Aleksander looked wonderful. When doesn’t he? The beaver hat was angled precisely right on his head and his dark mud-green coat fit him to perfection and deepened the color of those beautiful eyes.
This seemed a space of time, carved out only for her and him. Maybe it was all a pretense: he wanted her the way all men wanted a pretty woman. But what does it matter?
She’d had enough taken from her to realize that happiness came as flashes in time that one had to savor. It did not last. If she let it go, those flashes would fade away and no photographs, no memories, would be left for recollection.
Inside, Ava felt a fierce desire and an almost tremulous defiance: she wanted those memories and if they remained just memories, she would have something to think about on her lonely nights when she was back in her empty apartment.
She had already crossed the line—she should make that little defiance worth the price she would have to pay.
They walked side by side, each one tangled in their thoughts, neither knowing how to break the silence. Only the night creatures and Toddy running to and fro to grab the ball Aleksander kept throwing provided the sounds.
When they arrived at the clearing, she turned to him and said, “I’ve been a total jerk, ignoring you.”
She makes it too easy. He nodded with a smile.
She laughed. “So you agree?”
“I agree, but I understand why. I was a total jerk first.”
“You have a lot going on. A lot of emotions to work through.”
“Yeah.” He stepped toward her, his hand lifted and his fingers caressed her cheeks. Her eyes fluttered as if she wanted to close them. “But it’s no reason for being inconsiderate to you. And I wanted to say that I’m so sorry, about what you went through.”
The amused light in her eyes faltered, waned, and she turned, beginning the walk back to the house.
“You could have told me. From the beginning,” he said, catching up with her. “You could have told me that everything I was going through, you’ve been through, too.”
“It’s hard for me to think about, much less speak about it,” she said softly. “As I imagine it is for you, too. I concentrate on the present, the day by day. Not the past, not the future.”
“You don’t think about the future?” He was appalled by her words, by the sadness he hated showing in her eyes.
“Not until it’s very near. Things can change so much, there is no use worrying until that time comes.”
Shaking his head, he bent and picked up the ball Toddy brought back and threw it again. “But what if it’s something positive? Don’t you like to have something to look forward to?”
She shrugged. “No. Because plans fall through, don’t they? I don’t like to speculate about things.” To have expectations, to hope.
“Ah. But you do, Dr. Larsen,” he contradicted her but didn’t elaborate as he opened the door to the house for her. He took off his coat and hung it in the closet along with hers.
She followed him to the laundry room and watched as he washed and towel-dried Toddy’s paws and filled his water bowl.
Not wanting the evening to end, he asked, “Do you want a hot chocolate?”
Yes. It wasn’t just the open desire in his eyes that excited her. It was the intimacy of what they had done. They had talked about almost every hurt she kept secret in her heart and he understood, made her feel whole. She put her hands in her pockets. “Maybe later, thanks. I’d better check on Olivia, then I’ll be back for more reading.”
Back they went into the living room and Aleksander paused at the stairs, sighed, and walked to the Christmas tree to turn off its lights before joining her again.
As they started climbing, he surprised her by saying, “The Christmas after Rachel died, Olivia asked me to write a letter to Santa Claus for her. She wanted him to bring her mother back.”
Kristus. “What did you do?”
“My first impulse was to get drunk and stay that way until spring.” He stopped when they reached the landing and looked at her. “I didn’t, of course. With some help from Lydia, I explained to Olivia that even Santa couldn’t pull off anything that big. It was tough, but we all got through it.”
“Do you miss her?” Ava dared to ask, her voice barely more than a breath as she walked up the corridor. “Rachel, I mean?”
“Yes,” Aleksander replied, gaze locked on hers, before opening Olivia’s bedroom door.
The girl was sleeping peacefully and didn’t wake when Toddy jumped on the bed and snuggled on her legs.
Going through the motions of the medical procedure, without looking up at him, Ava finally asked, “Are you still in love with Rachel?”
Aleksander considered her words solemnly and for a long time.
“Not in the way you mean,” he finally said, his eyes caressing Ava’s face as he watched her reactions. “But I’ll always care about her. It’s just that I feel a different kind of love for her now. Sort of mellow and quiet and nostalgic.”
“Know what?” she asked softly, as she rearranged Olivia’s arm back under the coverlet. “Avoiding enjoying the holiday spirit isn’t going to change what happened.”
That was a connection they shared. Neither one of them spoke plainly of it, but it hung around them as they exited Olivia’s bedroom. Loss was something that couldn’t be escaped. It followed around like a magnet to steel.
“What?” she asked as he closed the door but didn’t move.
“Nothing,” he shook his head.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
Aleksander half smiled. “Because you’re beautiful. I enjoy looking at beautiful people, and I decided not to deny myself the simpler pleasures of existence—any pleasures.”
“I have a confession to make,” she whispered, leaning against the wall.
He smirked at her and whispered back, “Should I phone for a priest?”
“Don’t mock me.”
“All right, I apologize.” He forced a solemn look. “You can voice your shameless confession now.”
