Ann quietly slumped down, spent. At the sound of the blonde reaching her climax Frankie seemed impatient. “Shush, Leisl, they’ll hear you upstairs.”
Leisl became silent.
Ann waited as they speedily rearranged their clothes and headed back upstairs, following behind only when she was certain they had gone.
“Oh, there you are.” Ann hurried over to Frankie as she emerged from the restaurant. “Sorry I’m late,” she apologized. “I couldn’t find one of my gloves.”
“That’s okay,” Frankie replied. “As it happened I was a little tied up myself.”
Unable to help herself Ann chuckled.
“What?”
“Can we start?”
Frankie nodded and pushed her skis along with her poles. “This way.”
Once again the afternoon flew by, and Ann was disappointed she had to say good-bye to Frankie until the following day.
“Unless I see you performing in the hotel bar tonight, of course,” she remarked.
Frankie grinned. “Look, I don’t know what you thought you saw…”
Ann shook her head in disbelief. “Caught red-handed, so to speak, and she still won’t admit it.” The urge to tease Frankie was strong.
Frankie blushed. “I’ll admit nothing.”
“Let me buy you a drink,” Ann said suddenly, forgetting she’d promised herself she wouldn’t ask.
“I can’t.” Frankie said somewhat reluctantly.
“Just a quick one,” she suggested. “Please.”
“It’ll have to be,” Frankie replied. “I said I’d help the patrol tonight.”
“Oh,” Ann countered. “Sounds like fun.”
Two beers later, Ann had learned that Frankie was short for Francesca and she was half Italian. She had been skiing since infancy, and she became particularly coy when asked about Tess.
“Come with me.” Frankie stood up and pulled on her jacket.
“I can’t ski like you, or have you forgotten our lessons already?” Ann replied.
“You have state-of-the-art skis and you fall in a perfectly studied fashion. You’re no more a beginner than I am,” Frankie announced. “Now do you want to have that fun or don’t you?”
Ann whipped her jacket off the back of her chair. “What do you think?”
They stopped at base station headquarters for Frankie to pick up her equipment then headed for the gondola. Having ferried the last of the skiers up the mountain for the day, the cars were empty. Ann loaded her skis then climbed in beside Frankie.
The light was beginning to fade, and Ann thought how pretty the gondolas looked, like a string of fairy lights reaching across the night sky. The car rocked periodically as the cable carried it over the supporting towers. Frankie took off her rucksack and put it on the seat. Ann watched as she checked its first aid contents and removed something.
“How often do you do this?” she asked suddenly feeling a little awkward in the silence.
“About twice a week.” Frankie carried on with what she was doing.
The car screeched and suddenly stopped its forward motion only to swing up and down.
“Shit,” Frankie softly swore.
“What?” Ann wanted to know. It usually only took a few minutes before the lift would start up again.
“They’ve been having a few problems with it lately. Last time it took more than an hour to fix.”
“Great. To think I left a nice warm bar for this.”
Frankie stood up and laced one of her ski poles through two straps suspended from the roof.
“What’s that for?” Ann wanted to know.
“You’ll see,” Frankie replied. “Do you think you could help me by holding it steady?”
Ann got to her feet and raised her arms.
“If you could just move them apart a little more,” Frankie suggested.
Ann moved her hands and felt Frankie wrap something around her right hand and wrist. She looked up to see it was a bandage. “Hey,” she said removing her other arm from the pole.
“Put it back,” Frankie ordered. “It’s for your own safety, and my enjoyment,” she added.
Ann felt jubilant. She placed her hand back on the pole as Frankie applied a second bandage. “A small reward for following your instructions?” she asked blithely.
Frankie pretended to consider then grasped Ann’s face in her hands. She kissed her lightly on the mouth then moved out of reach. Ann struggled against the pole.
“Be good and you’ll get more,” Frankie promised.
She stepped back and reached for the zipper on Ann’s jacket. “It might get a little warm in here,” she said as she pulled it down and opened it up.
