The Near & Far Series

by Serena Clarke

  But at the bedroom door, he stopped, a question in his eyes. Was she sure? In that moment, faced with his good manners, every reason to stop right here crowded into her head. It was bad enough that she was here like some kind of secret agent—how much worse would it be to do this, and then be found out? Because now she knew what his work meant to him, and what a betrayal would mean. No, she definitely shouldn’t go any further.

  But she wanted wanted wanted it, and the driving ache was impossible to resist with him right in front of her. She glanced down. With the proof of his own wanting right in front of her too. She might be unethical, but hell, she was only human.

  “I’m sure,” she said, and led him into the room.

  By the bed, he pulled off her jumper, revealing the tight white thermal top she was wearing underneath. Oh no—from llama to granny. She’d forgotten about that frumpy thing. At least she was wearing a matching bra and panties underneath. Because now he was going to see every item of her underwear…and more.

  She tried to cover the thermal with her arms, wishing they’d turned off the light in the main room. “Ugh, this is so not sexy.”

  He took her hands and pulled them away from her body. “Yes it is.” He ran his hands down her sides, dipping into her curve of her waist and back out again at her hips. “Look at you.”

  But she could only look at him, lit from behind in a broad-shouldered silhouette. Then she grabbed the hem of the thermal and tore it over her head, letting it fall to the floor. He let out a breath, and pulled off his own jumper (not Norwegian knitwear, thank God). She tugged his t-shirt out of his jeans, then slipped her hands under the soft cotton fabric. His skin was warm at her fingertips, and she let them run up his back, then around his sides to his flat stomach. She could feel the breaths he was taking, shallower and faster, just the same as her own. In one impatient movement, he had the t-shirt off, and a flush of heat ran through her as they pressed together, only the lace of her bra between his bare chest and her hardening nipples.

  He reached around and released her hair from its ponytail, so that it fell down her back and around her shoulders, silky against her skin.

  “Like sunset,” he murmured, running his fingers through the coppery lengths, and she shivered.

  Then he stepped forwards, and she let herself fall to the bed, wriggling backwards as he followed. Propped up on his arms above her, his dark hair fell over his forehead, and his face was serious again. The rough-spun blanket covering the bed was scratchy against her bare back and arms, a contrast to his smooth skin as she explored the foreign country of his body. Soft skin, hard muscle, hot under her fingertips. An involuntary sound of appreciation escaped her lips, and he smiled, then lowered himself to kiss her, the length of his body against hers.

  But she pushed him away, and reached for his belt buckle. “You’re overdressed.”

  He stood up and undid the belt, shucked off his jeans, and was back in an instant.

  “Now,” he said, and kissed her with the most restrained urgency, a starving man at a feast still remembering his manners, making her squirm and hunger for him even more.

  Where had this man come from? Maybe she could have guessed there’d be something sultry beneath the surly—all that suppressed angst had to boil over some time. She wrapped her legs around him and let her last thoughts slip away, sinking into the irresistible spell of his lips and hands, of shuddery breaths and small moans and whispered exclamations. And the one blazing central point where their bodies met, separated only by the thinnest layers of cotton and lace.

  But then, through the lust-haze, a sliver of reality intruded. “Do you have any protection?” she whispered. “You know, a condom?”

  He shook his head. “No. Do you?”

  “No.”

  He rested his forehead against hers. “Shit.”

  “Yeah.” She felt like crying, or possibly screaming.

  They stayed like that for a few seconds, then he pulled back and looked at her, wicked determination in his eyes. “Don’t move.”

  Slowly, steadily, he traced a trail of kisses from her lips, down the side of her neck, and between her breasts, only pausing at the deepest point of her cleavage. Then she felt the warmth of his tongue against her skin, and the heat of his breath, and her body arched underneath him. With a quiet laugh, he continued down, stopping to circle her belly button, and she hardly remembered to worry about the appendectomy scar there, or the fact that her stomach wasn’t flat enough for her liking. Between lips, tongue, and the occasional scrape of stubble, she hardly remembered her own name, and by the time he reached the edge of her panties, there was nothing in the world but his mouth.

