Travelling Light

by Sandra Field

  She was holding the deep pink rose to her breast. The turquoise fabric clung to the curves of her body, baring the creamy skin of her shoulders. Her cheeks were as pink as the rose, her eyes very blue, looking straight at him with a mixture of bravado, pride and intense shyness.

  Slowly Lars pulled off the oven mitts. ‘The casserole will keep hot for a few minutes,’ he said. ‘You don’t mind waiting, do you, Kristine?’

  She shook her head, wondering what he was going to do and wishing she had the courage to produce the seductive smile she had practised in front of the mirror. He strode down the hall and vanished into his room. Kristine carried the casserole back into the kitchen and put it in the oven, opened the bottle of chilled white wine that was sitting on the counter, and poured herself a glass. From down the hall she heard the hiss of the shower.

  Her heart was thumping in her chest. She had certainly got his attention, she thought, and put the rose in a vase on the table. Her eyes strayed through the window and past the hammock. Mountains were supposed to restore a sense of proportion, weren’t they? Maybe if she stared at them very hard she wouldn’t feel so nervous.

  The soft pad of Lars’s steps came down the hall. She turned, feeling very much at bay, and saw that he had changed into a pair of light suede trousers and a full-sleeved, boldly patterned shirt. His hair was still damp. He stepped close to her, pressed his lips to her palm, and said softly, ‘I can never anticipate what you’re going to do next.’

  Her nipples had hardened under the thin fabric. He added even more softly, ‘There is time, Kristine...we have all night.’

  She stroked his hair back from his forehead and saw passion flare in his eyes. ‘So you do still want me,’ she said.

  ‘You’ve doubted that?’

  ‘I’ve wondered.’

  ‘Then I’m better at hiding my feelings than I thought. And I wanted you to be very sure.’

  ‘I’m sure.’ She gave him a brilliant smile, unaware that it was infinitely more seductive than the one she had practised in the mirror. ‘Shall I pour you a glass of wine?’

  ‘In a moment,’ he said, and kissed her.

  It was a lingering, sensual kiss that made her clutch at him for support, her body melting into his, her lips responding with a generosity that was instinctive. As he raised his head, his eyes churning with emotion, she murmured, ‘If you keep that up I won’t be able to breathe, let alone eat.’

  His smile was open to her in a way that she cherished. ‘This is the first time for you—I want you never to forget tonight.’

  Never was a long time. As Kristine felt all the old inhibitions entangle her, Lars said strongly, ‘You have nothing to fear from me, I promise you.’

  She poured his wine, raised her glass, and said, knowing she was putting her trust in him, ‘To us.’

  They ate by candle-light as the sun sank towards the mountain peaks; they talked and kissed and held hands; and as the slow moments passed Kristine gained an inkling of the force of will that Lars had exerted over the last few days to hide his passionate need of her. Then he put on some music, and they danced, close-held in the small space, her arms looped around his neck and her breasts rubbing the hard wall of his chest, his hands smoothing the curves of her waist and hips. And all the while her desire throbbed through her veins.

  When he swung her into his arms and carried her to his room, Kristine was almost faint with longing. She had long ago kicked off her sandals; as he hauled his shirt over his head, she twisted to reach the back zip on her jumpsuit, trying to ignore her bruised ribs. Lars said quickly, ‘Here, let me.’

  Against her back she felt the warm slide of his fingers down her spine. Then he was easing the straps from her shoulders, and his hands came round her body to cup the swell of her breasts. She cried out her delight, arching against him, then blindly seeking his mouth. He kissed her again and again, hard kisses that set his seal on her, and in between he murmured her name in a fierce litany of passion.

  The jumpsuit slithered down Kristine’s hips. She stepped out of it and turned gladly into his arms, proud in her nakedness, and in his face saw wonderment, primitive hunger, and another emotion, a far more complex and daunting emotion. ‘Lars—what’s wrong?’

  He shook his head, drinking in every detail of her body. ‘You’re so beautiful,’ he said in a voice she had never heard him use before. ‘And so generous and brave with your beauty.’