She let out a little laugh—part in humor, part in nervousness. “I was kind of waiting for you, that night. I was…willing.” As you told me I would be.
He raised an eyebrow as heat coursed through him. “You were?”
She nodded. “I admit it. Isn’t that enough?”
“What do you mean?”
“You aren’t going to say,”—she made quotes in the air—“I told you so?”
“Is that what you want?”
She smiled at him. An expression both shy and brazen, a smile as old as woman herself. “No.”
“You should always be like this,” he said huskily, stepping toward her until they were separated by mere inches.
Her pulse quickening as it always did when she had one hundred percent of his attention, his scent and his aura wrapping around her and pulling her in. She raised her head to gaze in his grayish-green eyes. Knowing that once he touched her, she’d be lost, she whispered, “Forward?”
He cupped her face in his palm. “Sure of yourself.”
And then his mouth met her parted lips and he was kissing her, hard. Her lips were welcoming and her body fit his, cradling his erection. He felt her hands in his hair, the rub of the fabric, harsh friction against his manhood as she arched toward him for more.
He tasted of wine and need and passion—all these things she had tasted before. But now she tasted something new, something triggered by their talk, or, perhaps, by her brazen admission.
An aching fury that moved his kiss beyond mere passion to something dark and dangerous and all-consuming.
He wanted to raise her against the wall and take her then and there. Since the middle of the corridor was not the appropriate place, almost savagely, he twirled her around and pulled her to his room.
He didn’t waste time and took off his turtleneck shirt, throwing it carelessly to the floor.
Before he took her in his arms again, she put a palm on his chest and b
reathed, “What does it mean?”
He didn’t answer.
Instead, there was a tug at her waist followed by a loosening, and then her cache-coeur blouse opened. She felt the kiss of air against her skin, heard the hiss of breath through his teeth as he gazed down at the ribbon of lace lingerie and exposed flesh, and felt the searing heat of his eyes like the brand of a torch.
“It means I want you,” he said, reaching out the fingers of one hand to scoop back the blouse away on one side, tracing a path down from her shoulder to her breast and circling the sensitive peak of her nipple over the lacy bra. “You have no idea how damn much I want you, Ava.”
She wanted him to look at her like that forever.
But then something flashed across his eyes, and she sensed the torment he was feeling, and panic shimmied up her spine for a moment. I’m a vessel, a vehicle for release from the demons plaguing him.
But even if there was only this, she would take it—take him—and gorge herself on it. She would also use him to release her own demons. She decided she wanted to live fully, damn the consequences. No more slow-downs or tip-toeing around.
“I think I do.” She didn’t need to take her eyes from his to smooth her hand over the rock-hard angles of his chest up to his large shoulders.
She boldly bent her head and took his nipple in her mouth.
A wave of heat washed over him, his head fell back, a grunt leaving his mouth.
She rose her head, and in a whisper, she repeated, “I think I do.”
He growled, before sliding a hand around her neck and pulling her to him. His lips captured hers, punishing and demanding, in a kiss in which it was impossible not to feel the turmoil that held him hostage.
And meanwhile his hungry hands grappled with her pants, shoving them down her hips, forcefully tearing her panties off, and pulling her naked body against him.
She went willingly, melting into him because she had no real choice, her senses overloaded with the taste and scent of him, the mouth sucking and nipping at her mouth, the brush of his chest hair against her nipples, denim against her legs, the feel of his hot skin melting her bones.
So many sensations, building one upon the other, a frenzy of feeling that threatened to consume her whole. And then the sound of his zipper coming undone, him lifting her, urging her legs around his waist, only to lower her slowly down until she felt his rock-hard length nudge at her core, and it was her turn to consume him.
He made a sound as he filled her, harsh like the cry of a wounded animal, as if it had been torn from his soul, and she clung to him, afraid for him.
Afraid for herself.
And then he was pumping into her, so fast and furious that sensation exploded inside her like a fireball.
She was falling then, his arms still locked around her, and he lifted himself, easing out of her until he sat poised there, at the very brink.
Though her eyes blurred with passion she looked up at him, looked into his wild eyes and saw the agony that marked his beautiful face and read the words inscribed on his soul—it was already too late—when with a roar he thrust into her, burying himself to the hilt again and again in a final turbulent release that sent her shuddering into a glorious abyss once more.
Chapter 29
Aleksander sighed deeply and cursed, “Goddamned it.”
Still dizzy after her quick and totally unexpected orgasm, Ava bit her lip. Should I say something?
But what could she say that might ease the sudden discomfort overtaking her, and radiating into the air around them?
Aleksander’s shoulders shifted under her hands, as he slipped out of her, and adjusted her in order to carry her with one arm under her knees, while cradling her with the other by supporting her back. He moved away from the wall, effortlessly making his way to his bed.
He lay her down on the bed, pushing the covers back on his side, scooting her in and climbing in next to her, while covering them both, and his hands moved back to her body bringing her to him.
All in silence.
She had been overheated, but now she was shivering.
