All In (36 page)

Michel put his hand over hers and a tingle surged through her. This was the best part. Foreplay. She swallowed against the hollow feeling that spread through her chest, pushed it away, and let her hand slide down his chest, rubbing his nipple lightly. She was an expert on the male nipple. He moaned.

Michel raised his hand and tugged on a bouncy strand of her hair. “I really want to,” he murmured, letting his finger trace along her thin shoulder strap. “But I don't just want sex. I want
you
.”

To her horror, tears welled up in Åsa's eyes again.

Was it really so much to ask?

A quick hook-up, then he could leave her and go. That's all she wanted, she convinced herself. Aside from the fact that if Michel disappeared from her life again, he would take such a big piece of her with him that she wasn't sure there would be anything left.

She stroked his biceps, felt a primitive ache inside. He was so damn sexy.

“I have a clean bill of health,” she said. “I've been tested. I'm on the pill. I really want to have sex with you.” She smiled. “But I am not a woman who ever wants to have children. I don't want to be tied down.”

Michel's parents were definitely expecting grandchildren from their only son, so she was giving him a chance now to agree that this was just about sex, that neither of them was planning something long-term, that she didn't expect him to stay. She didn't know a single man who wouldn't jump at what she'd just offered.

“I'm also clean,” he said. “And I want you. Just you. I don't give a damn if you want kids or not. I don't even understand why we're talking about that.”

He put a hand on her waist and pulled her to him. Her breasts pushed against his chest through the fabric. And then he finally kissed her, infinitely softly.

Her hands slid up over his arms as she responded to the kiss, and Michel pushed her back against the counter. She made a sound, clung tightly to him, planning to never stop kissing. He pulled apart the thin, silky layers of fabric, and then she had his palms against her bare skin. He grazed her hard nipples, and the arousal ripped through her.

“But Åsa,” he said, holding her gently around the shoulders and looking at her seriously. “If we make love, then you're mine. Understand? If this isn't important to you, you need to say so now.”

She nodded, slightly overwhelmed. “Okay,” she said, but she still wanted to add that this was
just for right now
, that she never made long-term plans and that this would end just like everything else. That she didn't
make love
to men, she had sex with them.

“Say it, Åsa,” he urged.

“What?”

“Say that this isn't just sex.” His eyes were like black fire. “I've loved you since the first time we saw each other,” he continued, and she couldn't decide if Michel thought this eternal love was a good thing or not. But his words gave Åsa something she hadn't ever felt before as an adult: hope.

“But how can you love me?” she said, her voice shaking.

This had to be the most pathetic seduction she'd ever orchestrated.

“I just do,” he said.

“This isn't just sex,” she whispered.

He exhaled, wrapped his hands around her hair, and kissed her furiously. Åsa clung to his biceps, not just because her legs turned to jelly but also because she wanted to cling to what Michel was for just as long as she could. A warm hand caressed its way in between her thighs; he pulled her cobweb-thin panties aside, and she leaned forward and bit him on the shoulder. She moaned against his skin as his fingers found their way in. Another man would have ripped off those expensive panties, but Michel was careful despite his intensity, and Åsa thought that a man like this was actually what every woman deserved. But he was hers, just hers.

“Where's your bedroom?” he asked hoarsely.

“Is there something wrong with the kitchen?” she murmured.

“No,” he said, kissing her again. Oh, he was such a superb kisser. Eager, hungry, just rough enough, as if kissing her made him crazy with desire. It was incredibly flattering. She rode the waves of arousal and then let them take her over. With her head tilted back, she let Michel hold her neck and kiss her throat, nibbling a fiery trail. His hands were everywhere, and she pushed herself into them, into his musky muscles and tender, golden skin.

“Take off your shirt,” she said, laughing at how quickly he ripped it off, before he started kissing a burning path down her body, over the dip at the base of her neck and her breastbone, over her thin skin and rosy nipples before continuing down over her soft belly. Åsa loved her body, how it responded and how it felt pleasure. She refused to see her ampleness and her softness as anything other than perfection. And Michel seemed more than satisfied to finally—after fifteen years of foreplay—get to go down on his knees in front of her.

