The Misadventures of Annika Brisby (17 page)

“Oh, if I don’t like something, I’ll let you know,” she assured him. With a nod of approval at her response, he leaned on his right elbow and caressed her inner thighs with his left hand, squeezing and teasing her mercilessly with his fingertips. Then he slipped a finger inside of her, and suddenly he became still. His mouth and his eyes pressed shut and a long, drawn-out sigh escaped from his nose.

“What is it?”

“It’s you,” he murmured, and shook his delirious head before looking down at her. “I didn’t expect your hot little honeycomb would be spilling over with nectar already.” He carefully slipped another finger inside, making her shudder and twist in pleasure at his fluid movements. “Why…you are absolutely
dripping
with honey! Gods be damned if I can’t last long enough to savor every drop.”

“Then you better start thinking about baseball statistics, or we’re going to have a serious problem,” she warned him, quivering under his touch. He snickered and withdrew his fingers, thoroughly distracting her with the long, deliberate strokes of his tongue as he sucked them clean. Unable to wait a minute longer for him, she reached for his belt and gasped when he took her hand and slid it down below his buckle.

“Do you still think elves are small?” he taunted, cupping her hand over his hard bulge. “Or have I convinced you otherwise?”

“I stand corrected,” she half-laughed, half-whispered.

“Now, now…you’re too short for that. Let’s keep you on your back—at least for now,” he hummed, then reached for her pants, tugging them down past her ankles before crawling over her once more. He dipped down to kiss her again, and she could only imagine what sorts of statistics were running through his head. Their breathing was so interwoven with urgent sighs and moans that she barely heard him unbuckle his belt over the faint chimes of the clock in the hall.

“
Blast
!” he hissed with an angry scowl. He rolled off of her and lay on his back, panting as he stared intently up at the ceiling. She sat up and gave him an accusatory look.

“What the hell? Don’t you dare tell me that you blew it already!” she sputtered as she began to feel the first inklings of outrage at him. While the clock continued to chime, he let a small sniggle escape his mouth, until it turned into a full blown belly laugh. She was about ready to punch him out of frustration.

“No, that’s not it at all.” He turned and looked at her with a pained expression, letting his eyes rove up and down her naked body. “Right now I want nothing more than to pleasure you for the remainder of the afternoon.” He took a deep breath and spoke though clenched teeth. “That bloody clock woke up Sloan. He’s upstairs crying as I speak. I’m sure you can imagine that is
not
the soundtrack I want to hear during this particular performance.”

“Oh, I see,” Annika said in disappointment. She pulled her sweater back on and strained to listen for the crying toddler, but heard nothing besides the clock finally striking noon. “I guess we should go check on him then.”

Talvi nodded, stood up reluctantly, and buckled his belt.

“What a bloody shame,” he lamented when she rose to put on her pants. “Letting all that honey go to waste.”

“I’m sure they’ll be more,” she said with a coy smile and smoothed her disheveled hair. “And I’ve been meaning to get my backpack from your bedroom. It might take me a while to remember exactly where I put it.”

“Yes, it very well might. I would plan to spend at least a few hours on your first attempt,” he agreed with innocent eyes and a wolfish grin. “Although my room is quite large. I expect you’ll have to return multiple times before you get what you came for.”

They left the room and passed the now much-despised clock, then hustled up the staircase to the second floor. It was mostly bedrooms, where they stepped into a room that had to be the children’s nursery. The drapes had been pulled shut, and a howling little boy was anxious to get out of his spacious crib. His red face was covered in tears, and he only screamed more when his uncle picked him up. It was obvious that Talvi had no desire to interact with what he referred to as larvae. He held Sloan out at arm’s length as though he were radioactive.

“I don’t understand why you’re still crying,” he said impatiently to his nephew as they walked out of the nursery. “You’re out of bed; what more do you want?”

Annika tried to be patient with the shrieks as they echoed and bounced off the walls, but it was quickly getting on her nerves before they even reached the end of the hallway.

“Here, give him to me,” she insisted, and took the screaming boy out of Talvi’s obliging hands. She hugged him close with his head resting on her heart and rubbed his back, swaying from side to side as she soothed him with her voice. In less than a minute he was silent, except for the little sniffs here and there. She walked into the reading room and sat down on one of the chaise lounges, lying back with Sloan’s head resting on her chest.

“That’s amazing. He never calms down with me, he just screams in my ears until I want to scream,” said Talvi while he looked on in disbelief.

“I’d scream too, if you held me like that,” Annika said, frowning at him. “You have to reassure him that he’s safe.”

“Where did you learn that?”

“My dad used to volunteer me to babysit a lot of the kids on the army bases when I was growing up. I guess I was good at it.”

“You certainly are. I can’t believe how quickly he quieted down,” Talvi said, observing how content Sloan was capable of being.

