by L. Langdon
“Oh, yes.” He continued his exploration, turning to her hands. “But even your hands are soft. With all of the work we do, they should be like mine.”
Gerri found it harder and harder to concentrate as Sven moved back to her torso and started caressing her breast. “I…” She caught her breath. It was too much work to evade his question while his hand was driving her crazy. “OK,” she finally gasped, “Remember when you gave me a hard time about how heavy my bags were? I have lotions and skin creams in there.”
“Well, I guess I can’t tease you about that any more. I like the result.” With that, he lowered his head to her other breast and teased the nipple with his lips.
Gerri was already impatient. She realized that Sven was controlling her motion—and their pace—with the weight of his arms and legs. On impulse, she squirmed out from under him and sat astride him. Oh, this is good. She felt in complete control. She grasped his organ, held it against her pelvis, and stroked his rigid length up and down. She watched his face as she did so.
Sven’s jaw dropped. “Gerri…umm…slow down. You’re going to finish me off too soon if you keep doing that.”
Gerri considered, ever so briefly, making some joke—perhaps an outrageous demand for her compliance—but she knew that the time for that had passed. She gave Sven one long stroke with her hand, then raised up on her knees to guide him into her body.
Sven sighed as Gerri sat back down on him, pushing him into her—a deep sigh, replete with satisfaction and yearning for more. He extended his arms and pulled her down onto his chest. Then there were no words as they stroked together—occasional grunts and mutterings communicated their pleasure as they moved.
Finally, Gerri’s movements grew more frantic and she started a corkscrew-like motion. Sven grabbed her hips and drove into her until he heard her cry of triumph. That sent him over the edge and he cried out hoarsely and he lost himself in her.
Gerri collapsed against him and panted as she listened to his breathing and felt his heartbeat. “Mmm, nice,” was all she could manage.
Sometime later, Sven woke from a doze, and arranged Gerri, now fast asleep, more comfortably beside him. And why shouldn’t she be? She just got through with one of the most eventful days of her life. Within thirty seconds, he was unconscious as well.
Chapter 23
Gerri woke up early the next morning and lay there listening. She smiled at how she had internalized Sven’s nautical habits. She listened for the sound of rain (none, although she could see through the window that it was cloudy); wind (just a little—not enough to cause them problems or discomfort while fishing); any errant noises that might indicate problems with the boat or with the anchorage (thankfully, none).
She turned over to face Sven and involuntarily emitted a loud groan.
His eyes flew open and he gave her a worried look. “Are you OK?”
“Sore muscles,” she said with a wince. She then bit her tongue, deciding that it would be unseemly to remind him that she had exercised some muscles vigorously in the last twenty four hours which had never before been exercised. Unfortunately, from the look on his face, she didn’t have to. It was the smug look of a well satisfied man—one whose major concern in life at the moment was trying not to laugh.
Gerri laughed for both of them, but she also shoved him. “It’s all your fault, you brute.”
As if he had been given permission, Sven started chuckling. “My fault? I seem to remember some little cowgirl who wanted to ride bareback—or should I say, bare bottom.”
“It’s not my fault that you’re built like a horse.” With that, she buried her face in his chest. What’s got into me? I can’t believe that I said that!
Sven put his arms around her and held her for a minute. Then he said, “I guess then that I should say ‘My fault? Neighhh…’”
“That was so bad,” she laughed, “You have no shame.”
“None.” He paused. “Wally claims that I start punning only when I’m happy. I’m certainly happy now.”
“Good,” Gerri wriggled, “me, too.”
Her movements reminded her again of her sore muscles. On the farm, they treated sore muscles by going out the next day and working some more. They didn’t really have much choice, but it was effective. Gerri didn’t want to suggest sex again, though, from what she could feel of Sven’s body, he would be more than willing. She supposed that they could get an early start on the fishing day, but…
“Sven, I’d like to take a short walk. I need to stretch my legs.”
