Falling

by Simona Ahrnstedt

  He saw uncertainty flash across her face, as though she couldn’t comprehend his doing something for her without an ulterior motive.

  “Come on, Isobel, you know you want to. I have magic hands.”

  She hesitated, but then turned around on the couch so that she was facing away from him. Alexander pushed down the blanket, placed his hands on her shoulders, and worked his fingers in beneath her hair.

  “God, that’s so good,” she mumbled as he worked away.

  Alexander leaned forward, bit her shoulder. She trembled. So, she liked that. He continued massaging her neck, worked his way down her shoulders and back. Her skin was soon glowing, and she was making a faint humming sound. He allowed one of his hands to creep round, cup her breast, massage her nipple. She didn’t say anything, but he heard her breathing change. She raised one arm and put it around his neck, pulled him close to her. He got up, onto his knees, hard against her back. He bent down, still cupping her breast with one hand and working his way down her stomach with the other, cupping her red curls.

  She was wet, and she breathed heavily in his ear. She definitely liked this.

  “I want to make it nice for you,” he murmured.

  “It is nice.”

  “Lie down, on your back.”

  His couch was one of the deepest models, and Alexander moved down alongside her, didn’t want to ruin the moment by suggesting they go to the bedroom.

  “Show me how you want it. Show me with your hands,” he said, taking her hand and placing it over his own. “Touch yourself.”

  At first, she lay still.

  “Do it, Isobel, please.”

  She slowly moved her hand along her thigh. He followed her movement and carefully parted her legs. She turned her head, looking wide-eyed at him.

  “Keep going, don’t stop. I want to watch.”

  Isobel’s hand wandered up, over her stomach, and then back down, slowly. She closed her eyes, raised her legs slightly, and grazed the inside of her thigh.

  “Go on,” he mumbled hoarsely, quickly pulling off his clothes and lying back down beside her again. He placed one hand on the inside of her thigh. She was as smooth as silk. He pulled her apart a little farther.

  “Yes,” she breathed. Her hips moved. “Come.”

  He got up and lay down on top of her, resting on his hands. She still had her eyes closed, as though she were in a world of her own, and he studied her face—the long eyelashes, the tightly closed eyelids, the high cheekbones—before he pushed her legs farther apart using his knees. He heard her pant, and made a mental note.

  “Keep going,” he said. She was breathing more heavily now. He entered her, and she let out a moan and her eyes flew open. He loved her eyes, he thought, as he started to move inside her. But this wasn’t about what he wanted, this was about forcing Isobel Sørensen to let go a little. He pulled out.

  “What’re you doing?”

  A good question. Why did he care so much whether she came? If it felt good for him, why was it important that he was better than all her previous lovers? The simple answer was, of course, vanity. The more complicated answer . . . was something else.

  “You know what I want,” he said. “I want you to touch yourself, and I want to watch. You like it, I can see that.”

  “You’re pretty stubborn, you know that?”

  He lifted her hand to his mouth. He took a finger, put it into his mouth, and sucked it. She liked that. He took the next finger too, sucked on it, knew that it zapped every single erogenous zone in her body. He pulled the finger from his mouth, cupped her hand in his, and held it to his chest.

  “I’m planning to fuck you now,” he said in a low voice as he rolled on a new condom. “And you’re going to keep touching yourself while I do it. And if I do something you really like, you’re going to tell me. Okay?”

  He waited until her right hand crept in between her thighs again. She closed her eyes and part of him felt regret. But then he followed his intuition, took her middle finger, and started to suck it again. She shuddered. He pushed back into her, studying her carefully. Whenever he was gentle a frustrated look appeared on her face, but whenever he was rough she began to move her hips. So, she liked it a little rough, his Isobel. He moved more firmly, angling himself so that she had better access with her hands. She was sweating now, her head rolling back and forth, gasping sounds coming from her lips. He took her with much more force than last time. She was breathing heavily, and then she raised her hips and came with an unexpectedly explosive orgasm, and it was so fucking sexy that it tipped him over the edge too. He came with a force that shook him, that rocked through him, that made him grab her and hold on.

