Fall Hard (18 page)

“Yes, please.”

As we walked into the living room,
Loki
rose from his basket and padded towards us, his thick, fluffy tail uncurling to wag gently. I half fell into the sofa, its garish throw already a familiar comfort, and petted the dog while Viggo made the drinks. Loki accepted the attention with dignified reserve, eventually deigning to put his head in my lap, and I ruffled the thick, reddish hair around his neck fondly. He clashed horribly with the throw.

The coffee, when it came, was strong and dark, all but black, just what I needed to sober me up, ground me in reality. Viggo sat next to me with his own mug, our thighs touching. The contact—and the anticipation of what I hoped was to come—warmed me, despite the chill in the flat.

“Did you have a good time tonight?”

I smiled. “Yes.” Again I felt the urge to tell him about the flash of memory. Again I resisted. A fresh start, he’d said. “I liked your singing.”

“I like to sing for you,” he murmured.

I drank another mouthful of coffee. My relaxed sense of anticipation was gradually giving way to more urgent desire. When Viggo put down his mug, I didn’t hesitate to do the same. We turned to one another and kissed, slowly and thoroughly. His lips were warm, and his hands were too as they roamed over my waist, slipped underneath my shirt. My body responded, and I pushed up his T-shirt, my fingers tingling as they encountered bare flesh. Viggo’s kisses grew more forceful, his tongue more demanding. I let my hands roam over his back, imagining I could feel the branches of Yggdrasil beneath my fingers. All at once I needed, had to see him, so I tugged at his shirt until he relented and stripped it off.

“You’re beautiful,” I breathed into his shoulder, kissing my way down Jörmungandr’s coils.

“So are you,” he rumbled, undoing my belt.

I was light-headed, dizzy with the knowledge that he desired me. Despite my damaged state. “Let’s go to bed.”

Viggo left off his attempt to get my trousers undone in favour of dragging me to my feet, and we stumbled into the bedroom, our progress constantly interrupted by fevered kisses.

“God, I want you,” I breathed, and we tumbled onto the bed together. We tugged off our clothes, kicking them onto the floor, until we were naked, pressing heated flesh to heated flesh. I ran my hands over every inch of him.
Mine
, I thought, with a kind of delirious pride.

Viggo chuckled, a low rumble in his chest I felt as well as heard. Had I whispered it aloud? It didn’t matter, I decided. I didn’t care who knew it, least of all him. He rolled us over so he was on top, then raised himself up on his hands, looking down at me. I blinked at him fuzzily. “What’s wrong?”

He was smiling. “Nothing. Nothing is wrong. I just want to look at you.”

Apparently there was still enough alcohol in my system to loosen my tongue. “My scars, they don’t bother you?” The ones on my torso were, thankfully, not so bad, and my hair hid the ones on my head, but there was a long, purplish gash running half the length of my thigh and down past my knee, where I’d had surgery to patch together the shattered bone. It wasn’t pretty.

Viggo shuffled farther down the bed and pressed his lips to it as if he’d read my mind. “I like them,” he said, looking up at me.

I was startled into a laugh. “
Like
them?”

“Of course. They remind me how lucky I am to have you now.”

“You’re crazy,” I muttered, my chest tightening painfully at his bald admission of sentiment.

“Crazy about you.” It was a corny line, and he knew it too, his mouth a teasing line and one eyebrow quirked. He moved up to nuzzle into my groin, but I was too impatient and pulled him up to lie almost on top of me, our lengths touching. I’d been tired before, bone-weary. But all weariness fled at the sight of him poised over me. I rolled, catching him by surprise and pinning him underneath me, ignoring the sharp protests of my leg.

Viggo smiled. “You like to be on top.”

“Yes.” I ground my hips into him for emphasis, the pressure and friction of his cock against mine a sweet tease. “But you can fuck me,” I added, feeling reckless.

His eyes went wide, his breath catching. “You’re sure?”

I nodded. I wanted him to have this. To have me. How else could I show him how I felt about him, how much I trusted him? I opened my legs and knelt up, straddling him. “In the drawer?”

