I screamed desperately into the white veil, thrashing at the blank landscape with the least convincing punches I’d thrown in my life. The cold numbed and bit into my skin, forbidding me from forming feasible fists while my stiff, unwilling arms couldn’t wait to hug me once more. My club-like mittens uselessly tucked under my armpits, seeking any modicum of warmth.

Turning back towards our makeshift camp, I could barely see the flicker of diminishing flames even from only a few feet away. The evil, lashing cold of the blizzard struck me squarely in the face like the possessed hand of a scalded woman. I scrunched my eyes together, behind my snow goggles, wincing from the blast. The fire’s warmth seemed so far away, even from here.

I could just see the hunched figure of my co-worker in the poorly sheltered area by the fire. Our trusted tents flapped and shook with the immense strength of the storm. I feared they might blow away entirely and doom us to an even quicker death than I already expected. Part of me wondered if it wouldn’t be a mercy.

The figure stood and waved to me, silent against the deafening shriek of the wind-blown snow. With my whole body hunched up and turned half against the blizzard, I shuffled towards the fire like a wounded troll, fighting to stay upright under the unrelenting barrage.

The lessening of the storm as I stepped into the simple shelter of our camp was immediate. The blasting snow no longer stung my face and the pounding roar in my ears diminished. Raising my goggles, I watched the fearsome power of nature as it fired past our pelted camp, shredding at man and material. The flapping of the tents was incessant and maddening, but at least it didn’t ring in your ears, like the wretched blizzard, and tear at your bitten skin.

“I don’t know why you insist on walking off like that!” shouted the hunched, shivering figure by the fire. The voice was still barely audible over the raging, apocalyptic scene around us. “What are you expecting to find but your death?”

The figure turned to face me. Huddled inside her massive coat, with the fur lining of her hood pulled tight to frame the sharp, angled features of her pretty face, Victoria continued to scream at me.

“I swear that one day you won’t come back and you’re just going to leave me here in this hellhole to rot!” She turned away as the shine of a tear caught her almond-shaped eye, pulling the hood back around herself and hunching over the fire.

My heart sank to make my cultivated mood of despair dip lower still. I hated to upset Victoria at the best of times. I thought the world of the girl. My hands uncoupled from my armpits and I sat next to her on the upturned sledge we used as a bench. I draped one arm around the massive, padded shoulders of her arctic coat and idly wondered if she’d even realise it was there.

Our heads rested together in silence. We stared into the fire, inviting its warmth into our souls. One monstrous gust of wind tore through our camp. The fire sparked and crackled, leaping towards us and swirling. The only semblance of colour in our white-washed world danced and shook with the force of the storm, paling under the cold’s relentless assault. We never flinched as we held to each other, wishing the nightmare were over.

“I’m sorry, Victoria.” My voice was raised over the din we were enveloped in, rather than the softer, lighter tone I would usually have hoped for. “Sitting here staring at this God damn fire just takes it out of me. I wish I could just see something out there!”

“There’s nothing out there, Tom! They’re gone. They’re not coming back. I know that, now.”

Her voice held such a pitiful, despairing tone that my chest constricted. I had prayed for days that she wouldn’t give it up, but the sound of her crackling, broken voice trying to hide her tears broke my heart.

I reached out with my frosty mitt to turn her face towards me, looking into the deep, blue, sorrowful pools of her crying eyes. The bitter cold stung her chiseled cheeks to a red glow, as though she had been smacked, and the cracked, full lip she bit down on held a purple tinge. I had seen the beautiful features of her face split open with unbridled happiness on our excursions. I’d seen her tanned skin, now pale and ruddy, glow brilliantly in the tropical climate.

“They’re coming, Vicky. They’re out there, too, looking for help. We can’t just give up! They’ll be back to get us and you’ll be tucked up in some posh hotel bed inside the week, complaining about the shit TV and the cheap wine!”

She smiled and I watched a freezing tear slide down her cheek and stop. I brushed it clumsily away and smiled back at her. The howling of the dogs was barely audible over the storm. They were chained up yards away, but their eerie crying could’ve been from another world entirely.

