Author: The Naughty Gaffer brndtag at mcn.net.
Please use “Story Comments” in subject line if you send e-mail.
Title: The Fireplace  
Keywords: M/F, rom
Summary: A cold day and a warm fireplace. Sex is in the air 
Snow blew in heavy gusts across the yard as Greg chopped the firewood.  His axe rang in the cold air with each blow; with each blow, a block of wood fell in two neat pieces.  Greg was skilled as a wood-splitter.  Valeria almost laughed.  A little blizzard wouldn't stop Greg from finishing his wood chopping, would it?
Valeria watched the blowing snow from the big picture window.  Most of her week's vacation was over.  Her job as a book editor kept her in San Francisco and Greg would hold onto the ranch against all comers.  It was the only serious area of contention between them and she wondered how it could be resolved.  In her heart, she already knew.  When she sold her first book, she would leave the city for the ranch and write there.  Greg had already proposed -- frequently.  He had even built a study in the barn's hayloft for her to use, but she had refused to answer yet.  "I need time," she had told him.  "Time to think, time to try.  When I know I can make it, I'll know what's right for us, too." He wasn't happy about it, but he was ready to accept it for now.  Valeria had written a couple of good stories in the study already.  Its view of the sweeping canyon was enough to get anyone's spirit flowing.
Greg came stomping in with an armload of wood.  The ranch house had two wood stoves that kept it as comfortable as any place Valeria had ever stayed, but they did go through a lot of fuel.  Greg shook off snow and stacked the wood by the open fireplace in the main room.  It was a combination room, the only large room in the house.  The kitchen was in one corner with a dining area and the rest of the room was like a ski lodge.  Couches gathered around the fireplace in front of a huge faux fur bear rug.  The kitchen stove was as modern as any in a restaurant.  In fact, Valeria had met Greg at a cook-book publicity event.  They were both ardent cooks.
"Do you want me to go get a load of wood, darling?" Valeria asked.
"We've got enough for the real stoves.  I see you've lit the fireplace."
"So it's just a show.  I like it.  There's no romance in a stove."
Greg smiled and went over to the coffee pot.  "I don't know about that," he said.  "We've found plenty of romance around the stove."  They had, in fact, burned several meals because they'd gotten distracted while "helping" each other cook.  Somehow they often wound up with their arms around each other's waists then.
"That's romance on a stove.  It's different."
"How is it different?  I think you should show me," Greg said.
"We just had lunch.  Come on, let's get your boots off for a spell.  Sit in front of the fireplace show with me."
Greg sat on the couch and started to untie the heavy boots.  Valeria sat on the floor and took over.  "You can relax a few minutes, can't you?" she said.  "I'll do a little pampering."
Greg looked down at her.  Her shoulder-length hair glowed auburn in the firelight.  Her sweater was soft and loose, hand-knitted from an alpaca fleece that Greg had gotten from a neighbor.  Valeria had spent a week on the project, carding the fleece and spinning the yarn, then knitting the sweater in its natural color.  The fire caught its red streaks as it did the auburn in Valeria's hair.  She was wearing an old pair of jeans, kind of loose on her, and a pair of socks.  Nothing was clinging to her figure, but her smile and her attention were sexier than the best of his Victoria's Secret collection.
She got the boots off and Greg stretched his feet toward the fire.  It really did feel good through the wool and the denim of his own jeans.  Valeria was rubbing his feet and it was getting to be more arousing than relaxing.
Valeria herself was feeling warmer by the minute.  She was proud of the alpaca sweater; she'd worked hard on it.  But between the alpaca and the fire on her back, she was growing too warm.  She looked up at Greg's face, a face with more of character than charm about it.  But she loved it and the man who wore it.  His moustache was a good touch, too, she thought.  And it tickled wonderfully at certain moments.
She saw, too, from her vantage point that Greg wasn't exactly relaxed.  His jeans had taken on a significant bulge under the zipper.  The sight of it stood her nipples up under the alpaca and a flimsy bra.  A familiar and welcome tension came into her belly and between her thighs under her own zipper.  She had wanted to nail Greg on the bearskin rug in front of the fireplace since the first time she'd seen this room.  Was this her chance?  It looked like it.
Valeria pulled Greg's arms.  "Join me on the rug," she said.  
"There's a come-hither-and-do-thus look in your eye, darling," Greg answered as he knelt with her.
"Then you know where to come and what to do, don't you?" she replied.