  Somehow she knew he was talking about his dead wife as much as about her, and knew too that this was not the time to ask. ‘It’s easy to give to someone who wants to receive,’ she said, and reached for the waistband of his trousers.

  He was naked beneath them, naked and fully aroused. As briefly she faltered, he lifted her on the bed and lay down beside her. ‘I’ll be as gentle with you as I know how, elskling.‘

  Taking his face in her hands, she told the simple truth. ‘There’s nowhere I would rather be than here with you, Lars.’ Then she kissed him with a seductiveness all the more powerful for being quite untutored.

  For the next few minutes, minutes that were out of time, Lars left the initiative to her. Her tongue danced with his. Her hands clasped the hard bone of his shoulders, tangled themselves in the hair on his chest, and caressed the strong curve of his ribcage. As her lips slid down his throat, tasting his skin, teasing and probing, her hips instinctively pressed against his in a beguiling mixture of innocence and ageless knowledge.

  He gasped her name, his face contorted. In sudden bewilderment, she said, ‘Don’t you like that? Shouldn’t I—?’

  ‘Of course I like it. But I’m so afraid of hurting you,’ he said harshly.

  Drawing on all the wisdom of her twenty-three years, knowing he was holding back although not at all sure why, Kristine said, ‘You won’t hurt me, Lars—you couldn’t.’ Then, intuitively, she guided his hand to her breast.

  Something broke in him, something that had been confined for too long and now was free. Stroking the pale gleam of her skin, he brought his mouth to the swelling flesh, and as she cried out with the startling, incredible sweetness of his touch he drew her close to the length of his body.

  Giving herself over to sensations as new as the dawn and as acute as lightning, Kristine matched him kiss for kiss, caress for caress. Then he found between her thighs the warm, wet petals of flesh that told him without words how ready she was to receive him. Again she whimpered with pleasure, wrapping her legs around his, unashamedly gathering him in. But even in the midst of a hunger so desperate that she could scarcely breathe she was aware of the care and sensitivity with which Lars took her. His control did not come without cost, she saw that too, and by his very restraint was bound to him more closely.

  He was watching her face, where the remnants of fear, a flash of pain, and then an instinctive wonder chased each other vividly across her features. She suddenly grasped him by the hips, pulling him into her. ‘Now, Lars,’ she said, ‘now...’ and knew she had never been more fully herself than in this moment when a man was entering her body in an intimacy wholly new to her. Then she stopped thinking altogether, tumbling into a whirlwind of tumultuous emotion, her broken cries and Lars’s mating in the storm’s heart. And finally, in that heart, she found utter silence and an immense peace.

  She was lying on her back, Lars covering her, his breathing slowly returning to normal, his face hidden in her shoulder. The stitches on her elbow were jammed into the sheet. Yet she hated to break the silence, to return to the world of mundane reality.

  Against her throat he murmured, ‘Kristine, are you all right?’

  She gave an incredulous chuckle. ‘All right? I should say so! Why didn’t you tell me how wonderful this would be?’

  He glanced up, laughter lurking in his eyes. ‘Didn’t want to brag.’

  Her chuckle turned into a full-fledged laugh. ‘I probably wouldn’t have believed you anyway...you’ve got to move, the stitches in my elbow are hurting.’

  He lifted his weight from her, h
is torso a taut curve. ‘As long as it’s only your elbow,’ he said.

  She flushed a bright pink. ‘I don’t know why I’m blushing,’ she said crossly, ‘after all that we just did.’ Glancing at him through her mascaraed lashes, she added doubtfully, ‘Was it wonderful for you too?’

  He collapsed beside her, drawing her round to face him. ‘Couldn’t you tell?’

  ‘I have no basis for comparison,’ she said, wrinkling her nose at him. ‘Plus I was rather caught up in all that was going on.’

