Forever Wife (12 page)

She fixed herself something to eat, tossing a frozen dinner in the microwave, which she later enjoyed on the couch in front of the television.  She intentionally left her empty dishes on the couch.  Vidar had always hated it when her parents let her eat meals away from the kitchen table.  He felt that every meal should be served at a table with napkins, manners, and candlelight.  If this didn't get a reaction from him, nothing would!

Then she retreated upstairs to her bedroom.  Last night Vidar had tucked her into bed, and she had felt so treasured. He’d massaged her back, easing her pain more than any prescription had ever managed to do. 

It took a while for her to fall asleep.  Part of her kept hoping that he would come to her room.  It made her smile, thinking of him all tall and dark and mysterious, snuggled up next to her on the pink full-sized bed that was teaming with stuffed animals, ruffles, and lace.  But he never came.  Just as she was about to drift off to sleep, she thought she heard him on the stairs, but her eyes drifted shut before she could be sure.  And in the morning, when she awoke she was alone.

* * * * *

Liz pulled on a pair of fuzzy slippers and skipped downstairs for breakfast.  If Vidar wanted to mope, lurking about in the dark corners of the cabin, let him.  She wasn’t going to let him ruin what could turn out to be a perfectly lovely day.  At least, if she kept telling herself that, she might start to believe it. 

Vidar was in the kitchen, though.  Didn’t that man ever sleep?  At least his clothes looked rumpled, as though he’d slept in them, and his expression looked like he might not have slept at all.  She felt a moment of pity for him, but then she shook it off.  She was here, after all.  She was ready for a relationship with him… he was the one to clam up, to shut her out.  Well, two could play that game.  She wasn’t going to say a thing to him until he spoke first.

She dug out the box of Pop Tarts again, just to irritate him, although she would really have preferred an omelet.  She made a show
of opening the package, smacking her lips as she lowered the treat into the toaster.  Leaning over the toaster while it heated up, she drew in a deep breath and savored the sweet aroma.

“Brat,” Vidar grumbled.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” she said sarcastically.

“Watch your language, young lady.”

“You’re speaking to me again.  I guess I should get down and kiss the ground.”

Vidar grabbed her and pulled her in, wrapping her securely in his embrace.  He inhaled deeply, tickling the area around her ear as he did.   “We need to talk,” he whispered.

She shrugged.  At least, she tried to, but held as closely as she was, she didn’t have much room to move at all.  “Talk is over-rated.  I need to eat.”

“I really didn’t like your characterization of me yesterday as just a man who used to work for your father.” He turned, pressing her up against a wall, then used one of his big booted feet to separate hers, forcing her to spread her legs to accommodate the intrusion of one his big thigh
s between her much more delicate ones.

It was entirely too intimate a position and Liz knew she should have been protesting his familiarity but she couldn’t seem to catch enough breath to do so.  This stance had her just slightly off balance – which she imagined was exactly what he intended – and her hands itched to reach out and clutch the front of his shirt.  She leaned against him, partly so that she wouldn’t end up collapsing entirely against him, but mostly because she desperately wanted to feel those hard muscles beneath her palm.

“We both know I was much more that.  I am sorry for the misunderstanding that came between us for the past eight years, and I accept at least partial responsibility for that.  I’m also sorry that I didn’t keep closer tabs on you.  I could have.  I could have followed your career, but I thought by staying away, maybe you would find a good man to love you and take care of you.  But I find I am just not that noble any more.  I cannot let another man take that job away from me. I am done with that, along with you thinking that I’m just some stranger in your life.  That is going to end.  Right now.”

Vidar tipped her chin u
p and pressed his mouth to hers.  It was slow and sultry and had her heart puddling at her feet.  She knew she should have been protesting the way he’d just strolled in here and taken over – as usual – but he was making her feel much too good to do anything that might jeopardize the heaven of his lips on hers.  He was a perfect kisser. He kept the pressure just right – firm but not too demanding – as his tongue danced with hers, teasing and tempting and delighting in her responses.

One big hand came up to cup the back of her head when he thought she might decide to try to end it, and he wasn’t going to have any of that until he was good and ready.  He’d obviously been much too patient – and by his own fault too absent – with her, not showing her demonstrably just how he felt about her.  Not any more.

By the time he left her mouth to drop soft, tingling kisses down column of her throat, Liz’s knees were ready to buckle, and he knew it, too, damn him.  She could tell by that annoying self-satisfied look on his face.

He forced her chin up again, so that she had to meet and yield to those stark blue eyes.  “Now.  I suggest you abandon any preconceived notions about who you think I am.  I
am
your friend, and I’m not about to allow you to starve yourself to death because of your own stubborn pride, Elizabeth.”

She opened her mouth to respond, but wisely closed it again at the look in those eyes.

“And I intend to be much, much more than that, whether you like it or not.”  He pressed his hips forward sharply and angled his thigh up, pressing it firmly against the notch between her legs, catching her unaware and reveling in the way her eyes widened in surprise then closed just slightly.

He’d put her into such a position – essentially straddling his thigh quite obscenely – that she had no choice but to grab handfuls of his shirt in order to stay upright.  “L-let m-me down,” she protested, but it sounded weak and hesitant to her own ears.  She could imagine what it sounded like to his predatory ones.

Instead he kissed her again, deeply, as he forced her to ride that broad, hard thigh of his, catching her mewls and groans of pleasure in his own mouth, letting them wash over him to settle in the area of his own already-bulging crotch.

“Oh, I don’t think so, Beth,” came the ragged whisper at her ear.  “I’ve wanted and loved you from afar for so long
… long before it was proper to do so.  So I waited until you’d grown up.  I lost track of you for a while, after visiting you in college.  I let you get much too far away from me, so much so that you don’t even consider me a friend any longer.”

