by Dani Collins
“I’m so sorry.” His voice was a grave, reassuring rumble against her back. His arm slid under the water and around her waist, holding her comfortingly close. “That must have been terrifying. You were seventeen?”
“Yes. And the rest of our tour had to move on. Our guide left me at the clinic with my father’s body. I saw the guide hand my passport to an official in a military uniform. I thought, That’s bad, but there wasn’t anything I could do.”
“Could you speak the language at all?”
“Only rudimentary words like ‘please’ and ‘thank you.’ Byung-woo was the doctor who wrote out Pappa’s death certificate. He and his wife, Sung-mi, lived upstairs. I was a wreck, obviously. She brought me a cup of tea and I could see her pretending not to listen to the men. She was being very stoic, but I could tell whatever they were saying was bad. I did the only thing I could think of. I tried to hand all my money to Sung-mi.”
“Bribery,” he said with disdain. “That quaint and reliable solution to any problem.”
“I pretended I was trying to finance a proper burial for my father.”
“And?”
“She took it into the room where the men were talking and they closed the door. A little while later, the official left and Sung-mi and Byung-woo brought my father’s body into a special room and helped me lay him out. Villagers came by over the next few days, sat with me while I grieved. Then they took him back into the mountains and we buried him in a small graveyard.”
“So he’s still there.”
“Yes.” And she thought it somewhat appropriate that he rested as he had lived, an interloper accepted in a land that wasn’t his own.
“Did you try to leave at that point?”
“Foreigners aren’t allowed to use public transport. There was no internet. Things like booking a flight or online banking... All those things people take for granted weren’t available to me. My cash was gone. The few times Pappa and I had talked about what I should do if he passed, Pappa always said that Oliver would help me settle his affairs, so I went to that same official. I gave him a letter to mail for me. Open, of course. I made sure it said how well I was being treated and that I only wished to leave because I felt I was a burden on my hosts—which I was.”
“He mailed it? You said earlier that the Swedish government was the first to get involved.”
“Oliver never got the letter, but the guide made a report about my father’s death. More officials turned up. That’s when I realized I was being officially detained, but I guess my letter reassured them. They left me in the custody of Byung-woo and Sung-mi instead of sending me to a work camp or jail.”
“Why would they risk taking in a stranger? One from the West no less?”
That cool, inquisitive tone of his bothered her. She started to sit up, but his arm stayed heavy across her waist. After a disgruntled moment, she sank back into him.
“When Sung-mi brought me upstairs that first night, she put me in a tiny room under the slant of the roof. It had a single bed with a handmade quilt. There was a chair with a doll in it and a pair of child’s glasses on the table. There was a box of puzzles beneath the bed.”
“Ah,” he said with solemn understanding.
“Yes. Their daughter was sick her whole life and died when she was twelve. Sung-mi talked about her a lot. That’s how I learned Korean. She taught me to cook and took me to the sewing circles where the local women made uniforms for the army. In many ways, she became the mother I’d missed all my life. Byung-woo was kind, too. He took me fishing sometimes. We barely spoke, but we sat by the river for hours.”
“Sounds idyllic.”
“Not really.” Her wandering gaze landed on the square head of the handheld shower nozzle. She realized it perfectly reflected his face in its gold surface.
“No? Why not?” His voice lazily encouraged her to confide, but she jolted as she realized he was looking right at her in that tiny reflection.
He casually turned his head so his mouth nuzzled into her hair.
“I, um...”
She didn’t know what disconcerted her more, the realization he might have been watching her the whole time she’d been talking or his languid return to assaulting her senses. Beneath the water, he cupped her breast and gently massaged.
“What were you saying?” He nibbled along her nape.
“Hmm? Oh. That I had to be very careful,” she recalled dimly, tilting her head to expose more of her neck. “We were under constant surveillance.” Her nipple tightened to stab into his palm. “My classmates at university didn’t understand how I cared for my hosts and wanted to protect them as much as myself. They said that sort of thing makes me a traitor.”
“Are you?”
“No.” She twisted to face him.
His eyelids were heavy, but his gaze keen beneath. All he said was, “Good.” And he pressed his mouth to hers. They didn’t talk again until he said, “We should take this to the bed.”
* * *
Giovanni had been fifteen when the car his father had been driving was broadsided and sent over an embankment, rolling three times before coming to rest. Everyone else had been killed instantly. Giovanni had spent a year in hospital, enduring endless pain and surgeries that culminated in amputation of his remaining leg when a stubborn infection had forced him to choose between his limb or his life.
He’d always been stubborn and competitive, but it had taken two more years of grit and effort before he felt comfortable in this new body, learning how it worked and ultimately achieving the independence he craved.
He’d never stopped hitting on girls. Charm was a quality Sicilian men possessed by law. He’d become sexually active around the same time as his peers, but there’d been a steeper learning curve for him when it came to giving and receiving pleasure.
