The ski trip had been planned for months. A family weekend at Aspen, complete with a luxury lodge, hot tubs, and the kind of forced bonding that made me want to fake an illness.
I’d been dating Eric for six months. He was nice. Safe. The kind of man who held doors and remembered anniversaries and thought that a weekend in the mountains was the height of romance. His sister, Paige, had been invited along—”for family time,” Eric had said, completely unaware that Paige and I had been avoiding each other since Thanksgiving, when she’d cornered me in the kitchen and kissed me against the refrigerator while Eric watched football in the other room.
We hadn’t spoken of it. Hadn’t acknowledged it. Hadn’t done anything except exchange glances across the dinner table that felt like threats.
Then the blizzard hit.
We’d left the lodge separately—Eric on the early chairlift with his friends, Paige and I driving to the rental shop for equipment. The storm had been a rumor when we left, a warning on the radio, something we’d laughed about over coffee.
By mile marker 47, it was a whiteout. The heater died first—a grinding sound, a puff of cold air, and then nothing but the howling wind and the dropping temperature. Paige pulled over, called road assistance, and was told two hours minimum. All units were responding to accidents. Stay in the vehicle. Stay warm. Stay safe.
We were in the back seat because the front had fogged completely, because the rear was slightly warmer, because Paige had said “scoot over” and I’d moved without thinking.
“The heater died,” I said, my teeth chattering, my wool coat pulled tight around me. “Road assistance said two hours. We’re going to freeze.”
Paige didn’t speak. She just looked at me—really looked, her blue eyes dark in the dashboard glow, her blonde hair damp from the snow she’d brushed off her jacket. Then she unzipped the leather, reached across the center console, and pulled me into her lap.
“Paige—”
“Shut up,” she whispered, wrapping the jacket around both of us, pulling me close until I was straddling her in the confined space, my knees on either side of her hips, my face inches from hers. “Your brother is at the ski lodge. He thinks we’re on our way. He thinks we’re safe.”
“He’s going to wonder where we are.”
“He’s going to wonder a lot of things,” she said, her hand sliding under my coat, finding the hem of my sweater, sliding upward until her palm was flat against my stomach. “He has no idea that his girlfriend is in the back seat of his car with his sister, about to get very warm.”
Her hand moved higher. Found my breast. My nipple, already hard from the cold, tightened further under her touch. She rolled it between her fingers, pinched hard enough to make me gasp, and then her mouth was on my throat, her teeth grazing my pulse point, her other hand gripping my hip to keep me from pulling away.
“Paige,” I moaned, though I didn’t know if I was warning her or begging her. “The windows. They’re fogged. Anyone could see.”
“Let them see,” she whispered against my skin. Her hand slid down, under the waistband of my jeans, finding me wet and ready and completely at odds with the freezing temperature. “Let them watch a woman warm up the only way that matters.”
She made me move. Her hands on my hips, guiding me, setting a rhythm that was slow and grinding and completely consuming. The leather of her jacket creaked. The car rocked slightly on its suspension. And I was riding her hand, her fingers inside me, her thumb on my clit, while the blizzard raged outside and the temperature dropped and my boyfriend waited at a lodge twenty miles away.
Headlights swept across the fogged windows.
We both froze. A snowplow, passing slowly, its amber lights flashing through the condensation. It stopped. The driver’s side door opened. Footsteps crunched in the snow.
A knock on the window. Muffled by the glass, by the wind, by the blood rushing in my ears.
“Everything okay in there?” A man’s voice. Deep. Authoritative.
Paige didn’t remove her hand. She just rolled down the window two inches—enough for the cold to rush in, enough for the snowplow driver to see two women huddled together, enough for him to miss the hand that was still inside my jeans.
“Just keeping warm, officer,” Paige said, her voice perfectly steady, completely at odds with the fingers that were currently pressing deeper inside me. “Heater died. Road assistance is on the way.”
“Alright. Be careful. Storm’s getting worse.”
“Will do.”
He walked away. The snowplow rumbled off. And Paige rolled the window back up, locked the doors, and looked at me with an expression that was part danger, part desire, part complete ownership of this moment.
“Now,” she whispered, her fingers moving again, faster, harder, “where were we?”
She made me come with her fingers inside me and her mouth on my breast, my wool coat pushed open, her leather jacket wrapped around us like a cocoon. The orgasm was sharp, desperate, completely consuming—amplified by the cold, the risk, the knowledge that my boyfriend’s sister was destroying me in his car while he waited in a warm lodge.
After, she held me. The blizzard raged. The car grew cold despite our shared heat. And she whispered things against my hair that I couldn’t quite hear but felt in my bones.
“We’re not going to make it to the lodge tonight,” she said. “The roads are closed. We’re going to have to stay here. In this car. All night.”
“Eric will worry.”
“Eric will survive.” She pulled me closer, her hand finding my waist, her lips against my forehead. “And in the morning, when the roads open and we finally get to the lodge, you’re going to hug him hello and smile and pretend that his sister didn’t make you come three times in the back seat of his car.”
She was right. The roads didn’t open until dawn. We stayed in the car all night—wrapped in leather and wool and each other, Paige showing me exactly how warm two bodies could get in the coldest conditions.
When we finally reached the lodge, Eric ran out to meet us. He hugged me, kissed my frozen cheek, and said, “I was so worried.”
“I’m fine,” I said, smiling, my legs still shaking, Paige’s taste still on my lips. “Paige took good care of me.”
She did. She still does. Eric and I broke up a month later—mutual, amicable, completely unrelated to the fact that I couldn’t look at his sister without remembering the back seat, the blizzard, the way she’d kept me warm.
Paige and I live in a warm climate now. No snow. No blizzards. But sometimes, when it rains, she makes me sit in the back seat of her car and she shows me exactly what she learned that night.
