All In

by Simona Ahrnstedt

  She wanted to lean over, lick the drop of sweat she saw at the base of his neck, follow it down over him with her tongue, take all of him into her mouth.

  She was good at sex, and that wasn’t bragging, it was a fact. She could picture herself taking him into her mouth, sucking him until he buried his hands in her hair, groaned, and completely lost it.

  She took a quick drink, studied him through her eyelashes as he stood there, his hip leaning against her kitchen island. She leaned back against the sink, letting him get a good look at her. She made a move and obediently the slit in her thin dress—it was just a hair’s breadth away from actually being a negligee—fell open, revealing her legs.

  “Åsa? Why am I here?” Michel asked calmly, setting his empty glass down on the matte-finished granite countertop. It used to be walnut, but she liked the granite better. An interior designer came once a year to change little things around and then sent her an astronomical invoice. “It sounded serious. What happened?”

  She sighed. She should have suspected that he wouldn’t let her escape.

  “Nothing happened. But I was at the cemetery today,” she began, sipping the water and steeling herself against the wave of pain that usually arrived when she thought about this. But it never came.

  “I haven’t been there in a long time, haven’t been to see them for several years,” she said, pausing and waiting again. Still nothing.

  They were all in the same grave, all three of them.

  Her mother, father, and little brother. Different birth dates, but all with the same death date. Eternally remembered, it said on the gravestone. She didn’t remember who’d ordered it, didn’t remember the funeral, didn’t remember anything. Just that one day she’d had a family and the next day she was alone. So alone.

  She looked at Michel standing there, steady as a mountain range.

  “How was it?” he asked somberly.

  “I guess it was okay,” she said, looking down.

  It had been okay, strangely enough. But now she felt very weak, more fragile than tissue paper or newly formed ice crystals.

  Michel crossed his arms. “What happened to your family was so awful,” he said softly. “No one should have to go through what you went through.”

  “Some people have it worse,” she said automatically.

  “That’s always true,” he agreed. “But you’re entitled to your feelings. And being the only one left, that’s certainly everyone’s nightmare.”

  “I had Natalia’s family,” she said. But Michel was right, she had wound up in a never-ending phase, in which waking up in the morning and being forced to realize that she was still all on her own was the worst thing.

  “I didn’t understand how I could go on living when I was so sad,” she said. Something ran down her cheek, and when she wiped her hand over it, she realized to her surprise that it was a tear. She hadn’t even noticed she was crying. She never cried. “Sorry,” she said.

  He came over to her, took her glass, set it down. He carefully wiped away a tear. “It’s okay,” he said softly.

  She sobbed. “No, I’m sorry about the other thing,” she said.

  He wiped away another tear, and she wanted to lean on his shoulder, give herself over to self-pity and grief. “At law school, when I stopped being your friend. I’m sorry about that.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” he mumbled. “That was a long time ago.”

  “I was so embarrassed when you refused me. I couldn’t handle being your friend after that, and I pulled away.”

  “Because you were embarrassed?”

  She shook her head, thinking it was now or never. “Because I was in love with you,” she said, not actually daring to look at him. “You can’t be friends with someone you’re in love with.”

  “No, that’s very hard,” he agreed. “You always want more.”

  “No one has turned me down as many times as you have.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “You know how people usually say it’s better to have loved and lost than not to have loved at all?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s bullshit. Nothing is worse than losing the people you love. When my family died, I decided never to be close to anyone again.” She bit her lip. “It’s such a terrible cliché.”

  But it had worked.

  She’d slid through life, not happy, but then again, who was? Happiness wasn’t a human right.

  He stroked her shoulder with his hand. It was a comforting caress that almost burned a hole in her. She had a hard time breathing. It hurt to feel so strongly about him. She slipped away and took a few steps. She wanted to leave him behind, erase him from her life, replace him with some other man she didn’t feel so strongly about.

