by Lucy Alice
“That’s good. I thought they’d just fired him. He didn’t say anything about it.”
“You saw him?”
“Yes, Friday night before I left he came in and took his stuff.”
Aiden puts down the frying pan and looks at me.
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“There wasn’t anything to say. He came, took some personal stuff, and left. That was the end of it.”
“And you’ve not heard from him since?”
“No. Last thing I did was tell him to call his girlfriend. I don’t expect to hear from him again, either.”
Aiden’s eyebrows lift at the mention of a girlfriend, but all he says is,“Okay”
We’re quiet for a little while, both lost in our own thoughts, when Aiden speaks again.
“So, your thoughts? What are you doing for Christmas?”
“I thought with my extra days off and everything I might go and see my mum and stepdad in Spain.” Aiden’s shoulders slump notably at my words. “But then I was kidnapped and taken to the country by a handsome guy with a gorgeous body who seems to want to get in my pants.”
Aiden laughs and scrunches up a plastic bag which he launches across the kitchen. It lands in the open recycling bin and he shouts “...and he scores! Again and again,” then he drops his voice to a husky low, walks over to me and putting both hands on my ass, lifts me up so that I wrap my legs around his waist, immediately feeling the length of his cock hardening against my core. “And again, and again” he says with hooded eyes and kisses around my face. I lean in and kiss him deeply and Aiden is dry humping me as we stand in the middle of the room. I eventually pull away from him, lowering my legs to the ground. He resists me, but I drag my tongue over his upper lip and tell him it’s time to eat.
“Food first, Aiden.” I cup his cock in my hand and lean in to whisper in his ear, “and then each other.”
*AIDEN*
I didn’t want to return to the cottage ever and now I can’t bare the thought of leaving. Aside from a quick trip to the shops on Sunday for food, and an online food order that Waitrose delivered first thing the next morning, we haven’t left in three days. Amber said we might have to return home for some clean clothes, but as it’s turned out, she’s either spent her days in one of my t-shirts or naked. It’s Christmas eve and both Jamie and Amber’s friend Sarah have sent numerous text messages and left voicemails asking us individually what our plans are, and today Amber told Sarah that she was going to spend it here at the cottage with me. I told Jamie the same, but invited him to come around, so long as he brought some Jack Daniels and stopped in the city to pick something up for me. He cursed me rudely and I deserved it. Christmas eve shopping is torment on the average person. On Jamie I may as well have banned him from sex for a month. In fact, I think he’d take that over shopping on Christmas eve. He grumbled a lot but when I sent him a picture of what he had to pick up, he chilled out quite some. He either thinks it’s amazing, or I’m bat-shit crazy. We’ll see.
Amber went for a walk to the local town, so I knew I’d have a couple of hours. I did offer to drive her, but she said she wanted some fresh air. I’ve never thought of myself as a romantic person, I’ll be honest, but just being around Amber is like switching a light on. For the first time in my life, I’m lucid, living an awake dream. I can look at things I’ve seen a million times and suddenly there I am seeing it in a completely new way. Even the cottage feels different. It doesn’t feel like a sad place, a place of loss or bad memories. A lot of the things in it - like the blankets Amber used to make a bed for us, or my parents’ bedroom - is filled with their stuff but as they only lived there for a few weeks, I now realise that it’s not haunted with memories of our lives there. Lizzy and I never even stayed in this house with them. We were married before they moved into it from the old house. I have many happy memories in the cottage from visiting my grandparents, and then there are areas, like the wet room and the newly refurbished kitchen, where my only memories involve Amber, her skin, her touch, her moans, her cries. There’s no TV or internet in the cottage right now, so these three days have heard a lot of those. I’ve had Amber almost every way I can imagine, and I just want more and more, and more.
As I’m mulling these thoughts over in my mind, I’ve pulled down the ladder for the loft, and rummaged around up there. I find what I’m looking for, and carry it down the stairs. I dress warmly, and putting on dad’s wellie boots and thick old gloves - is it possible they still smell of him, or is that my imagination? - I trudge outside and up the hill.
My grandparents had 8 babies, but only my dad survived. Each time one of their babies was lost before birth, my grandad would plant a fir tree at the top of the hill behind the house. Later, when his parents died, and his brothers and sisters, and my mother’s family, he planted a fir tree sapling in memory of each family member. By the time my father was growing up, there was a whole enclave that had grown out of the family’s combined grief. As the trees drop their pine cones, new trees sprung up and in time there was a whole copse of fir trees in a place they don’t naturally grow. When I was about 9 my dad would let me sell a few every year. I’d have to saw them and clean them up and carry them in a wheelbarrow to the front gate of the farm, and then wait by the side of the road for anyone who stopped and wanted to buy one. I could easily earn £15, back then, selling trees, and that would be the money I could use to buy presents for my mum and grandmother, or a girl in my class - whatever I wanted, with the money I’d earned. This memory makes me smile and I realise it’s been about 6 years since I last chopped down one of the trees.
