All In

by Simona Ahrnstedt

  “So soft,” he murmured.

  Natalia heard a sound, like a purr, and realized it must have come from her. His hands searched their way up her calves, and she heard her breathing change. She hadn’t come, and endorphins and adrenaline were coursing around in her blood now. His touch aroused her, made her soft, pliable, short of breath, and very, very excited.

  “I like your legs,” he said, pulling away the blanket so she lay completely naked before him. “Spread your legs, Natalia,” he said softly.

  She swallowed.

  Okay.

  She did as he said, opening her legs.

  “Farther,” he ordered.

  Natalia’s pulse galloped and her heart pounded as she slowly spread her legs under his gaze, opening herself to him. She had never done anything like this before.

  “Good,” he said. “Now I can see you.” As he spoke, he caressed the inside of her thigh, higher and higher, and Natalia shuddered.

  “So sensitive,” he murmured and pinched her, not hard, but not softly either. She moaned.

  “I want you to enjoy this too.” He pinched her again, higher this time, and Natalia’s breathing quickened. She was so turned on she was having a hard time lying still.

  David lay down next to her on the sofa, moving so that she was between him and the back of the sofa. He took one of her nipples between his thumb and index finger and studied her intently as he squeezed, quite hard. Oh God.

  He slid his hand down her stomach, stroking his finger along the dark hair that began there.

  “Please . . . ,” she moaned softly.

  He cupped his hand over her and finally, finally began to stroke her. He was so incredibly attentive, found a rhythm that was frighteningly right. She only needed to pant, nod, or close her eyes, and he adjusted his pace. It was magic. He leaned over and kissed her deeply, continuing his stroking all the while.

  Natalia started to tremble.

  He murmured words that would normally have made her blush, hot, arousing words between kisses and caresses, and she passed the limit where she knew she was going to come now. She pushed herself against his body, against his hand, against his mouth, and she—who was always analyzing, considering, and reasoning—quit thinking, stopped doing anything. She just was, dissolving under his hand, and then she came.

  This can’t be happening, she thought, and realized she was sobbing. Afterward she lay heavily on the sofa. She couldn’t move a limb. David slid his arm under her and cradled her against him.

  “So this is what everyone is always talking about,” she said, her voice sounding lazy. “I had no idea it could be like that, no idea.” Her eyelids closed. She’d never felt so relaxed in her life.

  “Yes, it was different for me too,” David said into her hair. He slowly stroked her arms and captured her legs between his own. “Better. We’re a good fit,” he said. “Sexually, I mean.”

  His voice sank to a low murmur. His mouth moved against her hair while he cautiously stroked her oversensitized skin. Natalia drifted off. It was impossible to stay awake, as if days of tension, hours of concentration, had disappeared. Her eyelids closed and she was asleep.

  David’s snoring in her ear woke her up. It had been a long time—too long—since she’d had a man here. Cautiously she started to disentangle herself from the sofa.

  “What are you doing?” he murmured, moving an arm over her in protest.

  “Lighting some candles,” she replied, managing to slip off the sofa.

  “Don’t be gone too long,” he said. “You’re very nice to lie next to.”

  While Natalia found some candles and a lighter, she heard David’s breathing deepen as he fell asleep again. She padded around, lighting every candle she could find. Then she stopped by the sofa and watched him. He was basically made of muscles, his lines all masculine. The candles cast flickering shadows over him, and her eyes lingered longingly on his chest, his legs, his . . . well. He was magnificent. She couldn’t find any words. The fleeting thought of whatever she’d felt on his back came to mind, but she shook it off. He hadn’t wanted to talk about it, and it was none of her business.

  She took a thin blanket off the other sofa and padded out onto the balcony.

  She had bought this apartment with her own money, not her family’s, but with her own salary and through a realtor who wasn’t her father’s. She rarely invited anyone over. She’d only had Jonas up here before, at least in this sense, and that had been quite some time ago.

  She pulled the blanket more tightly around her, the soles of her feet adjusting to the cool balcony. She loved her apartment, and most of all she loved her balcony. It wasn’t particularly wide, but it was long, and she had set out pots along the iron railing with easy-to-tend shrubs. She had added big hurricane lamps, which she now lit while she was at it, and then she leaned her forearms on the railing and looked out. She was surrounded by technology, electronic devices, and ringing phones every day. She needed this oasis.

  “What are you doing?”

  David’s voice made her jump, and just as she did his arm slid around her from behind.

  “Just enjoying myself,” she replied.

  David laughed quietly against the nape of her neck. “You’re good at enjoying yourself,” he said. “I can’t remember the last time I heard a woman enjoy herself so loudly.”

  “Thanks for reminding me,” she replied. “All my neighbors probably heard me.”

  “Heard us,” he said. “That was amazing. You are amazing.” His hands slid up and cupped her breasts. Natalia pressed back against him while jutting her breasts forward into his hands. The blanket started to slide off her.

  “Maybe we ought to go back inside,” she said as his hands found their way between her thighs. The iron railing was thin, and if anyone down on the street looked up, they would be seen. She trembled as his finger slid into her, stroking her just the right way. How could he already know so much about what she liked?