She lazily separated her legs a tiny bit, but he moved them farther apart, determinedly and with force, and burrowed his strong fingers into the softest skin on the inside of her thigh. Åsa emitted a muffled groan. She loved the sound of sex almost as much as she loved the actual act of sex, at any rate when it was good, and this, this was epically good. She made another sound as she saw Michel's head down between her thighs. She closed her eyes. His tongue was zealous and hot, and she squirmed so much under his licks that he finally put his hands around her bottom to get her to stand still, squeezing her butt cheeks and pulling her toward him so that she almost lost her balance.

This was going to get wild—she already felt that.

She'd had sex with a lot of men; she loved sex, and she loved the game. But something told her that Michel was nowhere near as experienced as she was. There was something about the cautious arousal that he approached her with that made her feel worshipped, truly, and she loved it. What did she know, maybe he'd been saving himself for her? She smiled at the thought, opened her eyes again, held on with one hand around his shoulder and the other on the edge of the counter. She looked down, heard the sounds, and felt—God, how she felt—his hardworking tongue and then she came, right in his face.

She gasped and supported herself heavily against the edge of the counter.

Michel stood up and just attacked her with his mouth and his lips and his tongue. He pulled down her slinky dress, let it fall in a heap on the stone floor, and then buried his face in her breasts. He kissed and caressed them, over and over again.
Oh God
, this was so good.

“You are unbelievably beautiful,” he said huskily, and if Åsa had been able to speak she would have said that
he
was beautiful, more beautiful than any man she'd ever met.

Each motion intense, Michel turned her around so that she was standing with her face toward the tiled wall and faucets. She barely had time to think how lucky she was that her sink was so attractive—expensive Italian faucets, stainless surfaces, decorative herb plants, and a bowl of limes (she honestly had no idea where they'd come from)—before Michel pulled the thin fabric of her panties down her legs, undid his jeans, and entered her. She felt dizzy because he was definitely not a small man; he was all cock and muscles and hard hands, and when he took her like that she actually lost her breath for a moment. Not that she had anything against that, quite the contrary. She closed her eyes with a muffled moan and let herself be taken against the counter in hard thrusts. He had the stamina of a teenager, she thought as Michel pulled out after a while, still hard. With a hand on the arch of her back, he tore off his jeans and underwear, then took her into his arms and maneuvered her over to the kitchen island, showering her with kisses along the way. Clearly they were going to be inaugurating the whole kitchen today. The island was also topped with granite, cold and black. He took hold of her waist and lifted her up without even batting an eye, as if she didn't weigh a thing, and then set her down on the granite, which was ice-cold for a second before her bottom warmed it up.

“Spread your legs,” he said huskily.

She spread her thighs and let him look. The island turned out to be the perfect height, and he stared at her before his enormous cock buried itself in her again. She wrapped her legs around him, and Michel came—with her legs wrapped around his back, his hands on her ass—with a wild, pumping groan. Åsa continued to cling to him and just followed suit. It seemed he could hold her up forever, she noted as he panted into her hair in the aftershocks of his climax.

They kissed again while Michel slowly deflated within her. Sincere, almost insatiable kisses, which neither of them could get enough of. Stupidly, she had tears in her eyes again.

He kissed her one last time, significantly more gently now that he seemed to have recovered a little, before setting her down on the island again. He fetched a new glass of water and handed it to her. She drank and then handed it back. He drank without taking his eyes off her, and she thought there was something tremendously intimate about sharing this glass of water. She admired his body as he set the glass down, studying his muscles and tendons and powerful lines openly and with ownership. Her eyes lingered on his cock. She raised her eyebrows and said, “Already?” because it wasn't that deflated anymore.

“I've been dreaming about having sex with you for half my life,” he said, and his eyes were more than intense, they were
passionate
. He slid in again. “Maybe someday I'll have had enough, but not yet, far from it.”

Finally they more or less collapsed, entangled with each other, on the floor. Åsa with her head on his chest, he with his arms around her, hard, as if he was planning on never letting her go. They lay like that, took a break, panting and sweaty.

“Do you want any more water?” Michel asked.

Åsa shook her head. She draped one leg over his hips and slid over him as he lay on her freshly waxed marble floor.

“Look at me,” she commanded as she put her hands on his chest, straddling him.

