“How’s your brother?” he asked. “Is he doing anything over the summer?”
“No.”
“Do you think the water’s cold?” he asked, quickly changing the subject. He knew there were people for whom summer didn’t mean vacations and relaxation, but he hadn’t ever spent time with someone who genuinely couldn’t afford to do anything over the summer. That wasn’t something he was proud of.
Small children paddled in the water a little way away from them, and a dog swam with a ball in its mouth, but it couldn’t be very warm.
“I don’t know,” she said as she wiped her mouth with a paper napkin. “I never swim.”
“Not even when you were at school?” he asked, astounded. “Over the summer?”
His own summers had been spent on sailing boats in the archipelago and in the Mediterranean. A couple of times, he’d been to the West Indies with friends, spent long weekends in archipelago cottages with his and Louise’s friends. But it was free, wasn’t it, to swim in Sweden? Jesus, suddenly he had no idea.
“I took lessons,” she said quietly. “I couldn’t swim when we got here. Dad was really keen for me and Amir to learn, because he’d read that children drown in Sweden. But I’ve never swum outdoors. In the ocean or lakes or anything like that.” She wrinkled her little nose and said skeptically, “It looks pretty cold. What are you doing?”
“I’m going to go wading,” he said firmly as he took off his shoes and socks and put them down beside the sun-warmed rock. He rolled up his trousers and padded the short distance to the water. He put one foot in. It was ice-cold. Couldn’t be more than about fifty degrees.
“You Swedes and your obsession with water,” Gina said.
“Don’t you want to try? It’s nice after a minute.”
“People always say that. It’s my opinion that people are wrong.”
“Come on. Or are you scared?” he teased, knowing that Gina would never let anyone believe there was anything she wouldn’t dare do.
After a moment’s hesitation, she took off her shoes and bared her delicate feet and painted toenails. She was always so properly dressed, in a monotone skirt and a blouse or, like today, a light dress and canvas shoes, that her pale purple nails seemed like the height of decadence. Peter didn’t want to stare, but she had really nice feet. Dainty and elegant, with slightly paler soles and the most slender ankles he’d ever seen.
He looked away. The rocky ledge they were on wasn’t steep, but he still held a hand out for her as she carefully slid down. Her dress rode up, and she pulled it sharply back down and then took his hand. He held her steady as she tested the water with one foot, felt a pulsing joy from the point where their hands met.
Her grip tightened. “It’s freezing,” she shrieked.
“Come on,” he said with a gesture toward a little pool a short distance away from them. “We’re going over there.”
They ended up with the clear water up to their ankles. Small fish darted around their feet, and he saw her pleased smile.
“I’m used to it now,” she said after a while. “Or maybe I just went numb.”
“I’ll take you swimming sometime,” he said, hoping it was true. Maybe he could invite her entire family. He could borrow a boat. Christ, he could buy a boat and take them into the archipelago.
“I think I’d rather skip that experience,” she muttered. “Can we get out now?”
* * *
Peter spread out his jacket on the threadbare grass, which was dotted with picnickers. She sat down close to him, on his jacket, and they let their feet dry in the sunshine. He wished he dared take her hand again, but there was no reason to, so he resisted.
She wiggled her toes. “It’s nicest after,” she said.
“Yeah,” he agreed.
They sat in silence and let the sun dry and warm them.
“What you said last time. About Carolina,” she said quietly as she played with a blade of grass.
Oh, God, here it comes.
“Yes?”
“Is that why you constantly punish yourself?”
“I . . .” he began, but then stopped, because he had no idea what he was going to say. Was it true? Did he punish himself? And if he did, wasn’t it a legitimate punishment? “I ruined her life,” he said.
Gina gave him a stern look. “But did you, really? Her entire life? Because I’ve met Carolina. And I’ve gotten to know you. Of the two of you, it’s not Carolina who acts like the living dead.”
“It doesn’t feel like I have the right to move on.”
“No. But just because it feels that way doesn’t mean it’s true.”
“How old did you say you were?”
She smiled.
“I should probably go home. I promised to make dinner.”
They got to their feet, gathered their belongings, and started to head back.
They walked along the narrow path next to the water, making small talk.
“Wait,” said Gina. She stopped by a tree, placed one hand on the trunk, and raised her foot to fish a piece of gravel from her shoe. Without thinking, without having planned it, Peter held out a hand to her. He gently grazed her cheek with his knuckles. As light as a sea breeze, fully ready for Gina to let fly at him for doing something he had no right to do. But she didn’t. She lowered her foot, stood up straight, and just gazed at him. Peter took a step toward her, toward the sweet-smelling, straight-backed being who occupied his thoughts so much she was rarely not on his mind, and put one hand on the tree trunk above her head. She was between him and the tree, and her chest was practically touching his when he laid his hand on the gnarled bark. Peter waited, gave her plenty of time to duck out from beneath him if she didn’t want it. But Gina stood still. He leaned in toward her, slowly, and brushed his mouth against hers, light, questioning. She closed her eyes, completely still, her back against the tree and her chin slightly raised. Peter took a chance. He kissed her again, for slightly longer this time. And then again. This time, he lingered against her smooth lips.
