I definitely couldn’t control the images springing into my head. With the scent of Aster’s release filling the steamy air, it was impossible I’d think of anyone else.
His delighted smile whenever I quoted one of the TVshows he was determined I enjoyed. The light that graced his face when he spotted me out in the mountains. The wrinkles that formed across his nose when he was frustrated.
I pumped harder, keeping my mouth carefully angled into the bend of my arm to trap the sounds escaping.
Aster’s intoxicating scent surrounded me. What would it be like to be surrounded by him? Instead of only touching his hands and the soft skin of his neck, how would it feel to press my chest against his, entwine my legs with his?
I moved my hand faster as I imagined chasing our release together. His arm moving with mine, his mouth pressing across my neck and chest, his penis pulsing with need.
Closeness, of another kind. Vulnerability and desire and heat.
Pleasure coiled in my stomach, tingled across my thighs, culminated in the heated flesh clasped in my jerking hand. I groaned into my arm, feeling the splash of cum over my fingers. My eyes closed against my will.
Orgasms had never felt like this before. Like my whole being was lit up with overwhelming sensation. Like I was consumed by this need. Like a thousand of these moments would never be enough.
I groaned as I loosened my hold, aftershocks of pleasure racketing down my legs and up through my chest. If this wasn’t the start of another long day in the mountains, filled with goat herding and worried glances at the snow-laden clouds, I would be tempted to allow the lassitude that followed these orgasms to lull me to sleep. I’d been a poor sleeper since the storm, but I had a feeling I’d pass out immediately if I got too comfortable after such a mind- and body-shattering experience.
Knocks on the bathroom door snapped me from my post-orgasm glow. I whipped my head up from my arm to check the lock was pushed across.
‘Callum?’ Aster paused knocking to shout my name through the thin layer of wood. ‘You alright?’
‘I’m fine.’ Hopefully Aster would attribute the huskiness of my voice to anything other than the long moans I’d been unable to contain.
‘Okay. Cool. I thought I heard something. But yeah. Shower time is private time. And I know?—’
‘Can I help you with something?’ I interjected. Usually, I loved listening to Aster ramble about any subject, but the blush would never fade from my face if he explained exactly what private shower time meant while my penis was softening.
‘Oh yeah. Yes. Yes, you can.’ Another series of knocks sounded, like Aster couldn’t contain the energy thrumming through him. ‘Do you wanna build a snowman?’
He sang that last part. I had no idea why. I flicked off the water, then stumbled as I stepped out of the shower cubicle and the detail behind what Aster had said hit me.
‘It’s snowed?’
‘It has snowed like a fucking machine,’ Aster shouted through the door. ‘At least a couple of feet has settled out there, and it’s still going.’
I grabbed a towel and hurriedly dried myself. If anything could snap me out of the hours-long glow that followed one of my Aster-induced orgasms, it was the prospect of what a late fall of snow meant for the pregnant goats.
Nothing good.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ASTER
When I looked out of the cabin’s windows and saw that the world was blanketed in white, I imagined potential snowball fights and building epic snowmen. I foresaw a day where I’d exhaust myself out in the cold, then come back into the cosy warmth of the cabin where I’d drink hot chocolate and watch mindless TV. I’d snuggle under blankets and warm my feet beneath one of Callum’s thighs.
Callum did not share my dreams. He crashed out of the bathroom after I interrupted his shower—treating me to a glimpse of his damp chest as he finished buttoning his shirt—and packed up supplies in a wild-eyed frenzy. He extracted a promise that I wouldn’t wander too far from the cabin and tugged me in for a hard hug before yanking open the cabin door and hurling himself into the white wilderness beyond.
I didn’t have time to marvel that this was the first time he’d initiated a hug before he disappeared, the cabin door swinging shut.
I looked down to where Albert had fastened his teeth onto the hem of my pyjama bottoms. ‘You’ll enjoy a snow day with me, right?’
I should have known that mine and Callum’s reactions to snow that settled rather than dancing annoyingly around my head or viciously pelting me would be vastly different. As a London boy, born and raised, snow held a mystical quality. Especially snow like this, which was only broken by the paths Callum and the goats carved through it. No grey slush in sight.
Callum had been muttering about the lingering cold every time he stomped into the cabin with snowflakes clinging to his mussed hair. It wasn’t my fault I was far too preoccupied with burying my face in his chest to listen to and retain what he actually said.
For Callum—and presumably the pygmy goats he cared for—snow this late in the year was bad news.
It was hard to remember that as I grabbed the pan Callum made porridge in each morning and got distracted by the flurries of snow dancing past the window. Inuits would have a good name for this kind of snow, something that meant pretty-snow-that-actually-does-what-it’s-supposed-to.