Michel's eyes obediently locked onto hers; they were foggy with arousal.

She leaned forward and kissed him. He eagerly kissed her back.

“Are you up for any more?” she asked.

“Are you kidding?” he asked huskily. His eyes were burning hot as he grasped her hips.

So Åsa rode him. Slowly, to begin with, but faster and faster as they found a common pace. She rode him like he was an animal, a slave, a cherished lover.

“Touch yourself,” he ordered and she did, until they both came, loud and sweaty and at the same time.

Åsa collapsed onto his chest. Her muscles would be sore. She couldn't remember the last time she'd had such acrobatic sex.

He placed a hand on her hair, still breathing hard, and it occurred to her—a bit too late—that it probably wasn't all that ethical for Investum's chief attorney to be having sex on her kitchen floor with one of the men who was in the middle of a hostile takeover of the board of her boss's company.

Some people would probably call that a moral gray area.

She listened to Michel's pounding heart and knew that right now he cared as much about Investum as she did—which was to say not at all.

What had happened between them had nothing to do with Investum. Tomorrow Michel would continue doing what he could to take over her boss's company. And she would fight him, of course. It was what it was, and it meant less than nothing.

Michel moved beneath her, mumbled something. He was starting to go limp again, but she didn't want to get up yet. She tightened her internal muscles and smiled at his moan.

He'd said he loved her a little while ago. Maybe that was true—probably it was; Michel was a romantic, after all. But there was a lot of other stuff that felt up in the air, that was for sure. Her and him. The future, all of fucking life.

Åsa wriggled a smidge and made a slight face from pain when she lifted a tender knee.

There were a lot of things in this world that were damned uncertain. One thing was certain, though, she thought as she studied her bruised knee, and it was that if she and Michel continued on in this way, she was going to have to talk to her interior decorator as soon as possible.

Because Swedish marble might be nice to look at.

But it was hard as hell to have sex on.

50

 

W
hen the ill-fated Monday morning finally dawned, gray and chilly, Natalia was still lying in bed with sleep in her eyes, her heart ticking away as she tried to go back to sleep. After listening to the blackbirds and something that sounded like geese for a few hours, she gave up and went out to the kitchen. She made green tea, padded out to the balcony, curled up under a blanket, and just let time go by.

When her phone dinged, she jumped, unsure how long she'd actually been sitting out there staring into space. She fetched her phone. A text from Alexander.

She texted him back quickly.

Fifteen minutes later, her doorbell rang.

“Hello there,” her little brother said, strolling in and kissing her on the cheek. “I thought we could go together.” He handed her a brown paper bag. “I brought you breakfast.”

She took the bag, opened it, smiled, taking out the sandwiches. Sourdough bread with brie and vegetables. “Thanks,” she said. She'd been awake for several hours and realized she was starving. They saw each other so rarely, and yet Alex had remembered what she liked. He'd always had a great head for details.

“No problem; you are my favorite sister, after all,” he said, walking out to the kitchen. It was an old joke, but suddenly it stung. She was only his half sister. Did that change anything? And
when
would she dare mention it?

Natalia made more tea, which Alexander declined. He moved around the kitchen restlessly, and when they sat down at the table he couldn't stay still, but fiddled with everything, stretched out his legs, and drummed his fingers on the table.

“How are things?” she asked.

“Good.” He got up, running his hand through his hair. “But I'm not sleeping that well. I hate jet lag.”

Natalia ate her sandwich and tried not to let his constant moving about bother her. When they were little he'd always been in motion; apparently he hadn't grown out of it yet.

Her phone, which was on the counter, started ringing.

“It's Peter,” Alexander said, looking at the caller ID. He made a face and handed her the phone. “He's called me like five times today.”

“What does he want?”

Alexander shrugged. “No idea. I didn't answer.” That didn't surprise her. Her brothers' relationship was touch-and-go and filled with conflict.

Natalia answered. “Hi, Peter.”

Alexander rolled his eyes, sat down at the table, and stole a slice of cucumber from her sandwich.

“What are you doing?” Peter asked her curtly.

“Eating breakfast,” she replied, looking at Alexander. He made a gesture like he was slitting his throat. “I'm home. Alex is here,” she added, disregarding his gestures. “We're going to the meeting together.”

