aiden was the first to break the silence.

  “Lizzy and I had been dating for a few months. Seven, give or take, when my family decided to sell the farm. We got on well, the sex was fun, but I didn’t see it as a forever thing. She wanted more ambition than I had. I like my work, but it’s work. My grandfather, my dad, they gave their whole lives to their work, the farm, and I didn’t want that life. I liked Lizzy, but in truth, I didn’t see us making a year. Honestly, I was just too comfortable to end it.”

  I don’t say anything. I don’t know what spell this is, but I don’t want to break it. I want to know all of him, and Lizzy and the baby and his parents? That’s a big part of it. I begin stroking his back again, encouraging him to go on.

  “We were here one night, visiting, when - I found out later - she overheard my dad and I talking about the fact that Mulberry Fields would fetch about £20 million, and that their debts from a few failed harvests over the years and fixing up this place - he expected to have about £12 million left after the sale, and he wanted to give me £10 million of that to help me set up my own business, buy myself a nice place near work, whatever. He wasn’t business minded and I didn’t know much about inheritance tax and all that stuff at the time and obviously neither did Lizzy. All she heard was that I was getting £10 million in the next few months.”

  He lifts himself off me and feeling suddenly returns to my legs in a flood of agony. I gently try and shake them a bit to get the blood flowing back to my feet, and Aiden reaches over for the towel to clean me and himself up. It’s a cacophony of body fluids and I make a mental note to take the towel home so whoever maintains this place doesn’t have to touch it.

  “I didn’t know that Lizzy knew, but over the next few weeks she started talk
ing about moving in together, about getting married, stuff that wasn’t even on my radar. Not at all, and certainly not with her. I didn’t think too much about the money. I mean, I know it sounds cliché, but when you’ve always worked for an allowance or low wage jobs as a student, the thought of a sudden few million in the bank is just so unreal, I didn’t even plan to think about it till I saw the zeros on my bank statement.”

  I nod and make an ascenting sound. I can understand that approach.

  “I think Lizzy knew it wasn’t working because the more she spoke about ‘forever’ the more I pulled away. So one day, about 10 months into the relationship, she turned up here when I had told her I was coming to see my parents for the weekend and didn’t want her to come with. I know it’s lame, but I kind of hoped she’d see the writing on the wall, but of course, I didn’t know that she knew about the money. Instead, she turned up here with a used pregnancy test and announced to me and my parents that she was pregnant and so excited to start our lives together.

  I remember looking at the test and not seeing anything at all. When I asked her why, she laughed and said that the positive result fades after a while. She said ‘It’s like one of those Chocolate Frogs on Harry Potter - you can’t expect it to hang around all day’.