  And then he paused. She twisted upwards in blissful frustration, his lips so close to where she wanted him to be, his breath warming the one spot that had taken over her entire body. Why why why had he stopped?

  Oh. Her blurry mind slowly became aware of a sound…a phone ringing. Her phone ringing, in the pocket of her jeans, abandoned on the bedroom floor. Well, not ringing, but playing the theme from Jaws—da-da, da-da, da-da-da-da-da-da—that she’d selected for Alcina. It had been hilarious at the time, Jaws and The Shark. Not so much now.

  She lifted her head, and he was looking at her, bemused, his dark hair rumpled, his eyes heavy with heat and promise. She wasn’t interrupting that for anything. She shook her head in desperation, and then, mercifully, the phone went silent.

  He ducked his head again, and she sank back, one hand tangled in her hair, the other pressed against her belly, every shameless millimetre of her longing to rise up and meet his teasing mouth. Patience, patience…

  Then Jaws rang out again, and he pushed himself up on his hands.

  “Do you need to answer?”

  She looked at his shoulders, the muscles extra defined as they held his body weight. Then at his broad chest, the abs sketched upon his stomach, the impressive fullness straining the front of his boxer briefs, and then back to the tempting curves of his lips.

  “No. Definitely not.”

  He grinned, and returned to his task. Finally, finally, his tongue met that sweet, aching spot that had been waiting for him. And as the waves rose in her body in answer to his tender, unrelenting strokes, she knew she was in the worst, best, most addictive kind of trouble.

  Seventeen

  For a creature so untamed, Brynjar seemed remarkably relaxed in his little room with the glass front. Maybe he knew that being there was actually a good thing. Through the glass, his dark eyes regarded Zoe steadily, a window into another world. Did he remember her, or understand that she had been responsible for his rescue? As they looked at each other, she felt like he must.

  “He’s amazing,” she whispered to Jakob, as Emil measured out a serving of dog food.

  He nodded. “They all are.”

  Emil went in and set down the bowl, and she held her breath.

  “Is it safe?”

  “Yes,” Jakob replied. “He’s not at full strength, anyway.”

  She looked again, and saw that one of the wolf’s legs had a small shaved patch, where a drip was still inserted, bandaged to hold it steady. “Oh. Poor thing.”

  “If he was poisoned, it should help him process it faster.”

  He put a hand at the small of her back. It felt like a combination of reassurance, and pride that she seemed to care so much. She might be secretly on the opposing team, but you’d have to have a heart of stone to not be affected by this denizen of the wild, first suffering at the hands of humans, and then being saved by them. She sighed. It was a crazy world.

  Just then, Vera came in, wearing regular clothes instead of her tunic, and Zoe remembered that it was Saturday.

  “Oh,” Vera said, her eyes going from Zoe, to Jakob, then back again. “I just wanted to check on the wolf.”

  Zoe shifted under her scrutiny, acutely aware she was wearing the same clothes, and that Jakob’s hand was still at her back. He didn’t take it away though, and she liked it there. She
liked it a lot. She snuck a glance at him, but he didn’t seem at all self-conscious.

  Last night, after her own climax—powerful enough that she was sure she’d thawed the snow on the roof above—she’d been jelly. But within a few minutes, she’d itched to return the favour, aroused all over again at the thought. She rolled over towards him, but he just lay a kiss on the side of her neck.

  “Go to sleep,” he whispered. “It’s late.”

  “But what about you?” she said, reaching for him in the dark.

  “No.” He grabbed her hand and tangled his fingers in hers. “We have time.”

  Not enough time, she wanted to say. Her first week was almost over already.

  But they’d drifted off together, and she had the kind of dreamless, sated sleep that only came after such a release. She woke up to the sound of him in the shower, and blushed as the night before replayed in her head.

  And she blushed again now, as Vera narrowed her eyes and came to exactly the right conclusion.