  “Isobel,” he panted into her neck.

  She simply breathed, her heart thundering beneath him.

  He collapsed next to her, his body shaking. He turned so he could see her. She was sweaty, her hair plastered to her forehead. Gently he pushed it away, kissed her, lay face-to-face, kissed her mouth. He looked more closely.

  “Are you crying?”

  “No. Maybe. A little. I’m just a bit shocked. No, not shocked. Surprised.”

  “Can I ask you something?”

  She shook her head. “Absolutely not.”

  “When did you last come?”

  “The other day.”

  He laughed. “With a man. Isobel, when did a man last give you an orgasm?”

  She closed her eyes, shut him out in the way she always did. He waited. She sighed.

  “It’s not so easy for me. I don’t know why it matters to you. If I’d known you talked so much, I never would’ve followed you home.”

  He snorted. “You practically threw yourself onto me.”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  “It’s for my own sake. The more orgasms you have with me, the more often you’re going to want to sleep with me. Basically, it’s a deeply selfish act. I’m selfish, we’ve already established that. You’re the idealist. I’m the cynic.”

  Isobel laid her chin on his chest, played with his gold ring with one of her long, sensitive fingers.

  She talked about control and safe sex and rationality as if they were the most important things in the world, but there was more to her, beneath the sensible surface. She’d been so wet when he was a little rougher, told her what to do. She got turned on when he talked dirty, and she might sneer at the luxury and glamor of his lifestyle, but she liked it.

  He supposed it ought to make him happy. He pulled her close and kissed her. It was best when they were making out or making love. Only when he started to think did things get unclear in his mind.

  “Should I get you something to drink?” he asked.

  She shook her head slowly. “You should stay right here,” she said. “I need your chest to rest my chin on.” She kissed his skin, then stuck out her tongue and licked the gold ring. “I think I will have to reassess my thoughts on piercing.”

  How many women had he seduced, only to end up in this same position? Women who liked the idea of Alexander De la Grip, who enjoyed the glamorous surface, but who didn’t know him deep down. He had seen exactly that satisfied, contented look so many times before, and he’d never had a thing against it, quite the opposite—it had actually been his goal.

  Women saw him as entertainment, as some kind of sexual conquest. He knew exactly what to do to get a woman to come. Not even Isobel and all of her “secrets” had been beyond him once he’d made up his mind. And now she was next to him, purring like a cat.

  She wasn’t even the first woman he’d ordered to touch herself to climax. Sex was a fundamentally lonely activity. He’d always told himself that he had no need for closeness and had never felt shut out when a woman closed her eyes and came on her own. So. He had given her exactly what she wanted and he had found release. She was humming with contentment and he was satisfied. He really was.

  Isobel had no other expectations of him than this.

  He hadn’t had any other expectations.

  Al
l was as it should be. All.

  Chapter 28

  Peter glanced at the clock, wondering where Gina was. When he’d given her a ride home after the wedding reception, everything had been as usual between them. He had tried to keep an eye on her during the party, constantly worrying that someone might try to accost her. He knew what men were like—especially drunk men from his own social class. He’d felt as if his heart were in his mouth the whole time. He hadn’t drunk alcohol, had barely spoken to anyone, had done nothing but watch out for her. And then that surreal episode with the man getting ill.

  She had been fantastic. But when he’d praised her in the car, she hadn’t wanted to take any credit, had just talked about how she admired Isobel Sørensen. Whom his little brother seemed to be dating.

  Peter peered out the doorway of his office. He had hoped everything would go on as normal, but Gina hadn’t been in yesterday, and she wasn’t in today either, and now he didn’t know what to make of it. Had something happened? He looked at the clock again; it was past six. He got up and went to the kitchen. Still no Gina. He opened the refrigerator to see whether her food was inside, if she’d arrived without his noticing, but no, nothing but half-empty cartons of Thai food and a variety of protein shakes.

