Falling

by Simona Ahrnstedt

  “That’s horrendous. Who did it?”

  “It was a long time ago. Before I was born. Some local group. My mother has refused to go there ever since.”

  But she had no problem sending her daughter there, he thought. Did Isobel even realize how that sounded? Probably not.

  “Mom had his body brought home. He’s buried in Paris. I’m happy about that.”

  He lay on one side, his head in his hand. She did the same, and he reached out, couldn’t stop himself from tracing the curve of her breast with a finger. She had fewer freckles there—the skin was paler. She trembled.

  “Are you cold?” he asked, moving her closer to him.

  “You asked me before whether it was too rough for me,” she said quietly.

  “Yeah, I’m sorry, I don’t know what came over me.” She had just come back from a terrible trip, one that must’ve wrenched up memories of what had happened to her grandfather, and he had been so rough with her, almost like an animal, when what she probably needed more than anything was tenderness and closeness.

  “No, I didn’t mean it like that. The opposite.”

  Her eyes seemed enormous in her pale face, big and gray, with the thickest eyelashes he’d ever seen. She didn’t look like someone who had just spent two weeks in Africa; she looked like an elven queen, someone who spent her nights dancing in the moonlight, ruling her kingdom.

  She seemed to urge herself on. “I think, no, I know that I need more than normal sex to really get off. It doesn’t have anything to do with anyone, it’s just me. So when you were so . . . I don’t know what to say . . . when you were rough with me, I get so turned on by that.”

  “I’m not sure I really follow what you’re saying,” he said, unsure whether he had understood her. What was “ordinary sex,” exactly?

  She took a deep breath and her eyes flared before she glanced down. She didn’t look at him as she spoke, as though it was hard enough to talk without having to meet his eyes.

  “It’s hard to explain.... Something happens when I . . . When you . . .”

  With a frustrated motion, she pushed back her hair and sat up, legs crossed. She reached for a blanket and wrapped it around her shoulders. Alexander held back a disappointed protest. She shouldn’t sit up with a blanket around her, she should be naked in his arms; everything else was a waste of time. But he was interested in what she was struggling so hard to say. She interlocked her fingers, sighed loudly.

  “I can barely explain. But when someone else takes over, when you hold me like that, when it’s like I . . .”

  She ran her hands through her hair until it was like a tangled halo.

  “I don’t think I can talk about it. Can we just forget I said anything?”

  Forget that she didn’t get turned on by ordinary sex? No way.

  “When I hold you . . .” he prompted.

  She sighed. “I liked the feeling when you held my wrists, okay? So damn much. I get turned on just thinking about it now. I’m ashamed, but that’s how it is. It wasn’t too rough for me.”

  “I was worried about hurting you.”

  “And I came when I realized I might get bruises from your fingers. So, now I’ve said it. I know. It’s totally messed up. I’m a mess.”

  “So you’re saying that you like more than what we did?”

  She was silent. Played with the blanket. Pulled at a loose thread. “Yes. More.”

  He had played sex games with women before, of course. Some pink handcuffs here, a bit of dirty talk there. But it didn’t sound like Isobel meant something a little adventurous.

  “It’s the only time I can really switch off,” she continued. “It’s like my head goes quiet for once. And I’m just living in the here and now, completely present. Not caught up in whatever happened before. Or what will happen. Just here. I don’t know what it’s like for other people when they have sex—you don’t really talk about that kind of thing, especially if you’re a woman. I just know that’s how it is for me. But I don’t talk about it. I only did it once before.”

  “When was that?” he asked. Of all the thoughts rushing around in his head, that was the only question he could manage. Honestly, he was a bit dazed right now.

  “Ten years ago. Eleven, maybe. I was twenty.”

  “What happened?”