Viggo nodded, and I leaned over, stretching to reach the bedside cabinet and pull out the drawer. Condoms and lube were right at the front, on top of a dog-eared John Grisham novel that could have come from my shelves. I grabbed a handful of foil sachets and scattered them on Viggo’s taut belly, making him laugh. “Quite a collection here. Ribbed, flavoured or plain?”

“Anything,” he said, his eyes dark. He ran his hands up and down my thighs, coming tantalisingly close to my cock but never touching it.

I breathed deeply and grabbed the first condom that came to hand. Tearing it open quickly, I scooted down a bit so I could lick a stripe up the length of him before I covered him up. His cock was hot and leaking, and my arse clenched involuntarily at the thought of taking it inside me. God alone knew how long it had been since I’d done this. But I wanted it. Needed it. My fingers trembled as I rolled the condom over him. It left them slippery with lubricant, and I wiped them on my legs, breathing in the familiar smell of latex.

“Now you,” Viggo said. “Get ready.”

I moved back up again, ripped open a packet of lube and drizzled it over my fingers, my pulse thumping in my ears. Then, as Viggo’s gaze trapped mine, I reached around behind myself and pressed inside. I made an involuntary noise at the sensation, the feeling of penetration. It felt good, not for what it was so much, but for what it would lead to. I rushed to add another finger.

“Okay?” Viggo asked. My face must have given me away. He rubbed my sides with a soothing motion, Jörmungandr writhing lazily on his arm, and the stretch eased.

“Been a while, that’s all.”

“No need to hurry. You look good doing that,” he said with hooded eyes.

“Not as good as you look.” His chest was a work of art. I caught myself thinking it’d be a shame to add any ink to what was already perfection. I carried on stretching myself, trying to fool my body into thinking it was Viggo’s cock inside me, not just my own fingers, until I was confident I could take him without damage. I was painfully hard, my cock leaking a glistening line down to Viggo’s belly. “Ready?” It came out as a gasp. Viggo might not need me to hurry, but I did. I wanted to touch him, to feel him all over and in me.

He nodded. Slowly, so slowly, I slid down, taking him inside me. It felt like heaven. He felt enormous, and the burning in my arse was a sharp counterpoint to the dull ache in my leg, but I didn’t care about the pain. It just added to the intensity of it all.

“It hurts you?” Viggo asked softly.

“No,” I lied. “It’s worth it.” God, he was fully inside me now, our bodies joined completely, his balls against my arse. The burning eased a little, and I began to move. Perversely, it proved easier on my leg than remaining still had done. Even if it hadn’t, I wouldn’t have stopped. The feel of him inside me, stretching me wide, caressing me intimately, was one I wouldn’t have traded for the world—or even my last year in it. When his hand wrapped around my cock, I let out a heartfelt groan. Jörmungandr writhed as he worked me, and my rhythm faltered for a moment. Gritting my teeth, I forced myself to concentrate on moving. Pleasure ratcheted up inside me.

Then it was Viggo’s turn to falter. His breathing became more and more ragged, his pupils blown. I wanted to kiss his reddened lips but the logistics were beyond me right now. I could only move, giving pleasure and taking it, until Viggo’s face contorted as if he were screaming a battle cry. His hand clenched around me, his grip just short of painful, and I was lost.

My vision whited out, and I could no longer localise what I felt. I was pure sensation, pure electric ecstasy. Did I cry out loud? I couldn’t tell. When I came to myself again I was lying on Viggo’s chest in a slick mess of my own making. He was kissing my face, my neck, his movements as ragged and uncoordinated as I felt.

If I dreamed of anything that night, I didn’t remember it in the morning.

Chapter Sixteen

We didn’t rush to wake up next morning, both of us still half-asleep as we rolled over to frot against each other until we came to a relaxed climax, spilling over each other’s bellies. Viggo felt around on the floor until he came up with a box of supermarket tissues, and we cleaned off halfheartedly and settled down in each other’s arms once more.

Maybe it was the late hour of the morning, but I didn’t manage to doze off again and neither did Viggo, as far as I could tell. At any rate, when I asked a while later if he was awake, he answered straight away.