  He headed over to the reception desk but didn’t dare ask any of the receptionists if they knew where she was. He really wanted to call or send her a message, just to check if she was okay, but they hadn’t swapped numbers, so he didn’t feel like he could, even if he did manage to get her number.

  Had she quit?

  Without saying anything?

  An hour later, the office was empty. Spring had arrived, the cherry blossoms in Kungsträdgården park downtown were in full bloom, and people used any excuse they could to sneak off out into the sun. When he went down for the third time, the night staff were already in place in the lobby. He waited, drumming his fingers, while the receptionist made small talk with a guard. Could he ask if any cleaners would be in today?

  He was just about to head back to his office when he saw the elevator doors open.

  It was her.

  She was rifling around in her purse, looking for something, and Peter stilled. Gina looked up at the exact same moment he regained his wits. He hurried over and opened the door for her before the receptionist had time to buzz her in, before she even had time to get out her pass.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  “Hi, Gina.” He tried in vain to come up with something intelligent to say, something easygoing, or at least something normal. She gave him a questioning look.

  “Is everything okay?”

  “Yes. It’s just, you weren’t in yesterday,” he said. “I was a little worried.”

  “I was off yesterday. I studied and had some classes. Everything’s fine.”

  “Good to hear.”

  He held the next door open for her and waited while she hung up her jacket.

  “And your brother? He’s well?”

  “Yes.”

  “And your father? How is he sleeping?”

  “Really well, actually.” She changed her shoes and hung her purse in the locker.

  “And you’re well, you said?”

  She closed the locker door and gave him a questioning look. “I’m good. Are you alright?”

  “I’m great. The wedding was nice. Did you know Alexander is dating Doctor Sørensen?”

  “I guessed as much.”

  “He’s fine, by the way. The man you helped. I called Åsa to ask. I thought you might want to know.”

  “Thanks. Isobel sent me a message.” She flashed him a grin. “Just between us, and I know it sounds awful, but it was so damn cool. Isobel did most of it, but still. I almost felt like a real doctor. Do you think I’m terrible for saying that?”

  “I think it’s a sign that you’ll be an awesome doctor someday. Is the vacuum heavy? Here, let me get it for you.”

  “Thanks.”

  She stood there in silence, shifting on her feet. “I need to start work.”

  “Of course. See you later.”

  Peter went back to his room.

  He would work until Gina was done. She normally cleaned for around two hours.

  In the meanwhile he hoped he could come up with a convincing excuse to give her another ride home.

  Chapter 29

  “Hi, my name is Tyra and I’ll be leading this training day, the first of two.”

  Isobel tried to concentrate on the speaker, who had begun with a load of practical information about the safety course. Tyra was a short-haired blond woman, an army officer, and what she said was both interesting and relevant. But Isobel, who was usually an excellent student, was having trouble focusing on the course outline.

  “We’ll be here for two days. This morning we’ll talk about safety and culture in the countries you’ll be visiting.”

  Isobel’s mind drifted away; she couldn’t help it. The sex with Alexander had been insane. He had been fantastic. Passionate, challenging, dirty—a woman’s wildest wet dream. The best lover she’d ever had. She drummed her pen on the notepad, considering the blunt fact that Alexander De la Grip was probably the best lover any woman had ever had. He enjoyed sex, he was focused on his partner, and he was impressively experienced.

  They had eventually fallen asleep. Woken up, showered, made love, made out again. She had walked around in one of his T-shirts, and he’d made cappuccino with his sophisticated-looking coffee machine, and yes—it had all been like something out of a feel-good chick lit movie. She hadn’t gone home until Sunday evening, after they’d kissed and made love and kissed some more.