  “I was still so immature, especially when it came to men. I hadn’t had any boyfriends or rebellious teenage years. Sexually, I was embarrassingly ignorant. Maybe because I never recognized myself in the way other girls talked about boys and sex and what they liked. And then I started my medical studies and met him, with a capital H. He was older. And I didn’t know what were just fantasies and what were real desires. I was inexperienced and unsure and so very much in love. The kind of love you feel when it’s the first time. It felt like I wanted to do everything with him. And so I told him. That I had dark fantasies. He was so into it, he wanted to try it out straight away. He said that all men dream about dominating women, that it’s natural, that he’d give me what I wanted. But I couldn’t really manage to keep up, I think. It wasn’t like I’d imagined at all. I panicked, cried. He thought I was playing along, so he just kept going, hurting me, until I was completely hysterical. Afterward he yelled at me, berated me, and said I’d overreacted. That it was my own fault. That I was stupid.”

  She shrugged as though it was nothing, but Alexander heard her voice break.

  “I was so scared after that, I decided to ignore those fantasies. I mean, what kind of woman likes stuff like that? During my medical studies, those deviations were talked about as some kind of sick depravity. A psychiatrist told us it was a defect, a reaction to something the patient experienced as a child, a trauma.”

  “Did anything like that happen to you?”

  She shook her head. “I’m pretty sure I was born this way.”

  “Who was he?” asked Alexander. What she had described was practically abuse. But he realized the answer the very moment he asked the question.

  “You met him. Sebastien,” she confirmed. “We broke up afterward, and I was completely crushed.”

  What a fucking asshole.

  “I decided that it was the wrong way for me to go. That I’d rather have normal vanilla sex than go through that again. I’ve never talked about it, not since Sebastien.”

  And you’ve had an unsatisfactory sex life ever since. Worked your ass off to save the world.

  “It actually feels pretty good to talk about it,” she said.

  “Thank you for sharing this with me,” he said quietly.

  When she looked at him he saw vulnerability in every muscle and movement. He sat up, studied her beautiful face closely, noticing a tiny freckle right beneath one eye. He kissed her softly, gently, as though she were the first woman he’d ever kissed, as though she were the last woman he planned to kiss, as though he wanted to take all the time in the world. It started as a tender kiss, but her response was passionate, and it quickly became something else, something wilder and more primitive.

  Isobel squirmed beneath him, twisted her body so that it grazed against his in a thousand places simultaneously, setting off a dark pulse beneath his skin. He pulled off her thin panties, threw them to the floor, admired the red curls against the pale flesh before he started to caress her, to kiss her, noticing that the rougher he was, the more she whimpered. Something dark and ferocious awoke in him, something new and barely controllable. When he pressed her down into the bed, her eyes shone with a fierce light. This wasn’t the lighthearted, playful kink he had engaged in on some occasions. This was something completely different. This was dark and dangerous. And then he saw it happen. Saw the control, the one thing that defined Isobel more than anything else, starting to slip away. Something else appeared in its place, a more compliant Isobel with softer eyes and a body eager to please. God, was it very bad that it turned him on? But it was so fucking sexy, the way she suddenly subordinated herself to him. All the strength within her was replaced by submissive plianc
y.

  “Turn over, onto your stomach,” he commanded, his voice rough with tension.

  Without a word, she obeyed, presenting her lush ass and luscious curves, shivering but yielding. He tore open a condom packet and rolled it on, and then he took hold of her hands, pressed her wrists down against the curve of her back and kept them there, firmly. He pushed her legs apart with his knees, spreading her before him.

  “Yes,” she panted into the bed.

  He almost groaned. It was incredibly erotic, as if something was taking him over, making him more animal than man. She was still tight and warm after her orgasm, but he pushed into her, so hard that it would have been almost ruthless if he hadn’t been able to hear her breathing heavily into the bedclothes. He pulled on her wrists and continued, dangerously close to losing control; pumped away even harder, forced her body to take the length of him, pushed until she was full. He was wild, insatiable.

  He shoved a hand beneath her and spread her even wider so he could inch in even farther.

  “Oh, God,” she groaned.