“OK, let me get ready.” As Sven started to get up, he, too, groaned. Gerri wasn’t the only one with unused muscles, he realized.
“I can go by myself if you want. I can handle the rowboat.”
Sven sat on the edge of the bed and took a breath. “No, I’ll come with you.”
“Don’t you trust me?” Gerri sat up with a frown.
He turned and looked at her with a wry smile. “No, I don’t trust you.” Gerri looked surprised and hurt. He continued. “I don’t trust you not to tease me forever and ever about how you wore me out last night.” With that, he reached over and grabbed her, pulling both of them down to the bed.
After a torrid kiss that had Gerri rethinking the possibility of sex as a restorative, she forced her thoughts back to the walk. She grinned and said, “I hadn’t thought of that, but it would be tempting, wouldn’t it?”
When they reached shore, Sven directed her to a creek. “The beach is muddy. I’ll get out here with the bow line and pull the skiff up to the tree line.”
Gerri looked at the creek calculatingly. “I could row up there. The current doesn’t look that fast.”
“Maybe you could. I grant that you’re strong. But it’s harder than it looks. If you row at six feet per second—which is a lot of effort in this skiff—and the creek flows at five, then you’re only making one foot per second. Then, if you hit a sandbar…”
Gerri was delighted by his acknowledgment of her strength, but distracted by his arithmetic. Maybe that would be an entry for her teaching journal. She didn’t have that many algebra entries. She filed it away to think about later.
Sven mistook her silence for resentment and tried to mollify her. “Look at the bright side. When we come back, you’ll be rowing with the current. You’ll be really rolling.” Gerri didn’t say anything. He tried again, breaking briefly into song. “Rolling on the river…”
That grabbed her attention away from her journal. “Sven! You’ve been holding out on me. You have a nice voice. Did you ever sing in a choir?”
“Oh, no. I’d be afraid to sing in public.”
“You’d be great. At least you stayed on key.” She entertained a brief fantasy of Sven being at Pee Dee State and in the choir, and then sighed. So far away—both in miles and in circumstance—and so hopeless to think about.
After Sven had the boat far enough up the creek, he tied the bow line to a tree and pointed. “Right there is a trail that we can take to go up the hill. At the top is a ridge with a nice view.”
“A trail? I thought that we were in the wilderness.”
“We are. It’s an animal trail.”
Gerri stopped in her tracks. “An animal trail? What kind of animals? Not big, hungry ones, I hope.”
Sven grinned at her. “Probably not. And we’ll scare them away if we’re noisy. If necessary, I’ll sing some more. That’ll scare them for sure.”
They compromised—they both sang as they climbed the trail. Sven’s repertoire was limited, so he stumbled through snatches of several, including as much as he could remember of ‘Proud Mary.’
Gerri didn’t want to try that one, however. “It’s not my type of song—too country and western.”
Sven thought about that for a minute. “I think you’d make it sound good, but you may be right. You’re more the Dinah Washington type. Ballads, you know?”
“Thank you. I wish I could be that good.”
“On second thought, your voice
is kind of low pitched. Maybe Nina Simone?”
Gerri laughed. “That’s funny. My mother heard me trying one of her songs once and told me I wasn’t doing a good job.”
“What? That’s hard to believe.”
“It was a sad song. ‘Rags and Old Iron.’ She said I got the melody OK, but that I wasn’t convincing—I didn’t get across the sadness.”
They were approaching the top of the ridge. “I don’t know that one. Will you sing it for me?”
Gerri didn’t answer right away. “Maybe on the way down. This climbing uphill is a lot harder than I’m used to—it takes all of my breath.” They came out of the trees and she twirled around. A vista beckoned. There were steep, forested hills in abundance. Further away, there loomed craggy mountains—many of them covered with snow even in the summer. Below them were waterways, snaking through the terrain. She could see the Glacier Gal directly beneath them, looking oddly small and insignificant from their vantage point. “Oh, Sven. This is beautiful. They don’t have any views like this at home.”