I’m kissing Gina.
He parted his lips and moved the tip of his tongue over the seam of her mouth, careful, tentative. She was still completely motionless, her hands at her sides. He deepened the kiss slightly. He heard a sigh come from her lips, and he moved his hand from the tree to her shoulders, gently pulled her toward him. Felt her breasts and mouth push against him. He couldn’t help it, he breathed out and it sounded like a groan, and then she finally kissed him back, a soft, cautious tongue that shyly brushed against his. It was a mutual kiss, the most beautiful, intimate kiss he had ever had. As though kissing Gina meant starting over.
When she pulled away, he let go of her immediately. His heart pounded in his chest, as though he had just sprinted up a steep slope.
“Sorry,” he said.
She touched her mouth with her long, slender fingers, as if she was trying to get a sense of what had just happened.
“Why are you apologizing?”
“I shouldn’t . . . Do you know how old I am? And your father.”
He was saying all the wrong things, he could hear it himself. But he hadn’t been with a woman since the divorce, and even then, he hadn’t “been” with a woman all that much. Louise had never taken the initiative, and he wasn’t someone who dared to have opinions on whether they would have sex or not. He had carried the absence of physical closeness with him as a punishment he deserved a hundred times over. And now he didn’t know what to do, what he could do.
“I know how old you are,” she said. “You point it out practically every time we meet. But I’m not a kid. It was a really nice kiss.”
He didn’t dare say any more, was afraid he would extinguish that smile, that look. He gripped his jacket in his hand and held out the other toward her. When she took it, they walked hand in hand alongside the glittering water, and Peter felt something he hadn’t felt in many years.
He felt as though even he had a right to be happy.
Chapter 46
When Isobel finished work Monday evening, Alexander was waiting outside her office. Blond and smiling, he stood in the sunshine on the sidewalk on Valhallavägen. Passersby glanced at him, but Alexander only had eyes for her. As they met, he pulled her into his arms, crushed her to him, and kissed her until she was clinging onto him. People continued to pass, some openly staring, but Isobel didn’t care; she allowed herself to be swept up into what was maybe just some kind of clinical insanity.
“How was work?”
She had been dazed. Hadn’t heard what her colleagues were saying. Had hid in a room and gazed dreamily through the window.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“I’m taking you to dinner,” he said, covering her nape with his palm, kissing her ravenously. This was madness. All she could think about was how, over and over, she had lain in Alexander’s bed, or across his armchair, or against his kitchen counter, being dominated and forced to come in orgasm after orgasm. The physician in her could rationally explain how pain released endorphins, and that these then took over to create enjoyment. But the psychology of it was more difficult. Why was what Alexander did to her, with her body, so good?
Though good was, of course, a laughably insufficient word. It was so much more than that. It was like she could be herself, sexually, for the first time. Be with someone who didn’t judge her. Feel safe, dare to trust.
“Eat out or at my place?” he asked as his hands moved over her, seeking out her cheek, down over her back, the back of his fingers tracing her spine.
She couldn’t think, her body was shouting take me, take me, take me, and that was why she said, as firmly as she could, “Out.” That way she would have time to formulate some rational thoughts before she was on her back or her stomach in his bed, with nothing but sex and orgasms on her mind. She had never been so irresponsible before, so young and crazy. Deep down, beneath doctor-Isobel, aid worker–Isobel, and ultracompetent-Isobel, the one you could always rely on, there had always been a woman who hungered after a raison d’être, to stop hiding away like some dirty little secret. She had repressed that side of herself for so long, but it had always been there. And now this. She would never have believed it if she hadn’t experienced it herself. That you could let go with another person in the way she had. And with Alexander, at that. It was incredible.
She had always looked down on people who let themselves be guided by passion, thinking it was a bit pathetic. Well, just look at her now.
* * *
Alexander took her to the Mathias Dahlgren, one of the most luxurious restaurants in Europe; spoke quietly with the waiter; and arranged a table in the same self-confident way he organized everything.
They ordered the vegetarian tasting menu and champagne. Expensive, luxurious, outrageous. He took her hand, caressed her wrist.
“This is insane,” she mumbled. Alexander had set something free in her, and he was so terrifyingly skillful. As if it was a hidden talent that had just been lying in wait for the right time to be put to use.
The truth was that everything with Alexander was simply the best she had ever experienced.
“Yes, completely insane,” he agreed.
He kissed her palm, and she was forced to close her eyes. She pulled her hand away.
“What is it?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I can’t think straight.” She couldn’t evaluate herself and this game they were playing anymore. Was it unequal? Had she entered into an unhealthy relationship? Should she be worried she had given up her independence?
“Is something wrong?”
“This, what we’re doing . . .”
“Yes.”
“It’s so . . .”
He smiled. “Yeah, it is.”
She leaned back in her chair and studied his handsome, self-confident face.
