It wasn’t, though.
Because if it was only sex, it would have eased by now. Or faded slightly, but there was none of that. Instead, it came alive with an intensity that threatened to destroy everything else. Threatened to destroy all that they were. Threatened to burn her where she stood. She wanted him. She wanted to burn in this. To burn in him. She wanted desperately to get out of her head. She wanted to fracture this thing between them. To make it as undeniable for him as it was for her.
She wanted to get through that hard layer of ice in his chest. He was in control. That was what bothered her. That he was maddeningly endlessly in control.
Everything seemed logical to him. If the baby was his, then they would get married. If not, he would send her to prison. And none of it spoke to any kind of feeling for her or for the child or anything. None of it spoke to the spark between them. None of it seemed to matter to him. And it felt astronomically and categorically unfair. That he could remain so untouched by all of this when she was upended. When she was ready to give up the pursuit of her life. The company, when she was reevaluating her entire relationship with her father. Her relationship with herself. Her relationship with everything.
But in this, she felt as if they were equalized. In this, she could feel her own power.
He wanted her. She could see that even now, even as he stood, poised as if on a knife’s edge, unmoving. Like a predator. Lying in wait. Even in that, she could see how difficult it was for him to seize control. And she gloried in that. Because it made her feel like perhaps she wasn’t the only one. It made her feel as if she wasn’t alone.
She desperately didn’t want to be alone.
But she waited. Waited for him to break. Because she needed him to. Waited for him to break, because it was the assurance that she needed. Because she needed control. She needed power. Even while she needed for him to claim her. To brand her.
It didn’t matter if that made sense to anyone else, it made sense to her. She wanted. With hot reckless greed. With a deep abandon that she hadn’t experienced in any other part of her life.
What she wanted for Ambient, she wanted on behalf of her father. What she wanted was to please him. And everything she did she had done with precision. But what she did, what she wanted, with Gunnar had nothing to do with precision. It had nothing to do with logic and everything to do with need. And she wanted to become that. Wanted to embrace it. She wanted to become his, and through that, become more of herself.
And maybe no one else could ever understand that, maybe if it were someone else, it wouldn’t make any sense. But they were them. And even feeling like she did, even feeling like she didn’t know him to the degree that she wished, to the degree that she had imagined, she knew that they were something that no one else was. The media could make proclamations about them all they wanted. The world could post about how they were this and that and something else entirely, but they weren’t anything except for Gunnar and Olive. And they couldn’t be. Not ever.
Nobody would ever be them. And no one would ever be him for her. He was everything. Everything and glory, and he made her want to be more. Somehow, even with all that iciness in his soul, he made her want to find her warmth. Or maybe that was why. Because she wanted so much to do something for him. To fix him.
Or maybe not even that. Just knowing him... That would be enough. That would be enough. She wondered if anyone did. And she imagined they didn’t. That he kept himself as closed off as possible. The human representation of that house of his, up on the hill.
And he was the one this time who gave in. The one who growled, lowering his head to hers and claiming her lips in a searing vow.
Whatever they would say to each other in that church, this week, whatever promises they would make in front of the world, they didn’t matter. Not compared to this. To this moment, with this man. He was everything, and they were incendiary. The rest of this, it would be a performance. The union for their child. But this? This was all them. Only them. A lack of control, a flaw in their personal systems. But it could not be denied, nor could it be controlled. He gripped her face, shoving his fingers through her hair, pushing the fur hat off of her head and onto the floor. She had chosen the outfit to be deliberately ridiculous. Soft when she normally went for severe. But she had to admit she sort of loved the hat. And the boots. And the coat. But all she wanted was to get all of it off now. She wanted there to be nothing between them. No barriers. Nothing. She wanted to give herself over to him entirely. To surrender to this, him.
And he kissed her. And kissed her, as if there was no particular hurry, and a ticking clock all at once.
He kissed her, his tongue sliding against hers, his big rough hands moving over her body.
She loved the feel of him. She loved everything about him. And the real problem was, she had always loved Gunnar more than she had ever loved her company. And that realization nearly made her knees buckle. But it was true.
He fascinated her, bewitched her, beguiled her, and had shaped her every fantasy from the first moment she had begun to have them. And it wasn’t simply because there had been no one else around. She could see no one else because of Gunnar. He blinded her to everything and everyone that wasn’t him. He was essentially everything. And it was not a lack of opportunity, a lack of skills, a lack of beauty, that had kept her away from other men.
It was the all-consuming desire for this one man. And not simply desire. She had felt when she was a girl that she understood him. And she knew now as a woman that she did not. But whatever was behind the ice blockade, she wanted him.
And perhaps that was the real truth of it. The real deep certainty of love.
That if she kept going, if she went deeper. She would still care. That she would accept him. That he could reveal to her any sort of new truth about him and she would simply kiss him and be grateful that he trusted her enough to tell her.
He was the spark to her flame, and she knew that, and it was enough. The man who could keep up with her. Who could challenge her. She respected his mind, his drive.
He was her equal. But even better than that, he was a mystery as well. And that was fascinating, more than anything ever had been.
The way he was known and unknown. The way he was like her and yet so different all at once.
And it was more than just their physical differences, but it was highlighted even now. He was so large. So hard.
And she began to greedily strip away the layers of his clothing as he kissed her, as he licked into her mouth.
She undid the buttons on his shirt, pushed it and his jacket down onto the floor. She gloried in the broad expanse of his chest, the hair there, the sculpted muscle.
She moved her fingertips down to skim his abdominal muscles, and she whimpered.
She wanted him more now than she had the first time, because now she knew how good it felt. She had explained away how aroused she had been that first time they were together with the simple explanation that it was years of pent-up longing. But now it wasn’t that.