Chapter 15: Frozen Lake Encounter
Minnesota air didn’t just bite; it gnawed straight through to the bone. Emery had chosen it for that reason. The shock of the cold was a purifying agent, she told herself, scrubbing away the cloying scent of Tokyo’s galleries and storage rooms. She’d traded silk for thick wool, alleyways for endless white.
The lake was a vast, blue-white plate under a hard sun. Her skates cut whispers into the ice, a feeling of perilous freedom. This was movement without destination, a looping, futile grace. She pushed harder, trying to outrun the echo of Kaoru’s words. The ashes are still there.
The sound of blades scraping, different from her own smooth strokes, broke her rhythm. She turned, a spray of ice dust glittering in the light.
A man in a dark parka and a beanie was gliding to a stop near the shore, a hockey bag slung over his shoulder. He stood watching her, his breath pluming in the still air. Not a threat. An observation.
She didn’t smile. She simply coasted toward him, the tension in her chest coiling tighter. Another person. Another possible oblivion.
“You’re brave,” he called out as she neared. His voice was warmer than the air, a low, steady baritone. “Ice is thin in patches this time of year.”
“I like thin ice,” she said, coming to a stop. Her cheeks were numb.
He gave a quiet, thoughtful hum. “Figure skater?”
“Avoider,” she replied, the truth slipping out before she could costume it.
His eyes, a cool grey like the winter sky, crinkled at the corners. “Logan,” he said, nodding.
“Emery.”
“You’re not from around here.”
“Is it that obvious?” She repeated the line from another life, another man.
“The skates are rental. And nobody local smiles at cold like it’s a personal challenge.” He shifted his bag. “I was going to shoot some pucks. Don’t let me interrupt your… avoidance.”
He began to move away, a respectful dismissal. Something in her clawed against it. Silence was becoming louder than noise.
“Would it be an interruption?” she asked.
Logan paused, turned back. He studied her face—the defiant glint in her eyes, the faint tremor in her lips that wasn’t just from the cold. He seemed to be weighing, thinking. “No,” he said finally. “I could use the target practice.”
They skated in a loose, wordless orbit. He moved with an athlete’s efficiency, firing pucks at a makeshift goal with a sharp, satisfying thwack. She watched the power in his shoulders, the focused calm on his face. He was contained. He didn’t fill the space with drama or psychoanalysis. He just existed in it, solid as the pine trees.
After a while, he gathered the pucks and skated over. “You’re shivering.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re turning blue. There’s a warming hut just through those trees. Wood stove. It’s quiet.” He said it like a simple fact, an offer with no hooks.
She followed him off the ice, the snow crunching under their blades. The hut was a small, cedar-shingled shack, smelling profoundly of smoke, pine sap, and old wool. Inside, the heat from the iron stove hit her skin like a physical blow. She gasped, the sensation almost painful.
Logan dropped his bag, shed his parka. He wore a simple thermal shirt that stretched over a lean, sturdy frame. He stirred the coals in the stove, added a split log. The firelight danced over his profile.
“So,” he said, not looking at her. “What are you avoiding, Emery?”
She unzipped her coat, the thaw making her fingers ache. “The usual. Memories. Decisions. Myself.”
He turned then, leaning back against a rough wood table. “And you think hypothermia is the answer?”
“Feeling anything extreme is the answer. Even if it’s just the cold.”
He nodded slowly, as if this made perfect sense. “And does it work?”
She met his gaze. The honesty in the room, fueled by the primal heat, was unbearable. “For about five minutes.”
He pushed off the table. The space between them shrank. He didn’t move like Kaoru, with a predator’s grace, or like Zayn, with a storm’s inevitability. He moved with a quiet certainty that was somehow more disarming. He stopped just before touching her.
“I’m not going to be your five minutes,” he said, his voice soft.
Disappointment, sharp and acidic, rose in her throat. Another door closed.
Then his hand came up, his knuckles brushing the cold-stung apple of her cheek. “But I can give you ten. Or twenty. And it’ll be real, for whatever that’s worth to you right now.”
The permission he sought wasn’t for sex. It was for presence. It undid her.
She closed the final distance, her mouth finding his. His kiss wasn’t hungry; it was thorough, deep and searching, as if he were trying to learn the texture of her loneliness. His hands came up to frame her face, his thumbs stroking her cheekbones. It was so considerate it made her want to scream.
She did scream, a tiny, frustrated sound into his mouth, and tore at the hem of his thermal, pulling it up. He broke the kiss only to yank it over his head. His skin was hot under her palms. She shoved her hands down the back of his sweatpants, gripping the solid muscles of his ass, pulling his hips hard against hers. She could feel the thick length of him, already hard, straining against his clothes.
“Okay,” he breathed, the word a concession to the urgency she radiated. “Okay, I see.”
He walked her back until her shoulders hit the cedar wall. The wood was rough, warm from the stove’s proximity. His mouth found her neck, biting, sucking, leaving a claim the cold would hide tomorrow. His hands pushed her coat off her shoulders, then went to the button of her jeans.