  “Touch yourself,” he told her as he let go of one hand. She couldn’t quite reach, so he pulled her up, roughly, and then pushed her onto her knees.

  “Pet yourself, Isobel,” he ordered hoarsely.

  She moved her fingers between her legs and started to touch herself. Alexander laid a hand on her neck, the hand not holding her wrist in an iron grip, and held her like that, tightly. He felt her thighs tremble, felt her body shake and start to tighten around him. She was whimpering, her hips were moving, her plump ass was quivering as he thrust himself hard into her, and then she came powerfully.

  “Isobel” was all he could manage as her body shook beneath him, trembled around him. He laid both hands on her hips, took hold of her, and thrust into her in a way that was bordering on brutal. And then he exploded. He came and came and came until Isobel collapsed beneath him, and he fell down on top of her.

  Jesus fucking Christ.

  With the last of his strength, Alexander rolled off of her, lay down next to her.

  They were side by side, panting, covered with sweat and with sex. He put an arm over his face, needed to shut the world out for a moment while he pulled himself together.

  “Hey, is everything okay?”

  He jumped, turned to her voice, and opened his eyes. Isobel had that relaxed expression that only an intense orgasm could produce. Her face was easy, no sign of any tension. She gave him a lingering smile.

  “All good. You?” His voice sounded strange to his own ears, as if it belonged to someone else.

  “Very good. You looked so serious.”

  “Nah. Stay there, I’ll get something to drink,” he said, hoping he’d managed to disguise the strange feeling that had rushed over him.

  Alexander got up, found his way to the kitchen, and opened the refrigerator. It was empty, of course. He poured a glass of water but then paused. He went back to her, held out the glass.

  “I’m going to run down to the store,” he said.

  She drank her water and looked at him without saying anything.

  He avoided her gaze, pulled on his clothes, and went down to the 7-Eleven on the ground floor of her building. He bought coffee, butter, and cheese. Picked up a chocolate bar and some juice, grabbed some bread and a box of cookies. He waited while the cashier packed his things and handed him the bag, fought the urge to just go back to his own place, forced himself to return to her apartment.

  When he’d unpacked the groceries in her kitchen and returned to the bedroom, Isobel looked utterly exhausted. She had spent ten days in the field, been evacuated, had kinky sex, and shared her deepest secrets. The odds of her being completely drained were pretty good.

  She had crawled under the covers and was on her side, her hand beneath her chin and her hair like a halo around her.

  “Are you sure nothing is wrong?” she asked quietly, her gray eyes serious.

  “Absolutely,” he lied, and crawled in next to her, still fully dressed.

  “Aren’t you going to get undressed?”

  “Soon,” he said absently.

  “Alex?” she asked.

  “I’m fine. I bought bread. Coffee. Want something?”

  She shook her head. “Not now, I’m so tired.” She yawned.

  “Go to sleep, I’ll go unpack everything,” he said, though it was already done.

  She closed her eyes, laid her cheek on his chest.

  He waited until he could hear her regular breathing. Waited a little longer, until he was sure she was sleeping deeply, before he carefully got up, out of bed. He paused and looked at her, but she didn’t move, just slept on.

  He showered, dressed, picked up his sunglasses, his cell, and paused in the hallway. Undecided. It was a shitty thing to do, to leave her.

  But he had never felt like this and it was scaring the hell out of him. The rush when they made love, no, fucked. It was like being high on something. His body had been completely intoxicated, his brain had shifted to another, unknown gear. It was like he’d temporarily been in a parallel world with Isobel, a world where the things he normally believed in no longer mattered. But then the high had passed almost as quickly, and left behind . . . something else. Whatever he was feeling now was, for want of other words, a crash.

  What he had done to her . . .

  It went against everything he believed in.

  It wasn’t him. It was someone else. A man he didn’t like, a man he couldn’t be.

  Because if she had asked him to stop, he didn’t think he could have. What he had done was wrong.

  And Alexander knew two things now.

