The cursor blinked, white and unrelenting against the black of the monitor screen. Dr. Harry Jordan stared at the last sentence he’d written as though it had just appeared by itself, that his fingers hadn’t been responsible. He jabbed at the delete key, berating himself, but relieved that he’d caught it before mailing off his weekly report. The guys back at the lab would have had a field day with that one…

Those last seven words erased, he prepared to send the file, praying that the intermittent wireless signal would last long enough in the blizzard to deliver the document. Stretching, Harry leant back in the desk chair, turning to gaze out of the small, insulated windows at the unabating storm.

It was three days since he’d been able to venture out of the station to gather samples or conduct any tests or surveys. Three days in this ten-by-ten hut, where equipment, machines, and food rations took up more space than he did. Three days closer to getting out of this place and going home.

The remote research facility had already been home for over twelve weeks. It had been snowing here when Harry arrived last October. Harry grew up so far south he hadn’t seen real snow until he left for college. Other youngsters had tacked up posters on their bedroom walls of sports cars, baseball stars, silicone-perfect Hollywood beauties. Harry’s wall had been decorated with photographs torn from articles in National Geographic, images of icy landscapes and snow-capped mountains.

He’d been prepared for his stay. Harry had undertaken rigorous training to endure the conditions, and although he’d been required by the department to undergo a psychological evaluation to establish how suitable he was for months alone, he’d been so sure that living out his dream would have made up for any problems.

Besides, he’d reminded himself, he had every reason to look forward to going home. He had Tanya.

The computer beeped, demanding his attention as it began to send the files in a trickle of information. This week’s data was paltry, but it served as a reminder that there was a world outside that wall of white. That somewhere, hundreds of miles south, another computer in the university lab would be accepting the report. Tomorrow morning, his colleagues in the department would read it over steaming coffee, and maybe they’d pause and wonder how he was.

At least they didn’t know the content of the dreams. That information would have rendered him the butt of toilet humour for months. Hell, he’d never have the courage to go home at all if he’d accidentally sent that remark.

If they knew about the images that even now, hours after waking, had him shifting uncomfortably in his chair to accommodate the growing hardness between his legs.

One hand strayed down to the front of his pants, massaging slowly as his thoughts filled with her again. Vivid visions of Tanya appearing here, walking naked towards him through the storm. Her bare skin was pale as the wintry landscape, her hair tumbled starkly over her shoulders like curling wisps of black smoke. The world outside the station was a Dali wonderland of melting ice pillars and sculptured snow, though he never felt the cold. Even when she lay him down in the snow, it felt like sinking into a soft down bed.

When she knelt in the snow between his legs, and leant down to take his cock between soft coral lips, his body felt fire, not ice. It licked along his spine as surely as her tongue lapped along his shaft.

Harry closed his eyes, unfastening his fly, and sliding one hand beneath the fabric. His fingers were a poor substitute for her, but while he was awake it would have to do. The chair began to squeak rhythmically as he wrapped his fingers around his erection, beginning to stroke.

She never let him orgasm until she was astride him, and the shivers of anticipation made him wonder if somehow the ice was doing her bidding to stop him.

He stroked faster as the image of her above him, slender body swaying. Sometimes the pleasure he got from simply watching her was as powerful as the things she did to his body. In his mind’s eye, the pace of his strokes matched the rise and fall of her hips, her cries echoed in his head in time with his groans. She threw back her head, palms flat against his chest, and his fist reflexively tightened, mimicking the way her body clamped down around him. The chair squeaked once, loudly, as he climaxed with a bitten back yell.

The silence pressed in again as his racing heartbeat settled back to a steady rhythm.

Getting to his feet, he picked up a T-shirt from the rumpled sheets of his cot, and cleaned himself off haphazardly, before fastening his pants. Gaze fixed on the wall by the door, he walked towards the items pinned there.

