by Kait Jagger
Again, Luna stopped herself from giving voice to the bitter thoughts running through her head: that Augusta banked on this response from those she intended to use, exploiting their sympathy to get what she wanted. Instead, she knelt on the rug next to Stefan and placed her hand on his.
‘So no,’ he concluded, ‘no time for personal grooming.’
Reaching her other hand up into the curl behind his ear, Luna reiterated, ‘I like it.’ She slid her fingers to his cheek, studying the shadows under his eyes. ‘But I don’t like to see you so tired.’ She smiled and attempted a jest: ‘Twice in two days I’ve been awake before you. Who are you and where have you put Stefan Lundgren?’
He laughed at that and pressed her back down to the rug. ‘I am feeling less tired all the time, Miss Gregory,’ he said, lowering his face to her chest and nudging his nose against her nipple. ‘Ah, your breasts,’ he said reverently. ‘Third on the list of Luna body parts I have missed.’ He licked the nipple, watching it tighten, then covered it with his mouth.
Luna closed her eyes, feeling his tongue moving on her, and her clitoris, as ever, stirring in response. His hand moved to her other breast and gently squeezed its nipple, then traced the aureole.
‘There’s… aahh,’ she sighed. ‘There’s a list, is there?’
He lifted his mouth off her and replied briefly, ‘Oh yes,’ before shifting his body on top of hers and latching onto her other breast.
Luna placed her hands behind his head, drawing him to her. ‘And number one is?’ she gasped as he inverted her nipple with the tip of his tongue.
Stefan removed his mouth from her and crawled his way, military style, up her body till they were face to face. ‘Your eyes,’ he said simply.
It wasn’t the answer Luna had been expecting, and she found herself smiling up at him. ‘Especially when they are like this,’ he added, stroking the hair away from her forehead.
‘Not Hallviken,’ she ventured.
‘Not Hallviken, please God,’ he chuckled. But then almost immediately sobered. She watched his eyes travelling down her face. She didn’t need to ask what number two was; she knew the answer as surely as his lips came down on hers, their tongues twining together. How, she asked herself, how had she lived for the past two months without this? Without the hard line of his mouth meeting the softness of hers, the taste of him, even the way his mouth, like the rest of him, was slightly warmer than hers.
Feeling his cock hard as steel against the hollow of her stomach, she disengaged her lips from his with a slight and thoroughly arousing hint of suction. ‘I want this to be slow,’ she said, stroking his back, running her fingertips along his spine.
‘Then I’ll make it slow,’ he promised, returning his lips to hers. She lifted her knees and he settled in between them, the head of his penis coming to rest directly on her clitoris. She felt him move his hips slightly, felt the pressure of his member upon her. Resting her hands on his hips, she wondered at their grace, the way they seemed to rise and fall and press and flex all of their own accord.
The head of his penis was at the mouth of her vagina now, just inside it, and Luna had to stop herself from wrapping her legs around him and pulling him in.
‘Tell me,’ she whispered, as he withdrew it, then pushed it back into her. ‘Tell me how I feel.’ They had played this game before, and she never tired of it, hearing what it was like for him, being inside her.
He inched further into her, then withdrew again. ‘It feels like…’ Again he pressed the very tip of himself against her and Luna felt herself practically gushing, flowing in welcome. Slowly, slowly he entered, then filled her. ‘There’s no other place I could be right now that could be better than this. It feels like this is where I belong.’
He pulled out again, then re-entered her. Luna lifted her knees further and he hooked his arms under them, pushing down on her thighs till he was deep, deep inside her. ‘Did you mean what you said,’ he asked, grazing his teeth against her jaw, ‘about making this last? Because I could do this for a very long time.’
He was as good as his word, and time slipped away as he silently, devotedly fucked her. It was only when Luna drew her fingernails along his buttocks, then placed her palms on them and urged them into her that his pace began to quicken. Eyes widening, he lowered his forehead to hers and pumped his hips against hers. She swore she felt it when he reached the point of no return, forcibly slowing himself so he could relish his final strokes.
He came with his head pressed into her hair, crying out her name as he arched into her one last time.