  But Jakob wasn’t blushing. When Emil came back out, they fell into a discussion in Swedish, and Vera joined in. Zoe found a chair and sat down, pleased at least that Brynjar seemed to be stable. She leaned her chin in her hands, and watched him finish his small portion of food. Apparently you could be wild, and yet tame enough to take what you need. She glanced back at Jakob. He was human proof of that.

  And what she needed was more of him. In the (literally) cold light of day, with two unanswered messages and three unread texts from The Shark waiting on her phone, she knew she shouldn’t. But she and Jakob had unfinished business now. She owed him. And she intended to pay him back…preferably with substantial interest.

  * * *

  Jakob stopped the car in the garage, and switched off the engine. They turned to look at each other. With Brynjar out of immediate danger, the tension had lifted, and their mood was cheerful—not surprising, she thought, after the activities of the night before. In the sudden silence, she couldn’t help laughing, and he smiled.

  “That was…something.”

  She nodded. “It was.”

  They undid their seatbelts, but no one was going anywhere.

  “Would you like something else?” she asked.

  He leaned closer. “I think I would.”

  “I wonder what that something might be…” She lay one finger on his lips, then began to trail it down, down, down, over his chin, in a wavering path down his chest, closer and closer to—

  They both jumped as Bengt flung open the door on the driver’s side.

  “Hej!” he said, holding a snow shovel like a soldier on duty. “The heroes are back. How is the patient?”

  “Good,” Jakob replied, as she whipped her hand back and gathered her composure.

  “Excellent.” Bengt looked across to her. “Good work, Zoe.”

  “I didn’t really do anything,” she said. “But thank you. I’m just happy he’s recovering.”

  She and Jakob got out, and they all went out of the garage into the biting cold. The new snow had covered the driveway and left deep pillowy piles against the house, and she could see where Bengt had started clearing it away.

  “We need a few more days to be sure,” Jakob reminded her. “And if he was poisoned, I want to know who did it.”

  “Yes,” Bengt said, his usually cheerful face grim. “We will find them.”

  Jakob reached out and took the shovel. “I’ll help you.”

  “Tack, Jakob,” Bengt said. “And you go inside, Zoe. Someone came to see you.”

  “Oh! Okay.”

  She took one last look at Jakob, already wielding the shovel like an expert. Snow is work, he’d said to her when they first met. She would have loved to stay and watch him work, flexing his muscles, especially now she knew what those muscles looked like. But instead she smiled, hugging the knowledge to herself, and went to see who was waiting for her inside.

  Four little arms embraced her as she came in the door.

  “Hej!” she said, gathering Lena and Ebba into a triple bear hug. She looked over their heads, through to the living room, and saw Malin smiling. “Hi! Thanks again for the party.”

  “It was fun,” she replied. “But we didn’t get much time to talk. The girls wanted us all to get together.” She said something to them, and they nodded, smiling at Zoe, then milled around her as she went in and sat down.

  “That’s so lovely,” she said.

  Like everyone, she’d heard the cliché of the cold, distant Swede—but so far, most people had been perfectly nice. Certainly no worse than your average English person, anyway. Or the people in any of the countries she’d lived in as a kid. In fact, it felt like she’d got to know people here faster than in any other place.

  One person in particular…

  “So we thought we would come and have morning tea with you,” Malin was saying.

  “Ah. Fika?” Zoe gave the girls a wink, and Lena winked back—the cutest six-year-old version of a wink, with both little blue eyes closed.

  Greta came in, beaming. “Listen to that. I said you’d be a real Swede.”

  “Maybe.” She laughed. “But is it okay? I haven’t done my jobs yet.”

  “I did them,” Greta said. “You were busy.” Her eyes caught Zoe’s, a sparkle of mischief evident.

  She was so busted. “Thank you.”

  Greta just nodded, obviously enjoying the tease.

  “Well it’s nice to have everyone here, together.” She turned to Malin. “So your car is okay now?”

