Ice and Fire Read Free

for fear. The door swung back slowly, silently, and he went in.
    Beth stood there in the doorway, framed by the soft light of the living room behind her and to her left. She smiled.
    ‘I knew you were coming. I dreamed of you last night.’
    He laughed and went to her, then held her tightly against him, kissing her tenderly. ‘Your dreams…’ He gazed into her eyes, loving the beauty, the measureless depth of them. ‘They never fail you, do they?’
    She smiled and kissed his nose. ‘Never.’
    He shivered and reached up to stroke her cheek then trace the contours of her lips with a fingertip. His whole body was alive with desire for her. ‘Where’s Ben and Meg?’
    Her body was pressed hard against his own, her hands at his neck. Her eyes were dark with longing. ‘They’re outside. Down by the creek. But they’ll not be back. Not just yet.’
    She kissed him again, a harder, longer kiss this time.
    He let his left hand rest gently on her waist a moment, then rucked up her skirt. Beneath it she was wearing nothing. He sought her mouth again, the kiss more urgent. His fingers traced the warm smoothness of her thighs and belly, then found the hot wetness at the core of her. She moaned and closed her eyes, her whole body trembling at his touch, then she reached down and freed him, grasping his swollen penis, her fingers softly tracing its length, once, then again, almost making him come, before drawing him up into her.
    He groaned, then, grasping her by the buttocks, lifted her, backing her against the wall, thrusting up into her once, twice, a third time before he came explosively, feeling her shudder violently against him.
    For a while, then, they were silent, watching each other. Then Beth smiled again. ‘Welcome home, my love.’
    The pine surface of the kitchen table was freshly scrubbed, the knives newly sharpened. Ben looked about him, then, leaving the bundled rabbit on the wide stone step outside, busied himself. He spread an oilcloth on the table then laid the big cutting board on top of it. He laid the knives out beside the board and then, because it was growing dark, brought the lamp from beside the old ceramic butler sink, trimming the wick before he lit it.
    Meg stood in the garden doorway, her small figure silhouetted against the redness of the bay. She watched him roll back his sleeves, then fill a bowl with water and set it beside the knives.
    ‘Why are you doing that?’ she asked. ‘You know it’s diseased. Why not just burn it?’
    Ben barely glanced at her. He turned and went down the four steps that led into the long, dark, low-ceilinged dining room, returning a moment later with a book from the shelves. An old thing, leather-bound and cumbersome.
    ‘I’ve a hunch,’ he said, putting the heavy volume down on the other side of the board to the knives and the water.
    Meg stood beside him. It was a book of animal anatomy. One of their great-great-great-grandfather Amos’s books. Ben flicked through the pages until he came to the diagram he was looking for. ‘There,’ he said, the heavy, glossy pages staying in place as he turned away to bring the rabbit.
    She looked. Saw at once how like a machine it was. A thing of pumps and levers, valves and switches, controlled by chemicals and electric pulses. It was all there on the page, dissected for her. The whole of the mystery – there at a glance.
    Ben came back. He placed the dead rabbit carefully on the block then turned and looked at her. ‘You needn’t stay, Meg. Not if you don’t want to.’
    But she stayed, fascinated by what he was doing, knowing that this had meaning for him. Something had caught his attention. Something she had missed but he had seen. Now she waited as he probed and cut and then compared what had been exposed against the diagram spread across the double page.
    At last, satisfied, he went to the sink and washed his hands, then came back and threw a muslin cloth over the board and its bloodied