Until a few days ago, he’d been satisfied with the frequency and quality of lovemaking he engaged in and thought he had it all figured out.
Freja was rewriting his entire scope of experience.
He kept telling himself he was only continuing to see her for investigative purposes, but as day four dawned and they’d barely been out of each other’s sight since dinner that first night, he had to admit it was the sex. He couldn’t keep his hands off her.
He had tried to take her home. Their first lazy morning had turned into an indolent afternoon, but she’d been scheduled to work that evening. His driver had parked outside her building and their goodbye in the back seat of his town car had turned into a steamy suggestion that she call in sick.
She’d left him long enough to run up to her flat for her laptop and to pack a small bag. She’d been here ever since, coaching a couple of her Korean students over video chat, helping with their English pronunciation and offering feedback on some writing assignments. She had made no effort to hide any of it while Giovanni answered emails on the other side of the room.
Yesterday, they’d strolled through the park, but the rest of the days they had stayed in. They worked, ate, swam, and waited for his small army of aids, therapists, assistants and housekeepers to leave so they could make love and lounge around half-dressed.
They had intimate encounters constantly. A light kiss turned into heavy petting that turned into an intense, inventive interlude. Other times he woke from a lengthy debauched session that had left him wrung out and supremely satisfied. His sense of contentment lingered into those moments when he turned his head to find her beside him, blinking awake and smiling through a yawn.
Those unguarded moments were the best and the worst. They convinced him she was exactly as she seemed—unusual, but ultimately harmless. For a woman who hadn’t had a lover until a few days ago, however, she was taking to it like a duck to water. That forced him to ask himself if he was being played by a champion manipulator.
Even Everett was starting to worry, sounding impatient when Giovann
i accepted his call. “She’s still there. Why?”
Giovanni bit back asking Everett if he’d ever gotten laid, because he definitely should try it sometime.
“I’m in the pool.” Despite the April rain spitting from the overcast sky. “What do you need?”
“Leave early and plan for a week in France in June,” Everett said in crisp tone.
Giovanni didn’t ask why. Everett would have a contact he wanted Giovanni to intercept or a party he wanted him to observe. It was the work he’d signed on for, but as he watched Freja continue to lap the pool in a graceful crawl, Giovanni resented Everett’s claim on his time. He wasn’t ready for this liaison to end.
Which was the most compelling reason it should.
“Sure,” he muttered and clicked off his phone, sliding it into the pocket of his robe where it hung next to his pool lift. He pushed away from the ledge and windmilled a backstroke until he crossed paths with Freja.
She stopped to catch her breath. They both hooked an arm on the ledge.
“Is everything okay?” She pushed her wet hair off her face. “You look annoyed.”
“Details about my trip. I’m leaving early.” He had deliberately mentioned this trip their first evening. He was always clear with women that he wasn’t looking for anything but a brief, enjoyable dalliance.
That same evening, Freja had called him a sexist for suggesting she aspired to marry and have children. Inexperienced she might be, but she wasn’t immature. There were no unrealistic fantasies dancing in her eyes. There was no guilt trip that he had been leading her on. She expressed exactly the right pout of disappointment, then turned it into a rueful smile.
“Probably for the best.” She wrinkled her nose. “The owner of the catering company asked if I should be admitted to hospital, I’ve called in sick so many times.”
He slid his free arm around her waist, floating her into contact with his chest. Swimming always aroused him, but the desire sizzling in his wiring was all for her. That and the tendrils of possessiveness that were becoming barbed hooks within him as their time together drew to a close.
It was a potent combination that charged what was supposed to be a leisurely kiss into one with more ferocious greed than he intended.
She stiffened in surprise, then melted into him, greeting his tongue with her own as she moaned and coiled her limbs around him.
This was why he still had her here after four days. This response of hers was addictive.
He flexed his arm on the ledge to secure them at the edge of the pool and slid his other hand into the bottom of her suit, palming her bare ass. He’d had time to learn what she liked, and that always made her squirm. She tightened her thighs around his waist and rocked her hips against him.
She knew his triggers, too. She swooped her lips across to suck his earlobe until he could hardly keep their heads above water.
The strings on her bikini were too much bother. He caught the neck strap and stretched it to bring it up and forward, dropping it away under the water between them. Her pale breasts with their pink tips sat just below the surface, pretty and tempting.
He scooped his arm under her butt and lifted her enough that he could suck her nipples, each one going cold and hard as a pebble in the brisk spring air.
“Giovanni,” she gasped, hands scraping through his hair and roaming restlessly over his shoulders. “Let’s go to the bedroom.”
“So impatient,” he teased grittily, even though that eagerness of hers never ceased to thrill him. Hell, he was right there with her, feeling so damned ravenous he didn’t want to let her go for the time it would take to dry off and get to the bed. How would he go months without her when he couldn’t bear to wait five minutes?