“You want to get up? Eat breakfast?”

“Mm. Soon.” I didn’t want to leave the warm cocoon of the duvet just yet. But outside thoughts were beginning to impinge on my sense of relaxation and wonder that I was here at all. I took a deep breath, feeling awkward. “Last year, when I was here before, did I ever talk to you about Sven?” I raised myself up on one elbow to look him in the eye.

“Sometimes. A little.” Viggo made a face. “I think I changed the subject quite quickly.”

“But we weren’t…” I tried to think how to phrase it obliquely. Then I just thought, to hell with it. “Did we sleep together, while I was with Sven?”

He hesitated, and when he spoke, it was with quiet emphasis, looking me straight in the eye. “No. We didn’t sleep together.”

It was a relief to have it spelled out like that. Then again, there was such a thing as emotional infidelity, wasn’t there?

God, I’d go mad if I carried on trying to second guess how I’d felt about Viggo eight months ago. I wasn’t even quite sure how I felt about him now. Last night’s certainty had faded with the dawn.

Or was it just his own feelings I was unsure of?

“So…we were just friends?” I asked. “We met up for drinks, that sort of thing?”

“And to talk.”

“What did we talk about?”

“You told me about your work, sometimes.” He smiled. “You said I looked like a traditional hero, but you were too dark; you would most likely be a villain. But that Egil went against this, although he was not exactly a hero. And there was…dualism? Yes, I think that was the word. You said that many stories in other lands had the dark and the light as a contrast, but Egil had both those things in himself.” He frowned. “And there was something about two people whose names both ended in Bog.”

“Belobog and Chernobog. Slavic deities—one light, one dark. You remembered all that?” I was amazed.

Viggo stroked my face with one rough hand. “When you talk, I listen.”

“Even when I drone on about my work?” I’d have angrily rebutted any suggestion that Viggo wasn’t intelligent, but even I could accept he was far from academic. And why the hell should he be? Surely it was better to be with someone who complemented you rather than someone who might as well have been your twin.

“You don’t bore me. You have passion. I like it.”

“I like your passion too,” I said, trying to sound teasing. I wasn’t sure I succeeded but Viggo pulled me to him anyway, his hands on my hips. We kissed, slow and gentle, his beard catching on my stubble to remind me I needed a shave. Then Viggo’s stomach rumbled loudly and we both laughed, and got out of bed.

After a leisurely brunch, we took an excited Loki out in the Land Rover in search of somewhere he could have a proper walk. I’d wondered if I’d be able to manage without my stick—I’d been an idiot to leave it in my car back in Reykjavik—but Viggo saved me with a battered trekking pole he unearthed from under the bed.

Viggo drove down past the old hydroelectric power station in the centre of Reykjavik, from where a trail led us to parkland with a river running through it. Ellidaárdalur, the Ellida river valley, a pocket of nature in the heart of the city. As well as the wide, rocky river, there was a small waterfall and, that novelty in Iceland, actual woodland. I couldn’t remember seeing so many trees anywhere else in the country. It was like walking into another land, accessible only to those in the company of a native Icelander; at least, I saw no one else here who looked or sounded like a foreigner. Small fair-haired children darted in and out of the trees like miniature elves from Tolkien’s imagination, calling musically in Icelandic, and couples of all ages strolled arm in arm.

“Is this place a national secret?” I asked as we wandered amongst them.

Viggo’s eyes crinkled. “Of course. Now you’ve seen it, you can never leave Iceland.”

“Going to keep me prisoner, are you?” Right now, that didn’t seem much of a hardship.

“Do I need to?” He was still smiling, but there was a wariness in his eyes that cut me to look at. I took a deep breath, suddenly needing air.

“No. No, you don’t need to.” Warmth blossomed inside me as the tension left his face.

“I used to come here when I was a boy,” he said. “We lived close enough to walk, and it was a good place to come. To play pretend. My mother… She had many problems.”

So, not just the drinking, then. I slipped my arm into his. “It must have been hard. Do you mind my asking how she died?”