Next to the calendar, the first half of January crossed out with angry red marker-pen slashes, were his photographs. Taken early last summer, each snapshot was drenched in amber sunshine, golden wheat fields and jewel blue skies. His friends leant over the side of an old pick-up truck, grinning at the camera and holding up bottles of beer in some forgotten celebration. And Tanya, hovering on the periphery of each picture, wearing a summer dress and a mysterious smile.

Harry hadn’t seen those blue eyes since he’d last seen those blue skies, and now that mystery was unfathomable. The delays of getting any supplies delivered to him meant that the terse note she’d sent arrived a good month after she’d actually left him.

She’d cited her reasons as the distance, the long separation, Harry’s pre-occupation with his work. He’d almost laughed when she’d written “I’m lonely”. He wondered whether she had any idea of how that felt in a world where even the birds and animals made themselves scarce over the winter.

He didn’t regret his choice. He just didn’t quite understand what he’d done. Either way, he left the photographs up.

The dreams began a few days after the letter arrived.

For the first few nights, he’d brushed the dreams aside. It wasn’t the first time he’d woken up from a dream of Tanya, feverish skin cooling in the icy night, evidence of this forced abstinence tenting the sheets.

He’d never really dreamed about sex with this sort of intensity before. Save for the occasional nightmare that Freud would have had a field day with, Harry couldn’t remember any dreams that clung to his thoughts long after waking.

But it was easy now, to superimpose the snow and ice over Tanya’s image in his photos.

He stared at the picture, reaching up to trace Tanya’s outline with one fingertip, trying to imagine how it felt to touch her. The way she’d shiver and giggle softly when he ran a hand over the hollow of her waist, complain that it tickled but would never ask him to stop. The way her hair felt like ribbons of satin when he brushed his fingers through it, when it spilled over his chest as she rode above him. He tried to recall the softness of her lips, the sting of her glossy red fingernails scratching his skin, the tight wet heat of her body enveloping him. Those things weren’t as easy to conjure to mind anymore.

Something about this incessant cold numbed more than just gloved fingers.

The following week’s report was even slimmer. Outside the cocoon of the research station, the storm continued with banshee shrieks of wind. Harry had little taste for venturing outside, but he forced himself once or twice. There were ongoing tests for which he needed to gather in some data, readings he needed to take. Ordinary things.

Despite the brutality of the weather, and that it took half an hour to dress warmly enough to step outside, the windswept landscape of white was still beautiful. Flurries of snow swirled around him as he went about his duties, clung to his coat and boots like a possessive lover. The flakes stubbornly refused to brush off, even back inside the station, and something deep inside ached at watching them melt away.

Inside the facility, the passage of time was marked only by the things his wristwatch told him, and the red gashes on the calendar. According to the view outside the windows, day and night were denoted by different shades of grey.

Harry whiled away hours just gazing at his photographs. Sometimes, if he stared long enough, just like seeing pictures in the blizzard, he swore he could see the wheat fields dancing, smell the beer, watch the summer breeze ruffle Tanya’s dress.

This week’s fantasy—at least the calendar said it was a new week—was to take her there and then, pushed up against the side of the pick-up truck, regardless of who was watching. He could feel the thin folds of her skirt bunched up in his hands as he exposed a long expanse of pale thigh, and the ruthless grip of her body as his thrusts pounded into her, making the old truck’s suspension squeak. He’d drizzle that warm beer down her chest, watch the golden liquid stain the front of her dress, peaked nipples taut against the fabric. He’d suckle them through the floral material, tasting the summer and hearing her moan.

Tanya had mentioned once that for such a smart man, Harry’s imagination was about as adventurous as a spam sandwich. He thought he finally understood what she meant. The images in his head barely provided enough stimulation for a few quick strokes beneath the cold blankets of his cot, half-hearted orgasm a brief splash of heat against the chill.

At least he had the dreams. They came every night now. When there was nothing to do besides count the minutes and watch the snow, Harry curled up on his cot, willing sleep to come.