Later in bed they lay side by side, staring at each other, Luna’s hand resting on his chest.
‘Luna,’ he said after some time. ‘I didn’t crawl into Isabelle’s bed after you left. You believe that, don’t you?’
Her response was succinct: ‘You wouldn’t be here in mine if I didn’t.’ Rolling onto her back, she gingerly ran her fingernails across the scratches on her chest. When Stefan said nothing more, she added smilingly, ‘I note that you haven’t asked me whether I’ve been crawling into anyone’s bed.’
She felt him shrug slightly next to her. ‘I don’t think you have.’
He said this with such certainty the Luna let out a quick bark of laughter. ‘I’m not sure why, but I think I’m slightly offended.’
He was quick to clarify. ‘Something my father said, when he was forbidding me to ever darken your doorstep again. He said, “Luna is a serious girl. The kind who doesn’t love lightly.” I hoped, I believed he was right, that you loved me enough that you wouldn’t find it easy to move on.’
She’d been prepared to say something tart and humorous, but his tone was so… fervent, she couldn’t find it in herself to toy with him. Keeping her eyes fixed on the skylight she shook her head and said, ‘No, there hasn’t been anyone else.’
‘Would you be even more offended if I told you I’m very happy to hear that?’ he replied, and then they both laughed.
Yawning, Luna rolled back toward Stefan and motioned toward the bedside table. ‘Do me a favour? There are some gloves in the top drawer. Can you get them for me?’
Stefan retrieved them, but instead of passing them to her he studied them curiously in the moonlight, turning them over in his hands. They were white and thin, made of soft cotton. ‘What…?’ he began.
‘I scratch myself in my sleep if I don’t wear them,’ Luna admitted with some embarrassment.
‘Flicka…’ He shook his head sadly, sitting up immediately in the bed and kneeling next to her. Taking her right hand in his, he kissed her palm, then slowly pulled the glove over her fingers, adjusting it on her hand, pulling it tight. Then he ran his finger down the sensitive inside of her wrist and forearm. The hair on Luna’s neck rose – again, as much at the intense, almost painful pleasure of someone else caring for her as in answer to his innate understanding of her body.
He took her left hand and again kissed the palm, then bit the soft pad of her thumb, taking it into his mouth, sucking it gently as he trailed the other glove along her body, over the sharp angle of her hip bone, into the hollow of her stomach, between her breasts. His eyes glimmered in the darkness, never leaving hers as he repeated the process of fitting it to her hand.
Lacing his bare fingers with her gloved ones, he climbed on top of her and straddled her waist. He pushed first her right and then her left hand down onto the mattress. Luna’s sex prickled and filled, swelling for him as he dragged her hands down to the sides of her thighs and extended his body over her.
‘Open your legs, Luna,’ he instructed, and when she complied he said, ‘Wider.’ He slid down her body, licking the love bite on her neck, running his tongue along the scratches on her chest, kissing her ribs. When his tongue delved into her naval, Luna tried to extricate a hand from his, to bury her gloved fingers in his beautiful hair, but Stefan shook his head against her stomach and said, ‘No.’
He unlaced his fingers from hers and positioned her hands palms up on the
bedspread, giving her an intent look, silently compelling her to leave them where they were. He slid down further till his nose pressed into the soft cleft between her outer labia and her thigh. She heard him inhale, felt his nose against her hairline. And Luna waited, waited for him to put his mouth on her.
But instead he lifted his head, placed his left hand over her wrist and encircled it with his fingers. And did the same with his right. She saw him looking first at one, then the other, studying them, awaiting her response. She knew then, what he expected of her, and curved her own gloved fingers around his wrists. He inhaled again, eyes consuming the image in front of him, and swiftly lowered his mouth to her.
Luna panted once, twice, then twisted her cheek into the pillow. He was so good at this, his tongue homing directly in on her clitoris in a way that would have been unbearable were it not… aahhh, so soft against her, so gentle, so insistent. Persuading her to feel more; finding her vulnerability and plundering it.
She moved her heels up the bed, felt his fingers grip her wrists, his forearms holding them against her thighs. ‘Stefan,’ she moaned as the movement of his tongue became agonizing and the keening joy of it overtook her, reaching up, up and over, subsuming her.
