Snowbound Summer

by Veronica Tower

  “So my number one example of an adult relationship—my parents’ marriage—isn't exactly a healthy model, and frankly neither is Ron's.”

  Hanna bristled and opened her mouth to retort, but Kara simply smiled at her, meeting her gaze without flinching away. It wasn't, after all, as if the failure of Hanna and Howard's marriage was a big secret. Howard took great delight in detailing how much he detested the institution.

  Hanna closed her mouth without saying anything.

  Kara patted her hand again. She noticed that the ski lift was honing in on the top of the mountain and so she'd better wrap up this awkward conversation.

  “So my principle concern is avoiding having my marriage deteriorate into something like my parents had.” Like you have, she added silently. “There's no doubt in my mind that I love your son, but then I hope my parents were in love, too, when they walked down the aisle. So I want to take things slow enough that if Ron and I reach the stage where we want to marry, we're absolutely sure that we're not going to regret the decision ten or twenty years down the line.”

  The ski lift reached the top of the mountain and Kara scooted off the chair with Hanna gliding easily beside her.

  “When Ron told me he wanted to move in with you,” Hanna told her, “I suddenly had the image of him pulling out a ring and proposing to you on the spot. I know this sounds terrible, Kara,” she said, “but that thought horrified me. It's not that you aren't a very nice woman, but I don't think Ron and you know each other well enough to get married.”

  Kara stifled her urge to respond and let Hanna talk.

  “And contrary to what you think, your age really is a big part of my concern. Ron's young. He's going to want children some day and you're old enough that that might not be possible. I know it's hard on a marriage when your spouse can't give you something you want desperately.”

  “Hanna?” Kara asked before she could censor the question. “I never really thought about this before. Is that what went wrong for you and Howard? I mean, Ron is your son, isn't he? Biologically, I mean. You didn't adopt him.”

  Hanna's facial expression confused Kara. It got strange—not exactly hostile, but nothing that could be described as open or friendly. Secretive might describe it, but Kara couldn't figure out what the woman might be hiding.

  “No, no,” she told Kara, “Ron's my son through and through. There was never anything wrong with my fertility.”

  She touched Kara's shoulder with her gloved hand and effectively ended the conversation. “I'm so glad we've had this chance to talk,” she said. “Do you think if we start down now we can still catch Ron and his father before they reach the bottom?”

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  Chapter Seven

  Kara didn't get a chance right away to talk to Ron about her conversation with his mother. For the rest of the morning, they never got any privacy on the ski slopes and while they sat next to each other at lunch, it wasn't exactly an opportunity for quiet conversation.

  After lunch Howard and Hanna both announced they were taking a break from skiing. They each seemed surprised—and maybe even a little disappointed—to discover that their respective spouse had reached the same conclusion. Sadly it seemed that the opportunity to spend some time together made the suggested break look far less appealing.

  Anne and her husband surrendered to the pressure of their youngest daughter and agreed to take little Emmy further down the mountain to ride the ponies. Their older children were not entranced by Emmy's idea of a great afternoon and ran back to the ski lifts. As Kitten and her family had never even appeared for lunch, Ron and Kara suddenly found themselves presented with the privacy Kara had been longing for—or at least they would have been presented with it if Ron hadn't suddenly disappeared, leaving Kara by herself looking around in confusion.

  The conversation with Ron's mother still bothered her and she wanted to talk to him about it. She had the nagging suspicion that she'd missed something important on the ski lift—that Hanna had been on the verge of confiding something critical to Kara's understanding of the Miller family dynamic, but the moment had been lost because they reached the top of the mountain a minute too soon. It made Kara feel surprisingly close to Ron's mother. She still didn't exactly like the woman, but she felt they'd forged a connection which she wished they could have strengthened with a few more minutes of discussion.

  And what had happened to Ron anyway?

  “Excuse me,” a familiar voice said behind her. “I can't help but notice that you seem to be looking for someone.”

  Kara turned around to see Ron standing behind her with a cocky grin on his face and what appeared to be a room key card in his hand.

  “Why yes, I am,” she played along. “I'm looking for my boyfriend. Perhaps you've seen him. He's very handsome, about your height, with the same very blond hair.”

  “Well, I would hope he's handsome,” Ron said. “A woman as beautiful as you deserves a handsome man beside her.” He looked around the lobby. “I don't see anyone matching your description. Are you sure you're in the right place? Perhaps he thought he was meeting you out on the slopes?”

  “I don't think so,” Kara told him. She wondered if she were saying the right things for Ron's little game. “I'm certain he was supposed to meet me here in the lobby.”

  “Well, perhaps you'd like to get a drink in the bar,” Ron suggested, “just while we wait for him.”

  "We?" Kara asked.

  “If you wouldn't mind the company, of course,” Ron said. “I hate to think of what might happen if you were to sit in the bar by yourself. A beautiful woman like you—men would flock to you! What would your poor foolish boyfriend think if he were to finally get here and see you talking to half a dozen strange men?”

