Oddly enough I’m not hungry at all and I go to the window, spending a few minutes looking out of it, trying to see if I can see trees through the whirling snow and darkening light or if my eyes are playing tricks on me.
I glance down at his desk. A pad of paper is laid out, along with a pen and a small sachet of…
I pick it up and smell it.
My heart melts.
Lavender. It’s lavender.
He really was scenting his letters.
I let myself swoon for a moment because wow.
Viktor is the real deal.
I sigh happily and then do one of those twirling, smiling, swooning moves across the room like a total Disney princess and then toss myself on the bed.
The moment the soft covers meet my cheek, I know it’s a bad move.
Sleep comes for me like a monster and then…
I’m out.
* * *
***
* * *
“Maggie?” I hear a voice float into my dreams.
I open my eyes to darkness.
A slice of bare light cutting across my vision like a sword.
Then it fades.
I fade.
Another light glows behind my eyelids.
I pry them open to see Viktor standing beside the bed having turned on the side lamp, his pants unbuckled, undoing his tie. It runs through his fingers with a slick cutting noise that stands out to me in this cavernous room.
“I didn’t mean to wake you,” he says softly. “I’m so sorry I wasn’t home earlier.”
I mumble something like, “no cow on the ice,” but it all comes out in a garbled hush. I clear my throat and try to push myself up onto my elbows, my eyes all squinty, my hair mussed up. I’m still in my clothes.
“What time is it?” I whisper, my voice rough. I need water.
“It’s just after ten,” he says. “At night. Let me get you some water? Do you need anything to eat?”
I’m still not hungry. I just want to keep sleeping.
“Water is good,” I manage to say.
He gives me a warm smile and then walks off into the bathroom. I hear the sink running and I place my head back on the bed.
“Here,” he says, and suddenly he’s sitting beside me and holding out a glass.
I try to sit up, not as much as before, and take it from him, downing it in three large gulps and coughing wildly at the end.
“Easy, Maggie,” he says to me, taking the glass away. “I’ll get you another. I’d offer you some red wine or brandy, but I don’t think you need anything.”
“No,” I say, grabbing hold of him. It takes me a moment to realize that now his clothes are all off and he’s just in his pajama pants and nothing else. My fingers curl around the fabric. “Please stay. I don’t feel…good.”
He lets out a low laugh. “Jet lag is a bitch, as they say. It always takes me a few days to adjust when I’m coming back home. It can be really brutal. Did you take any melatonin?”
I shake my head. He did mention it, but I didn’t think it necessary. I thought jet lag was something I felt when I went from California to New York. This is a whole other beast altogether. This makes me feel like I am on a really weird drug bender and not the good kind, the kind that you know will take days to wear off.
He strokes my head and I’m falling into the mattress again. “Just sleep Maggie. Tomorrow is another day. A better day. I’ll be here in the morning.”
“Then where are you going?” I ask him and suddenly I’m gripping him tighter.
“To a gala,” he says.
I look up at him and squint. It’s still my Viktor, looking as handsome as ever. Jet lag doesn’t change that. “Okay.”
“I’d invite you of course but…”
“But I’m a secret.”
“It’s better this way, please believe me.”
I sigh, nestling my face deeper into the covers. “I believe you. The whole Meghan and Harry thing.”
“You don’t understand. I want time alone with you. I don’t want to share you. Everything is still so new to us and our time together, just us, is crucial.”
I smile, my eyes closed. “I know.”
And I do. I can feel every single word that falls from his lips, the way they radiate from his heart.
I feel him lie beside me in bed and when I open my eyes, his face is facing mine, cheek against the bedspread. “Look, Maggie, I invited you here because I want you here and I need you here and I’m going to do what I can to make it worth our while. Whatever silly thing I have planned or engagement that’s not worth it, I will skip for you. Whatever event I’d rather not do, I won’t. I’ll stay home. I’ll tell people I’m running a fever, I don’t know. But I will do all I can to make sure that the next two weeks and the weeks after that with your family, are all focused on you. I will be here by your side, as much as I can. As Viktor, not a prince. As your friend, your lover, your man. You understand?”
“I do. That was a lot of words flying into my head, but I understand,” I mumble against the bed, my eyes lazily focused on his. I smile and reach for the waistband of his pajama pants, my hands skimming the taut planes of his stomach, the soft trail of hair. “Do you understand this?”
He grins at me, that same fucking grin that always catches me off guard and makes me swoon all over again. “I understand very well. But you’re in need of sleep, my dear.”
He then moves over on the bed and pulls back the covers, and then puts his hands under my arms and practically lifts me so that I’m properly positioned.
Then he starts to undress me. My boots, my jeans, my sweater, my shirt. My bra. I’m topless in my underwear and in the back of my head I’m wondering if I smell and then I remember I had a shower earlier. My hair must be such a wild mess right now, I never even had a chance to brush it.
“Sleep tight,” he says to me, pulling the sheets over me. “I’ll see you in the morning.” He pauses. “If you wake up in the middle of the night, feel free to watch TV or whatever. I can sleep through anything.”