  If they slept with each other, then she’d be able to move on. She leaned her hip against the counter and trained her eyes on him. She’d done this before, been obsessed with having one specific man. It always passed. She was going to put an end to this. She’d waxed herself yesterday, not too much because she loved her blond, curly locks, but she was smooth and fresh, and she just wanted this so much. She wiped away the last of the tears and took a step toward him. “Michel,” she said in a low voice, making herself sound tempting and promising.

  “No, don’t do this,” he said. “Not when you’re sad.”

  “I’ve regretted it for all these years,” she said, because this time she wasn’t going to accept a rejection. “I’ve wanted you. Wondered what it would be like. Haven’t you?”

  “Of course I have,” he said, sounding choked.

  She put a hand on his chest. She could do this in her sleep, seduce a man. His skin was scorching hot through the fabric, as if he had a fever.

  Michel put his hand over hers and a tingle surged through her. This was the best part. Foreplay. She swallowed against the hollow feeling that spread through her chest, pushed it away, and let her hand slide down his chest, rubbing his nipple lightly. She was an expert on the male nipple. He moaned.

  Michel raised his hand and tugged on a bouncy strand of her hair. “I really want to,” he murmured, letting his finger trace along her thin shoulder strap. “But I don’t just want sex. I want you.”

  To her horror, tears welled up in Åsa’s eyes again.

  Was it really so much to ask?

  A quick hook-up, then he could leave her and go. That’s all she wanted, she convinced herself. Aside from the fact that if Michel disappeared from her life again, he would take such a big piece of her with him that she wasn’t sure there would be anything left.

  She stroked his biceps, felt a primitive ache inside. He was so damn sexy.

  “I have a clean bill of health,” she said. “I’ve been tested. I’m on the pill. I really want to have sex with you.” She smiled. “But I am not a woman who ever wants to have children. I don’t want to be tied down.”

  Michel’s parents were definitely expecting grandchildren from their only son, so she was giving him a chance now to agree that this was just about sex, that neither of them was planning something long-term, that she didn’t expect him to stay. She didn’t know a single man who wouldn’t jump at what she’d just offered.

  “I’m also clean,” he said. “And I want you. Just you. I don’t give a damn if you want kids or not. I don’t even understand why we’re talking about that.”

  He put a hand on her waist and pulled her to him. Her breasts pushed against his chest through the fabric. And then he finally kissed her, infinitely softly.

  Her hands slid up over his arms as she responded to the kiss, and Michel pushed her back against the counter. She made a sound, clung tightly to him, planning to never stop kissing. He pulled apart the thin, silky layers of fabric, and then she had his palms against her bare skin. He grazed her hard nipples, and the arousal ripped through her.

  “But Åsa,” he said, holding her gently around the shoulders and looking at her seriously. “If we make love, then you’re mine. Understand? If this isn’t i
mportant to you, you need to say so now.”

  She nodded, slightly overwhelmed. “Okay,” she said, but she still wanted to add that this was just for right now, that she never made long-term plans and that this would end just like everything else. That she didn’t make love to men, she had sex with them.

  “Say it, Åsa,” he urged.

  “What?”

  “Say that this isn’t just sex.” His eyes were like black fire. “I’ve loved you since the first time we saw each other,” he continued, and she couldn’t decide if Michel thought this eternal love was a good thing or not. But his words gave Åsa something she hadn’t ever felt before as an adult: hope.

  “But how can you love me?” she said, her voice shaking.

  This had to be the most pathetic seduction she’d ever orchestrated.

  “I just do,” he said.

  “This isn’t just sex,” she whispered.

  He exhaled, wrapped his hands around her hair, and kissed her furiously. Åsa clung to his biceps, not just because her legs turned to jelly but also because she wanted to cling to what Michel was for just as long as she could. A warm hand caressed its way in between her thighs; he pulled her cobweb-thin panties aside, and she leaned forward and bit him on the shoulder. She moaned against his skin as his fingers found their way in. Another man would have ripped off those expensive panties, but Michel was careful despite his intensity, and Åsa thought that a man like this was actually what every woman deserved. But he was hers, just hers.