Increasingly, he found himself making excuses for not leaving the station, excuses for not getting out of bed at all. When he remembered to eat, the dirty dishes were left in a pile. He convinced himself that he was conserving energy by not cleaning, either the station or himself. What did it matter? There was no-one else here to offend.

He only went out that morning grudgingly, well aware that if he sent in a sloppy report again, there’d be trouble.

The storm had settled into a steady fall of sleet. For the first time in weeks, he could see further than two feet in front of him. Just a short while ago, he would have seen the trek from one experiment site to another as an indulgence, appreciating how lucky he was to see this at all. He would have stayed out here until either the cold or the darkness forced him back. Now he just wanted to return to the station. Wanted to return to her, with a longing that overwhelmed him.

He knew the way her kisses tasted like melting snowflakes on his tongue. Her touch was never cold, her body never any cooler than his as she pressed against him.

Hurrying back through the knee-high drifts, the sudden turn in the weather caught him off guard. A squally wind battered at his goggles, and in an instant, the world around him became a disorientating swirl of white.

Stumbling onward against the wind, he fumbled in his pockets for his compass. It wouldn’t be the first time he was caught out by a storm, and he knew the station wasn’t that far east from the last site he’d visited.

Beneath his feet, the ground fell away, the thick snow concealing a step in the land. It was no deeper than a foot, but the momentum and surprise made him stumble, landing on his hands and knees. The snow came up to his chin, and with nothing solid to lever against, it took several attempts even to get back on his feet.

The compass had disappeared somewhere into the snow. He patted his jacket down searching for the spare, before eventually remembering where it was. Sitting on the counter back at the station, where he’d looked at it earlier, and forgotten it in his haste. It was an elementary mistake, one that even weekend hikers wouldn’t have made.

He would have kicked himself, given the opportunity.

It never came. The moment he took another step forward, the entire shelf of snow on which he stood broke off with a crack. The sound of the shifting snow rushed in his head, knocking him off his feet, carrying him over the side of the drop.

And the last thing he saw before black, was endless white.

Harry opened his eyes to the caress of snowflakes, as detailed and unreal as a child’s drawing, or the ones he remembered making at school, with folded paper and scissors. They were spiderwebs of ice, far more intricate than anything he should have been able to see, falling from a cloudless sky, hazy from the cold. He felt a little like a cartoon character, perpetually caught under a stormcloud while the world around him went unaffected.

Memories of the fall came back with a clouded detachment, as though it had been something he’d witnessed rather than experienced. Nothing hurt, and he couldn’t quite grasp any reason he had to worry any further than that.

She came to him from a self-contained blizzard, snow gathering together into a curtain of frozen lace.

She wasn’t Tanya. She never had been.

The similarities were still there, but the differences were more pronounced this time; the slightly narrower face, the shorter build. In the dreams, her eyes had seemed blue. Now, they sparkled with crystalline violets, silvers, and jades. She circled around him with a shy curiosity, watching him the way he watched the snow. Somewhere in the back of his mind he’d assumed this was just another dream, but something uneasy was beating down on his thoughts like a scalding sunbeam.

She was still beautiful. The strange blue-infused light shivered and danced across her skin, as though it didn’t quite dare touch her. Harry knew how it felt. Yet one hand reached out to her, unbidden. Distantly he wondered what had happened to his gloves, but the thought drifted away when she smiled.

She came to his hand like a well-trained animal, though Harry had no illusions that she was docile. It was in those eyes, the same kind of desolate wildness he saw in the frozen landscape.

He wanted to touch her, with an urgency that burnt like frostbite and her skin was the only salve. It shone as though lit from within, shimmering like moonlight on snow. Her eyes never left his as he ran his hands from her shoulders, down over the curve of her breasts. Her nipples jutted out against his fingertips at the briefest touch, the soft flesh of her breasts quivering beneath his hands as she sucked in a breath.