“Then I'll come over too,” said Peter, and he hung up before Natalia had a chance to reply.

“What did he say?” Alexander leaned back in the kitchen chair. He was wearing a suit, something he rarely did, but of course it looked great on him. Long, black eyelashes and dark eyebrows were a dramatic contrast to his blond hair. He looked like some divine creature who'd just been expelled from paradise for morality-related reasons.

Alexander had once graced the cover of
Vanity Fair
, photographed shirtless with two naked female models at his feet. Art, they'd called it. Sexist, Natalia had thought. Rumor had it that Alexander was actually supposed to have been photographed with two other jet-set guys but that they hadn't been able to get a picture where Alexander's beauty didn't completely overshadow the other two men. The solution had been to let him pose with women instead, and the cover had been legendary.

“Peter's coming over,” she said and pushed the rest of the sandwiches toward Alexander, eyebrows raised. She was having a hard time getting used to these fluctuations. First she was starving, then stuffed. Nothing in her life had ever been this changeable before; everything had been predictable. Now there was a big storm everywhere. Especially in her body. And all because of a fetus that was the size of a thumb.

She was starting her seventh week today—it was totally dizzying. Every morning she woke up and thought she must have imagined it. But she was still pregnant.

She was on the verge of putting her hand on her abdomen, but stopped herself and set it on her teacup instead. Alexander would have noticed that right away. He was lethal if you underestimated him. She realized that she was going to have to tell her brothers at some point—that she was expecting a child, that she wasn't their sister, that their father had disowned her, that she was unemployed.

“Are you feeling alright?” Alexander asked, studying her. “You look pale.”

“I have something that I . . . ,” she began, but she was interrupted by the doorbell ringing again.

“I'll get it,” Alexander said, getting up and walking out to open the door.

Natalia listened to the voices in the hallway and then to the footsteps approaching. The voices got louder, and even before Alexander and Peter entered the kitchen, they were arguing about something.

Natalia studied her brothers, so similar and yet so different. Peter's face was red with rage, whereas Alexander was looking very aristocratic, with that mixture of derision and disdain that he somehow reserved solely for his big brother.

It was always the same, Natalia thought gloomily, as if they had some constant, ongoing argument. She tried to remember if it had ever been different or if they had always felt this antipathy toward each other. Peter was seven years older than Alexander, she was the middle child—the illegitimate one, she reminded herself—but she had vague memories of her brothers when they actually
weren't
arguing, when a little Alexander had toddled after a laughing Peter, but maybe she was deceiving herself. These days she wasn't really sure about anything.

These days, Alex took every opportunity to openly mock Peter's choices in life and the way he groveled before their father. For his part, Peter picked on everything Alexander did and
didn't
do. At the heart of it, Natalia suspected, Peter had always felt inadequate; he'd never had Alexander's natural charm. But then
no one
had Alexander's natural charm. Being jealous of him was like being jealous of a sunset or a painting.

Peter greeted her with a brief nod, said no thanks to a cup of tea, and leaned against the counter with his arms crossed.

Alexander sat back down in the kitchen chair, with his lips curled into a stiff smile.

Natalia drank her tea, which was now cold. Actually it was sad: three siblings with so little in common.

She snuck a look at Peter, trying to imagine him raping Carolina, raping
anyone
. Was he that brutal? If he had, how could he live with himself? And what did it say about her that she wasn't confronting him?

Alexander drummed his fingers on the table, and it struck her that Alex might know about the rape. He'd gone to the same school, after all. He'd told her about the hazing David had gone through. He must have known
something
.

It was as if everything that was stable in her life had started to disintegrate. No matter what happened, it would never be like before. This insight wasn't new, but it was painful.

Her mother still hadn't answered a single one of her phone calls.

It was slowly starting to sink in how deep this went. Things that had happened, things that had been done or not done, came to the surface and changed life forever. She was going to have to deal with it, whatever
it
was.

Peter snorted at something Alex said. He shouldn't have come if he was just going to argue. But that was Peter in a nutshell. He couldn't tolerate his siblings doing anything without him. He had to be there, keeping an eye on things.

The doorbell rang again.

“I'll get it,” Natalia said, leaving the kitchen with some relief to go open the door. She rarely had so much traffic at home, and she wondered who it could be.