  The smile died from his face. ‘Yes, it was wonderful for me too.’ He hesitated, playing with a strand of her hair. ‘I don’t even know if I should say this, Kris...but I want you to understand. I loved Anna when I married her, and she was sweet and gentle and a loving mother to Elisabet. But she was frightened by anything that she sensed was beyond her control—a ski slope, lovemaking—anything wild and exuberant and joyous.’ He moved his shoulders restlessly, avoiding Kristine’s eyes. ‘So I became tame and domesticated. I kept my true self under wraps, giving her in bed only what she wanted because the alternative was to frighten her, and I hated to do that.’

  Kristine lay still, his few words making clear to her how hard-won was his will-power and his self-control. ‘That’s why you needed the ski-meets—they were the only outlet you had.’

  ‘I suppose you’re right.’

  Her heart clenched with compassion. She said gently, ‘You were as afraid as I was of making love, weren’t you?’

  ‘I needn’t have been. Because you’re generous and brave and passionate. I watched you putting your trust in me—that was an immeasurable gift, min kjaere elskling.’

  Not sure which was the greater intimacy, his lovemaking or the disclosure of what his marriage had been like, she said fiercely, ‘I want you to be yourself with me, Lars. Never less than who you are; I couldn’t bear that.’

  He smiled into her eyes. ‘I was myself. And next time I’ll be even freer because I won’t be afraid of hurting you, and you’ll be even wilder because you won’t be going into the unknown.’

  She gave a shaky chuckle, widening her eyes in mock amazement. ‘Next time? That’s like planning dinner when you’ve only just eaten lunch.’

  ‘We could get up and wash the dishes first,’ he teased.

  ‘Oh, no,’ said Kristine, snuggling closer to him and kissing the hollow at the base of his throat, certain that she would recognise the flavour of his skin until the day she died. ‘I like being right where I am—you’re stuck with me for now.’

  ‘Have you ever slept with a man before—in the literal sense of the word?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘We could try that, too.’

  ‘I like that idea much better than cleaning up the kitchen,’ she said with a contented sigh, although she was quite sure she’d never sleep with Lars so disturbingly and fascinatingly close to her. She nestled her cheek into his chest, rested her hand on the hard jut of his hip-bone, and closed her eyes.

  When next she opened them, it was daylight. She blinked. Her field of vision was an expanse of tanned chest; her legs were entwined with a man’s thighs, and the man was quite definitely in the mood for seduction. She said naughtily, ‘What, no cup of coffee in bed?’

  ‘That comes later,’ Lars growled. ‘Kiss me.’

  ‘The masterful approach,’ she giggled, and stretched as sinuously as a cat.

  ‘Do that again and you’re in trouble.’

  So Kristine did it again, and as Lars abandoned his self-control and she began to put to use all her new-found knowledge she forgot about her morning coffee.

  * * *

  A week passed, a week as idyllic as a honeymoon. Kristine sang in the shower and on the hammock and practised her Norwegian, and the last of her bruises disappeared. Lars cooked some inspired meals, repaired the diving-board at the lake, and laughed more than she had ever heard him laugh before.

  Every day they made love—sometimes with a wildness and wantonness Kristine would not have thought herself capable of, sometimes in an intense and utter silence; sometimes in daylight, sometimes by the flickering yellow glow of a candle. As she lay in the hammock on their eleventh day at the cottage listening to Lars pounding nails in the wharf, she knew she would never forget this place, or the man who had initiated her into the wonders of lovemaking. Never.

  She had learned a lot about Lars in a very short time. Because she had already known something of the serious side of his character, it was a delight to watch him play the fool, to hear him match her joke for joke until she was choking with laughter. They had fun together, she thought. The kind of fun that she was almost sure her parents had never had.

  Furthermore, she could visibly watch him throwing off the shackles of the past, both in bed and out, and with a strange sense of humility knew that she made him happy. She could not doubt it; it showed all over him.

  She also knew more of the fabric of his life. Last night they had lingered over dinner, listening to the rain drum on the roof, the mountains obscured, their world shrunk to the immediate circle of rocks, grass, and drenched rose-bushes around the veranda. ‘Tell me what you do,’ she had requested. ‘You used to ski, and you’ve been looking after your grandmother’s affairs—there must be more.’