  She had gotten caught up. Or maybe she’d just relaxed. Definitely left doors ajar that had long been closed. And yes, it had been magical. And worryingly intimate.

  Well, it didn’t look like intimacy or getting too close would be a problem. As far as Isobel could tell, she had been dumped.

  “You don’t need to write this down; we’ll give you a folder with all the information. Except the stuff that can’t leave this room for security reasons,” she heard Tyra say.

  Isobel looked up. The whiteboard was covered with writing and arrows.

  Tyra gave the class a stern look. “Tomorrow we’ll spend the whole day on hostage situations.”

  Isobel nodded and then immediately disappeared back into her thoughts. So, she’d been dumped. Alexander hadn’t been in touch at all Sunday evening, and finally she’d decided that women could send texts just as easily as men could. Well, that had been its own special kind of humiliation. Sending a quick text to Alexander, and then worrying that she’d been too brief and so sending another, accompanying message. And then waiting. She broke out sweating just at the thought of it. His reply hadn’t come until Monday evening, almost twenty-four hours later. Curt, as from a distant acquaintance. Impersonal, as though from a salesman.

  She had spent an entire night and day interpreting every word, punctuation mark, and new line in that message. But it made no difference how many times she read it; she came to the same conclusion every time. She was dumped. For him it had been a one-time thing, and now it was over. Welcome to the twenty-first century. Thanks very much, grow up, move on.

  Isobel drummed her pen against her notebook so hard that one of her coursemates, an award-winning journalist she had always admired, shushed her quietly over her shoulder.

  “Sorry,” Isobel whispered. She made a halfhearted attempt to listen to the speaker, but she lost the plot somewhere around the words “Things to consider in Muslim countries.”

  She wondered whether Alexander had already left Sweden. That was probably the most likely explanation; he had talked about going back to New York. And she really hadn’t expected it to continue. Just the opposite actually. Hadn’t she had sex with him precisely because she knew he would vanish? Yes, she firmly reminded herself. That had been the plan, and she’d been well aware of it. It just kept slipping her mind.

  After the introduction—she would ha
ve to borrow someone else’s notes—they took a quick break. Isobel did her best to focus afterward, but the subject was trauma medicine, and if there was one thing she knew about, it was saving the heart and lungs and stemming the flow of blood. She tried to look as though she was listening to the ambulance driver who was demonstrating how to apply a tourniquet to a shot-off leg. It did actually capture her interest. She had met plenty of people injured by mines, and she managed to brush aside all thoughts of teasing blue eyes, hard muscles, and crazy-good sex until lunch.

  She would do better during the afternoon, she decided as she followed the crowd toward the lunch room. After all, she would be headed to Chad soon and Alexander would be long forgotten. Anything else was madness. Life would go on like it always had. It had to.

  * * *

  Alexander looked up over the lunch menu. He hummed in agreement with what his lunch date had said, though he hadn’t heard a single word of it. He had reserved a table at one of his old hunting grounds, Riche. The service was fast, the food a combination of French bistro and Swedish fine cuisine, the atmosphere in the nineteenth-century surroundings cozy but not too secluded. He glanced around, searching for a waiter. If he was going to make it through this, he would need a drink.

  “I was a little surprised you answered my call. I heard you were in Stockholm, but it felt like you were avoiding me,” his date said, pouting her lips. She had a sexy mouth. Small and glossy and pink, like bubble gum. She had reapplied her lip gloss three times since they’d arrived.

  “That’s why I felt it was time to make it up to you, Qornelia,” he said smoothly. It was automatic, getting into this kind of talk. I should be happy now, he thought as he focused on Qornelia’s account of her latest sponsors. She was a former reality TV star, a so-called entertainment profile these days, and she had some kind of clothing label. Or maybe it was makeup or purses? He didn’t have the energy to remember.

  “That’s so nice,” she cooed. “And I know I can say this to you without your taking it the wrong way, but it’s good for me to be seen with you.”