I don’t even get a chance to reflect on that before I’m drifting off again.
Chapter Twenty-One
Viktor
It’s been a couple of days since Maggie arrived in Stockholm.
I would love to say the days have been bright and easy.
But that’s not quite the case.
The moment that I showed up in Tehachapi I knew there were two hurdles for me to jump. One was to convince Maggie to come back with me to Stockholm. This, I assumed, was the biggest hurdle of all.
But it didn’t take as much convincing as I thought. Probably because Maggie is somehow in love with a sorry sap like me, just as much as I am in love with her. When I finally convinced her, it felt like an anvil was lifted off my chest and that the hardest part of our relationship–the will to continue it–was over.
Then she got here. And already on her first day landing in Stockholm, she was alone. I had engagements and dinners I couldn’t get out of without a huge guilt trip and though I’m not always susceptible to guilt trips, I also knew I had to pick my battles. There would be many battles on the horizon.
Even so, I didn’t get back home until she was here and delirious with jet lag.
Which of course, because she went to bed earlier, meant she got up at two in the morning and couldn’t get back to sleep. When I finally woke up at seven a.m., I found her wandering the halls of the estate. In the dim light after the snowstorm, she looked like a ghost, but she was more than content, just soaking in the history of the place and happy to be here.
It made me realize that she’s a lot more interested and excited about my new role, and all that comes with it, than I am.
But as the days went on, I became busier and busier. I tried to shake most things but unfortunately, so many of them were part of my job. Even just showing up counts. You make a speech, you cut a ribbon, you pose for pictures. If you aren’t there, the world will notice, and the world wil
l talk, and they won’t be saying nice things.
Though Maggie was still coping with jet lag in a big way, she’s also very independent. On the days I had engagements, I had Nick take care of her, driving her anywhere she wanted. He became her companion in some ways. Not quite a bodyguard but more like a tour guide. I know in the future that Maggie’s freedom here might be more constricted but for now, she could do what she wanted, go where she wanted. Even in -11C weather, even in the snow. She went out and braved it all.
I am feeling bad though.
I’m not connecting with her as much as I would like.
I want her to feel that I’m here with her, not just some tired thing that stumbles in late at night. Someone that’s too overworked and overwhelmed to even take full advantage of this beautiful woman in my bed.
I swear it’s creating a bit more distance between us than before. We connect on so many levels, but we communicate best with our bodies. I need to be inside her, need to feel that contact, that love, that desire.
That understanding.
I need her more than I can bear.
I’m in the car, halfway to a lunch I’m supposed to attend with a Croatian diplomat, when my thoughts turn to the creaminess of her skin, the peach softness of her lips, the way she melts underneath my touch.
I can’t stand it anymore.
She’s here to be with me.
And one day she will be gone.
If I don’t take advantage of that, I’ll hate myself forever.
I tell the driver to turn around and take me back, all while sending a text to Freddie and telling him I don’t feel well. Freddie knows, of course, all about Maggie, even though he hasn’t met her yet.
He also knows I’m full of shit.
I don’t care.
The need to be with her is overpowering.
Within twenty minutes I’m dropped off back at the estate and storming through the halls looking for her.
“Where is Maggie?” I ask Bodi, who is dusting a painting.
“I believe she’s in the study, sir,” he says.
The study is on the main floor and actually just a living room, just on a cozier scale. There’s a desk and a couch, some arm chairs and a fireplace. A large bar cart. It’s a place to unwind with guests, so I can’t imagine why she’d be in there alone.
I walk inside and see her curled up on the couch with a book in her hand. She’s wearing fuzzy black leggings she’s calls her long underwear, as well as a soft gray sweater that falls off one shoulder, exposing her creamy skin. Her feet are encased in fluffy slippers.
“Oh hey,” she says, putting the book down. “Did you forget something?”
“Yes, you,” I tell her. I stride over to the couch and glance down at the book. It’s an old worn classic in English. “Watership Down?”
She smiles sheepishly which makes her cheeks extra rosy. “I remembered you telling me about having rabbits as a child and naming them after the book. When I saw this at a used bookstore the other day in English, I couldn’t help myself.”
“If you got it in Swedish maybe you could learn the language.”
“Maybe. Or maybe you would make a better teacher…”
She doesn’t have to finish the sentence.
I could teach her…if I were here.
She tilts her head and looks at me. “So, why are you here? Was it cancelled?”
I nod. “Yes. I cancelled it.”
“Why?”
“Because I’d rather be with my lover than with a stuffy diplomat. That’s why.”
She stares at me for a moment and then takes the book, putting it gently on the coffee table beside the couch.
“Lover?” she questions. “Is that what I am today?”
But I don’t even have to answer her because she’s already taking off her slippers, then her leggings. Briefly her eyes flit over to the study doors I’d already closed.
“No one will come in here,” I tell her, my voice already growing rough with impatience. I have no doubt Bodi knows what’s happening behind those doors.
She reaches down and pulls her top off her head. I hadn’t even noticed that she wasn’t wearing a bra until now.