Natalia opened the door.

“Hi,” Gina said. The housecleaner looked surprised, standing with her keys out. “I didn't know you were home,” she added apologetically.

“Sorry, I'd totally forgotten that you usually come at this time,” Natalia said. She'd forgotten that it was a normal weekday. Of course, Gina had no idea she was unemployed now and spending a lot of time at home. She'd never realized how complicated it was to have so many secrets.

“Come in. We're nearly on our way out,” she said, stepping aside.

Ever since Natalia's breakdown, the atmosphere between her and Gina had been uncomfortable. As if the balance between them had shifted in some invisible way. Natalia led the way to the kitchen with Gina following, like a silent shadow.

Alexander stood up as they entered and greeted Gina with his normal, easygoing charm. Peter totally ignored her, although they must have met several times. He gave her a blank look and furrowed his brow, as if it were beneath him to greet her.

“I'll start in the living room,” Gina said, getting her supplies out of the broom closet and lowering her head as she left the room.

“Thanks,” Natalia said uncomfortably. She wanted to say something more, apologize for Peter's rudeness, say that it was wrong to divide people by social class, but the moment was lost, and words would hardly have improved the situation.

“You could at least say hello,” Natalia hissed.

“What?” Peter asked, looking genuinely surprised. “To her? But she's just here to clean, right? Why should I say hello to her? I didn't even know she spoke Swedish.”

“Shh,” Natalia said, embarrassed.

“You're such a dick,” Alexander said.

Peter shrugged. “I don't give a damn what you think,” he said to Alexander. “You don't do anything sensible, you drink and take drugs and sleep around. I hardly need a sermon on morality from you.” He raised an eyebrow. “Are you even sober?”

Alexander's eyes flashed, but then he went through that transformation that always scared the life out of Natalia. He adopted a cool, bored expression and sort of disappeared, as if behind a mask. As if there were nothing in the whole world worth caring about. No one could tune out emotionally like Alexander.

“Oh yeah, I'm sober,” he said. “At the moment anyway. Try not to fall apart out of moral indignation.”

Natalia looked at her brothers. They were actually more alike than either would want to admit. Both were tall and strong, and they were both blond and blue-eyed. Unlike her. How could she have missed that when it was so obvious? She was so unlike them, not just because she was female but also genetically. She let her eyes linger on Peter. Should she tell him that she knew about the rape? She should talk to him, but not when Alexander was listening.

She rubbed her forehead.

Soon she was going to have to sit down and decide what order to do all of this in.

The list of Things I Need to Talk to People About was starting to get quite long. Maybe she should make an Excel spreadsheet or a flowchart.

They heard the sound of a vacuum cleaner turning on in the hallway. Peter looked at the time and got up from the counter with a quick motion. He straightened his clothes and said, “I have to go. I'll see you there.”

“Where are you going?” Natalia asked, astonished. Now that they were all here, she had assumed that they would go to the meeting together.

Peter looked over his shoulder. “There's something I need to take care of first.”

“Do you know where he's going?” Natalia asked after Peter had left.

“No idea,” Alexander replied, unconcerned.

“I was hoping we could talk a little bit, all three of us, come together, you know, show a united front.”

“United front?” Alex asked sarcastically. “Really? I know you want to fight for the family business. I know that you've been slaving away like an animal, and I admire you, because you
are
admirable. But, Nat dear, not even you can save this.”

“I can try,” she said, irritated by his lack of desire to fight. “I talked to Uncle Eugene, by the way. He's coming too.” She'd talked to so many people in the last two weeks that her jaws hurt.

“What did he say?”

“Not much. I think Hammar Capital got to him first.”

“Natalia, how . . . ,” Alexander began in a worried tone. He paused and then started over. “This thing between you and David Hammar, how are you doing?”

“I can't talk about it,” she said in a warning tone. “Not now.” He really was frighteningly sharp, she thought, freaked out.

Alexander stretched his shoulders as if he'd already stopped caring and quickly said, “Fine. Get yourself together then, and let's get going to our lynching.”

“Do you think it's going to be that bad?”

Alexander watched her with his brilliant blue eyes.

“No,” he said. “I think it's going to be much worse.”