  Tonight, he and Isobel had barely scraped the surface of what she wanted from a man. What she needed. She wanted more, needed more.

  And he would never be able to give it to her.

  Chapter 39

  I shouldn’t have said anything.

  The words found their way into Isobel’s sleep, into her dreams, awakening her.

  She was alone. The bed was empty next to her, and when she padded out into the kitchen, she found a note:

  Thanks for yesterday.

  Loads to think about.

  I’ll be in touch, okay?

  A

  Isobel closed her eyes and tiredly rubbed her face. She really shouldn’t have said anything. She had seen it in Alexander, suspected it last night. That she’d shocked him. It wasn’t so strange—she was a little shocked herself. She had blurted out the one thing she’d promised herself never to tell anyone again. She should have known it would be too much for him. Jesus, it was too much for her. Of course it scared him. How could she be so dumb?

  Though Isobel knew the answer. She had been knocked off balance by all the stress. The danger, the increased tensions, and the panicked evacuation out of Chad had lowered her defenses. And the feeling of having escaped death had set powerful compensatory behaviors into motion. She saw it often enough. People who had been on the verge of death were thankful to be alive, they wanted to live. They wanted physical intimacy, and that invariably led to sex. How could she have given in to such basic urges?

  Her sexual preferences didn’t define her as a person; she had made that decision a long time ago and she had stuck to it. A few days’ recovery and she would’ve been herself again. She had made do with normal, boring sex for most of her adult life, so why had she been so stupid? And with Alex, of all people? Because he’d given her some of the best orgasms of her life? But an orgasm lasted a few seconds. It wasn’t worth this.

  The shame.

  I really shouldn’t have said anything.

  There was a new packet of coffee on the kitchen table, next to a bag of freshly baked rolls, a pack of Maryland cookies, and a chocolate bar. When she opened the refrigerator she saw butter, cheese, and expensive orange juice.

  She leaned her head against the refrigerator door. She didn’t know what to think. Or feel. Everything was a mess.

  She drank her coffee, then cut th
ick slices of cheese, which she rolled up and ate before she moved on to the biscuits. She kept an eye on her cell phone.

  But Saturday passed without word from Alexander. And when Sunday evening came and went and he still hadn’t been in touch, Isobel shuffled down to the store, bought ice cream and chocolate sauce, and ate it on the couch in front of the TV.

  I’ll be in touch. Right, sure.

  There was something seriously wrong with her. Wrong, wrong, wrong. And now she’d scared off Alexander for good. Great work, Doctor Sørensen.

  * * *

  On Monday morning, Leila called and woke her up.

  “You’re free, I’m coming to get you and we’re going for lunch.”

  Isobel groaned. Her first impulse was to say no. She didn’t have the energy to take a shower, to talk.

  “I’ll pick you up at eleven-thirty,” Leila said, and hung up.

  And since the idea of calling Leila to explain that she didn’t want to see her felt even harder, Isobel was down on Vasagatan at eleven thirty on the dot. A black sports car, roof down, with the famous jaguar on the hood, swept in and braked abruptly in the middle of the bus stop outside Isobel’s door.

  “What do you think?” Leila grinned.

  Isobel opened the car door. “Don’t tell me this is where all Medpax’s money has gone?”

  Leila snorted. “I borrowed it from Eugene. My Medpax wage barely covers proper shoes.”

  Isobel hopped in and Leila tore off just as the bus driver behind them blasted the horn. Leila did a sweeping illegal U-turn and the Jaguar flew off away from the center of town.

  “You’ve lost weight,” Leila said, with a quick glance at Isobel before she changed gear and swung in ahead of a truck which flashed its headlights at them.

  Isobel gripped the door handle. “It’s an optical illusion. I’ve eaten cookies and ice cream for almost three days.”

  “Real Persian food is what you need. Persian women have perfect bodies and that’s because of the food we eat.”

  “It’s not one of those restaurants where you sit on the floor, is it?”