She wanted him to have absolutely no defenses at all when she did this.
It was dark, the northern lights visible out over the snow, green and purple and all the light. They cast beauty out onto the stark landscape, and it gave her hope.
Bundled in her parka, she took his hand in her mittened one, and began to lead him down the side of the mountain. She knew now where the path was that took them to the hot springs.
“What is this?” he asked when they arrived down there to a table set with food, and heaters placed around. “You have set us up food on the tundra.”
“Yes,” she said. “I have. I wished to take you on a date without entering into civilization. This seemed like a reasonable enough way to do it.”
The dinner was exquisite, lamb, fish and potatoes.
Extremely Icelandic, and she could see by the look on Gunnar’s face, that it tapped into something special.
She knew that this place was special to him. That no matter how much time he spent in the rest of the world, this was his home. His heart.
The scary thing was, this was an unforgiving, harsh, frozen landscape.
But there were also northern lights. There were miracles. Hot springs. Possibilities. And she had to hope that his heart reflected all those things in the same way as his homeland. She had to hope that that was true.
As soon as he finished eating she unzipped her coat, and revealed that she had nothing but a bikini top underneath.
His gaze suddenly became keen. Extremely interested.
“I had thought that we might use the hot springs.”
“Indeed.”
She shimmied out of her boots and pants, and stepped into the steaming, pale blue pool. He was not far behind her, stripping his clothes off, moving down into the pool and taking her into his arms.
He kissed her, her neck, on down her shoulder blades, making his way to her breasts, he clearly loved her breasts.
And she arched her back, rubbed her nipples against his hair-covered chest, gloried in the textural differences between them. In his strength.
But this was different than the other times they had come together. Those times had always been furious, intense. Growling and fighting, and she loved them.
But she wanted to show him something else. She wanted to show him her heart. And so, she swam away from him, to the corner of the pool. And he followed. But when he rejoined her, she wrapped her arms firmly around his neck, and kissed him. She made the kiss long and deep, keeping her hands firmly clasped behind his neck, preventing herself from exploring the rest of his hard, beautiful body, as much as she wanted to. And she poured everything into it. All the things that were hard for her to say. All the things that she felt with every last bit of her heart.
Finally, she broke the kiss off, and began to move her hands over his muscles, and as if he sensed that this was her moment, something she must do, he kept his hands at his sides, and allowed her unfettered access to his body.
She explored the planes of his chest, the glorious ripples in his stomach. She moved her hands to his thighs. He had a warrior’s body. And that, she realized, he was. Fighting an endless battle to find victory.
But she wondered what he was trying to claim victory against. For all that they had been together, she had not been able to entice him to share.
And tonight, she realized she could not kick the ice wall down. She had to melt it.
It was all that could be done.
With an elegant lift of her body beneath the water, she brought herself down over his stiff arousal, lowering herself slowly onto his shaft. She clung to his shoulders as she took him into her body, as she reveled in this moment. She looked up, dizzy, the light swirling above, mingling with those crushed glitter stars, doing their best to light up a black velvet night.
It was them. All that velvet darkness, and never-ending hope.
Hope.
She hoped for better without even ever seeing it with her own eyes. She hoped for more for the two of them without any assurance that such a thing existed. Without a certainty that it was possible.
It was faith, at the end of the day, something she had never put a lot of thought into. But that was love. Faith, hope and love were all part of the same thing. You could not have one without desperately wanting another. Without clinging as hard as possible to another.
For this love in her heart was the substance of all that was hoped for, and she took her peace in the fact that she knew she did not have to see it for it to be there.