She looked thoughtfully at Ann’s expensive, well-worn ski sweater. “More evidence that you’re not the novice you claim,” she exclaimed.
Ann tried to think of a fitting retort, but Frankie hoisted the sweater up and over her head. Wedged behind her neck it braced her shoulders back and thrust her naked breasts forward. The cool air goosed her skin.
Frankie whistled appreciatively. “That’s more like it.” She cupped her hands around Ann’s breasts then pinched the nipples expertly between her thumbs and forefingers.
An arc of arousal swept through Ann and buried itself below her waist.
Frankie let go, pushed her foot between Ann’s legs and forced her to spread them. Ann’s arms tightened on the pole as she tried to maintain her balance. She felt Frankie’s breath, warm on her body as she bent to release the zipper on her trousers. In one movement she’d pulled them down to Ann’s knees. Bound and exposed Ann experienced a flutter of panic followed by a surge of excitement.
Frankie toyed with the delicate, black lace edges of Ann’s panties then slipped a finger momentarily inside, causing Ann to take a sharp intake of breath. She felt the finger probe the searing wetness within her then retreat, leaving behind a steady, pulsating rhythm.
Frankie leaned toward a small open window and forced her hands through, quickly gathering the small clumps of ice and snow that had collected on the glass. She transferred it to Ann’s breasts, rubbing it roughly over them. As the extreme cold shot through her, Ann felt her nipples tense, only to pucker harder still as Frankie’s hot, soft, moist tongue and lips found them before descending to drink in the melting water running down over her belly. Lower still, Frankie paused, then teased the flimsy lace to one side as she pushed her face deep into Ann’s crotch. Ann’s legs startled to buckle but with her arms held in position she could only sag. Her breathing was confined to short gasps as Frankie rasped her tongue over her sensitive nub.
She opened her eyes. “Stop,” she managed to pant. “I followed you and Leisl to the workshop.”
Frankie lifted her head and looked at her with disbelief. “You were there?”
Ann nodded. “I want what I saw.”
Frankie reached into her rucksack then approached Ann with her arms behind her back. Ann strained to see what she carrying but the pole restricted her movements.
Frankie came closer and leaned in to kiss her. Ann felt her tongue explore her lips, rim her teeth, then plunge deeper. Simultaneously, she felt the tearing of lace and a cold hardness slam up inside her.
“Ohh,” the exquisite surprise forced her to exhale.
Frankie braced one arm behind Ann’s back and continued to maintain strong, relentless strokes.
“Is this what you saw?”
“Yes. Oh, yes.” Ann concentrated on receiving each thrust, enjoying the pounding sensation it created.
“And what did you hear?” Frankie’s voice had a hoarseness to it.
Ann struggled to speak. “I heard, ‘Harder! Faster!’”
“Is that what you want?”
Ann’s awareness was confined to the rhythmic, slippery passage of the toy in Frankie’s hand.
“Yes,” she admitted.
Frankie moaned softly and increased her tempo, kissing Ann with renewed vigor.
Ann pressed her pelvi
s forward, meeting Frankie’s hand as it ground ever deeper within her. It had been so long since she’d felt this alive.
Finally, together with the familiar tingle in her nipples and an overwhelming gush of moisture, she felt the insurmountable pressure inside her explode.
Drained, she hung limply from the pole. Frankie untied her hands and helped her to a seat.
Minutes later, a burst of radio static had Frankie rushing to her bag.
“Time’s up, Frankie, I can’t hold off any longer,” a disembodied voice announced.
Frankie pressed a button and held the radio to her face. “Thanks, Karl, we’re out of here now.”
Ann removed what remained of her panties and redressed. “You stopped the lift?”
Frankie grinned sheepishly then swung the rucksack onto her back. “Time to go.” She hit the emergency release button on the door then leaned out to grab first Ann’s skis, then her own.
“Are you mad?” Ann asked as Frankie clipped on her skis and hovered part in and part out of the open door. “It must be a fifty-foot drop out there.”
“Five,” Frankie stated. “Come on.” She leapt from the door to the depths below.