  “Where’s your bedroom?” he asked hoarsely.

  “Is there something wrong with the kitchen?” she murmured.

  “No,” he said, kissing her again. Oh, he was such a superb kisser. Eager, hungry, just rough enough, as if kissing her made him crazy with desire. It was incredibly flattering. She rode the waves of arousal and then let them take her over. With her head tilted back, she let Michel hold her neck and kiss her throat, nibbling a fiery trail. His hands were everywhere, and she pushed herself into them, into his musky muscles and tender, golden skin.

  “Take off your shirt,” she said, laughing at how quickly he ripped it off, before he started kissing a burning path down her body, over the dip at the base of her neck and her breastbone, over her thin skin and rosy nipples before continuing down over her soft belly. Åsa loved her body, how it responded and how it felt pleasure. She refused to see her ampleness and her softness as anything other than perfection. And Michel seemed more than satisfied to finally—after fifteen years of foreplay—get to go down on his knees in front of her.

  She lazily separated her legs a tiny bit, but he moved them farther apart, determinedly and with force, and burrowed his strong fingers into the softest skin on the inside of her thigh. Åsa emitted a muffled groan. She loved the sound of sex almost as much as she loved the actual act of sex, at any rate when it was good, and this, this was epically good. She made another sound as she saw Michel’s head down between her thighs. She closed her eyes. His tongue was zealous and hot, and she squirmed so much under his licks that he finally put his hands around her bottom to get her to stand still, squeezing her butt cheeks and pulling her toward him so that she almost lost her balance.

  This was going to get wild—she already felt that.

  She’d had sex with a lot of men; she loved sex, and she loved the game. But something told her that Michel was nowhere near as experienced as she was. There was something about the cautious arousal that he approached her with that made her feel worshipped, truly, and she loved it. What did she know, maybe he’d been saving himself for her? She smiled at the thought, opened her eyes again, held on with one hand around his shoulder and the other on the edge of the counter. She looked down, heard the sounds, and felt—God, how she felt—his hardworking tongue and then she came, right in his face.

  She gasped and supported herself heavily against the edge of the counter.

  Michel stood up and just attacked her with his mouth and his lips and his tongue. He pulled down her slinky dress, let it fall in a heap on the stone floor, and then buried his face in her breasts. He kissed and caressed them, over and over again. Oh God, this was so good.

  “You are unbelievably beautiful,” he said huskily, and if Åsa had been able to speak she would have said that he was beautiful, more beautiful than any man she’d ever met.

  Each motion intense, Michel turned her around so that she was standing with her face toward the tiled wall and faucets. She barely had time to think how lucky she was that her sink was so attractive—expensive Italian faucets, stainless surfaces, decorative herb plants, and a bowl of limes (she honestly had no idea where they’d come from)—before Michel pulled the thin fabric of her panties down her legs, undid his jeans, and entered her. She felt dizzy because he was definitely not a small man; he was all cock and muscles and hard hands, and when he took her like that she actually lost her breath for a moment. Not that she had anything against that, quite the contrary. She closed her eyes with a muffled moan and let herself be taken against the counter in hard thrusts. He had the stamina of a teenager, she thought as Michel pulled out after a while, still hard. With a hand on the arch of her back, he tore off his jeans and underwear, then took her into his arms and maneuvered her over to the kitchen island, showering her with kisses along the way. Clearly they were going to be inaugurating the whole kitchen today. The island was also topped with granite, cold and black. He took hold of her waist and lifted her up without even batting an eye, as if she didn’t weigh a thing, and then set her down on the granite, which was ice-cold for a second before her bottom warmed it up.

  “Spread your legs,” he said huskily.