Our heads leaned together and my hand rested against her leg, stroking her with an attempted soothing motion. It all felt rather clumsy and ill-conceived, but I knew I had to try – for Victoria’s sake. Watching my hand’s fruitless attempt at consolation, my mind drifted a little. I imagined the softness of her thighs, beneath the layers of winter clothing. My mind turned inwards, hiding from the cold.

The white background of our world gave the perfect backdrop to the playback of my memories. I remembered watching her lithe legs strut her tight form around a tropical hotel pool. My mind’s eye perfectly recalled the shine of her golden hair, paired with the flawless, tanned skin that gave her the radiance of a celestial body.

Strapped teasingly into a plain red bikini, she had me enraptured. I could only stare at the gentle bounce of her breasts and the rhythmic quivering of her firm, divine ass with every measured step. Victoria’s shapely body, kissed by the sun’s glow, looked perfect in that warm, tropical setting. She dived neatly into the pool, surfacing with a playful giggle and an elegant flick of her hair.

She swam with such grace and fluidity that the water parted for her easily. She belonged in that place, akin with those tropical waters. She delicately lifted from the pool, in front of me, with a refreshed sigh. Dripping wet and shining in the baking heat, she captured my heart instantly. The sun beat down on my neck and I felt the flush of my cheeks as our eyes met – hers full of the easy confidence she wore like her own skin.

Next to me, Victoria whined and turned to hug me tight as another sudden violent gale hammered our camp. The storm was getting worse. Part of me still clung to the warmth of my memories as I clutched at the gorgeous girl next to me, wishing we were back beside that pool in the tropical heat.

“Remember Barbados, Vicky?” I ventured, squeezing her tight and placing my hand delicately on the back of her hooded head.

She whined again next to me, nodding into my chest.

“Remember the blazing heat and all the sun-kissed bodies; the sound of local music playing all night long and the gentle lapping of the warm sea on the hot, sandy shore? Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be back there again?”

She turned to look at me and nodded, closing her eyes tight and pressing her body tight against mine.

“That was a proper job, wasn’t it?” I chuckled and attempted to stroke the back of her head with my oversized paw of a glove. “Why can’t all of our experiments take us somewhere tropical, where all you need to pack is a pair of shorts and a bottle of sun lotion? Oh, and a bikini, in your case: a lovely, teasing, red bikini that shows off your ass just perfectly.”

She looked up at me and feigned a scowl while I struggled to contain my smirk. “Shut up,” she muttered, leaning against my shoulder and thumping it with her fist. “But keep talking.”

“Of course, your majesty! What would Her Highness like to hear about next?”

Victoria moved to hit me again just as my ears filled with the piercing, shrieking howl of another surge in the storm. We both grabbed each other, instinctively, cuddling close. I stared into her beautiful, squinting blues as the storm beat harshly around us, overturning our equipment and scattering it as debris in the fierce assault.

The fire roared and flickered, laid horizontal by the wind’s power. We both turned to watch as it died before our eyes, quenched at once to a small pile of charred twigs. The world darkened, the storm encroached on us further and I faintly heard Victoria sob next to me.

I screamed out loud, jumping up and petulantly kicking the smouldering remnants of the fire into the wind, watching the ashes fly into the white abyss intent on consuming us. Victoria shouted and grabbed my wrist, pulling me back to stop me. I turned to see her face drop into her hands, shoulders stooped and weeping.

I couldn’t stand there watching her cry. I couldn’t. I pulled her to her feet. She looked at me with confusion in her wrinkled brow and narrowed eyes, in the impossible twilight of the storm. I crushed her body against mine in a solid hug as the elements shrieked and swirled around us.

I clutched her hand tight in mine and dragged her to the nearest tent. Victoria stumbled after me and only watched as I threw open the flap to my tent and pulled her inside, fastening down the door in a vain attempt to isolate us from the bitter world outside.

She stood in the middle of the tent, hugging herself, looking confused.

“We can’t stay out there in this, Victoria. We’ll slowly freeze to death. The fire’s out, we’ll just have to make do.” I walked over and held her shoulders, gently sitting her down on my bed roll. She just watched me work.

I fished for my stove, lighting the small fire and setting it in front of her, on the quilted sleeping bag. She sat, trembling, while I took her gloves off and held her hands close to the fire.