  “David . . .”

  “Shh,” he said. “You’re disturbing my concentration. Put your hands on the railing.”

  She should have hesitated or protested but instead she did what he said, spellbound and seduced. Chemistry, it’s just chemistry, she convinced herself as she closed her eyes and squeezed the iron railing.

  David ran his hand down Natalia’s spine. He pulled her curvy buttocks to him and enjoyed the feeling of having her so close. He pushed himself against her, caressing the silky cheeks.

  “David,” Natalia gasped over her shoulder.

  “Do you want to go inside?” he asked with a smile.

  “Don’t you?”

  “No.”

  He wanted her here, out on her balcony with her hands on the railing. He quickly fetched a condom and ripped open the package. He entered her slowly, enjoying the view. Natalia made a soft, delightful sound. Then she started moving against him.

  Perfectly, she fit perfectly. He leaned forward and held a sensitive nipple between his thumb and index finger in the way he’d already learned she liked. He felt her muscles tighten around him and then she made another sound, an almost animal sound that echoed over the street below.

  David pinned her to the railing. He held her so hard that she could hardly move as he took her in slow, deep thrusts. He leaned into her back, cupped one hand over her sex, and separated her heat. “I want you to come for me again, Natalia,” he whispered.

  “David,” she panted against the railing.

  “Let go,” he urged her, thrusting into her, harder and deeper.

  Natalia came just as intensely as the first time and stifled a scream that made the railing reverberate. David kept pumping into her until he too detonated. His orgasm was so powerful that he literally lost his footing for a moment. Gasping for breath, he leaned against her, rubbing his chin against her back, burying his nose in her hair.

  “Well, that does it,” Natalia said. “Now I’m going to have to move.”

  He laughed.

  Afterw
ard they sat entwined on one of her enormous sofas.

  They watched the candles burning, listened to Sarah Harvey, talked, and sipped vodka.

  Then, when the sun started to rise, they made love again. Slowly and sincerely, which made Natalia shed a tear that she quickly wiped away. Because she knew, she just knew he wasn’t going to stay, that it was over. And sure enough, even though it was only two or maybe three in the morning, it was already getting light in the eastern sky when David gathered up his clothing, quickly got dressed, and said good-bye.

  Natalia heard his footsteps fading away in the stairwell, and she refused to feel anything but pleasure, pleasure for the experience, pleasure for having gotten to feel so beautiful and attractive, and happiness, despite his not having said anything about their seeing each other again.

  She walked into the kitchen and opened the fridge. It was almost totally empty, just a jar of gherkins and one of cocktail onions. After a moment’s hesitation she opted for the gherkins. She poured herself a splash of vodka and took the jar and her glass out to the balcony.

  The sun was already at full strength. It was going to be another broiling day, and she heard the paperboy coming down the street. She was only human, just a woman, she thought, fishing out a gherkin with her fingers. And David was so very much a man. She took small sips of the vodka and pulled the blanket tighter around herself. The smell of him was still everywhere, and she breathed in the scent of his aftershave, of salt, and of their lovemaking as she let her mind wander.

  She had grown up with animals. She had taken care of horses her whole life, from her first pony to her chestnut Lovely, whom she still rode as often as she could.

  As a teenager she’d tagged along with various veterinarians who worked with abused racehorses. Once she’d gone along with a veterinarian on a call to treat a stallion whose owner had whipped him. The animal recovered tolerably, but the scars never went away.

  She stuffed the last gherkin into her mouth meditatively. True, she had never worked at a hospital or other doctor’s office, but she was guessing that scar tissue looked about the same in people and animals. She set down the jar and swallowed the rest of the vodka. She rested her chin on her knees and pulled the blanket over her.

  So the question was—who had whipped David Hammar’s back so horrifically?

  15

  Tuesday, July 1

  A few hours later that same morning, David stepped off the plane that had taken him back to Malmö again. He glanced at his watch, which said it was 9:30, squinted into the sunlight, and stretched slightly to wake himself up.

  During the last year, as he and Michel had literally flown around the world looking for financial backers, he occasionally realized that he hadn’t been in the same country for more than a day at a time for several weeks. It was hard work, he thought, walking down the staircase that had been rolled over to the little domestic plane, but it was necessary.

  Their financial backers were all over the globe. Banks and funds, the biggest of the big, had their offices in Moscow and Beijing, in London, New York, and Singapore. So they’d flown there, given their pitch, presented their plan, and then moved on to the next one. Always on the go, twenty-four hours a day. They had compiled all the information, formulated their strategy, and then done the same thing all over again. And again. They slept on the plane they’d chartered, each in his own airplane seat.

  Outwardly, in interviews and articles, David always maintained that he liked to fly, that he lived for this. And that was partially true. You couldn’t work like this if you didn’t have a deep conviction that it was meaningful. But the truth, David thought as he strolled across the tarmac toward the terminal, was that the travel wore on him. And he’d been doing it for so long.

  He had been about twenty when he started his first business. The first few years it was pretty much all about survival. In the following years it had been about going from an upstart to a superstar without losing focus.