“Don’t you have any hills in South Carolina?”
“Not in my part. Not even little hills—it’s totally flat.”
“Huh! I’m afraid I’d go crazy there.”
Gerri felt obliged to defend her home. “It has its own type of beauty. It’s very lush. But it’s not spectacular the way Alaska is.”
On the way down, Gerri sang the song for him. When she finished, she waited anxiously for his reaction. “Well, I think it sounds pretty. But I guess I understand your mother a little bit. You didn’t really sound very sad.”
Gerri made a face at him—which he couldn’t see anyway walking in front of her. She could take criticism, she reminded herself. Her choir director had been a hard taskmaster. Somehow, though, coming from Sven it seemed to get under her skin more. She was still deciding upon her response when he spoke again.
“Sometimes when I’m painting, I find the mood difficult. I try extra hard to put myself into the painting. If I’m painting something sad, I try to think of the saddest things I can. It sounds silly, but it works for me.”
“Hmm. I’ll think about that. Sometime.” She couldn’t help but wonder what sad thoughts Sven evoked at those moments. Laura’s death? His teenage estrangement from his parents? The hostility he encountered from Mindy and others? Perhaps, if Wally was correct, even the circumstances of his marriage to Laura? Surely he had many sad thoughts to choose from. Gerri believed that he deserved better. She wished that she could chase all of his sadness away.
Sven thought about Gerri’s testy reaction. What would he do if someone criticized his painting? He was spared any direct criticism because of his anonymity. Maybe that was just a form of cowardice. No, he couldn’t really blame her. “Don’t take what I said too seriously. It was just an observation from someone who’s not knowledgeable anyway.”
Gerri changed the subject as they neared the beach. “This was a great walk. Let’s do it more often.”
“OK.” Sven smiled wryly. If she had any idea… Her wish is practically my command.
___
The morning walks became a routine. Some days they walked along a beach; some days they ventured into the woods and up a hill. That made for harder walking, but in a perverse way Gerri liked it more. Certainly they could cram more exercise into less time. And the views that they garnered from the hilltops were worth the effort.
They never did meet any ‘big hungry animals,’ but the possibility lent an air of adventure—and a whiff of danger—to their outings. Once they heard a crashing in the brush and Gerri froze, her heart beating a mile a minute. Sven pointed at something, but it was gone before she could turn her head.
There was plenty to see, however, and Sven was an enthusiastic guide. The unfamiliar sights ranged from awesome (the largest trees Gerri had ever seen) to awful (a plant with vicious thorns that Sven called a devil’s club—an especially apt name she thought as she gingerly examined one) and from delightful (pretty stalks of flowers called fireweed) to delicious (some tiny button mushrooms that Sven pounced on and gathered into a small sack).
She was surprised that the mushrooms were edible, but more surprised that Sven cooked them expertly after their fishing was done for the day, and they had anchored for the night.
“I thought you couldn’t cook,” Gerri said half-accusingly.
“I never said that. You said that,” Sven said with a smug grin.
“And I still say that.” Gerri cast him a sideways glance and a small smile. “But these are very good.”
“Thank you. I have a small number of things that I cook well,” Sven admitted, “But those are treats. A few wild things, a few desserts, and smoked salmon. Although I’m not sure that I’d call that last cooking.”
Gerri’s interest was piqued, and she was already looking for ways to know Sven better. “I’d like to taste some of your recipes some time.”
Sven thought about that for a moment. He’d been searching for a way to see more of Gerri in different circumstances, and he was painfully aware that she would be leaving soon—in fact, she’d already made reservations for her flights home. It pained him that it was happening so soon, but true to his vow, he kept things casual. This, though, was too good an opportunity to pass up.
“Why don’t you come to my house on your last night in Alaska? I’ll cook you one of my favorite desserts.”
Gerri beamed. “I’d love to. Do you have any smoked salmon?” Mindy had extolled its virtues, but unfortunately didn’t have any available.