“Helvete,” I mutter, taking my dick out of my pants and giving it a long hard stroke as I stare down at her. She stares up at me with those dark, wide, almost nervous eyes, her lips parted, her silky dark hair across her face. Her nipples are hard pink peaks against her full breasts. Her stomach leads smoothly to her hips and thighs that just beg for my teeth to dig into them and make marks along her creamy flesh.
The sweet pink flash of her persika.
“I’ll do more than that,” she says, getting up on all fours and facing me. “I always remember what you said about my peachy lips that you like so much.”
A grin spreads across my face. “Which ones?”
I move closer to the couch while she reaches up for my cock, slowly wrapping her long fingers around it. The pressure reverberates along every inch of me, and I let out a harsh groan, the desire slamming into me.
“Lick me, sakta,” I tell her, my words coming out thick.
She flashes me a wicked smile. “Sakta? Is that Swedish for suck it?”
“It’s Swedish for slowly,” I tell her. “As in, go slowly. Please.”
“It’s been too long, I guess,” she muses in a teasing voice, sticking out her tongue and licking around the dark, swollen tip. My head goes back and my eyes close, giving into the feeling, even though I desperately want to maintain eye contact with her.
Her tongue slides down to the bottom of my shaft and everything inside me tenses. I’ve never felt like this, this white-hot blistering lust that penetrates every last nerve. This is what I get for waiting, sleeping beside her for days on end and being too tired to do anything.
The tension inside me builds and builds into something more than primal, and when I finally open my eyes, practically panting, her sly eyes glance up at me with excitement. With her dark hair spilling around her milky shoulders, she looks like a fucking goddess that men would have died trying to paint.
But she’s nothing but real, nothing but here and now as she takes me into her mouth. Her lips are wet and plush, like a ripe juicy peach.
Persika.
I make a fist in her hair, tugging on it just enough for her eyes to widen, and she sucks me harder in response. It would be so fucking easy to just come hard down the back of her throat and watch her swallow, watch her accept me.
But I’m not about to come now. I want to be inside her again, to feel every hot squeeze of her around me. I need that connection again. I need to remind her of why she’s here in Sweden, why she came to be with me.
She came here because I can’t be without her and I want to show her just how much I need her.
“Hold on,” I pant, pulling back. My cock pops out of her wet, wet mouth.
Helvete.
“Turn around,” I tell her, my voice shaking with need.
She does as I ask, and I grab her hips, tugging her back into me, teasing the crack of her bum with my glistening cock. Then I lean over and take a quick nip of her ass cheek.
“Ow,” she says, shooting me a deliciously dirty glance over her shoulder.
“Jag är ledsen,” I mutter. Which means I’m sorry. And I’m not really sorry at all. She knows how rough I can be.
Even so, I lick over the bite marks, making her relax, soothing any surprise. I want to know how wet and eager she is, so I part her cheeks and stroke my fingertips over her pussy, and I’m nearly salivating over how slippery she is.
I push my finger in and bite my lip at how she holds me. So tight. Her breath hitches and she lets out a breathless moan that shakes me to my core.
You’re mine, I think. And only mine.
You’re here with me.
That’s all that matters.
Suddenly the urge, the pure need to be inside her is overpowering and I’m nearly trembling at the hunger pulsing through me. It’s
this animalistic drive that sneaks up, like I’m being reduced to nothing but basic instinct around her. She’s not just Maggie, my Maggie, she’s this woman I need to claim, to take rough and hard and fast until I can’t remember my name, until I can’t remember who I am and what I do.
Until I can’t remember the person I’m supposed to be.
But I need to remember the person she thinks I am.
The person she fell in love with.
I need her to fuse to me, bend to me, I need to take her so hard that she knows exactly why she’s here.
I need her to know that this place, with me, inside her, is her home.
Without realizing it, I’ve pushed another finger inside her, rubbing eagerly against the right spot, feeling her swell around me.
“Viktor,” she gasps, her head down, her hair over her face as she breathes heavily, her body pressing back into me, wanting more. “God, you’re so good. So, so good. Never stop, never stop.”
Her words are so desperate and urgent.
They’re everything I needed to hear.
I have to get inside her now.
I quickly withdraw my fingers, rubbing them along my lips briefly, savoring her sweet and salty taste, and then I hold my shaft, rigid and heavy in my hand and angle it into her. I try to go slow, rubbing my head around her soft opening, getting my tip wet before pushing in just a few inches.
But just a few inches are enough to make my jaw clench, trying so hard to keep myself in control.
It’s been too long.
And she’s so hot and slippery and tight as a fucking fist that I want to slam myself inside of her, bury myself deep. It takes all of me to try and keep breathing, my fingers digging into her sides that I’ve bruised many times before.
“You’re perfect,” I tell her, my voice guttural as I push in deeper, watching as my cock disappears into her, her resistance deliciously tight. “So fucking perfect, Maggie.”
I pull out in a slow slide and she shudders beneath me before I push back into her, staying cautious. “I want all of you forever. I want every day to be like this. I don’t want the distance anymore, not when we’re both here.”