She looked up at the place, a feat of modern craftsmanship, not wholly dissimilar to the house in Iceland, though formed instead around the landscape here. She opened the door, and turned circles as she looked at the palatial entry. There was a large chandelier in the doorway, that seemed to be made entirely of tubes of glass with little sparkling drops of air illuminated inside of them.
“Wow,” she said.
“Like my house in Iceland, all of it runs on green energy.”
“See. You really do have the luxury part of it down. It’s absolutely beautiful. And nobody could complain about not being comfortable here. That’s for sure.”
“Well, I’m glad you find it to your liking.”
“I suppose I need to find something to my liking.”
She wondered then if he wanted her. At all. Or if being married to her was going to feel like a life sentence.
She wondered if...
She wondered what he felt at all.
They had been fighting. And through all of it, she had not lost her desire for him. When he had taken her into the hot springs and held her close, in spite of the chill, she had felt rising desire for him. It had been...
It still made her hot just thinking about it.
She flushed even now, looking at him in the entryway, and felt so ashamed that she had to turn away.
“Your room is up the stairs and down at the very end of the hall.”
“Are we to have separate bedrooms?”
He looked at her, his eyes molten. “Of course. I should not like to take your space from you.”
Or maybe he just didn’t want her. And what did she want? She wanted him, but...
He was such a complicated man. And what she knew about complicated was it was only worse when there were feelings involved. Her feelings. The feelings he claimed he didn’t have. Yes. There were a whole lot of feelings here, and she had a feeling that he would deny it, but it was the truth of it.
Having her own space would probably be a necessity.
For her sanity.
“Has anyone ever told you that you’re infuriating?”
“A time or ten.”
“What do you want, Gunnar? What do you want from me? Do you want simply to be husband and wife and bump around this giant house together? Do you want... Do you want me? I don’t understand. You seem to want to turn me into something else. And as much as I kind of love this outfit, you know it’s not what I prefer to wear. Are you throwing me in these things to change me, or is it simply to get at me? This is the thing, you know me. I think you might know me better than anyone else on earth. I thought I knew you. I’m trying to know you. But I wonder if I do, even a little. Even at all.”
He moved toward her then, fire in his eyes. He backed her up against the wall there in the entry. And there it was. Her Viking marauder.
It made her heart throb with desire. Made that place between her legs ache.
Yes, her soul whispered. Take me.
Because that would make sense. It would make sense because she wanted him. Because it was how they had gotten here. Because of the desire between them, and the two of them denying it for these past few days while all of these intense changes happened around them... It made her feel disconnected from it all. But this reminded her.
It reminded her that in a sea of uncertainty, there was this. There was him.
“You do not wish to be strangers in the house together? I should’ve thought that that would be to your liking. I should’ve thought that it would make things easier.”
“Nothing makes this easier. But at least...” She didn’t know if she wanted to shame herself like this. “At least if there’s this...” She reached out and put her hand on his chest, and she found herself being pulled toward him.
“This is just sex.”