I locate a baby fir tree - maybe about waist height, and I set to work, digging a hole around it. I had originally planned to saw it off and drag it down the hill to the house, but I couldn’t find dad’s saw in a hurry, so I’ll just dig it up and put it in a pot.
I get it out of the ground with some difficulty as the roots are rather deep, and with the tree hoisted over my shoulder I trample back down the hill. I figure I have about an hour left, and I want to surprise Amber with a decorated tree on her return. It’s only as I stomp the mud off dad’s boots before I open the front door that I realise I’ve been whistling Christmas tunes, in full view of the cottage, without a single stab of pain.
~ 12 ~
*AMBER*
I am crazy about Aiden. Let’s get that right straight off the bat, but there’s something you have to understand. My first long term boyfriend was sleeping with half the girls in his dorm and telling me he was totally okay with us waiting before we slept together. I was so confused and upset when I found out the truth that I had a one-night stand with the bartender in the restaurant we both worked at. Way to lose your virginity. I bounced around a bit, then, and had a few different partners with who I went to different bases but I didn’t sleep with anyone again until I met Eddie, my second long term boyfriend.
We pretty much hooked up in a drunken haze and ended up staying together for 18 months, but it wasn’t a great relationship. I think in retrospect he just wanted somewhere to live rent free, because as soon as I’d start talking about us sharing all the bills, he’d start talking about us breaking up, or having an open relationship, or maybe he should just move out. It was 50 shades of fucked up, and when he started suggesting I give his friends sexual favours instead of him paying half the rent I finally had enough of him trying to take advantage of my kind nature and messing with my mind.
He got home from I have no idea where one night to find his stuff in the hallway, the locks changed and me gone. I stayed with a friend from college for the last two weeks, and went to see my mum in Spain for the six weeks of summer. By the time I came back there were over one hundred messages on my answer machine from Eddie begging me to come back, threatening me, and later just calling me horrible names. The final message was one in which he told me he was done with me and was leaving me. Whatever it takes, buddy. I never heard from him again. I got my first job as an administrator thr
ough a temping agency, which is how I ended up working at the firm as a personal assistant and remained single for the next two and a half years, until I met Aiden.
All this to say, my track record with men is diabolical. I couldn’t even blame my parents. My dad was a good guy, but he died when I was six, and my mum didn’t even have a boyfriend, as far as I knew, until she came home with Geoff one day and said they were getting married. I was 17. Somehow, though, I have a totally broken compass when it comes to choosing between good guys and losers.
I know Aiden’s a good guy too, but I am scared of falling so wholly into him that I can no longer see myself. He has everything to offer, and he seems to want to, but when we go back to work and the festive season is over and January brings it’s hard knock truths as it always does, he will realise I’ll never be able to bring as much to the table as he does - I’m a PA, he owns a company, I’m always broke and live on a tight budget, he has millions at his disposal, I live in a tiny, gloomy flat with temperamental heating and he has not one, but two amazing properties. The list goes on and on. What do I do when Aiden gets bored of me? Going back to my own life will be a hard fall, even from here.
By the time I reach town, I’ve decided to not make any decisions until the new year. If this is to be the best week of my life, I may as well hold on with both hands and ride it till I’m saddle sore. No pun intended.
As I walk around the shops picking out bits for a light Christmas meal, I wonder about a present for Aiden. I can’t afford anything super fancy, and anything he needs he can get himself the best version of. In a charity shop I find an old Polaroid camera with 9 shots left on a 10 shot pack and while I know that’s a very odd present, I have an idea that will hopefully make it a wonderful gift. At least if Aiden walks away, he’ll have a little memory of our time together to take with him.
I don’t have anything for Sarah, but I know Jamie is coming to the cottage tomorrow for lunch, and I drop her a text, asking if she has any free time to visit us tomorrow. She has her brother that she takes care of, but I can only ask. If she can get away for a few hours, she might have a nice Christmas too.
On my way back to the cottage I stop in the woodland again, and fortunately the weather is much the same as it was on Saturday. I lie down on the leaves, just quickly, and take a picture of the sky through the mottled sunlight of the trees. It’s a beautiful picture and it captures our experience a few days ago perfectly.
I hide the camera and print and make my way back to the cottage. I get to the front door and hear jovial Christmas music coming from inside, and as I open the door, I’m hit with the beautiful fragrance of fir trees. As soon as I step inside, I’m lost for words. While I’ve been away Aiden has transformed the house. There are fairy lights running along the hallway and into the living room. There’s a fresh tree filled with twinkling white lights, and beautiful decorations, and candles are lit around the room too. There’s a Christmas village display on the windowsill and running off onto the side table, with tiny carol singers, a carousel and a moving Santa-sleigh all covered in snow. It’s just beautiful and it takes my breath away.