She couldn’t really dispute what he was saying.  It was all the
bald-faced truth.

But wait!  Had he just said that he loved her?  And wanted her? 

Vidar wasn’t giving her time to consider his words.  “But that’s done.”  He took a small step back, still not removing himself from between her legs, though, and looked down into her eyes.  “Your financial worries are over from here on out. And you’ve earned yourself a paddling for not coming to me with your problem in the first place, the moment it began to arise.”

There was one word that caught her attention in his little speech, even through her amazement at his confession of love for her: paddle.  At that one word she started struggling to get away from him, which she realized she should have been doing throughout. The thought occurred that she didn’t know how exactly it was that she was supposed to resist him.  He was too much of everything she wanted in a man, besides the fact he was
twice her size.

All Vidar had to do to stop her escape was to press himself forward, and he did so, plastering her back up against the
wall and her front against his.  It was slow, painful torture to be so close to her and not have her naked beneath him, but that was coming, and it couldn’t come soon enough.

He was delighted to see the desire that she couldn’t quite hide in her eyes, but he also saw something he wasn’t expecting:  a tinge of fear floating around the edges of that passion, and whether it was fear of him or the situation, he didn’t know, but he found the idea of her being afraid of him abhorrent.

As much as he desperately wanted to simply claim her as his own, to imprint her indelibly as his and his alone, he exerted a tremendous force of will and reigned himself in a bit.  “In case you didn’t hear it the first time, my lady, I
want
you.  Every single inch, from that lopsided bun on the top of your head to your pink bunny toes. Before and beyond anything else in this world.”  He kissed her deeply and very, very slowly, coaxing and teasing, nibbling and sucking on her lower lip, then tongue, feeling the whole-body shiver that ran through her.  His heart swelled when she somewhat shyly answered him back, nipping playfully at the tip of his bold tongue when it dared venture forth to plunder the inside of her mouth yet again.

Vidar growled low in his throat at her gesture, already imagining that it was his nipples she was biting so sweetly.  Her curious – and somewhat triumphant – expression had him smiling broadly.  “You look like the cat that ate the canary.”

“You said that you loved me?” she asked, as if to make sure she’d heard him right.

He would have laughed, if it weren’t a tragic reality that she still didn’t seem to understand.  “Yes, Baby,” he breathed.  “I love you.  And I plan to spend the rest of my life proving that to you.”

With another low, almost menacing growl, he lifted her high into his arms.  “Right after giving you that paddling,” he said smugly.

Outraged, she tried unsuccessfully to struggle out of his arms, but when he tightened them just slightly, she found she couldn’t so much as move a hand.  She was trapped against him, and he was on his way to the master bedroom.

“No – not there,” she pleaded.

He diverted to her room upstairs, the same pink and pretty little girl room that had been hers while she was growing up.  He made a mental note that she should be given free reign to redecorate, especially the master bedroom.

He lay her down with infinite care, ever-mindful of her injury, although he didn’t know just how long he was going to be able to do that when he made love to her.  He was already half out of his mind wanting her and common sense had been known to leave him entirely when he merely fantasized about this moment.

But there she was, lying next to him, not even trying to get away as he had worried she might, but even turning towards him, so that they each lay on their sides, facing each other.  She was biting her lip, and he knew she wanted to say something.

Vidar paused in the act of reaching for the hem of one of the colorful layers of her ragtag pajamas.  “Honey, I know you might not believe it quite yet, but you can say absolutely anything to me.”  He wrapped his strong arms around her and simply held her, wanting her to feel his support as she decided whether to trust him.

“Except that which gets me into trouble.”  That she had absolutely no problems conveying to him.

“Most
especially
that which gets you into trouble.  You are expected to tell me when you know you’ve done something wrong, young lady.”

She sputtered and blustered and snorted. Slightly annoyed, he flipped her over onto her tummy, delivering several very hard, very sharp swats to her gorgeously rounded derrière.

“Ow!  Cut that out!”

After another set of sharp smacks he rolled her back over, and then wagged his thick index finger in front of her nose as he leaned over her.  “I want that well understood, Elizabeth.  I’ll spank you whenever and wherever I want, and I’ll try not to miss it when you’ve broken a rule.  But I’m going to tell you now that if I find out that you knew you’d done something wrong and you just waited for me to discover it, you’re going to get twice the punishment you would have otherwise.”

Suddenly her sense of indignation rose to the forefront.  “Hey, what gives you the right to spank me
at all
!”

He caught her eyes with his.  “Because I love you to distraction, that’s why, and I’ve watched you grow up with no rules and no consequences to your actions.  But that ends here and now.  You will have set rules and if you break them, there are going to be very serious consequences, delivered by me.”

Liz preferred to discount the latter part of his speech in favor of concentrating on what she wanted to hear.  “You - love me?” she asked, true unadulterated wonder in her tone, as she needed to be reaffirmed yet again.

Vidar, who had been gearing up for an argument with her about the fact that her little butt was going to find itself getting tanned every and any time he decided she needed it, switched gears with amazing aplomb.  “I do.  And I always have, practically from the moment of your conception, through birth, and when I first held you in my arms, I knew that you were special.  I watched you grow up into the beautiful woman that you are.” 

He kissed her with infinite gentleness, and she returned it in kind.  But when he pulled away, she was biting her lip again, as if there was something she desperately wanted to say to him.

Liz could barely believe what was happening between them, and it made her question her sanity, and the sanity of telling him that she felt the exact same way he seemed to.  She wasn’t sure whether it might be better to wait before she made her grand confession, although he had had the courage to bare his soul to her, and she really felt it was only right that she do the same.