When she’d finished surrendering to him, gasping her release, Stefan covered her body with his again, lifted her gloved hands above her head, forced them down onto her pillow. And drove his cock straight home.
*
He left on Tuesday morning, having spent most of Monday entertaining himself while Luna worked. She felt guilty about it, but he’d been quick to reassure her.
‘I’m a big boy, älskling,’ he’d said, ladling a helping of scrambled eggs onto her plate in the kitchen and looking at her so purposefully that she immediately started shovelling them into her mouth. ‘I will find things to do.’
And find them he did. Luna returned from a meeting with the local tourist board at just after 4pm to discover him chatting with Malcolm and George in the field outside, surrounded by sheep. And she couldn’t but be impressed when he listed everything he’d gotten up to, including bleeding the radiators in her bedroom, replacing the washer on a leaky tap in the bathroom, and visiting the fish market and textile museum down in Lerwick.
‘They love you at that museum, Luna,’ he reported enthusiastically. ‘When I told them I was your boyfriend I got the special tour and a go at using their loom.’ He was pan frying fish on the Rayburn, his tablet propped up on the kitchen table, open to a cookery website. Luna warmed inwardly at his characteristic exuberance, as well as his description of himself.
Later, she reached down from the bed to rest her hand on the radiator on the adjoining wall, marvelling at how much more heat it put out now that he’d bled it.
‘You know how to do everything, don’t you?’ she said, only half-jokingly.
‘Everything that counts,’ he replied, promptly pulling her ass against him, lifting her knee, and gliding his hand between her legs.
So it was a thoroughly… replete Luna who accompanied Stefan to the front door on Tuesday morning. Clad only in her vest and sweatpants, she found herself feeling suddenly and inexplicably shy as he said he’d send his flight details for Friday, and issued final eating instructions for the rest of the week.
‘No more skipping breakfast, yes?’ he said, kissing her in the open doorway. Luna heard the sound of gravel crunching on the drive and peered past him to see Dagmar’s car. Her heart sank a little; she’d hoped to put this off for a while. And did she just imagine it, or having clocked Dagmar’s approach himself, did Stefan’s kiss linger just a little longer, and his hand reach a little lower to clasp her waist?
As he walked to his rental vehicle, Dagmar emerged from the driver’s seat of her car. She looked first at him, then at Luna, still standing in the door.
‘Dagmar,’ Stefan nodded in greeting, not smiling. Then he got into his car and drove away.
As her boss went to retrieve her bags from the car boot, Luna briefly considered her options. She could wait for her, offer some limited explanation of what had occurred between her and Stefan that weekend. Or she could behave as she had tried to behave throughout her career, drawing a line between her personal and professional selves.
Luna turned back into the cottage. And climbed the stairs to her room, off to get dressed for work.
Chapter Nine
‘Du t’ink I’m bein’ trawirt,’ Magnus Petersen said, drawing on his pipe ruminatively.
It was Tuesday afternoon, and Luna was standing with the farmer next to his ‘lammiehouse,’ a stone outbuilding in his field that he was cleaning out prior to the start of lambing season. His strong Shetland dialect was tricky to understand, but Luna thought she caught the gist. ‘Trawirt’, she knew, meant difficult, awkward. And Petersen was being awkward.
She’d come to talk to him again about joining the wool cooperative. Like Malcolm, Petersen was a crofter, with a flock that currently numbered somewhere near two hundred sheep. At the moment, he bred mostly white sheep, whose fleeces fetched the best price on the market. And he wasn’t convinced by the offer on the table from Sören. He wasn’t getting any younger, he told Luna, it would take effort to completely transform his flock, and besides, what was in it for him?
Luna took a sip of the tea he’d made her, trying not to think about the grime inside and out of the mug it was in.
‘No,’ she said, ‘but I think possibly you’re being short-sighted. Mr Lundgren is offering you an extremely generous deal, where he will pay you 126 pence per kilo for black fleeces, the same price you would get for white. You would be provided free of charge with the services of a prize-winning black ram to serve your ewes, plus advice and support from Malcolm Couper.’