“Keep warm,” I told her, ducking out of the tent again. She shouted after me at last as I fastened the door shut and, shivering still, I headed for her tent.

I returned a few minutes later, exhaling deeply and watching my breath rise around me as I rushed to close the tent once more. I dropped her sleeping bag, and the blankets I found in her tent, next to mine, along with her stove – just in case.

“You’re sleeping with me tonight, Victoria.” I suddenly realised my phrasing might not have been very well chosen. I turned, slowly.

She was sat in front of the small fire, her slender hands cradling the flame. Her long blonde hair cascaded over her shoulders and the snow-flecked fur of her lowered hood. The colour had partially returned to her cheeks and her eyes had dried up. She gave me a smile that made my heart skip. I’d not seen her smile too often in the past few days, but the grin that spread across her face and the giggle she let out was warm and smooth, like liquid chocolate to my soul.

“I am, am I?” She giggled. “Hmm. Maybe.”

She winked and laughed, throwing a glove at me as I struggled out of my own. The return of Vicky’s playful side had me grinning instantly. I threw myself down next to her, bumping her into the wall of the tent. A small avalanche of snow slid down the outside, loudly, as she pushed me back.

Laughing, I took my freezing hands and cupped the warmth of her cheeks. She gave a shrill, high shriek, and pulled away.

“Your hands are dead!” she cried at me, holding them tight in her slightly warmer ones. She held my hands over the stove and we both tried to regain some kind of feeling, rubbing each other’s fingertips and breathing fruitlessly on the stinging skin. “If I’m sleeping with you, tonight, mister, you’d better warm those hands up! They’re not getting in my knickers in that state.”

I looked at her and we both smirked before she hit me again. She brushed the dusting of snow from my shoulder and rested her cheek against me as we resumed the cuddle we’d held outside. Quiet fell in the tent, apart from the merciless lashing against the tent walls, pulsating like bellows.

Pulling the blankets and opened up sleeping bags over us, we huddled close together around that tiny flame and quietly warmed our frozen bodies in each other’s embrace. Somehow, I tuned out the sound of the storm and managed to listen to Victoria’s slow and steady breathing. It felt somehow comforting.

“Weren’t you talking about Barbados?” She nudged playfully against me, nuzzling into my shoulder, snugly, with her body wrapped tightly around mine. I loved having her so close and completely in my arms, all to myself.

“I was, wasn’t I? I digressed a little, though. There was this gorgeous blonde in a red bikini that just completely distracted me, if you can believe it.”

“Oh shut up!” Victoria’s voice cracked with the giggle she tried to hide before mumbling into my coat. “Gorgeous, indeed.”

I turned to look at her with a harsh bark of laughter.

“Oh, please! It’s a wonder I got any work done on that trip. Every time I looked up and saw that perfect arse of yours in that bikini, it wasn’t science on my mind, girl.”

She looked up at me with a slight scowl and I could only laugh in response. Maybe it was the desperation of the situation; maybe it was years of frustration finally breaking free, but my hand reached out and stroked her well defined cheek.

Victoria’s eyes closed and my hand found the zip on her coat. I inched it slowly down. She looked up at me, her bottom lip pinned by a row of perfect, pearly teeth. Still wrapped tight around me, her breath clouded around my face as she whispered, almost inaudible.

“What’re you doing, Tom?”

My fingers inched the zipper lower to just below her breasts. My hand slipped into the coat and eased it open as my palm drifted across her chest and the soft woollen jumper.

“I’m… Opening you up to the fire.” I bit my lip and stared into her eyes. She knew it wasn’t true, but I felt the arms around me grip a little tighter and her fingers start to walk over me.

“I’m not wearing it, y’know?” I looked at her, confused, and at last she giggled again, breaking the quiet moment between us. “The bikini, pervert! I’m not wearing it, if that’s what you’re after. It’s all thermals, I’m afraid.”

I shook my head and leaned closer to her. My hand continued to open her coat until it fell open and I could swipe a hand slowly along her shoulder, shrugging off the heavy material. She shivered just as I whispered quietly in her ear.

“It was never the bikini, Vicky.” She turned to look at me, our gazes locked with unspoken need. “It was you.”