  “What would he think if he were to find me talking to one extraordinarily handsome man?” Kara countered. She felt just a little bit awkward with Ron's game, but it was fun trying to figure out what to say. She'd never felt all that comfortable meeting men. Ron had been the first stranger to pick her up. Before that friends had always set her up.

  “Well, I would hope it would worry him,” Ron said. “Perhaps if he realized how many men would like to enjoy your company, he wouldn't leave you standing in a lobby by yourself.”

  He offered her his arm and she happily entwined her own in his. Intellectually, Kara had known she was attractive before she met Ron, but walking with him arm-in-arm like this made her feel beautiful as well—striking and desirable.

  He led her toward the bar where a busboy was cleaning up a spilled drink with a mop and actually making the mess worse by not ringing enough of the water out of the mop before pushing it around the floor. Ron guided Kara around the spreading water and helped her onto a barstool. “What can I get you?” he asked.

  “A Black and Tan,” she suggested. It had become their drink and she enjoyed the mix of slightly bitter ale with the thick and creamy Guinness stout.

  Ron ordered two and then sat back on his own stool, boldly appraising her body.

  Kara wasn't exactly certain what she was supposed to say now. She didn't know the rules of the game. What she wanted to do—what she hoped Ron was planning to do—was to run up to the room that went with the key card he was sporting where she could rip off his clothes and impale herself on his body. She knew Ron had to want her, too. She wondered how long he would wait to act on his desires.

  “You know what this reminds me of?” Ron asked.

  “No, what?”

  “When I was fifteen years old,” he began.

  Kara suppressed the impetuous urge to make a joke about how short a time ago that must have been. Ron must have seen the impulse cross Kara's face for he stopped talking, gave her a mock serious glare, and then started speaking again.

  “When I was fifteen years old, my best friend Kenny's parents went out of town and his older brother threw a party. There was a lot of beer and loud music and Kenny and I weren't really supposed
to be there, but his brother couldn't exactly get rid of us either.”

  Kara did not immediately see the connection between this memory and sitting with Ron in a bar.

  “There was a girl at the party. She was a couple of years older than me. I think her name was Sandy something or other and somehow we ended up sitting together in the basement. People were making out and getting drunk all around us—which was really exciting. We both wanted to do that, too, but I was only fifteen and she didn't know how to take the lead either.”

  Kara could now vaguely see the direction Ron's memories were taking him. “Are you saying you'd like to make out with me?” she asked—not that she really had any doubts about that. Then she remembered their little game and said, “I have a boyfriend, remember.”

  “So did she,” Ron said, “which sort of brings me to my point. Sandy and I were sitting together in the basement wishing we were doing more than sitting but not really knowing how to get started.”

  Ron always seemed so confident and self-assured to Kara that it was hard for her to imagine a time when he felt out of his depths. “So what did you do?” she asked.

  “We played truth or dare,” Ron told her.

  “You what?”

  He grinned. “You heard me.”

  “And you—”

  “Want to play the game with you now,” Ron said.

  The bartender arrived with their drinks and Ron broke off talking while he pulled out his wallet and paid him. Kara took the opportunity to sip hers. It wasn't well made. There was too much head in the glass, but the flavors she had grown to love were still hidden under the foam. She set her glass down and wiped her mouth with a napkin while Ron took a long swig of his own. When he set down his glass, he sported a drinking man's mustache which glistened on his upper lip.

  “So what do you say?” Ron asked. “Will you take truth or dare?”

  Kara found the whole idea amusing. “Do you really want to do this?”

  Ron grinned. “It's a great way to shake things up a little.”

  That answer made Kara wonder if Ron felt they needed to shake things up, but then she realized she was letting her insecurities cause trouble where there didn't have to be any. She decided to try Ron's game. “Truth!” she told him.

  Ron laughed. “I knew you'd pick that one, you coward.”

  “What do you mean, coward?" Kara asked.

  Ron kept laughing. “You know what it means. You picked truth because you were afraid I'd dare you to do something totally crazy like get up on the bar and dance for me.”

  Kara's heart stopped beating for a moment. A dare as crazy as that had never even crossed her mind.

  Ron seemed to find her facial expression comical because he began to laugh harder. “Okay, truth,” he repeated when he began to calm down. “ Truth! Let's see if we can make truth much more challenging than a dare would be. What is the most exciting public place you've ever fantasized about having sex?”

  Kara shivered. If she'd been surprised before, this time she was really shocked. The first time Kara and Ron had made out—well, it had actually been a lot more than making out—had been in public. She had no doubt he was asking this question to store the information away to use in the future. “I-I don't know,” she told him.

  “It's called truth not lies," Ron told her.

  Kara squirmed in her seat and took another drink of her beer. She didn't really taste it because her mind was fully focused on Ron's question—except for the part of her mind that was watching Ron stare at her with those beautiful blue eyes. “I-”

  “Kara?” Ron prompted her. Under the scrutiny of his gaze, she forgot that in this game they were playing they hadn't exchanged names yet.

  “I—” She still couldn't wrap her mind around her own fantasy well enough to put it into words. She'd grown moist between her legs and heat flushed her face.

  “I...do you remember what we did in the airport?” she whispered.

