#iceplay

Night.

When I tell you it’s hot I mean to say that clothes are not an option.  Neither are sheets for that matter.  You have to just lay there, spread-eagled.  Whether face up or face down, that’s your preference.  But it is hot.  Stifling.  Sweaty. Hard to breathe and harder to distract yourself from the itch of sweat bubbling to the surface and running down your sides.  I’m not usually one to complain about soaking the mattress… but this is not in the right context.  This is ridiculous.

It was the worst time for the AC to spark into an untimely death.  Yes, even that box of humming and dripping machinery gave up the fight.  So did the fans, both of them, which I stared at with envy and malice that they no longer could feel the hot air blowing through their outstretched limbs.

It’s the worst kind of heat. It’s not fogging up the backseat of a car on a fall night.  It’s not straddling atop a lover in a steaming bath.  It’s certainly not swimming naked in a heated pool as you see your partners swirling, shimmering body just beneath the surface.  It’s none of those things at all.  It’s just misery in the shape of you.  Glistening, yes.  Panting and heaving, yes and yes.  But you didn’t earn those labored breaths and you certainly got no satisfaction.

I can’t stand it.

So, I peel myself away from the sheets that pull like a lover who isn’t ready to let go.  I make my way in the dark because I can’t stand to think of adding any more energy to this stifling air.

Even my feet slip on the kitchen laminate. Fuuuuck.  If I fall, if I land in a pool of my own damp footprints I might just lay there a half an hour, groaning and moaning and not in the way one hopes to.  But that’s not what happens, thankfully.

I make it to the sink and run the water as cold as it will go, forgoing any glass, face beneath, head beneath, hands cupped and rising to my mouth to drink and splash and make a mess all down my chin and neck and chest and all the way to my toes, which causes me to almost slip once more.  But this cool water, it’s not enough.

My god. This heat. I can't get cool enough.

It’s then that I hear a clink in a glass.  I’m bracing myself against the kitchen island like a lost shipwreck in a lake of fire when I hear it.  A tumble and a crunch that, for some reason, triggers a sensation in memory and shivers run through my hot, wet skin.

-Stay there.

You’re up.  You can’t sleep either, can you.  You need just what I need.  Some way to stifle back the heat.

-Stay right there.

I don’t know if I can move anymore, even if I tried.

-Try this.

It’s then that I understand what you have, what salve or offering drew you out of bed and down here as well.  It’s cold, shocking in this heat but soothing in all the right ways.  It’s wet and melts against my warm body.  I imagine steam rising as it does.

You start at my neck, just below my hair, moving side to side across my shoulders, a cape of melting ice flowing down my back, before running it down my spine, slow, diminishing and warming as it falls into nothing but streams of lukewarm sensation.

Your cold fingers glide through my hair, guide my head forward as you bend me over, chest down to lay flat and breathless in this heat.  Still so very hot.  Still needing so much more.

-Let me help.

The glass clinks again. Your hand returns.  The ice is so cold at the start, three cubes in your hand as you draw them across my back, tickling across my sides.  I squirm under your touch, held down with your hand still in my hair, lifting their dampness from my neck.  The water pools along the valley of my spine.

I ask for more. Please, more.

You spread my legs, bare feet guiding bare feet apart.  With tussled hair atop my head your hand slides down.

If you don’t help break this heat I don’t know how I’ll get through this night.  This oppressive, steaming air and suffocating, miserable -

Ice, so much cold ice held against the back of my thighs.  I’m whimpering as I realize you’re not going down my legs.  Though the water drips and streams away, your hand roams higher.  It’s close. So very close.  So nearly what I need but the ice keeps melting so fast.

It can’t compete against the heat.

We need more.  So much more.

Together, we clear the table. The tablecloth ripped aside and sailing down to the floor.  We pillage the freezer's icebox.  Each crunching and clacking sound sends shivers of anticipation.

And then I’m lifted, laid back atop the table and splayed out.  Just as I was in that suffocating hot room where we lay night after night.

Handfuls of ice fall all across my stomach and chest, tumbling from my collarbones to rest in the cleft of my neck, firm and oh-so-cold as you glide that icy salve across my lips and press it further into my mouth to melt across my tongue.  Your hands bring even more, just beside the rise of my hips.  And there’s more in your mouth as well.  You’re breathing frigid air over me like a cold winter wind, like a swim in a glacial stream that runs from your body to mine. I shiver as a drop lands in the pool of my belly button, as the waters overflow and your lips follow where it flows. Down. Down. To where the heat comes from within.

We’re almost there. We've almost won. This heat will surrender.

Imagine silk sheets.  Soft and shining and tussled.

Imagine a guitar played flamenco on a balcony unseen.  The fingered strings rising and falling in crescendos of rhythm and melody.

Bring to mind a room lit by moonlight with fragrant gardenias and lilacs just beyond the open windows, brought in with a warm breeze.

Try to feel that breeze though it is only a small relief from the stifling hot air all around you. Feel the kiss of the breeze as it flows over and around your body.  A body unadorned but for small beads of salty sweat that glisten in the dim light.

But there is another sensation you can feel here as well.  Cool air that emanates from the ice in a small bowl beside your bed.  Ice that you are not to touch yourself, only able to ask for it … for where and, of course, for when.

Sometimes you ask and watch as your words become action.  Sometimes you simply point and wait for a hand or mouth to deliver cool relief.

Sweat mixes with rivulets of melting ice to drip and stream away from your ribs and collarbones and breasts and thighs to dampen the silk beneath and twisted around you.

The melting water tickles between your legs.  It forms pools beside your hipbones and on your stomach until, as you remember to breathe once more, your chest rises and the miniature lakes flow away.

You feel soft lips as they follow those streams of melting ice.  A mouth that rests upon those hills and valleys of skin and searches for the goosebumps that subside with the warmth of breath.

Warm to cold and warm again. Warm air against cold ice brought to pleasure by warm lips again and again and again.  A mouth that starts with your own, finding its way over your neck and collarbones, descending slow and wandering wide until you find it nuzzling between your legs and bringing a new kind of warmth with every breath and kiss and slide of the tongue.

Your back arches with the sensations that begin to overwhelm.  Hips raise from hands beneath.  A fresh breeze rushes in, sweet and rich.

And all the while the silk sheets wrap and pull and constrict around your limbs.  All the while that Spanish guitar lilts and reverberates through the air. All the while you feel the warmth within growing into a white-hot light, an electricity, an overwhelming fire that steals your breath and tightens your muscles into spasms of satisfaction and joy.  The waves of it all, of hot and cold, of tension and release, of pleasure, wash over and through until, with your breath returning once more, you fall back into those silk sheets.