She forced her body to submit to the world around her as she stripped off her layers, toeing off the boots he’d lent her and down to her underwear.
‘You can take those off too,’ he taunted, and she laughed out loud, the action cutting through some of the tension.
She stood there for a moment, breathing deep, her hopes and fears warring for mastery of her body.
‘Remember. Go slowly and use the rope.’
He’d told her that the lake wasn’t deep here, that she’d easily reach the bottom, but she clung to that rope with white knuckles as she stepped into the dark abyss, breathing through the impulse to cry her shock out loud.
It was so cold that at first she felt nothing. But her body had reacted even if her nerves were still playing catch-up. She gasped for breath, fighting the need to tense, but it was the adrenaline that shocked her the most. She inhaled and wanted to laugh. Wanted to scream into the air around them. As sensation began to bleed into her skin, an inconceivable coldness drenched her. Her body was alive and bursting with something indescribable, her heart pounding, not from fear but from vitality, from life. From the utter shock that she was there, in the freezing cold, breathing through her body’s reaction to the impossibly cold water.
Kjell joined her, his gaze locked on hers as if delighting in nothing more than simply her experience of this gift he’d given her. Because it was a gift. She’d spent so long feeling numb after her diagnosis. Numb to her body’s failings and absence.Thiswas something her bodycoulddo. The miraculous abilities that she still had within her.
She reached for him and drew him in to a kiss, powerful, demanding as their tongues clashed and tasted and tested and revelled. He slowed the kiss, as if reluctant, just as she began to feel her foot curl into what could soon be a cramp.
‘That’s probably enough for today,’ he said, as if knowing her limits better than she. Freya would have protested, but actually her bones were beginning to ache from the cold. Kjell hauled himself out from the hole he’d dug in the ice and turned, his black trunks plastered to his skin, outlining every delicious inch of him and the powerful thighs that braced as he gave her his hand and pulled her from the ice water as if she weighed nothing. In an instant her teeth began to chatter and he wrapped a warm blanket around her, rubbing at her skin, less to dry and more to warm.
‘You are incredible,’ he said with a pride that stole her heart. And with that he lifted her in his arms, marched them back to the cabin and together they showered for averylong time.
Kjell placed a bottle of wine on the table, promising himself that, no matter how bad dinner might be, he would eat it. Freya had been a terrible cook at university, he doubted that she’d had much practice since.
There had been something seductively domestic about the afternoon. The snow had resumed almost immediately upon their return to the cabin—as if the pause in the weather had been just for them. The fire had blazed in the burner, Freya had teased a book from the shelves and curled up beside him before falling asleep on his shoulder. She’d been so deeply under that he’d turned lengthways on the sofa and pulled her gently up against him, cradling her with his body. And he’d done nothing but relish every second of it.
He’d felt a peace he’d not experienced for years and hoarded it within him for the years to come after she returned to her royal duties. Even if she couldn’t see a way, Kjell would find one. Because it was in her blood, she’d been born to it. And he knew in his bones how damaging not doing the one thing you lived and breathed for could be.
‘Ta-da!’ Freya said, placing the pan on the table mat, tendrils of smoke escaping from the burnt edges of the pan.
‘Smells...delightful,’ he said, his voice high-pitched even to his own ears. She looked up at him, eyes wide but hopeful. He picked up a spoon from the table and plunged it into the mysteriously beige depths of the pan. ‘What is it?’ he asked hesitantly.
‘You tell me.’
‘Oka-ay,’ he said, the word broken by his concern. He put the spoon into his mouth and just barely managed to stop himself from spitting it back out. ‘It’s...um...’ He looked at her and swallowed. ‘You don’t know what it is, do you?’ he accused.
‘Not really. Is it...edible?’
He barked out a laugh. ‘You haven’t even tried it?’
‘God, no. It smells awful.’
He’d forgotten this side of her. The playful, fun, teasing side to her. He wondered if she had too, from the way that the light sparkled in her eyes.
‘You could teach me, you know,’ she said, removing the pan as he entered the kitchen space to pull together a half decent meal. Thankfully, the bread was still fresh and would certainly work with smoked fish, pâtés, pickles, cheeses and smoked meat.
‘Teach you what?’ he asked, distracted, setting the rye bread to toast.
‘To cook.’
His actions slowed as he caught the tone of her voice. ‘That could take a while,’ he replied cautiously.
‘It will takeyears, Kjell.’
He clamped his jaw shut, turning back to the table to pour them some wine, his fingers white-knuckled around the green glass bottle. He knew what she was doing. Building a dream around a future that wasn’t possible. He’d done it himself and had been devastated when that dream disintegrated. So devastated that he’d agreed to every single UN overseas mission possible. He’d stayed away from his family, from his country and anything that had reminded him of her.
And, despite that pain, he still wanted to give in to the picture she was painting, to get even just a glimpse of a future in which there was no throne, no active service, just them. The ache of knowing how perfect it would be was worth the agony of it being taken away. Because in that moment, for just a heartbeat, they’d been together, imagining the same future. But he’d stopped lying the day he’d last seen her eight years ago. To others. To himself.
‘Freya,’ he said, turning towards her.
‘And I was thinking,’ she pressed on, ignoring him, ignoring the warning in his tone. ‘Perhaps I could come here? You know. After I step down from my title. It’s just so peaceful here. And I’dloveto see it in the summer. I imagine that it’s stunning. Is it? Stunning?’