The world outside my windows is white, everything buried under almost a foot of snow. Little splashes of color remain, the green of the pine tree grove, the blue back of a deck chair half buried under a drift, but overwhelmingly my world is crisp, and clean, and white. If I put my hand on the glass walls of my house, I can feel the cold seeping into my bones, but if I stand back it’s like a wonderland.
Yesterday, when I went outside, I saw strange prints on the driveway. I think they belong to my fox. It’s strange, this tendency to claim ownership of nature, but she does feel like she’s mine. She’s so beautiful, with her bright eyes and red fur, and I talk about her whenever I see her, and sometimes even if I don’t. I think about her, wandering in the snow, or curled up in a ball, tail wrapped warmly around her nose, and hope she’s found a place to shelter. I leave the gate open and put a blanket in the old doghouse just in case.
Sometimes I imagine meeting her. What would it be like to be the sort of person a fox finds fascinating? I was standing on the deck, this morning, staring up at the squirrels running mock battles in the trees when I noticed a flash of red across the snow. I turned my head and there she was. Time stopped, and I held my breath as our eyes caught and held. One moment passed. Two. And then a branch cracked under the weight of the heavy snow and she ran. I would have thought I dreamed it, except when I went to look there were three red hairs caught in another set of those same strange prints. I brought them inside and wrapped them in a piece of paper. Proof. No one ever believes me when I tell them about the fox.
Winter habits are winter comforts. I spend the afternoon cooking, baking, filling the house with the scents of cinnamon and nutmeg. I light a fire in the fireplace and curl up in front of it with a good book. The sounds outside are deadened by the snow and I feel like my world is wrapped in a blanket of cool, white, silence. I drift off into dreams lulled by the warmth and quiet found within its folds.
The doorbell rings. I’m not expecting anyone, and I rise to answer it in my winter uniform of mismatched pajama pants and warm fleece jacket, long hair rumpled from my impromptu nap beside the flames. At the door is a woman, of about my height, with no gloves on her pale white hands and no hat on her short red hair.
“Aren’t you freezing?” I ask her.
“I got lost on the road and saw your light,” she replies, “may I come in?”
“Of course. Come sit by the fire and warm up. Then I’ll help you get on your way.”
She curls up in a ball, like a cat, on the sofa next to the hearth and I bring her hot mulled cider from the stove.
We start to talk, about nothing of consequence, and keep talking for hours. Staring into her amber eyes, I forget that she’s a stranger. She begins to feel like an old friend.
I end up sitting at her feet, hands resting on her knee. I can’t not touch her with her right there next to me, warm and fascinating and real. I feel connected to her, enlivened by her presence, excited, and more alive in our little bubble of reality than I have in a long time. I don’t question the instant attachment. I just want to be by her side.
She touches my face with her hand. Time stops and I forget to breathe. In a moment of bravery, or perhaps insanity, I let how much I want her show within my eyes. She kisses me and I can’t move. Our lips, our tongues, and her hand on my face are all I feel for a moment that I wish could last for hours. Her hand twitches strangely and there is suddenly a sharp pain in my cheek.
When she pulls back there is a drop of blood on her finger, “Sorry, I lost control,” she says, and puts it in her mouth to suck.
I stare up at her, eyes wide, mouth open, and can’t find any words to ask for what I want. She kisses me again and I taste the salty iron tang of my own blood on her tongue. It makes me gasp into her mouth.
She flows off the couch, and pins me to the ground, her weight firmly on my hips, both my wrists grasped in one of her hands. She leans down and with her pink, pointed tongue licks the cut she made on my cheek. It stings.
I gasp and my hips buck beneath her.
“You like that?”
“Yes.”
She lowers her body onto mine, pressing me into the ground with her weight until I can barely breathe. She’s so warm. She feels like she’s hotter than the fire. My head starts to swim.
Just as I’m about to pass out she rolls off me onto her side, her back leaning up against the couch.
“Don’t go,” I beg, and she pulls me back against her, one hand recapturing my wrists and her strong legs imprisoning my lower body.