Touching her was as hypnotic as snowblindness, as intoxicating as whiskey. His hands skirted down her sides, fingertips raking just hard enough to leave short-lived blushes of pressure against flawless skin. er nopH

He heard himself whimper softly as she lay him back in the snow. Eyes closed, he felt her tugging at his clothes, though he couldn’t quite pinpoint when or how she eventually stripped him. Neither, when he sat up and opened his eyes, could he see where they’d gone.

Then she was kissing him, and any other thoughts on which he needed to concentrate melted away.

Everything was settling into the same pattern as the dream, as she placed small hands on his shoulders, pushing him back down as she straddled his hips. But for once, Harry felt as though he had more control, that if he wanted to alter the pattern he could affect it now.

She made a soft sound of surprise as he rolled them over, pinning her down in the snow. Her hair spilling out against the white surface like spilt ink, she gazed up at him, legs wrapping around him, ankles tucked behind his knees. He groaned as his hips settled more snugly against the cradle of her thighs, his cock nestled along the warm valley between her legs. Something wicked crossed those exotic eyes, as she squeezed her legs a little, rocking against him, rubbing his arousal between the folds of her body.

Skin slick with moisture, the cold around them accentuated, and his body demanded more, demanded to be buried in heat, surrounded by tight warmth. The head of his erection nudged at the entrance to her body, testing resistance, and he couldn’t help watching as his cock sank into her, one deliciously slow inch at a time.

For a moment, there was stillness, nothing but her body rippling to accommodate him, and the soft crunch of the snow beneath them.

She flipped them back over again, rewarding his lack of argument with the tantalising view of her body rising and falling above his. Harry’s breath caught in a guttural moan, watching his cock disappearing into her with each thrust, rosy wet skin glistening. She cried out as his fingers ran along the seam where her body was stretched taut around him.

Vaguely, he began to notice that each thrust was pressing him deeper into the snow. It felt as though the crisp surface was parting beneath him, tickling up along his sides, like being slowly immersed in a bathtub. Harry struggled a little, trying to push himself back up, trying to tell her something felt wrong. Above him, she seemed oblivious, still riding him hard and fast, fingers curling against his chest as though she was clutching at sheets. Cold electric shivers coiled around his spine, body responding instinctively despite his unease. As he came, ribbons of liquid heat shooting hard inside her, he was struck with the disorientating image of the creamy moisture freezing to sharp jagged little spears.

He wasn’t quite panicking, too much of his attention still occupied with the pleasure she had wrung from him, but like a souring dream, he began willing himself to wake up. The snow began spilling over the crooks of his elbows, piling up against his waist. Struggling just made him sink faster, and there was nothing to hold onto besides her.

As they sank slowly, the snow swallowing him up as surely as her body did, the rising tide of white gave the illusion that it wasn’t engulfing her, she was becoming a part of it.

And in that moment, there was only one body he wanted enveloping his. Before the snow closed up around him completely, he watched her eyes narrow and freeze at the one word on his lips.

“Tanya…”

It was the weight pressing down on him that eventually woke him. Groggily Harry fought against it, trying to move it away.

He didn’t know what he’d expected to see when he opened his eyes, but it hadn’t been a bleary view of the research station. The wind and snow battered against the securely closed door, and he was wrapped snugly in his nest of thick blankets. The clothes he’d worn to go outside were hanging neatly against the door of the small bathroom, looking as untouched as they had been for several days.

Sitting up, he ran a slightly shaky hand through sleep-mussed hair, letting the blanket slide down his bare chest to pool at his waist.

Another dream. Just another dream. Harry rubbed his hands vigorously over his face, as though he could shake some sense into his foggy thoughts. He really needed to consider how suitable he was for this position anymore, when it was clear his mind was running away with him. Maybe next time he sent a report he should request a co-worker. A blonde, he decided. A tanned blonde.

Shaking his head, Harry flopped back onto the cot, content to turn over and go back to sleep. And he would have, if the dim lights hadn’t danced across something on the desk.

In a melting puddle of snow, lay the compass he’d lost.

Harry stared, feeling as though the ice had seeped into his blood. To hell with a co-worker. Next time he sent a report he was going to demand a transfer.