Snowjob

was barely visible, wrapped totally from head to foot in her mother’s favorite pink down comforters, a wedding gift from seven years ago. Tyler knew instinctively trying to wrestle any of it away from her would just light off another fight. They’d been fighting non-stop since he’d told her they were going home to Moss Lake for a while; Gabrielle hated to get anywhere near what she considered a dead-end town in a dead-end state, and the farther from the shops and social life of New York he took her, the angrier she got. After he’d broke the news to her, she’d hopped an overnight flight to Boston to visit her niece, and almost not come back.

“Fix the heat,” his wife grumbled from her safety under the covers, breaking into his thoughts. “’S fuckin’ cold.”

Tyler leaned over toward her side of the bed, slipping his fingers across the inch of exposed cheek. “I thought maybe we could warm up a different way, baby,” he whispered, feeling what he assumed was her bottom pressed back against his hard-on. With a grunt, she snapped her foot backward into his shin, sharply, making him wince as he backed up. For a moment, his anger flared, but then he bit his lip and sat up, resigned to another cold morning alone. He hunted around under the bed for his slippers, then grabbed his robe and shaved and brushed his teeth, the wintergreen flavor of the toothpaste helping him to wake up. He bent down, rinsed with the ice cold water from the tap, and then looked at himself in the bathroom mirror as he gathered his wits for the day.

I’m not bad to look at, he decided, wondering for the thousandth time why his wife wouldn’t make love to him anymore. I’m tall, and I’m not muscular, but I’m thin and fit. He studied his own eyes, light blue, what an ex-girlfriend in high school had once called ice blue, and his features were nice enough, if a little feminine. He felt a quick flash of guilt at that thought, his fingers gripping the cold tile of the bathroom counter.

“You’re taking too long,” his wife called from the comfort of her covers, and he sighed and obediently shuffled his way to the bedroom door, along the balcony, and down the stairs, the old pine stairs creaking under his steps. At the bottom, he stopped briefly at the large front window, which looked out onto the front yard. It was still dark, although he could just make out the glimmer of red which meant the sun was coming up. There were circles of frost on the window panes, glittering silver in the reflected light from the small end table lamp he always left on in case Gabrielle wanted him to get something after dark. The gusts outside were propelling waves of snow across the paths leading out toward the shed, and already he couldn’t see the raised walkway leading south toward the lake. This could be a real problem if we miss our flight, he considered, wondering if Gabrielle would let him use her laptop to see if the airport in Clairmont was snowed in. He heard the bed springs creak upstairs, and knew he’d better hurry up. He turned to his right and walked to the swing door of the kitchen, brushing it open with his hand as he imagined what life might have been like if he’d made other choices.

It hadn’t always been this way, he remembered. Back in high school, Gabrielle had been quite the catch. A lot of boys had fought back and forth to get her attention, and she was very discerning in her selections for who got to sample her prodigious charms. At the time, he’d been a lanky blonde with nothing to offer but his father’s money, and truth be told, he hadn’t been trying too hard to find a girlfriend anyway. He’d been happy as heck when she’d decided to start dating him instead of Luke Adams, the head of the school’s football team. He’d been aware at least some of her enthusiasm was for the amount of money his family had, and for his willingness to spend it on her, but she’d seemed so genuinely in love with him. They’d had a great senior year, and then when he started talking about heading to college, she’d seemed so upset with him that he was going out of state without her. He’d tried telling her he’d come back on holidays, that he loved only her, that he’d buy her a ring.

He could hear the wind roaring by outside the back door from the kitchen. It sounded as if a full winter storm was on the way, which could be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on the situation. Although he was glad to get out of New York before anyone important started wondering where he was, he wasn’t really after a long stay here in Moss Lake, either. He had places to be, and not for the last time, he wondered how Gabrielle was going to handle it when he told her they weren’t going back.

He tried to get his dream out of his mind as he wandered toward the furnace room at the back of the kitchen. This was the last property his family had when his father had died, and no matter how many times she’d pushed him to sell it, it was the only thing Tyler had ever stood up to her about. It wasn’t that he was so hipped on owning it, but he’d always felt that his father wouldn’t want anyone but a Price to own it, and that he owed it to his father’s memory for being such a horrible disappointment. Besides, right now, it was pretty much his last refuge.