  Ron's cocky grin creased his face again. “Of course,” he said.

  She could picture it in her mind. They were snowed in at the airport on Christmas Eve, sitting against the wall with their coats covering their laps and Ron's arm around her shoulders. The other arm was beneath the coat and his fingers had glided up the soft flesh of her inner thighs and... “I want to do it again,” she whispered just before she shuddered in remembered pleasure. A young woman all done up in Goth makeup had watched them, knowing Ron was touching Kara, but everyone else in the airport had been oblivious to their secret pleasure.

  Ron edged forward on his barstool and touched Kara's knee through her jeans.

  Even through the denim, his fingertips jolted her ultra sensitive flesh just as if he'd sent a bolt of electricity shooting through her body.

  “We can do that,” he whispered.

  His fingers slid an inch and a half higher, moving toward her inner thigh.

  Kara suddenly remembered they were sitting in plain view of the bar and everyone. Not that she thought he could actually try something through her jeans.

  She pulled away from him. “Not here!” she said. “And not on a weekend when we're staying with your parents and family!”

  Ron straightened back up on his stool, good naturedly accepting her qualifications. “ Where then?” he asked. “The question, if you'll remember, was actually where would you most like to have public sex.”

  Kara hesitated, wondering how to answer this question. It wasn't easy for her. All of her instincts, all of her upbringing, told her public sex was flat out wrong. But it had made things ever so much more exciting.

  “I have an idea,” Ron whispered. He slipped off his bar stool and pulled her against him. His cock was hard and firm within his jeans.

  “What about our game?” Kara asked him.

  “We can play more later,” Ron told her. “But first we need to give you what you need.”

  “Give me...” Kara began, before pulling back from Ron. “I said no! Not when your parents and your sisters are here.”

  “Trust me,” Ron said.

  His arm slipped behind her back and he guided her off toward the elevators.

  Their unfinished Black and Tans remained on the bar behind them.

  * * * *

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  * * *

  Chapter Eight

  The hotel room Ron had secured was on the fifth floor of the lodge and looked out over the ski slopes stretching up the mountain. The slopes really weren't that crowded. There were nowhere near as many people here as Kara would have expected to find in the height of winter. Which was actually a good thing, of course, because it meant less waiting in lines and more time actually skiing.

  Ron slipped the Do Not Disturb! sign on the door and Kara wrapped her arms around him as he turned back into the room. She was relieved that he had brought her here. She'd half feared he'd try to masturbate her on the ski lift or something else equally impractical, but instead he'd decided to bring her to his newly acquired accommodations where he would hopefully fuck her brains out for a couple of hours.

  She stretched up onto the tips of her toes to kiss him but Ron turned his face away.

  Kara sank back down onto her heels. “What's wrong?”

  “Nothing's wrong,” Ron told her. “I'm just not ready to start kissing you yet.”

  That was definitely a mood breaker in Kara's opinion. She stepped back away from him feeling anger and embarrassment welling up within her. “Why not?” she snapped. “Why the hell did you bring me up here then?”

  Ron grinned. Apparently he wasn't troubled at all by her sudden burst of temper. “I brought you up here,” Ron said, “because you lost the Truth or Dare game.”

  This was not what Kara had expected him to say. “I what?”

  “You didn't answer your truth question,” Ron told her.

  “Yes I did!” Kara said.

  “No, you told me what you want to do, not where you want to do it, so I win.”

  H
e looked so pleased with himself that Kara stopped fighting and started listening. “So what does that mean?”

  “It means that for five minutes,” Ron said, “you have to do everything I say.”

  Kara looked around the room, trying to figure out what the catch was. Ron had tied her up a couple of times. Maybe that was what he had in mind. Maybe he just wanted her to give him head. She decided to play along to see where he was going with this.

  “So if I say yes, what does that mean? What are the limits?”

  “There are no limits,” Ron told her.

  “No!” Kara said. “There has to be some boundaries.”

  “What's the problem? You don't trust me?” Ron asked.

  He was too pleased with himself to engender much trust and Kara told him as much. “Not today, I don't. So here are the rules. You get your five minutes, but we don't leave the room.” She remembered his question about public places. “And we don't open the door either.”

  Ron shrugged. “I can live with that,” he said.

  “And the next time we play this game, I get to ask you truth or dare first!”

  Ron laughed. “Okay,” he agreed.

  He stepped away from her to the bed and pulled the cover off one of the pillows. “It's one thirty-seven. Are you ready to begin?”

  Kara gave the pillowcase a measuring glance. So he intended to tie her up, did he? “Okay,” she agreed.

  Ron guided her over in front of a full-length mirror. She had a flannel shirt on beneath her ski vest and in the air-conditioned lodge it felt pretty good.

  Ron slipped the ski vest off her shoulders and tossed it onto a chair. Then he folded the pillowcase a couple of times and lifted it to her face to blindfold her.

  “Hey!” Kara protested. “I didn't agree to that.”

  “Yes, you did,” Ron told her. He quickly tied the covering in place, effectively blocking all of her sight. She couldn't even see light through the opaque cloth.

  “Is that too tight?” Ron asked.