“Would you let me do it?” she asked quietly. “What you do to me? Switch roles?”
She had thought about it, how it would feel, what he would say.
Silence.
“Alex?”
“Is it something you’d like?” he asked, holding her gaze. She couldn’t read his face. His eyes were pure blue, not a single deviant shade. Blue was the rarest color in nature, she remembered from her biology classes.
“Maybe.”
She hadn’t thought it through, but the moment she said it, the words sounded right. “Yeah, I’d like to try,” she concluded.
“Why?”
She had said it to test him, to try to find some kind of balance in the madness she’d been drawn into.
“I want to know what it feels like for you. And I want you to know how it feels for me.”
She held her breath. Was it an absurd request? And how would she feel if Alexander said no, if he only wanted to be the dominant one?
“I guess it’s a way for me to experience what it’s like for you,” he said after a moment. He took her hand again, brought it to his mouth, kissed a finger, bit it gently. “Tell me, Isobel,” he said against her skin, his voice low and almost purring. “What would you do if you were in charge?”
It was as though all her blood had been redistributed in her body. That sultry look, that rumbling voice . . .
“I probably wouldn’t do anything different from what you did,” she answered, barely able to get the words out. She really hadn’t thought this through.
“But if you’re going to take control,” he said, kissing the next finger, “then I need to tell you what I fantasize about.”
“Okay,” she said, trying to sound brazen and sassy.
Her heart was pounding. It was one thing to cockily suggest dominating Alexander but something completely different to realize that it meant trying to control a man who weighed somewhere over two hundred twenty pounds. It was mostly about mental strength, she knew that, but still. Jesus. Would she be able to pull it off?
“Beautiful, sexy, addictive Isobel. D’you know what I want?” His eyes were half-closed, and his dark lashes cast shadows on his golden skin and angular features. He breathed out, and the warm air from his breath made her shudder.
“I want you to do to me what you want me to do to you later.”
“What do you mean?”
He took yet another finger, kissed it lightly. “That there are things you want from me, things you don’t dare ask for. That you still think you have to guard your secrets.”
“I’ve never told anyone as much as I’ve told you,” she said honestly.
“One night when you can do whatever you want to me . . . I’m looking forward to it.”
“Don’t you think I can do it?”
He smiled. “Au contraire, ma chérie.”
How many times had she ended up in discussions where men wanted to put her in her place? It was often so subtle that she didn’t even realize it until long afterward. That the strange feeling clinging to her was from the small pinpricks she had been dealt, and that started to sting only once she got home. It wasn’t that she couldn’t cope with being contradicted. Having a discussion and being forced to refine your arguments were par for the course when you worked in the aid community. But there were many men whose sole aim in such discussions was to flatten her.
Alexander, who already talked about aid, fieldwork, and humanitarian efforts in the third world as if he had studied the subject his entire life, had never tried to show off at her cost.
The violent attraction she felt to him was about just that. The combination of arrogance and respect. Yes, she wanted to dominate him. Wanted to force him down onto his knees as he had done with her.
His eyes, so fixed on hers that it felt as if he could hear every word she thought, darkened. Maybe it was the lighting. The candles were lit; the sky was azure blue outside, the way it was only a few days every year; and she felt that they were communicating wordlessly. This game, the one between them, it had set something going. Earlier today she had thought of it like a door she had opened and entered.
But it wasn’t a door.
It was more like an opening, ten thousand feet up, that had suddenly appeared and sucked her up.
There would be a battle between them. She loved it when Alexander dominated her, probably more than she dared admit to herself. But she planned on taking this opportunity to create some kind of equality in their relationship.
“If that’s going to work, you’ll have to tell me things,” she said.
“Whatever you want, baby.”
No.
She shook her head.
“Not about sex. Personal things.”
A cautious look flew over his improbably handsome features. Ah. So he wasn’t as comfortable with this as he made out. Excellent.
She leaned back. Watched him, searched for a way in. Remembered how often she had thought that this was a man who had experienced things he would rather hide.
“What’s the toughest thing you’ve ever been through?”
He laughed. Stretched out his legs.
“I don’t have any particular traumas. I’m much too busy living in the here and now.”
“No. That’s not how it works. You can’t demand total honesty from me and then give me bullshit in return.”
His eyes flashed, and his face changed, went through nuances of feeling. Isobel could see his caution. His arousal. A small, small amount of anger. And fear.
Sweet Alexander. What is it you’re hiding from me?
“I saw it last summer. You definitely have your demons.”
“Doesn’t everyone?”
“Actually, no,” she replied. “I’ve met people who haven’t experienced anything particularly difficult. But on the other hand, they’re all unbearably boring. So tell me now. I really want to know.”
Alexander leaned back. Didn’t move his eyes from her, not even when he reached for his glass and took a sip of champagne.
“It’s nothing much,” he started. “I wish I could say there was some trauma, but . . .”
Mmm, right?
“School?”
He shrugged. Traced a finger around the edge of his glass.
“What happened in school?”
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