♦ In winter, it takes ten minutes to get out the door and another ten to come in again.
The second pair of socks are wriggled onto waiting toes, the second jumper meets cold shoulders. Then a coat buttoned high, a scarf wrapped tight around a neck meant for dappled sun and dappled kisses.
A hat provides blinkers. We can’t see each other unless we turn directly. Gloves keep the pads of our fingers delicate for a delicate touch, but make holding hands a bundle of wool upon wool. In protecting ourselves from the biting wind, we shield ourselves from nibble and nip.
Each layer becomes distance. I can wind my way to your waist through hidden passes, but each exposure provokes a yelp and a wriggle to re-adjust.
Your cock is an onion heart, found after peeling off layer after layer. Your kiss often lands on fabric instead of flesh. I feel the pressure more than your touch.
But we brave the weather together, hand in glove, glove in glove.
And the reward is worth the wait, the enforced frost of the lack of loving touch.
Each piece of clothing becomes a striptease. Each sector of skin revealed is like lovers reunited after a journey. Absence makes the cunt grow fonder.
The air is chill, even indoors, but you’re still the same under the layers. Your skin radiates heat, a warmth that smells so much of you. Your temperature probably shouldn’t come into my lust for you, but I find myself so often wanting to press myself up against you just to feel it. To inhale it.
In weather like this, the desire is practical as well as sensual. We huddle under blankets, snuggle, bodies pressed close. Our hands wander, freed from woollen barrier and endless obstructive layers. Fingers scuttle over skin, wander curiously into thickets of your body hair and my own hot-wet crevices.
I’ve missed the freedom of your body and your freedom of mine. You’re something familiar yet almost forgotten, a staple I once took for granted that I revel in now that it’s returned to me. Like lasagne after months of onigiri and yakitori.
At first all I want is to play, but then the play turns earnest, our breaths mist hotly, our grasp is needier, our hips move without thought. My skin flushes, your hands are embers and soon the closeness of the duvet is repressive. We burst from the bedding like budding shoots from snow.
The heat of our bodies as we fuck grows until the room seems temperate, clement even. I wrap about you, new vines curling, grasping, as you thrust warmth and life into my once-chilled skin.
We are gasping, we are groaning, we are creaking and panting and running riot.
We are spring.
So the next time we venture out into the winter cold again, in our solitary confinement made of hats and gloves and clumsy layers, at least I’ll be able to think of uncovering the long-lost territory of your skin again and of fucking life and warmth back into our bones… ♦