The first week of our winter vacation had gone perfectly. The mid-winter break from the city felt like just what we'd needed. Winter at home is typically a grey, wet slog of sleet and slush, but as we drove up the long driveway leading to the remote mountain cabin, a picturesque coating of snow glistened under the bright midday sun in a scene of postcard perfection.
"It looks like something you'd buy in a souvenir shop! Like standing inside a snow globe!" John marveled upon arrival, dawdling next to the passenger door as I lugged our suitcases up the front walk.
I don't know if it was the fresh mountain air or the freedom of vacation, but my libido had been insatiable since our arrival. Every night as John turned off the light, I attacked him, forcing my mouth and pussy onto his cock and moaning in mile-high ecstasy in our mountain retreat. I simply wouldn't take 'no' for an answer those first few nights. For his part, John not only answered my demands that first week, but elevated his own stamina as we shook the bed in our rental. Maybe it was the elevation.
At the end of the first week, my parents flew in and drove to our rented house, remarking on its scenic beauty but noting (with a parental tenor) how isolated it was in the event of an emergency. Their presence did little to suppress my sex drive, but despite my insistence that the guest bedroom at the far end of the house was out of earshot, John's shyness won out and my lust was left unmet.
My parents stayed with us for a long weekend, and while it was a lovely visit, John and I breathed a mutual sigh of relief on Monday morning when they left to catch a flight home. However, in the newly empty house, his willingness to respond to me now hit the familiar barrier of his work stress. The next day John was leaving for a six-day trip to Florida consisting of meetings through Friday, then conveniently transitioned into a long weekend rendezvous with his own parents.
While he was away, I would remain at our vacation house. He was slated to fly back next week, and we'd have another five days together here. It had been a hectic autumn and the prospect of a week alone in the wilderness - or, rather, in a beautiful house packed with modern amenities with no other homes in sight - sounded like an ideal chance to unplug from work and the news to catch my breath. I hoped when John returned, we'd be able to recapture the passion with which we'd started our trip. Tuesday, as I watched him pull down the driveway in our rental car, a couple fat snowflakes drifted lazily in the morning breeze.
I hated admitting when my mom was right, but the next morning I would have been forced to confess that the cabin felt pretty goddamn isolated with a half foot of fresh snow on the ground - and mounting! I knew I was safe in the house, a pantry stocked with food and the heat pump chugging along at a steady sixty-nine degrees. Still, I instinctively pulled the hood of my sweatshirt over my head as I stared out at the remote vacation property-turned desolate tundra. The idea of having someone here with me as the mountain roads choked with snow - John, or my sometimes-problematic friend Mallori, even my mom - was suddenly appealing.
A vacation in the mountains had been John's idea. I had lobbied for a SoCal beach house - or better yet, Mexico! But he had pointed out that would limit my parents' visit, and this was more convenient for his intervening work trip. So, I'd relented and gone along with his plan. Now the front yard and drive were a featureless sheet of white powder and John was on a beach in Florida.
I debated if I should try to get to the nearest town, but I didn't know the terrain, nor how to ski or snowshoe. The house had a Polaris snow mobile in the garage, but I didn't dare take that out; I had no idea how to drive that thing or what condition it was in, stored under its sheet. Anyway, this wasn't The Shining, it was just a lot of snow. I perused the home's streaming services, then decided to settle in with a book and a cup of tea. Cozy Sarah was going to ride out the storm in peace and quiet.
The house lost power sometime in the early hours of Thursday morning. My chattering teeth woke me up, informing me the heat was off. I tended to sleep hot, so I was wearing only a pair of rainbow-striped panties and a laundry-thinned tee shirt from a long-ago rafting trip. The wind howled outside, clattering the windowpanes with ice crystals. I shivered and tugged the quilt up to my neck, curling into a warm ball to try to get back to sleep.
By late afternoon of the first day without power, the temperature in the house had plunged. I roamed the rooms, piled under layers of hoodies and waffle knit base layers. I even wore two pairs of socks inside my furry slippers. A growing concern though was that the house's pipes might freeze; I didn't have a temperature reading but my stiffening knuckles evinced the sinking cold. The house had a wood burning stove in the living room, but only a few scraps of wood in the copper bin beside it.
I reflected with irritation that I had raised the issue of collecting firewood in the comparably balmy days after our arrival. John had waved off the idea, insisting that with the house's top of the line HVAC system we would never need it. Even the idea of lighting a romantic fire - and my suggestion of some rustic, fireside lovemaking - hadn't seemed worth the effort to him. Hauling and chopping wood, bringing the fuel inside, lighting a fire: none of those had appealed to John as novelties, but now as I stared at the ongoing blizzard, they were looming as a dangerously procrastinated necessity.
That night I slept in two sweatshirts, curled into a ball with a herd of blankets piled on the bed.
Friday morning, the storm showed no sign of relenting. My phone had drained into a brick of dead black glass hours ago, and even while it was alive my signal had been useless. I burned the scant fuel beside the stove around lunchtime (I estimated, though with the thick clouds and whirling snow time of day was difficult to tell), heating a kettle of water for tea and oatmeal. The embers of the last log in the stove dulled from orange to gray as night fell. It was going to be another cold, dark night.
I fell asleep on the couch just after dusk, burrowed in a nest of blankets and sweatshirts. I awoke with a shivering jolt as an intensified burst of wind rattled the frame of the cabin. The fire in the stove was dead; the temperature in the house was plummeting critically. Regardless of the storm, I needed a fire, or I risked damaging the home's plumbing, not to mention my increasingly hypothermic body.
I pulled the thickest pair of gray sweatpants I could find over my green cotton panties. I stacked layers of long underwear beneath a hoodie and then added my ski jacket. I covered my head in a beanie, slipped my feet into John's snow boots, and grabbed a flashlight in one gloved hand and a handsaw in the other. Equipped as best I could manage; I walked out the rear door into the storm.
The backyard was edged by a ring of tall pines whose trunks rose limbless above my reach. Landscapers had cleared the yard of fallen branches before our arrival. Rugged forest stretched beyond the property line. I hoped that I could harvest some downed limbs there. Casting a cautious glance over my shoulder at the darkened house, I followed the weak circle of my flashlight beam into the woods.