With her free hand, she unzips my fleece jacket. I’m wearing nothing underneath. She grabs my wrists harder and then runs one sharp black nail down the center of my sternum. I can feel it scraping me, like a knife. I arch my back to press into her hand, and feel the warm, wet sensation of blood as her nail breaks my skin.
It makes me shiver and press back against her warmth. I can feel her breath against my ear as she begins to play with my breasts. It’s like she’s exploring. Her hand traces the shape of my bosom, she cups my right breast in her hand and sees how it can move. Then her fingers start to grab, slowly building pressure until I moan and then further until right before the point where I’m almost willing to ask her to stop.
After that it’s back to those strange sharp nails, tracing along my ribcage, flicking sharply across my nipples, until I’m writhing in the cage of her limbs. She pinches my nipples so hard that I gasp, and doesn’t let go, simply increasing the pressure until I’m whimpering and her hand is too tired to hold. She continues until my breasts are so sore that even the brush of her fingers against them makes me shiver, and then her nails move down to my belly.
As her fingers pause there, grabbing deep into the skin, where tomorrow I will find crescent shaped scabs and a deep lingering ache in the muscles of my abdomen, I hear her mutter something that sounds like “Not pray,” and her teeth briefly bite deep into my neck to echo the sensation of her hand. She mutters it again and moves her hand lower under the waistline of my pants, pushing them down and then pulling them the rest of the way off with her legs before using them to recapture my own.
I feel her fingers between my legs, exploring again, and it makes me writhe. Her nails trace the line of my outer lips and then one pushes sharply against the base of my clitoris and I scream and try to jerk away. She holds my wrists more tightly and uses her legs to separate my own and then she flicks her nail slowly in the same place to see if she gets the same effect before returning to her explorations.
I’m breathing hard as her fingers move lower and discover wetness. She slips one inside me, and then two, and I can feel her investigating the space inside me, pushing with her fingers, and scraping with her nails until I scream. It feels like her hand moves inside me and over me for hours until what started out as pleasure becomes pain and what should be agonizing is inducing wave after wave of bliss.
When she lets me go, I pounce. I kiss her, like I would devour her, and start to unbutton her blouse. She has beautiful breasts, so different than mine, and I stroke my fingers over them gently where they swell above her bra. When she unclasps it for me I draw first one and then the other nipple deep into my mouth.
I love touching her. I spend ages exploring the hollows of her neck with my tongue, although she stops me at the sensation of my teeth against her skin, flipping us over, pinning me with her own teeth to my throat and holding me there until I stop fighting, before releasing me and saying “Not that.”
I remove the rest of her clothes and play gently along the curve of her hipbone, her knee, with my fingers and my tongue. When I feel between her legs, she’s wet, so wet, and I play with her dampness, moving it up to tease her clit, running my fingers in the warm space between her inner and outer lips until she quietly squirms. I slip one finger inside her and then two and stroke gently. I love how it feels having my fingers inside another woman. I love the warmth, and the textures, and the way she moves. I love to play, and see what I can do to her body, see if I can make her react. I love to explore and look for the routes and pathways of her pleasure, and feel the honor of being allowed inside her with my hands and my tongue.
She lets me touch her for hours, and eventually we fall asleep in front of the fire wrapped in each other, happy and warm.
When I wake the next day she’s disappeared. When I open the door to see if I can determine where she’s gone there are no footsteps in the snow, and I would wonder if I imagined the whole thing if it weren’t for the delicious ache in my lower body and the soreness in my breasts. I look closer and see paw prints in the snow, and when I turn back to the fire I see three short red hairs lying on the pillow we pulled from the couch.
I wrap them in a piece of paper to remember her by. I put it next to the identical packet where it lies next to my bed.
It wasn’t “pray” she muttered into my ear, her hand gripping deep into my belly, but “prey.”
Maybe I’ll see her again one day.
My beautiful huntress.
My fox.
–
Happy Holidays.
Recent Comments