  David walked through the gate and out onto the street, flagged a cab, and gave the driver the address of the man he was going to meet. He leaned back in the seat and watched the familiar buildings and streets pass by. How many times had he been here? Twenty? Thirty?

  He knew he was good at what he did, maybe one of the ten best in the world. Of course he had failed sometimes. Especially in the beginning, when he was inexperienced and compensated for that by being excessively ruthless.

  The first time Hammar Capital had wound up in the spotlight was when he’d pulled off a really brazen coup against one of the most venerable companies in Sweden, a medium-size company with a good reputation among the conservatives, but one that he’d known he could make more efficient. It had been lunacy from beginning to end. With an extremely large loan, he’d made an aggressive move. It had failed, which earned him a lot of bad press. The Investum-owned evening paper, in particular, had hung him out to dry, called him a butcher, a pirate. It had been tough, but it had also made him stronger. Because the abuse he took in the press—sometimes deservedly so, sometimes completely undeservedly—taught him to take a beating. If there was anything his childhood had demonstrated, it was the importance of being able to handle a real thrashing. He’d always endeavored to learn from his failures and bring that experience to his next deal.

  Twice Hammar Capital had struck at Investum directly. Twice, they had fought for dominion of a company they both wanted to control. And both times, the bigger and stronger Investum had emerged victorious.

  The first time, David had been almost bankrupt. Hammar Capital had been up to its ears in debt again, and David had only managed to save the business by a hair’s breadth. The second time, a few years after the dot-com bubble, which had weakened Investum but made HC strong, the battle for a position on the board of a software company had been more evenly matched, but HC had still lost. They had had to back out, injured and humiliated in the press, but largely intact.

  After that David had decided that he needed to stay away from Investum for a while. He realized he needed to plan better, that he needed to rely more on a cool head and logic, and act less out of emotion and hatred. He had started over, taking on Michel, whom he’d known from both his military service and the Stockholm School of Economics, as his partner. And that strategy had paid off. In recent years, Hammar Capital had gone from being an admired but very small venture capital firm to one of the biggest and most respected in Europe.

  Now David didn’t have any trouble getting meetings with the foremost representatives of superbanks and superfunds the world over. Everyone knew that HC delivered, and today, whatever money David Hammar asked for, they gave him. His team of analysts was talented, his whole organization was as efficient as well-oiled machinery. They had never been stronger. He belonged to a new generation of finance men without old-school loyalties but with global contacts, and if he wanted to he could take over any big company.

  David watched out the cab window. The thing was, he needed to think about where he was going next. For almost so many years he had dreamed of what he and Michel were about to do in a few weeks: a hostile takeover of Investum. Take it over and break the company up, crush it and crush Gustaf and Peter.

  And Natalia.

  God. Natalia. The woman with the golden eyes and the silky soft skin. What had he gotten himself tangled up in?

  As David greeted the Russian he had come here to meet, as he summarized all the details, as he invited the man to lunch, as he flattered and convinced him, as he packed up after the successful meeting and took the afternoon flight back to Stockholm, he must have thought of Natalia a hundred times. As he walked into his office at Blasieholmen, he thought about how she was just a short walk away, so close over there at Stureplan. As he sat in his desk chair, he thought of her.

  Was she also both tired and upbeat at the same time?

  When was the last time he’d made love to a woman three times in the same night? He had no idea. She’d felt it too. He didn’t need to wonder. He knew tha
t she’d felt what he’d felt, the intensity.

  It had been unparalleled.

  He let out a heavy sigh. There was a huge problem here. It was supposed to have been a one-time occurrence, making love to Natalia De la Grip. In principal, he reminded himself with a grimace, it shouldn’t even have been that, of course. But then when he’d agreed to go in, against all better judgment, he’d known that it could only be one night, nothing more. He hadn’t exactly been promiscuous in his life, but he’d never had any difficulty moving on from meaningless, casual dalliances.

  David stretched, started his computer, and then just sat there, his eyes glazed over. He knew what he had to do, what he should have done from the beginning, before things had gone this far.

  Break things off with Natalia for good.

  He had to put it behind him. Not dwell on thoughts of the best sexual experience he’d ever had, not fantasize about seeing her again, not suspect that sex could never be meaningless or even casual to her.

  He gazed out the window, wondering absentmindedly where Michel was. He’d forgotten to call Michel. Forgotten to call his closest and most important colleague, his best friend, while at the same time he’d thought about calling Natalia a hundred times.

  He opened a couple of documents on the computer to do what he needed to do, focus on what was important. They had everything they needed now. Signed confidentiality agreements from everyone in question. Nothing could get out. Access to four billion euros. Brokers at the ready. In a week, when Båstad week began, the financial elite would all be off at their summer homes. Stockholm would empty out; all the alert systems would be running at half speed. They had chosen the timing with care. By this time next week pretty much every Swedish banker and moneyman would be in Båstad or Torekov, or on a boat in the Mediterranean. Summer, sun, and vacation would take over. And then they would strike.

  David took a deep breath and decided to get to it.