"I think so.  Let me know if I'm doing something wrong."  Greg knelt in front of her and pulled his sweater off.  He pulled Valeria's head to rest against his big pectorals for a few moments and she began to lick his chest.  They kissed and she pulled him against the alpaca sweater.  Her breasts were straining for him, even through the lace and the sweater.
Greg opened the snap on her jeans and slid down the zipper.  "Did you know this is why women's clothes are different from men's?" he asked as he pushed the denim off her hips.
"Huh?" she said brilliantly.  She wasn't worried about the direction of her zipper!
"It's true.  You try opening my zipper."
"I'm trying to open your zipper, but you had your hands in the way.  On my zipper!"  She wrestled his zipper open and pulled his jeans down to reach his briefs.
"See what I mean?" he said.  Greg slid her zipper up and down again quickly.  "Your zipper is made so someone else can open it easily.  That must mean I'm supposed to undress you."
"Okay, yes, you are supposed to undress me!  Now will you get on with it, please?"
"Gladly," Greg answered with a leer and a twinkle in his eye.  He drew Valeria to her feet and tugged on the denim.  It fell around her ankles with a plop and she stepped out.  Greg tossed the jeans on the couch and put his hands on her bottom.  Valeria's back was to the fireplace and the flames warmed her bare thighs, her panties, the small of her back where the skin was exposed.  Valeria put her hands to the edge of the sweater to lift it over her head, but Greg touched her hands lightly.
"No, leave it on," he whispered.  "I want to feel it under me." He eagerly pulled her panties down and kissed her pubic hair, then lightly tongued her pussy.
Valeria giggled as she knelt back down.  But it was so weird!  She was kneeling on a fur rug, naked from the waist down.  It felt wild, sluttish.
"Hey, you're still way overdressed," she said.  This time she got him to his feet and made short work of getting his pants off.  She had a pleasant moment of tangling his eager cock in the waistband of his briefs before she got them out of the way.  Then Greg scooped her up in his arms and scorched her lips with his own.  A moment later she felt herself on the rug.  It still seemed so unreal, her bare bottom and legs below the sweater and her bra.
Greg was kneeling by her thighs.  His leg was a firebrand against hers.  His hands were playing between her thighs, stroking the delicate flesh and the downy red thatch of hair.  The fire cast flickering shadows around the room and along his body as she looked at him in longing.  His own face showed how he wanted her and how he would take her in a few moments.  First, though, he dropped his head again and kissed her thighs.  He continued kissing along between her legs and to her cleft.  His tongue traced paths of tingling flame; his breath followed and fanned the flames even hotter.  She opened her thighs to invite him to continue and to go further.  He did, pushing his tongue hungrily into her wet lips. He knew exactly where her clit was, even if it was the only anatomy he was sure of. He enjoyed her ardor as he brought her to a climax.
 Greg stretched his body along Valeria's and she put her arms around him. They kissed again, hungrily, demandingly. Valeria could sense her own aroma on Greg’s lips.  She pulled on Greg's waist, urging him to join her and to fill her.  He knelt between her legs and lay forward onto her.  She took his penis in her hand as he lay against her chest.  The feel of his body pressing through her clothes was a new sensation, a delight against the painfully hard nipples.  
Valeria guided him to her vagina and she moaned as he pushed his cock eagerly in.  Their restraint was gone, flung aside as their bodies joined and melded.  Valeria could scarcely tell where she began and Greg ended, so thoroughly did they come together.  Greg groaned with pleasure as he moved inside her flesh.  Valeria gave a high, short cry of her own as she felt his eager penis become part of her, felt him moving inside.  He was hers and she was his; this was their physical statement of their spiritual union.
Physical and demanding.  Greg was clenching his teeth and holding his breath as he kept control of his pace.  It was all the control he had left and there wasn't much of it.  Valeria was completely absorbed and abandoned in their union of joy.  Her breasts, her belly, her vagina were all fused in one ray of pleasure and joy and excitement.  The bubble of her pleasure grew and grew even as Greg's excitement built higher and higher.  She called his name and he answered with hers, and then they were both caught up in the great moment of ecstasy.
Ecstasy is a fleeting thing.  Greg and Valeria seized it fiercely, held it as long as they could, and then they felt it slipping away.  Ecstasy is too powerful for humans to hold; we can only touch it and glimpse it before we must release it.  Or perhaps it releases us, for we cannot live under its spell all the time.  The spell wore off and they found themselves, sweaty and smiling, lying on the bearskin rug in front of the fire that blazed cheerfully.  They lay in each other's arms for a long time after that, and Valeria knew that she would soon come here to stay, to make her home, and to write in the studio above the barn.