Ann quickly clipped on her skis and took a deep breath, then jumped too.
“I knew you could do it,” Frankie said as Ann landed beside her. “Now all you have to do is keep your eyes open for anyone still out on the slopes.”
“And then?” Ann asked.
“Then you can take me to bed. You owe me.” Frankie replied as she set off at speed.
“It would be my pleasure,” Ann responded as she overtook Frankie.
“So Tess said in her email,” Frankie shouted from behind.
ICE
Rachel Charman
She was going to leave town, the cold-hearted bitch.
It didn’t matter to her. My existence only crossed over with hers in the most superficial of ways. She regularly asserted that she had no responsibility for my interpretation of our affair. I was her dog, running, jumping and barking when she said so, nipping at her heels and whimpering as she drifted out of my life.
She had been there only five weeks. I had come upon her on her first day in the town center. It seems strange to me now that I had been walking around, going to work, buying vegetables and whatever else without knowing what was about to happen to me. I turned onto the High Street and there she was, sitting languidly under one of her sculptures in the middle of the busy pavement.
It was the sculpture that caught my eye first. As the hot bodies of shoppers, bundled in coats, never still, whining, shouting and wanting, swarmed around it, the sculpture remained demure, still, beautiful and freezing. It was the perfect antidote to life itself. It was made of ice, around nine feet tall and impossibly constructed; a lion, standing on its hind legs, front paws raised to the sky. Though from a distance the lion seemed to be about to pounce snarling onto the passersby below, the face was perfectly calm, with its eyes shut and its mouth closed and smiling a little. The overall effect was of a creature not about to kill, but about to dance. I laughed out loud as I drew closer.
Next to the lion, practically horizontal on a bench, she lay. She wore a thick, grubby men’s overcoat and a scowl. Her dark hair was unkempt and practically dreaded, and her hands were covered in scars. Piercings glinted dirtily from her nose, ears and lip, and I could see from where I stood her heel, poking proudly out through a hole in her shoe. Anyone passing might have thought she was homeless but for the way she gazed at the lion, jerking slightly when anyone touched it.
“It’s delicate,” she growled at a middle-aged couple laden with bags.
“Did you make it?” said the man.
“Yes,” she said, and with her tatty foot, she nudged the old hat positioned under the lion’s pedestal.
On the second day the sculpture was a mermaid: a glistening siren calling out to me silently from a melting rock. I tried to strike up a conversation about the sculpture with its creator. I thought art might make me interesting. She looked at me with a bored expression that seemed to say, You’ll do, and invited me gruffly to get coffee somewhere.
There, in a dingy midafternoon bar, she ordered two double whiskies for herself and another to go with my coffee. We spoke little. I was afraid. I asked her about her sculptures. She explained that she was a former rich brat and earned a fortune making ice sculptures for exclusive parties for ten months of the year. The rest of the time, she said, licking the rim of her glass like a savage, she moved from town to town displaying her work on the streets, got up like a beggar with a ragged cap for spare change. She was, apparently, doing it all to write a book on perceptions of art and poverty. I think she just liked to glower at people from a smug self-induced state of poorness. I didn’t say so. I smiled at her and said it was fascinating. At that, a flash of joy passed over her features, and she seemed to be about to thank me. Instead, she asked me to take her home with me.
Once we were through the door, she slammed me against a wall in the fading light. I was shocked to say the least, but delighted that I was suddenly part of this rock ’n’ roll artist lifestyle. She kissed me and I tasted booze and tobacco and a little desperation on her mouth. I kissed back eagerly as she made no attempt at ceremony. She reached down and began fucking me hard, glaring at me as if daring me to come. Losing myself in it all I began to feel the waves of tension wash over me and my knees weaken.
“So,” she said casually, as if she weren’t controlling my body from the inside out, “you like my work?”
“Yes,” I said breathlessly. She nodded to herself.
“And you’d like me to sculpt you someday, wouldn’t you?”
“Oh, yes,” I said, imagining standing naked under her gaze while she chiseled the shape of my hips and thighs into the ice.