He worked them down her thighs, the denim scraping her skin, until they pooled around her boots. The air in the hut was warm, but the shock of exposure made her shudder. He hooked his fingers in the waistband of her plain cotton underwear and pulled them down, too.
He dropped to his knees.
His hands spread her thighs wide. He looked up at her, his grey eyes dark, his breath a hot cloud on her inner skin. “You’re sure?” he asked, one last anchor to a decency she didn’t want.
In answer, she fisted a hand in his hair and guided his head forward.
His tongue tasted her, a long, slow lick from her opening to her clit. He groaned, the vibration going straight through her core. “Fuck, Emery,” he muttered against her wet flesh. “You’re so fucking wet for me already.”
He didn’t just eat her out; he devoured her with a focused, relentless intensity that belied his calm exterior. His tongue speared inside her, then flattened to lave broad, maddening strokes. He circled her clit, sucked it into his mouth, flicked it with the very tip of his tongue. He used his fingers again, plunging two deep, crooking them to find that perfect, melting spot inside her while his mouth worked her clit.
“Come on,” he urged, his voice a rough scrape. “Let go. I can feel you shaking. Just let it go.”
He pinned her against the wall with his mouth and hands, a prisoner of sensation. The orgasm broke over her silently, a vast, internal collapse that made her legs buckle. He held her up, drinking every pulse, until she was gasping, pushing weakly at his shoulders.
He stood, his own breathing ragged. He shoved his sweatpants and boxer briefs down, freeing his cock. It was thick, veined, the head flushed a dark red. He gripped himself, smearing the bead of pre-cum over the tip, and pressed it to her soaked entrance.
He didn’t slam into her. He pushed in with a single, inexorable, deep thrust, seating himself to the hilt. The fullness was breathtaking, a stretch that bordered on pain. They both cried out—hers a sharp gasp, his a choked groan.
“Jesus,” he hissed, his forehead falling to hers. “You’re so damn tight.”
He began to move, withdrawing almost completely before driving back in. Each thrust was measured, deep, impactful. The hut filled with the sound of their bodies meeting—the solid, wet slap of skin, the creak of the wall against her back, their ragged, mingling breaths. He wrapped one arm around her waist, holding her firmly in place, while the other hand braced against the wall beside her head.
“Look at me,” he ground out.
Her eyes, which had squeezed shut, flew open. He held her gaze as he fucked her, his face a mask of intense concentration. He was watching her, seeing every flicker of pleasure, every wince, every retreat behind her eyes.
“Stay with me,” he commanded, driving into her harder. “Right here. This is real. I’m real. This is happening.”
It was the most intimate thing she’d ever experienced. It wasn’t a game or a silent transaction. It was a confrontation. With every deep, penetrating stroke, he was demanding she acknowledge the act, acknowledge him, acknowledge her own body’s screaming, traitorous response.
She came again, a shorter, sharper climax that ripped through her with a sob. Her inner muscles clenched around him in rhythmic pulses, milking him, pulling him over the edge.
With a final, brutal thrust, he buried himself as deep as he could go and came. A raw, guttural sound tore from his throat, and she felt the hot, liquid spill of his release inside her, a shocking contrast to the cool drip already on her thighs.
He collapsed against her, his weight pinning her to the wall, both of them slick with sweat, panting in the oven-like heat. His breath was hot in her ear.
Slowly, he softened and slipped out. A mess of their combined fluids coated her inner thighs. He righted his clothes with clumsy hands, then knelt again, this time with a bandana he pulled from his bag. Gently, with a tenderness that felt more violating than the sex, he cleaned her up. He helped her step out of her tangled jeans and pulled them back up her legs, doing the button and zip for her.
He dressed himself in silence, then tossed another log into the stove.
The reality of what had just happened—the raw, un-anaesthetized connection of it—began to curdle inside her. It felt dangerous. More dangerous than any dark storage room.
“You should go,” Logan said, not unkindly, as he zipped his parka. “A storm’s coming in. The path back to the road will get rough.”
She just stared at him, hollowed out.
He walked to the door, then paused, looking back at her. His expression was unreadable. “The ten minutes are up, Emery. The feeling you were after… it’s already fading, isn’t it?”
He didn’t wait for an answer. He opened the door, letting in a blast of frigid, clean air, and was gone.
She slid down the wall to the floor, the warmth of the stove no longer reaching her. She pressed her hands between her legs, where she was still tender, swollen, filled with the physical proof of him.
It wasn’t fading. That was the terrible part. The cold, thoughtful clarity in his eyes, the demanding presence of him—it clung like a burr. It wasn’t an oblivion. It was a mirror.
Outside, the wind began to howl, promising to erase all tracks, to bury everything under a fresh, blank layer of snow. She pulled Kaoru’s silk jacket from her bag and put it on over her wool sweater, a crimson blasphemy in the rustic hut. The ashes weren’t just still there. Someone had just blown on them, showing her the embers still glowed beneath.
She had nowhere left to run but deeper into the cold.