Petersen blew out his cheeks and made a dismissive sound, as if to say he needed no advice from the likes of Couper.
‘And you would become part of a cooperative that will represent your interests in the future.’
Petersen grunted. ‘I’ve ’eard dine man Lundgren wants to charge more den a t’ousand poun’ for dese coats, is dat right?’
Luna lifted her eyebrows at him. ‘The coat is a bespoke item, aimed at an extremely select market.’
‘I’ll say. Rich folks. And he t’inks he can actually sell ’em?’
‘He knows he can.’
‘Well den, dint sound like much of a deal to me. Tying me to a t’ree-year contract wit no price increases.’
‘We are paying you double what black fleeces would capture on the open market,’ Luna said, ‘and the three-year commitment is non-negotiable.’
And she swore, she swore she heard Stefan’s voice just over her shoulder then, saying, ‘Cut this conversation short, Luna. He’s playing you now.’ Draining her cup of tea, she handed it back to Petersen and said, ‘Thanks for the brew and for your time.’ Zipping up her Gore-Tex jacket, she retrieved her helmet from the stone bench outside the lambing shed.
She took a risk then, and channelled Nancy, the most steely-nerved negotiator she knew. ‘I have two more meetings with farmers tomorrow, and then a conference call with Mr Lundgren on Thursday. You have my number. If I haven’t heard from you by Thursday morning, I’ll assume you aren’t interested and proceed with other options.’
A deadline. Something to concentrate the mind, as Nancy would say. It was a calculated risk, as well as a bald-faced lie. Luna had no call with Sören on Thursday, but she sensed that Petersen would drag this out indefinitely if she didn’t force the issue. She needed him more than she’d let on; their Scottish funding relied on a significant percentage of the cooperative being made up of crofters. But if she wasn’t going to get him, she may as well find out now.
It started to rain as Luna drove back to the cottage, her work for the day finished, and she slowed the bike to a crawl when she saw a car a quarter of a mile ahead of her aquaplane on a stretch of waterlogged tarmac.
Luna wasn’t particularly looking forward to getting home. Her boss had been even more dou
r than usual with her that morning, and Luna caught her shaking her head when she opened the fridge to find it fully stocked. Had Dagmar witnessed Stefan wooing previous paramours with gifts of provisions? She was going to have to ask him where this powerful mutual dislike was coming from, for she’d seen it on his face that morning too.
Dagmar wasn’t home when Luna got in, so she quickly stripped out of her suit and hung it in front of the Rayburn to dry, then went into the living room to empty out the ashes in the wood burner. She was just shovelling them into a bin liner when her mobile rang.
‘Luna Gregory,’ she answered, dragging a stray strand of hair out of her mouth.
‘Petersen here,’ came a gruff voice on the phone. ‘I accept Mr Lundgren’s offer. Bring me the contract da moarn ’n’ I’ll sign.’
Luna was still staring at her phone when Dagmar came in.
‘Hur går det, Luna?’
‘Tack, bra,’ Luna replied, giving it a bit of Swedish understatement. And then she beamed and said, ‘Keep your coat on. I’m taking you out to celebrate. That was Magnus Petersen on the phone.’
Dagmar sat down in the chair opposite Luna. ‘And?’
‘We’ve got him. He says he’ll sign the contract.’
Her dour boss smiled then, a big, excited, relieved smile. ‘Well done, Luna! It is me who will take you out.’ She reached for Luna’s cheek, rubbing it gently. Soot from the wood burner, Luna realised. Then Dagmar squinted. ‘But don’t we have—?’
She was interrupted by a knock on the door. Luna slapped her forehead. She’d completely forgotten they were hosting knitting club tonight.
Two hours later and knitting club had become something of an impromptu party. Thanks in part to Stefan’s provisioning generosity, they’d gotten through four bottles of wine and almost a case of beer, and done very little knitting. Judith Andersen, who was on her third glass of Pinot Grigio, was regaling them all with tales of her misspent youth, including some surprisingly saucy revelations that had Ruth Ollason laughingly covering daughter Maisie’s ears.