  Malin rolled her eyes. “Ugh. I think so. Sometimes it won’t start,” she explained for Zoe.

  “I’m amazed that anything starts in this weather,” Zoe said.

  Greta tutted. “You should buy a new car.”

  “I know,” Malin said. “When Anton gets back he can help me choose.”

  “Good,” said Greta, satisfied. Then she turned to the girls. “Okay. Ska vi fika? Come and help me.” They went off to the kitchen.

  “So when will Anton be back?” Zoe asked.

  Malin screwed up her nose. “Not until spring. He works on an oil rig, in the North Atlantic sea.”

  “Wow. You must miss him.”

  She shrugged. “It’s okay. But we get used to being without him, then when he comes back all our routines are broken. It’s hard to make him…fit in again.”

  “Oh, I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “But they pay him well, so I can be home with the girls.”

  “Well, that’s one good thing. They’re so gorgeous.”

  She looked pleased. “Thank you. Honestly, I don’t know what I’d do without them.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “What about you—are you having fun here?”

  “I am.” After last night, the fun had definitely stepped up a notch. His promise lingered in her mind—we have time. She couldn’t help it—she was very interested in her conflict of interest. She tried not to laugh, the Jakob high still lingering. “It’s interesting work.”

  Malin pursed her lips. “Hmm. And working with Jakob—is that okay?”

  Remain neutral, she told herself. “Yes, it’s fine. I don’t see him an awful lot, but he seems very dedicated to his work.”

  “He is. And what do you think about the wolves? Should we have them so close to humans?”

  Even after only a short time in Lillavik, the issue didn’t seem at all clear. “That’s a hard question. I can see both sides, I suppose.”

  Judging by Malin’s face, she was unconvinced. Fair enough. Zoe herself was only just able to hear a wolf’s howl without freaking out.

  “Did Greta tell you about the wolf I found? He might have been poisoned.”

  “Yes, she told me. She was upset about it, but she didn’t want the girls to see. You were in the right place at the right time.”

  “I was.”

  At that moment, the girls came back in. Each of them proudly carried a plate, Lena with the kanelbullar Zoe had come to love, and Ebb
a with gingerbread biscuits. Greta followed with a tray of mugs, glasses, juice and a coffee pot, and they settled in for fika and chat.

  With the little ones having a wonderful time, it was the sweetest tea party Zoe had ever been to. And if she had to stifle a yawn every now and then, after her ‘interesting’ night, she made sure not to show it.

  * * *

  That afternoon, after changing into fresh clothes, she went to help Greta and Stina over at the guesthouse, making up for missing her morning’s tasks. They were down in the basement, having a sort out.

  Greta sighed as she surveyed the mess, kneeling in the middle of dusty boxes, broken pieces of furniture, bags of old-fashioned linen, and ancient skis…the kind of assorted debris that isn’t needed any more, but can’t seem to be thrown away either.

  “I don’t know why I kept all this. Who’s going to sort it out when I’m gone?”

  Stina shushed her. “You’re not going anywhere.” She rummaged in a box, and pulled out a child’s drawing. “Look at this! So sweet.”

  Stick figure people with balloon heads stood waving between zig-zaggy trees, under a huge, smiling sun. A wobbly blue circle off to one side looked like it might represent the pond, or maybe even the lake.

  “Oh, cute. Is it Oscar’s?” Zoe asked.

  Stina pulled out another drawing, and an old school book. “You can’t throw this stuff away.”

  But Greta’s face closed over. “Just leave that box,” she instructed.

  Stina glanced at Zoe, but put everything back in and closed the box again.

  “You must miss those days,” Zoe said.

  Greta occupied herself with a pile of old magazines. “Hmm.”

  The girls looked at each other, and Stina shrugged.

  Then Greta stood up, vigorously dusting herself off. “Let’s leave this for now. The university group is going tomorrow, and then we have a few days with no guests. It’s a good chance to do a big clean of each room.”

  “No,” Stina said. “It’s a chance for you to have a holiday.”