Aiden comes out of the wetroom and it gives me the perfect idea for another picture, so I quickly close the door to keep the heat in, and wrap my arms around his neck.
“Do you like it?”
“I love it!”
“Where did you find all this stuff?”
“In the loft, and the tree is from up the hill.” He grins at me with obvious pleasure at my happiness.
“It’s amazing Aiden! I can’t believe you went to all this trouble.”
“It’s our first Christmas, Kitten. I had to make it special.”
I beam up at him, but all I can think of is his words… our first Christmas. My heart leaps at the implication, the hope, that that means there will be more and I kiss him deeply.
I excuse myself to have a quick shower too - I’m not really cold at all, but I use it as an excuse.
The wet room, what us normal people call a shower room, I suppose, is as big as my living room. It has beautiful dark slate walls and a huge window above the cistern of the toilet with views up the hill ending with the fir trees in the skyline. A glass screen separates the shower from the toilet and towelling racks. The shower is big enough for eight people at least and they could have an adjustable spray nozzle each. Of course, it’s even better with eight nozzles between two.
In the wet room I strip down and pull out the Polaroid camera. I turn the shower on as hot as it will go again, filling the room with steam. The next picture I take is of my hand splayed against the glass wall, clouded by steam with rivulets of water running down either side of it. With the glass and the dark background, against my red painted fingernails, the picture is incredibly sexy, and I know when he looks at it he’ll think of all the times he held my hands as he took me against that shower wall too. I hide the camera and the new print and I call out to him. Aiden walks into the wet room, drops the towel and joins me under the jets, and it’s not long before I’m screaming his name again.
~ 13 ~
*AMBER*
Christmas morning dawns gloomy and wet, and it takes us hours to get out of our blanket nest by the fire. Our hands are intertwined, our fingers doing that dancing thing I love so much, and we spend the time talking about previous Christmases with our families, about places we’d love to spend Christmas - although right here ranks in my top 5. We talk until our mouths have run dry, and our stomachs are grumbling. We talk like two people exploring each other’s souls.
Lying here in a fog of happiness with Aiden, all my fears from yesterday are forgotten. I decide it’s time to give him his present, so I slip to the room while he’s making coffee.
We’re back in our positions on the floor, when I start.
“Okay, so, I’m feeling a little nervous now,” he looks at me with eyebrows raised, “because I got you a pretty unusual Christmas present.” Now he looks surprised. “It’s just small, and it’s more about the idea than the present.”
He smirks at me, “just hand it over, Kitten.”
I give him the bag and he peeks inside. He definitely has no idea what he’s looking at, so I take it back, and tip it upside down and catch the camera in my hand, and the two pictures I’ve already taken fall out.
I hand the camera to him. “It’s a Polaroid camera.” Understanding lights up his face. “And I’ve taken a few pictures already”.
“It’s so that I can have real pictures of the things you take mental pictures of, right?” There’s a broad grin on his face and I think I did good with my idea. I smile brightly back too.
“Take a look” I pick up the pictures and hand the first one to him.
His brows draw together and he looks up at me, his head tilted to the side.
“It’s the woodland. It’s where we were lying the other day, right?” I nod. “How? How did you get a picture of it? I didn’t leave you alone there at all?”
“I went back yesterday.”
He pulls me close and kisses me on my temple. I hand him the second picture.
“And this?”
He looks at it and a naughty flicker crosses his face. “This is you against the shower wall. Your hand.”
I bite my lip, nodding, and he shifts in his seat, so I’m pretty sure the picture achieved my goal.
“I have another I’d like to take, if you’re keen?”
“Sure, where?”
“Lie back down and do the hand thing again.” He snorts and smirks again.
“The hand thing?”
I feel shy saying it, but I do. “Yeah, I like the finger dance thing you do.” He kisses my temple again.
We sink down, and our fingers naturally entwine. He moves his fingers up and down between mine and once again it sends shivers down my spine. I lift the camera and take a picture of our hands, from our eye level, just as his fingertips reach the tips of mine with the blurred fairy lights from the Christmas tree twinkling in the back
ground.
“I know it’s a strange gift,” I say again, but he interrupts me, taking the latest picture from me.
“Amber,” he shakes his head, “this is probably the most thoughtful gift I’ve ever received. I mean, I’d have been happy with a blowjob,” his eyes cut to me and I grin and roll my eyes. He continues, “I’m serious though. It’s like you’ve let me into your mind, with these pictures. I already know where they’ll go. So do you take the rest, or do I?”
“Whichever, I guess… whenever the mood strikes?”
He rolls over, almost on top of me, and starts kissing my neck. “The mood has definitely struck for something.” I know where his mind is at - I can feel it pressing against my entrance - but just at that moment, my stomach lets out a loud gurgle and we both freeze. Aiden bursts out laughing first, and I follow. He rolls off me again and says, “Fine. Food first.”