“I want to feel all of you,” she said with a pang in her voice and a drift of her touch to delicately pinch his nipple.
He shuddered in reaction, nearly losing his grip on the ledge.
She chuckled softly as she dropped back into the water with a slosh. They were nose to nose again, mouth fusing to mouth with insatiate need. He shoved his hand in her bottoms again, squeezing her cheek and sliding his touch under her thigh. There. His long fingers reached the plump folds and fine hairs. A sweet noise throbbed in her throat as he found the heart of her response.
“If you want all of me, take me,” he said against her mouth. Distant warning bells sounded in his head, but he ignored them. “I want to feel you, too.” He deepened his touch, shaking with want at the idea of being naked inside her.
“H-here?” She blinked dazed eyes at him. “Without a condom?”
He wore them to protect his health. “I don’t ejaculate,” he reminded her.
Her hand dropped into the space between them. She pushed the front of his bathing suit down, freeing his erection. The cool of the water did nothing to chill his ardor. He pulled aside the crotch of her bathing suit, his thumb lingering to coax another jagged noise out of her.
She guided the head of his erection against her folds. Slowly he was enfolded in heat, a sensation so acute his whole body felt as though he was thrust into a furnace.
His one rational thought was that he shouldn’t let them drown, but— He tilted his head back and swore his gratification at the overcast, spitting sky. “You’re so hot.”
“You feel good, too,” she gasped, curling her arms and legs around him, clinging as they kissed and kissed.
The suspension of the water gave him more ability to thrust than he usually had. He used his arm to cushion her against the hard, tiled wall, but gripping the ledge, he was able to use his whole body to make love to her. It was incredibly exciting. The water swirled around them, further stimulating him, while Freja moved in response, making those gorgeous noises that told him he was giving her great pleasure.
He wanted to slow down and make this last forever, it was so impossibly good, but the intensity was more than he could control.
“Giovanni,” she gasped in the fractured breath of approaching climax.
“Come,” he coaxed, speaking Sicilian because his own crisis gathered like a condensed ball of energy, ready to explode. “It’s too good. I can’t hold back.”
He didn’t want to. Ecstasy beckoned.
As the last of his discipline shredded, she released a cry of elation and convulsed against him. A ragged, “Freja,” tore from his throat as his entire body shuddered in a way he hadn’t experienced in years.
CHAPTER FOUR
FREJA WAS FEELING very subdued as she and Giovanni showered off the salt from the pool.
The shower was enormous with a dozen heads and nozzles and taps. He had a special chair he used in here, but there was still plenty of room for her. He’d even had his housekeeper purchase some organic, vanilla-scented body wash and shampoo, making it super easy to linger in the warm spray.
Or maybe she was seizing the excuse to draw out her last few minutes with him. Once she dried off and dressed, she would have to say goodbye and she didn’t feel ready.
Not that she could say so. Giovanni was a sophisticated man. This was the sort of transitory affair that consenting adults engaged in. She kept reminding herself that this was a rite of passage on her part. It was her first tumble into physical intimacy, one that was paired with deep infatuation with a dynamic man. Getting her heart bruised was all part of the process.
If anything, she ought to view the termination of their affair as a healthy end point. They were ending things in a civilized and, frankly, necessary way. In recent years, she’d grown used to being autonomous and making her own decisions, but these last few days, she had found herself accommodating his presence in her life, trying to maximize the limited time she had with him. That was fine for a weekend, but arranging her world around a man had its pitfalls. She knew that.
Nevertheless, the sense of abandonment that engulfed her as their goodbye loomed threatened to cr
ush her.
“You’re being very quiet,” Giovanni noted, turning off the sprayer he was using.
“Hmm? Oh.” She tilted back her head to give her hair one last unneeded rinse, not wanting him to see the morose expression on her face. Her worst nightmare was to behave like some gauche teenager at the last minute. “I’m thinking of all those very compelling things like whether I need to pick up milk on my way home.”
She turned off her showerhead and accepted the towel he handed her. She stayed in the shower to dry off while he rolled out to the spot under the heat lamp.
She realized he was being very quiet as well, sitting up straighter to saw the towel across his back, but watching her closely. Anxious for her to leave? She wrapped the towel around herself and stepped out with a meaningless smile plastered on her face.
“Freja.” He reached out as she came even with him and tugged the bottom corner of her towel.
She scrabbled to secure it, letting out a laugh only to sober when she realized he wasn’t trying to playfully steal it, only to get her attention. The gravity in his expression made her heart lurch.
“What’s wrong?” Her hand instinctively tightened on the towel.
“Do you realize that I may have made you pregnant just now?”
“What?” She stumbled back a few steps, bumping into the edge of the sink.
“Are you going to faint?” He pushed forward and set a hard hand at her hip.
She kept one hand clenched in the towel, the other gripped the sink. “But you said—”