  She spread her thighs and let him look. The island turned out to be the perfect height, and he stared at her before his enormous cock buried itself in her again. She wrapped her legs around him, and Michel came—with her legs wrapped around his back, his hands on her ass—with a wild, pumping groan. Åsa continued to cling to him and just followed suit. It seemed he could hold her up forever, she noted as he panted into her hair in the aftershocks of his climax.

  They kissed again while Michel slowly deflated within her. Sincere, almost insatiable kisses, which neither of them could get enough of. Stupidly, she had tears in her eyes again.

  He kissed her one last time, significantly more gently now that he seemed to have recovered a little, before setting her down on the island again. He fetched a new glass of water and handed it to her. She drank and then handed it back. He drank without taking his eyes off her, and she thought there was something tremendously intimate about sharing this glass of water. She admired his body as he set the glass down, studying his muscles and tendons and powerful lines openly and with ownership. Her eyes lingered on his cock. She raised her eyebrows and said, “Already?” because it wasn’t that deflated anymore.

  “I’ve been dreaming about having sex with you for half my life,” he said, and his eyes were more than intense, they were passionate. He slid in again. “Maybe someday I’ll have had enough, but not yet, far from it.”

  Finally they more or less collapsed, entangled with each other, on the floor. Åsa with her head on his chest, he with his arms around her, hard, as if he was planning on never letting her go. They lay like that, took a break, panting and sweaty.

  “Do you want any more water?” Michel asked.

  Åsa shook her head. She draped one leg over his hips and slid over him as he lay on her freshly waxed marble floor.

  “Look at me,” she commanded as she put her hands on his chest, straddling him.

  Michel’s eyes obediently locked onto hers; they were foggy with arousal.

  She leaned forward and kissed him. He eagerly kissed her back.

  “Are you up for any more?” she asked.

  “Are you kidding?” he asked huskily. His eyes were burning hot as he grasped her hips.

  So Åsa rode him. Slowly, to begin with, but faster and faster as they found a common pace. She rode him like he was an animal, a slave, a ch
erished lover.

  “Touch yourself,” he ordered and she did, until they both came, loud and sweaty and at the same time.

  Åsa collapsed onto his chest. Her muscles would be sore. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had such acrobatic sex.

  He placed a hand on her hair, still breathing hard, and it occurred to her—a bit too late—that it probably wasn’t all that ethical for Investum’s chief attorney to be having sex on her kitchen floor with one of the men who was in the middle of a hostile takeover of the board of her boss’s company.

  Some people would probably call that a moral gray area.

  She listened to Michel’s pounding heart and knew that right now he cared as much about Investum as she did—which was to say not at all.

  What had happened between them had nothing to do with Investum. Tomorrow Michel would continue doing what he could to take over her boss’s company. And she would fight him, of course. It was what it was, and it meant less than nothing.

  Michel moved beneath her, mumbled something. He was starting to go limp again, but she didn’t want to get up yet. She tightened her internal muscles and smiled at his moan.

  He’d said he loved her a little while ago. Maybe that was true—probably it was; Michel was a romantic, after all. But there was a lot of other stuff that felt up in the air, that was for sure. Her and him. The future, all of fucking life.

  Åsa wriggled a smidge and made a slight face from pain when she lifted a tender knee.

  There were a lot of things in this world that were damned uncertain. One thing was certain, though, she thought as she studied her bruised knee, and it was that if she and Michel continued on in this way, she was going to have to talk to her interior decorator as soon as possible.

  Because Swedish marble might be nice to look at.

  But it was hard as hell to have sex on.

  50

  Monday, July 28

  When the ill-fated Monday morning finally dawned, gray and chilly, Natalia was still lying in bed with sleep in her eyes, her heart ticking away as she tried to go back to sleep. After listening to the blackbirds and something that sounded like geese for a few hours, she gave up and went out to the kitchen. She made green tea, padded out to the balcony, curled up under a blanket, and just let time go by.