“I tend to smoke it in the fall and eat it over the winter, but I do have some left at home.”
The next morning, Sven picked up where he had left off. They had barely started their walk when he veered off the trail. “Salmonberries,” he announced when Gerri caught up to him.
She took the one that he offered and looked at it. It was almost like a raspberry, but yellow-orange in color. She tried it. “Pretty good,” she agreed as they continued walking. She smiled at his penchant for pointing out things and decided to tease him about it. “You must have taken a course in botany to be able to name all of these plants.”
“No, ‘fraid not.”
“Well maybe they’re all secretly marked with signs that only you can see.”
He didn’t answer right away. By the time he did, Gerri had already decided that he was ignoring her lame joke.
“Actually, it would be nice to have a trail with the names of all of the plants marked on signs.”
Gerri had heard of this. “There are such things…”
“I’d call it the appellation trail,” he continued.
Gerri cocked her head as she gazed at his back. “That name is already taken.” She had started to tell him about the Appalachian Trail, when he turned and grinned at her.
“No. Appellation Trail. An appellation is when you give something a name.”
“Oh, good grief,” she laughed. “You snuck that one right by me. If Wally’s right, then you must be especially happy.”
“Why especially?”
“I figure the more obscure the pun, the happier you are.”
“I am happy.” He turned and recommenced walking. “But that was only semi-obscure. I don’t tell anybody my really obscure ones. The only thing that people hate more than a pun is a pun that they can’t understand.”
Gerri thought about that. “OK,” she challenged him. “Tell me one of your really obscure ones.”
He was silent for a minute as they walked through the woods. Finally, he seemed to come to a decision. “OK, I’ll tell you a little story.
“A man and a woman were relaxing on a deserted ocean beach, watching the surf. The woman spoke dreamily. ‘Sometimes, I think that I’d like for us to make love.’ The man looked at her with surprise and delight. He reached for her and started to pull down the strap of her bathing suit. She squirmed away. ‘No,’ she said, ‘I didn’t mean littorally.’”
Gerri was determined to g
et this, but she couldn’t make any sense of it. “Don’t tell me—let me think a little bit.”
Finally, she was ready to give up, but she thought she’d try for ‘partial credit’ rather than drawing a total blank. “OK,” she grumbled, “I don’t get it, but there was something a bit off about the way you said the word ‘literally,’ so I think it has something to do with that.”
“You’re on the right track. ‘Littoral’ refers to the seashore and the waters next to it—anything below the high tide line.”
“I’ve never heard of that.”
“Actually, it’s even worse. I’m not sure that the adverb form—littorally—is even a word. So I’m really cheating. Definitely not a pun to share with people.”
Gerri decided that it made a weird sort of sense. “Well, I asked for it. Where did you ever hear of that word?”
“I was in the Navy. They used it. Littoral operations are completely different than deep water operations.”
Gerri was struck anew—there was so much that she had yet to learn about Sven. “I’d love to hear about that some day.” And still, she added silently, I think you’re right not to share that pun.
___
Later, after she was back home in South Carolina, Gerri would look back at this period as the happiest time of her life. That’s not to say that it was an easy time. They worked hard. The early morning walks, though cherished, made their days longer. Her relationship with Sven made Gerri want to work harder—when she was gone she wanted him to remember her fondly, but also as an exceptional first mate.
Best of all, since they had abandoned any pretense of sleeping separately, they had the comfort of knowing that each day would start and end in each other’s arms.
Chapter 24
Her adventure had to end sometime. At the beginning of the summer, that had been a matter-of-fact acknowledgment for Gerri—tinged with an eagerness to be home again and to relate her experiences triumphantly to her family. Later, contemplating it was bittersweet. Her eagerness to be home was balanced against the knowledge that she would be leaving dear friends—Sven, Mindy, and even Mrs. Kallek—whom she would likely never see again.