He **** himself not to think about that, yet. Pushing open the heavy oak door to the furnace room, he was hit with a blast of freezing air from the chinks in the back wall. He’d been meaning to caulk them back up, but he’d never gotten around to it when they’d last visited two summers ago. Now the breeze kept blowing out the pilot light on the enormous kerosene burner furnace which took up the back half of the room. At least twice a day, he had to stomp down and bear the cold long enough to relight the furnace and change out the fuel cans. And then Gabrielle would always get mad at him for tracking the dirt back into the kitchen, and make him sweep and mop it out when he was done. He kicked his slippers off, placing them alongside the door and taking a deep breath before stepping off onto the freezing red clay floor.

The sensation of the ice-cold earth on the soles of his feet was agony, driving the air right out of his lungs. Be a man, Tyler, he griped at himself, ashamed that he was such a weakling. His father and Gabrielle both had spent years telling him to be a man, which just made all his dreams more ironic when you thought about it. He could feel his anxiety building, the general panic he’d been feeling for most of the last year. Maybe that was why Gabrielle had stopped making love to him, because she had a hard time feeling romantic with a man who was about five seconds from crying all the time. Or maybe it was because of the other thing, he thought, feeling his face flush even in the cold room. A worm of guilt tunneled through his gut as he remembered his morning dreams.

He’d been fourteen when he’d noticed that watching the guys on the wrestling team was as exciting as watching the cheerleaders. At first, he’d tried not to think about it, but as he’d gotten older, there’d been more and more moments where he’d caught himself looking at his friends and wondering what it would be like, just once, to feel their hands and lips, to be curled around them, to be told that he was beautiful, attractive, to be loved by someone strong who could keep him safe when he was so frightened all the time. By the time he’d started dating his future wife, he’d done his best to **** that side of himself down, to bury it as deep as he could and never acknowledge it. He’d avoided any and all situations where he might slip up and be revealed. And, in little Moss Lake, that hadn’t really been that difficult. It was in college, after she’d moved up and made him get their first little one-room apartment that things had started to go wrong.

He struggled with a half-drum of kerosene, dragging it over to the furnace, suppressing a curse as he stubbed his toe on the steel rim and accidentally splashed some of the fuel onto the dirt floor. The smell was thick and nasty, assaulting his nose. He left the drum there for a moment, wishing he’d paid to have a separate storage room for the fuel cans built. His grandfather had always been sure to point out that you had to haul the fuel cans out to the shed, and there were a couple of dozen out there now, but as often as he had to refill the furnace right now, it had been easier to leave five or six cans stacked in the corner farthest from the pilot light, under the shelves. As long as they’re tightly sealed, right?

Casting around in the shadowy room, he tried to remember where he’d left the hand pump for the fuel line. Another blast of wind kicked up a flurry of dust from the floor and caused him to inhale sharply in pain; he moved to the shelves and began feeling around for the pump and the matchbox full of long-stem fireplace matches he’d brought in from the fireplace mantel when they arrived last night. Outside, the sound got even worse, and he worried for a moment about what he’d do if the snow got bad enough to trap them here for a week or so. Can Emil Darcy get people into Moss Lake’s little bitty airport in this kind of weather? He suspected that, with as many billions as the man had, he could probably do any damn thing he wanted.

His fingers brushed the edge of the pump, which teetered on the edge of the shelf just long enough to torment him before falling just as he grabbed for it. He grimaced in pain as he barked his knuckles on the wooden shelf, feeling splinters slice under his thumb, hearing the dull metallic thump as the pump banged off the top of the stored fuel cans and fell near the furnace mounting. He picked up the box of matches, bent to collect the pump, and stumbled back over toward the fuel drum he’d left behind, just as the scent of coffee carried in from the kitchen, and he realized his wife must be up. His stomach tightened even more as he realized he’d taken too long to get things done, and now she’d be mad at him. He hurried to hook the hand pump around the plastic fuel line, and began cranking it as fast as his half-frozen hands would allow. As he did, he zoned off into thinking about his situation again.

