And it would catch him. Consume him.
It would destroy him. Bring him low.
And yet, it was quite possibly the only thing that would ever allow him to breathe.
In her he had found his destruction, and his renewal, and there was not a clear path ahead of him.
Except that she was his. His.
She cried out, her internal muscles pulsing around him as her orgasm overtook her, and he followed behind, roaring as if it were a great victory in battle, crying out his claiming as if there were ears to hear.
And then it was over. The storm. And yet it simply felt like the quiet of it. Not the end. Not truly. For it was only the beginning. She curled up against him, nestled in the furs, her head on his chest.
And he could see their lives entwined, bringing them to this moment, and yet, even seeing it all, it made no sense. How had they arrived here?
Inevitable winds of fate? He did not believe in such things. A man made his own path.
And yet she felt like something more than a choice.
“I’m hungry,” she said softly.
And when they ate dinner, they did so naked, wrapped in furs, with her looking delightfully disheveled.
They spent the next few days like that. There was no reason to wear clothes. There was no contact with the outside world. It was simply the two of them, lost in a reality that could not be contained outside of this place.
For a media frenzy awaited them, and the demand to perform. And none of that was here. Here, there was nothing but their bodies. Nothing but their pleasure. Here, he began to feel something like comfort. Something like home.
And it felt like something close to peace for the first time since he had left the one place he had ever truly thought of as home.
Olive was beginning to realize that nothing was going to magically spark between the two of them that would prevent her from having a conversation she simply didn’t want to have.
She was beginning to realize that it was different when you had your actual emotions invested in something. It wasn’t going to be clean or easy or quick. It wasn’t just a business deal. It did matter how it happened. It mattered... All of it.
The things that she had done before had been out of allegiance to her father. A desire to give him exactly what he wanted, even though he wasn’t here. But this was for her.
Her feelings for Gunnar were hers.
And the risk was hers.
It was such a catastrophic feeling. She felt rocked, altered. She felt afraid. Because she was going to have to risk something, not a contract. Her soul.
But she had made a decision.
He had bought her the skimpiest bathing suit of all time, as if a bathing suit were at all necessary here. But she wondered if he liked it purely for decoration. He did that sometimes. Make love to her with her clothes on. He had her naked too, but there seemed to be a particular thing he got out of leaving articles of clothing in place. She couldn’t deny there was something sexy about it. When all he could manage to do was open the front of his pants and have her with all of his other items in place, it made her feel cherished, which was a funny thing, because she never would’ve imagined that animalistic passion could equate to feeling cherished, but it did. It made her feel special. Made her feel like she mattered.
Like she was something special to him.
She worried sometimes that she was simply a shackle. Because he had done this for the sake of their baby, and yet... They didn’t talk about the baby. They didn’t really... They didn’t really speak of the future. It was difficult. Strange. This thing between them. It seemed wholly focused on them, and yet he would never have said that he was doing this because of her.
Or maybe he would. It was the asking, that was what she had to do.
“I have something a little bit different planned for tonight,” she said.
What she had learned, being up there on the mountain, was that there were people she could call for assistance. And for the two hours a day that they were both off doing work, she had sacrificed a little bit of time planning this.
“You’re going to want to bundle up,” she said. “It’s going to be cold.”
She could have told him to bring his swimsuit, but she wanted him naked.