“I’m sorry.”
She pulled her head back and made eye contact, when she registered Aleksander was speaking to her, feeling slightly disappointed to hear he was apologizing to her and her mind was reeling, jumbled, and trying to catch up with his apology. “Why?”
“I meant to make it to the bed.” He smiled sheepishly at her and shrugged. “But I…”
“Didn’t.”
“I didn’t. It’s just that with you here, like this. I couldn’t think straight.”
She smiled at that. “Does that happen very often?”
“What?”
“Up against the wall…”
“No.” He chuckled, ran his fingers in her hair, wound a strand around his fingers, feeling the silkiness of it. “Maybe it should though.”
She rolled back and stretched her arms over her head. “We haven’t used the bed yet.”
“Christ!” He bolted, sitting upright on the bed, looking at her. “We didn’t use anything.”
“We didn’t the first time, too,” she said languorously just to smile at his eyes widening. “Relax, I’m on the pill.”
He flopped onto his back, blowing out a stream of air, relieved, and pulled her over him.
“I’m surprised you aren’t more careful,” she said as settled herself more comfortably.
“Usually, I am. Actually, always I am.” He smiled ruefully at her. “But never with you, it seems.”
“So this…isn’t usual?”
“You know that it isn’t.”
His words had the ring of certainty. Then what is this?
He saw the question in her eyes but he did not have an answer for her. So, he just pulled her head down and kissed her, softly, slowly. For now, that was all he had and all he could give her.
When he broke the kiss, he also saw that she accepted what he had to give.
The result was inevitable and he was long beyond fighting it. He wanted her, needed her—and the ache was too new, too fresh, too excruciatingly sensitive to let it go unassuaged. “Sleep with me tonight.”
She smiled mischievously at him. “Only sleep? Only tonight?”
“Do you have any other idea?”
“Right now, right here? I can’t think of a thing.” She winked and smiled at him. “Or maybe…we could go down to a cup of hot chocolate? You don’t look strong enough to lift me right now.”
“Probably not now.” His hands ran down her back. “But later, if you wish…”
“Perhaps.”
“Tell me about your plans. Your clinic.”
“It’s on the slate.”
“I could back you.”
She inched back, just a little, to have a better look of his face. “I like backing myself.”
His brows raised. “No investors allowed?”
“It’s not that. I just don’t need an investor, Aleksander. I have enough money on my own and my grandfather— my step grandfather as it is—has set a trust for me and my brother when our mother died and we are his sole heirs.”
“And your grandfather is?”
“Eirik Huitfeldt, from Trondhjems Værksted.”
She didn’t need to explain to a businessman who the Huitfeldts were or that his was one of the biggest shipbuilding company in the world.
But the recognition which sparkled in his eyes had more than that. “My father worked for Trondhjems Værksted. That’s how my mother ended in Trondheim.”
“I know.” She told him about Eirik remembering his father and that after his parents’ visit she had already confirmed it. “Eirik liked you father.”
“But not my mother,” he complemented with a dry smile.
Her lips trembled, then they smiled.
And then he returned to the previous subject more interested in her. “How do envision your clinic?”
“I’d like a good space, comfortable, serene. Good light. A sprawling big
house, not a building, with a garden for the patients to stroll, but nothing too big. But for now I’m happy doing what I’m doing.”
“Which is everything.”
“Everything I like. Aren’t we lucky?”
He gathered her closer, taking her mouth in a soft kiss, letting her silken warmth fill his senses. “I’m feeling pretty lucky at the moment.”
She curled up warm and loose against him in silence, her bones lax and her sense of well-being incredible, falling into a deep sleep again.
Slipping dreamily toward sleep, she realized she liked everything about being with him. And when she thought of tomorrow, she thought of him and Olivia happy.
She understood as she drifted with the wind sighing outside, if she let herself slip just a little more, she would love to see herself in that picture.
Friday, November 18, 2015
10:15 a.m
.
* * *
When Ava came into the living room, father, daughter, and dog were on the sofa together, quietly watching Mulan on the big-screen television.
She had slipped away from his bed that morning before the house stirred up awake and somehow she managed to keep from smiling like an idiot every single moment.
“How about that tea party we talked about, Olivia?” she said.
Olivia pumped her fist, scuttling from the couch. “Yes!”
Matthias and Kira followed her carrying a tray filled with Olivia’s teapot, cups, saucers, and a plate of Christmas cookies and arranged everything on the coffee table in front of them.
Olivia snatched up a cookie that had red sprinkles on top. “These are pretty, Ava. Are these Christmas cookies?”
“Serinakaker, Norwegian butter cookies, yes.” Ava picked up the pot and poured tea into three cups.
“Mmmm.” Olivia smacked her lips. “They’re soft and sweet.”
Aleksander took a cookie from the plate and sat down on the rug with his legs crossed. “Wow.”
Ava chuckled. “I’m glad you like them.” She thanked Matthias and Kira and looked at Aleksander after he’d left. “He’s such a gem, Alek. And a real help at rolling out dough.”