After Gabrielle had moved up, Tyler had been able to behave himself, but the neighborhood they could afford turned out to be very gay-friendly, and it hadn’t taken long for him to start watching again. He never did anything, not once, but there had been a lot of opportunities, and then he’d taken to surfing porn on the web, more to stop the urges than to encourage them. The night Gabrielle had cruised through his internet history and discovered what he was looking at was one of the worst of his marriage. She’d ranted and railed at him, called him a faggot, made fun of him, called his father and told the old man about his son the pecker-puffer. The fact Tyler was still attracted to women hadn’t really made much of a difference, but finally things had settled down when he’d agreed to go to a “councilor” and to allow her to periodically check his internet accounts. She was willing to overlook his long showers, and after a few years, she’d stopped making comments about it. But the urges had never gone away. And father had certainly never forgotten.

He **** the pump handle down with a vengeance, working his frustration and humiliation out the only way he could. When the last of the fuel was gone, he disconnected the pump and tossed it into the corner, momentarily too upset to bother putting it away. Taking a match from the box, he struck it on the sandpaper strip on the box, and bent down to light the furnace. From somewhere outside, he could barely make out the sound of a motor somewhere in the distance, too deep in tone to be Deputy Arvin’s Snowcat, or one of the rare lake boats the locals used when the roads were too snowed. The hiss-pop of the pilot light distracted his attention, and he sat back, watching to make sure the flame burnt nice and bright before he closed the small cage door over the bottom of the furnace. For one long moment, he sat there, basking in the glow of the fire, feeling the delicious heat play across his skin.

The rattle of dishes from the kitchen brought him out of his reverie. Reluctantly, Tyler rose and plodded toward the door, swinging it open carefully, half-expecting Gabrielle to begin yelling as soon as he came out. Instead, she was sitting by the corner table, wearing one of her old high school drama club tee-shirts, her laptop open, and she was smiling as she typed something. There was a cup of coffee waiting for him by the counter top, and he tried to appear nonchalant as he walked over to it and lifted it. The first sip was boiling hot, burning his tongue, and he twitched as Gabrielle laughed at the face he made, tossing her hair over her shoulder with a practiced flip and glancing back to her screen. She clicked the mouse, then slapped her machine closed, and turned toward him, stretching like a cat with a juicy fish on the hook. He couldn’t help but notice her nipples were stiff and hard in the cool air, her legs curled outward from her body, her toes sliding across the tile floor she’d insisted she wanted in the kitchen.

“Sorry I didn’t take advantage of your morning wood, dear,” she said, still smiling. She kept the stretch going, shifting in her seat and slowly spreading her legs. He felt his erection come roaring back to life as he stared at her, not believing he could be so lucky that she’d be in a good mood AND horny. Tyler tried to mumble something suave, but his breath caught in his throat when she slid forward a little more and he realized she wasn’t wearing any panties. The slick wetness of her was an invitation his body understood, but his brain was having trouble processing, and so he stood there like an idiot, frozen.

Gab took the initiative, leaving her chair and crouching down on the floor, looking up at him. She crawled toward him, and slid her hand up his leg, hooking her thumbs into the belt of his robe and pulling it open. His length sprung out, and she curled her hand around him, licking her lips and giving him her best porn-star smile. “I think baby needs some cream for her coffee,” she growled, and engulfed him in one move. He groaned and leaned back against the countertop, feeling the heat of her mouth as her tongue slid along the underside of his cock, her fist tugging at him insistently. He shuddered, knowing that, as long as it had been, he wouldn’t last long at all. She was drawing him out, sucking him so deep into her mouth, then pinching him off, preventing him from coming. It was a tease, but it was so good he felt like he’d die when he finally did finish.

With a loud bang, the back kitchen door slammed open, catching the two of them in the moment and ending it very abruptly. No matter how much Tyler Price wanted to flood his wife’s mouth with his seed, the sight of two heavily armed men barging into the lodge waving guns ended any pretence of sexual interest. As he froze in terror, some small part of Tyler was screaming in rage at the interruption of the first sex he’d had in months.