would always make him spasm. He kicked. She spat into her fingers and rubbed the saliva under the head of his cock and squeezed him. His cock grew harder in her hand.
She slipped his cock inside her mouth, sliding her tongue around the glans, and as his cock grew even harder and swelled in her mouth she felt his body give in to her and become limp by contrast. He lay back, surrendering to her, giving her all the power. She released his cock and sat upright, swinging her leg over him, to mount him. Outside the alpine light was a mysterious species of blue she associated with neon, almost ultraviolet. It illuminated his teeth and the whites of his bloodshot eyes and gave his limbs a tanned, healthy hue.
He had once said to her that she was such a sexual creature she could make a dead man come, and here she was, proving it. She levered herself onto him, impaling herself, gasping at the moment of yield when her vaginal muscles relaxed and let her slide down over him. She leaned forward, letting her long hair fall across his face, inhaling the smell of his hair and his sweat. The smell of fuck charged the room, circling above them like smoke, like a ghost. She pressed her fingertips against the white wall over the headboard above him to give herself leverage, raising and lowering herself onto him. She was fucking him hard and angrily and with a desperate air, as if this might be their very last time. The headboard was banging against the wall as she thrust with her pelvis, thudding against the wall, and she didn’t stop even when she felt him ejaculate and shiver as his orgasm eclipsed him entirely. She went on, driving herself, slamming the headboard against the wall until she started to feel the wall itself crumble under the touch of her fingertips, turn to powder, dissolve until it was no longer the powder of plaster but the powder of snow, freezing to the touch, and collapsing back into a swirling, gaping hole, from which a man’s arm reached through and took her by the neck, took her by the throat in an icy grip, closing off her breathing, pulling her, trying to drag her off Jake, choking her until she shrieked out loud, not in ecstasy but in terror.
Jake sat up. ‘What is it? What is it?’
The outstretched arm released her, and the pool of snow, the swirling white hole in the wall simply closed up, becoming white painted plaster on a bedroom wall all over again.
Now Jake was holding her face between his two large hands, his eyes searching hers for explanation.
She looked at him; she looked at the wall. ‘I’m seeing things. Jake. I’m seeing things.’
‘What things?’
‘Nightmarish things.’
‘Tell me.’
But she shook her head. She’d recognised the arm that had come through the wall. She recognised the ring on the middle finger and a small scar on the back of the hand before it had started to choke her.
They lay together for a while, he stroking her hair. But even with his eyes closed he could almost see her restlessness, and he said so. ‘Go to sleep, my darling, go to sleep.’
‘No. I can’t. I have to talk to you.’
‘I never like the sound of that.’
‘I feel like this is a chance to pull a thorn out of my skin. It’s about Simon.’
‘Yes. Best man at our wedding. I know about that.’
She blinked at that. ‘Yes. I always feared you knew.’
‘Can we leave it?’
‘It was a bad time for me. You weren’t paying me much attention. I’m not saying it was your fault. I’m telling you it was meaningless, mistaken and a folly. That’s all. I knew you knew, all along. I just needed to have it said in the open.’
‘Feel better now?’
‘A little.’
‘Well, don’t expect me to feel better. You’ve taken the thorn out of your skin and stuck it in mine. And it hurts.’
‘I’m sorry, Jake. I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t cry. It doesn’t matter. If there is any sense to marriage at all it’s so that I take your thorns, and you sometimes take mine.’
They lay together in the dark of the room. There was enough light reflecting off the snow from the lamps outside by which to see. Nothing more was said.
After a while Jake’s breathing changed: he had fallen asleep. Zoe fell asleep too, but woke shortly after when she heard the gentle sound of harness bells outside.
They were the kind of bells associated with animals in train, of distractions for tourists. Zoe glanced at Jake’s sleeping form and swung her legs out of bed. The harness bells had stopped. She moved over to the window.
Since they had moved across the hall, their window looked down onto the road passing the entrance to the hotel. And there stood the vast shadowy form of a splendidly muscled black shire horse harnessed to a large sledge. It was a stallion, its flanks sleek, coal-black and sparkling with fresh sweat. The breath from its muzzle steamed in the cold air like an old engine at a railway platform. The animal’s hooves were magnificently feathered and on its head it sported a brilliant crimson plume that in the moonlight was the colour of spilled blood. The horse chewed at its silver bit, but otherwise remained perfectly still, as if waiting.
Zoe gasped at the sight of the creature. She stepped back, automatically reaching a hand to wake Jake, but changed her mind. Throwing a blanket around her, she hurried out of the room and took the elevator down to the lobby. She ran out barefoot in the snow, hardly conscious of the cold.
It was still snowing. Large fluffy flakes, some already clustered as they fell. The horse stood utterly immobile as she approached, doing nothing to acknowledge her presence.
It was an enormous stallion, powerful in its withers and boasting a great curve of muscle at its loin quarters. Zoe knew enough about horses to estimate that she was looking at one a staggering twenty hands high. Though the horse wasn’t saddled for riding, to mount such a beast would require a small ladder. She put a tiny hand to its flank and felt its hairy and muscular warmth. Snowflakes dissolved the instant they fell upon its steaming sides. Rows of tiny bells were stitched into its polished-leather harness, and the metal foil of each bell was stamped with the emblem of a six-pointed snowflake.
The horse waited patiently, as if for a command. Zoe moved her hand along its shoulders and neck, failing to reach the poll between its ears, so tall was the horse. Though the horse pricked up its ears at her gentle lunge, and clouds of mist spiralled from its muzzle.
‘So black against the snow! You are beautiful!’ Zoe said. ‘Beautiful!’
She moved to the front of the horse. Its nostrils were terrifying, flaring black holes releasing snorts of steam. It was like a creature from the origins of the universe. The horse turned its head slightly away from her, so that its eye, regarding her steadily, was like a polished black obsidian mirror in which she could see herself distorted: a small thing, swathed in a single blanket, looking up with hope and wonder. The horse tossed its head and shook its crimson plume, and began to chew again on its bit. Zoe tried to blow gently into its nostrils but it shook its plume at her again. She took it as a sign that he didn’t like her approach from the front.
Instead she walked around the patient animal to examine the sledge it was pulling. It was a simple construction: a heavily built wooden frame with giant steel runners to glide over the snow. The seat was comfortably upholstered with smart, plush black leather with a velvet trim. Though the seat was large enough to take two or more passengers, there didn’t seem to be a special bench for the driver. The studded leather reins lay coiled across the front of the sledge as if waiting for someone to take them.
Zoe thought to try the seat. She lifted a foot to climb onto the step-board but found it way too high for her. She jumped back with a tiny exclamation of surprise. The step-board was now level with the top of her head and the horse and sledge also appeared to have expanded. Now it was terrifying, enormous, and she felt like a small child looking up at the beast. What’s more, the instant she moved backwards the horse, as if flicked by an unseen crop, tossed its head and trotted onwards.
‘Hey!’ Zoe shouted after the horse. ‘Hey!’
But the stallion was already away and moving on through the gently falling flakes of snow at a steady clip, its bells shivering in a percussion of admonition. Zoe watched it go. The horse and its empty sledge rounded the curve of the road and disappeared behind a dark row of snow-burdened firs.
Zoe waited until its sound diminished and silence returned. She looked up and down the street. Then she returned to the hotel, and to the room where Jake was still sleeping.
She sat on the bed watching the gentle rise and fall of his chest as he slept on. She reached out and held his