“Say so then,” she spat, almost disdainfully.
“I’d like you to sculpt me.”
“You’d what?” she demanded, knowing I was losing the power of speech.
“I’d love you to sculpt me. I…want you…to…” I felt my hips buck and my head roll back involuntarily as the orgasm swept through me, and I abandoned my words to screams. She left almost as soon as I had got my breath back.
So now, she was moving on.
Since the second day I had seen her, we had fucked every day. In that time we had barely spoken. Or at least, I hadn’t. My chattering in her silences made me nervous, and she rarely spoke apart from sudden rants about Prejudice, Capitalism and the Right Wing, and I was afraid to interrupt. Aside from in bed, she barely looked at me, and even there she seemed not to really see me. She enjoyed toying with me, holding me on the edge of orgasm for what felt like hours and making me tell her whatever she wanted to hear, about her sculptures, about her, about us. It was that power that kept me coming back. I craved her hold over me, almost as much as I longed to exert the same hold over her.
After five weeks of this, she called me, as she often did, to summon me. I licked my lips as I answered the phone.
“I’m going tomorrow,” she said.
“Going where?”
“On. Out. Next place,” she said. She rarely spoke in full sentences.
“What the fuck?” Panic rose in my voice, surprising me. I composed myself. “Well, thanks for the notice.”
“Whatever,” she replied. “Come over.”
“There’s no point really is there?” I said, attempting to sound bored but only sounding indignant.
“Just come. The workshop. I’ll be there all night, so whatever.” She rang off. I seethed for a moment. Then I cried a little and then drummed my fists on my knees.
“Bitch!” I shouted at the telephone.
I shouldn’t have cared, but I did. I should have just gone over there for quick sex and left, because that was what we both should have wanted, but it wasn’t. She had ignored and used me for just over a month and now she was leaving. It shouldn’t have been such a big problem, but I was stuck. I wanted so badly to
crack that veneer and make her see through all her miserable judgments and her big philosophies. I convinced myself that it wasn’t for my sake but to simply prove a point.
If there is one thing I can’t resist, it’s proving a point, even if I have to fight for it long after the argument is relevant. Convincing myself that this stubbornness drove me, not my longing for her, I stamped into the bathroom. I was a mess, I conceded, as I looked at my blotchy face in the mirror. Rising to the challenge I slipped into the shower and began to prepare. I lathered, shampooed, shaved and scrubbed until I was pink, glowing and soap scented all over. After drying off in my room, I applied rich moisturizers and a perfume I knew had caught her attention before. I chose my clothes carefully, deciding on a short pencil skirt that had made her eyes linger longer than usual and a crisp white shirt that made me feel stern. I knew, despite all her feminist rants about sexualized clothing, that nothing turned her on faster than a pair of heels worn with confidence, so I selected my favorite black patent kitten heels to complete the outfit. Next, I dried and combed out my hair until it shone and applied light makeup. Once I was sure I was looking the best I could, I drove across town to meet her.
The workshop she squatted in was a former shop with a basement below it. The basement led to a bay where delivery vans had unloaded stock, and this was where she loaded her sculptures into her clapped-out transit each day. The windows at the front had been boarded up and the shop itself gutted. There was an old sofa against one wall that she slept on, and toward the back in an alcove behind a ragged curtain was a sink. Aside from that, it was empty. I found the door to the shop open and walked through to the back, where the stairs led down to the basement.
The basement was freezing, appropriately, and lit with institutional strip lighting. Leaning against the nearest wall was a chainsaw and a canvas strip full of hammers and chisels freshly cleaned and dried after the latest creation. She stood in the center of the room, smoking and leaning against what I presumed was a sculpture hidden under a dust sheet. She rarely let me see the sculptures before they went out on display. In fact, she rarely sculpted at night, preferring to create something early in the morning and then display it from midday in public. I anticipated another of her games and remained silent as I reached the bottom of the stairs. Once there I stood still, hoping she would feel awkward.
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