  He had stared into his glass, where the candle-flame lit a ruby glow in the wine. ‘I’d always wanted to take my pilot’s licence,’ he’d said. ‘After Anna and Elisabet died I took lessons, and when I’d clocked enough hours I went overseas and got a job with a private company that flew in emergency supplies to war refugees and drought victims. When civil wars were involved, as they often were, it could be dangerous, and that suited me fine. I never took unnecessary risks with the crew or the plane, but if we’d been shot down I don’t suppose I would have minded that much.’

  ‘When I first met you I thought you were a man-about-town waiting for his inheritance,’ Kristine had confessed. ‘I couldn’t have been more wrong.’

  ‘Then I was offered a job with an engineering firm that specialised in Third World development, realistic stuff with a chance of making lasting improvements. From Malaysia I went to Brazil, and I was on my last week of a project there when Bestemor had a slight stroke. So I came home. A month later I met you.’

  ‘Will you go back to Brazil?’

  ‘There’s a UN job in the offing that I’ve applied for. A lot of travel.’ He had looked straight at her and said, unsmiling, ‘You’d like that, Kristine.’

  She’d had no idea what he meant. Suddenly edgy, because she liked things just the way they were and wanted no changes, she had pushed back her chair. ‘I picked enough wild strawberries this afternoon for dessert; do you want some?’

  ‘You’re running away again.’

  ‘I want to live in the present for now, that’s all.’

  ‘Some time we have to talk about the future,’ Lars had said, his blue-grey eyes impaling her.

  ‘But not yet. Not now,’ she had retorted, and had made her escape to the kitchen and the strawberries...

  Thoughtfully Kristine reached down with one foot and gave the hammock a push. That conversation had been last night. Was she being overly sensitive to imagine that it had changed something between her and Lars? That there had been strain between them today where the day before there had been only harmony?

  She didn’t want to think about the future, whatever that highly amorphous term might mean. The present was more than enough. They would have to leave the cottage in a day or two anyway, because Lars’s brother wanted it for the weekend.

  Fjaerland, she thought. I have to go to Fjaerland first. Once I know how I stand with my grandfather, I’ll know better what to do. Because if he doesn’t want anything to do with me I’ll have to go back to Oslo. And Oslo raises a whole host of problems. I don’t have a car, my money’s running low, and I don’t want to live off Lars.

  While Lars had dealt with the wreckage of her car and the insurance claim, she was not very hopeful that the i
nsurance company would give her any more money than the cost of one good meal in Oslo. She’d have to get a job soon. Or go home.

  Attacked by a pang of homesickness, Kristine remembered the kitchen in the old farmhouse where she had grown up, the worn softwood floor and the red geraniums she had grown every winter in the bay window. She should go home. Settle down and go to university and study languages, so she could get a decent job overseas instead of having to depend on whatever came along.

  The ring of hammer on nail had ceased. She saw Lars coming up the path towards her, a tall, long-limbed man who moved with unconscious grace, his blond head and blue eyes achingly familiar to her. If she went back to Canada she would miss him, she thought with a sharp clench in her belly. Miss him horribly.

  Not wanting to follow this train of thought, she waited for him to reach the deck. ‘Lars,’ she said bluntly, ‘will you take me to Fjaerland?’

  The hammer he was carrying dropped to the deck with a clatter. He bent to pick it up. Hunkered down near the hammock, his eyes on a level with hers, he said guardedly, ‘When?’

  ‘Tomorrow?’

  ‘We don’t have to leave until the day after.’

  She picked at the tightly woven twine. ‘I need to know whether my grandfather will see me or not.’

  ‘And what if he invites you to stay for a month? Do I say a nice polite goodbye and drive back to Oslo as if these past few days had never happened?’

  ‘Don’t be angry! This has been wonderful, Lars, but it has to end and I have to go to Fjaerland, you must see that—’

  ‘I see a lot,’ he said grimly, thwacking the nearest chunk of granite with the hammer so that sparks flew. ‘Yes, I’ll take you to Fjaerland. No, I won’t promise to drive back to Oslo as soon as I become an inconvenience to you.’