As I finished the sentence, my hand lifted from her shoulder to glide along her long, slender neck. I cupped one side of her face with my thawing palm, into which she laid the weight of her head. Her eyes closed and I simply breathed to her.

“It’s always been you.”

I waited no longer before easing the cracked and broken surface of my lips to hers. Her head lay back in my hand and accepted the tender kiss for a moment before she reciprocated. Victoria’s hand idly ran up and down my flank while my fingers laced into her hair, unwilling to let her go. It was the roughest – and yet the softest and sweetest – kiss I’d ever experienced.

Pulling back at long last, our lips reluctantly parted. I watched her chest rise and fall; I saw the ragged, steaming breaths that poured from her lips and knew I should’ve never waited so long to kiss her.

Her hand reached out and clasped my zip, easing it down with that unmistakable sound. Our eyes remained locked as I shrugged out of it, letting it drop away behind me.

The sound of the crumpling coat was the cue we had waited for. That sound set us loose. I dived for the girl I’d loved for so long, crushing our punished lips together in desperate desire.

Our mouths met and tongues joined at once as we rolled into each other’s arms. Collapsing on the open sleeping bag, in front of the fire, my hands pawed her poor, tortured body through the layers of her clothing. Her hands were knotted in my hair and the heat of her skin on mine thawed my cold body and soul better than any fire.

I pulled the makeshift blankets over us while our hands hungrily roamed our pulsating bodies. My lips found Victoria’s neck, kissing and tickling her sensitive skin as she held me close, squirming in my arms. I sought the warm, supple flesh hidden from me beneath her arctic clothing. Feeling the goosebumped skin of her torso under my caressing fingers was something I’d only dreamed of.

We kissed again, hard, as my palm cupped the tender mound of her breast, my fingers automatically pinching the pointed, stiffened tips of her nipples. Victoria’s hot, breathless sigh against my cheek only inflamed my desire further with a deep, passionate growl. She was intoxicating.

I kissed her again, harder this time, allowing my fingers to glide down her body. My excited digits fought their way through the layers of thermals to find the hot, beating core of her sex. Her legs parted for my fingers as her lips parted for my tongue. Victoria’s palm pressed against my bulging manhood in response, grinding against me with a frustrated need.

We were joined together, inseparable through our clumsy, desperate fumbling. My fingers strummed delicately through her wet and swollen petals, teasing her to gentle whines. Victoria clung to me with one hand gripping my stiffened shaft, almost possessively, as she rocked against my slickened fingers, needily.

“T-t-Tom…” the desperate, panting air to her voice just encouraged me. My fingers began to rub faster and her breath left her in torrents before she could finish her sentence. “F-fuck… F-f-fuck me, Tom! Please!”

I’m not sure if the noise I made was a growl, a whine or a happy combination of both. I only knew that I couldn’t deny her for a single second more. She sighed as the weight of my body rolled over her, before my lips pressed hungrily to hers. Her hands once more found my hair, holding me firmly into the impassioned kiss while my own hands fought against her many layers.

I growled impatiently, sitting up in the cold tent. I seized her bottoms and yanked the obstructions down her slender legs and out of my way, then shrugged out of my own. Victoria shrieked with the chill and giggled, pulling my lips back to hers. We covered up again, frantically, while she ensnared me in her bare legs. Through the kiss, we held a steady rocking rhythm while I ground into her pelvis.

“Now, Tom. Please.” Her eyes slammed shut and her head fell back, splaying her flowing hair, as my engorged tip found her soft, velvet entrance. “Give it to me!”

The final word trailed into a long, happy mewl. I sunk into her and sighed, giving myself to her as she forced her lips to mine, seeking my hungry tongue. I held still, buried completely inside her, kissing her passionately as our bodies pressed so closely together.

Slowly, my hips started to thrust and Victoria met the languid movements with her own rocking hips and delicate sighs. We were hardly animated, but the tenderness was real and I never wanted it to end. My lips kissed her neck as I held the two of us so intimately together and she sighed in my ear.

“Don’t ever leave me again.”

“Never, for a moment.”

My hips ground into hers as she slowly accepted my length inside her. Her voice turned breathless with a groan and her fingernails scored across my back.

“I love you.”

At last, I could see what I most wanted.

“And I love you, Victoria.”