“It’s a pretty simple technique, see? I put his head over my heartbeat so he can feel it. It’s really comforting. And then you rub their back, and hopefully they end up like this,” she pressed her nose against Sloan’s curls and smiled.

“You better not move unless you want to do your trick again,” Talvi warned under his breath. “He’s fallen back asleep.”

“No, I definitely don’t want to wake him. If he doesn’t have a good nap he’ll be a sour little boy. Even worse than you,” she teased. Talvi shot her a look, but eventually smiled. He’d been knocked down more than a few pegs since meeting this saucy American girl.

“What’s in this pile of books? Anything interesting?”

Talvi stood there, deep in thought, then bent down and silently moved the table off to one side. Then he swung the other sofa around so that it touched the one Annika was lying on. He covered her and Sloan with the afghan and grabbed a green book from the table, settling in the chair diagonal from them. It was a fantastic idea; it looked like their own little island. He opened the book and she recognized the cover immediately.

“Is that Andersen’s Fairy Tales? Let me guess; 1944, right? With a little Dachshund in the bottom corner of the inside cover. And the man on the left is dedicating this book to his granddaughter,” she whispered excitedly.

“Why, you know this very book?” he asked and showed her the inside cover. Her description was perfect.

“Yeah, my grandma gave them to us when we were in high school. There were two. I got the green one and Charlie got—”

“The red one?” Talvi asked, and held up a red covered book the same size as the green one.

“Yeah, that’s the one. How crazy is that?” Annika marveled, trying to keep her voice low.

“I don’t know, you tell me. The green one is mine and the red one is Yuri’s copy.” Talvi was looking at her very strangely at the coincidence that they owned the same exact books. “Finn gave them to us not that long ago it seems, but I suppose it’s been a few years.”

“Why don’t you read me my favorite story, then?”

“Which one is your favorite?” he asked her.

“You ought to know, it’s probably your favorite too,
Prince Talvi
,” she teased. He ignored this comment and cleared his throat, turning the pages to the very first story in the book. Instantly she was lost in the world of a young prince who, in his quest for knowledge, met the winds of the North, South, East, and West and in the end was brought to the Garden of Paradise. As Talvi read, he gave each character a different voice or accent. The prince in the story had claimed that he could resist the very thing that drove Adam and Eve from the Garden. Sin. Temptation. But alas, he did not even last one night when he was tempted by a lovely fairy princess and was removed in an instant from the wonders of the garden.

Annika saw herself become the fairy princess from the story, dripping in shimmering gauze and jewels. She was sleeping under the heavy branches of the enchanted, glittering tree in the center of the garden while waiting to see if the prince would come to her and sin, or stay away and preserve the garden for all time. The tall, black-haired prince entered the room, and by the look in his blue-green eyes, there was no question that he had sin on his mind. He watched her for a long time, wondering if just a light touch on the lips was really enough to banish him from the garden. He leaned down to kiss her as she lay in her little bed of velvet and silk and rose petals. As his weight rested on her chest and his lips brushed against hers, the garden did not sink into the center of the earth as he had been warned. He kissed her deeply with a soft touch, and his hands moved over her skin, warming her bare arms. She felt her body stir as giant flowers pushed out of the ground and rose all around them. Tulips, roses, snapdragons, and daisies lifted their heavy, fragrant blooms, searching for the warmth and light, but there was no sun. The flowers were bending and hugging each other, planted in the ground, yet touching and caressing one another as though they were lovers.

Annika blinked sleepily and was greeted with a rested smile, bright blue eyes and a mass of blond curls. She must have dozed off, hearing Talvi tell the story. The book he’d been reading from was resting on his chest, still open, and his head was nestled into the chair as he slept. Sloan let out a little squeal and his uncle opened his eyes.

“How long have we been asleep?” she asked him, wiping some drool off of Sloan’s tiny mouth.

“A while. I skipped to the end. You talk in your sleep, did you know that?” he said while he stretched and yawned.

“Yeah, I do that sometimes. What did I say?” she asked curiously.

“It wasn’t decipherable,” he said, sitting up and closing the book. “But it was amusing, nonetheless.”

“Did it sound anything like
mo rees toe comp anya vlatzee
?”

“You don’t even know what that means,” he taunted.

“Is that so? Then I guess we were just two flowers in a meadow with no bees to help us out today,” she smirked.

“Who told you that?” he seemed slightly more than surprised, maybe even upset.

“Oh, I have my sources,” she smiled, and any trace left of his cocky arrogance disappeared. It was replaced with a tender gaze, so sweet and innocent, that she couldn’t even begin to understand the force that was fueling it.

“Then I suppose I can tell you how glad I am that my little bee crossed that meadow when he did. I was beginning to doubt if flowers like you even existed,” he said and leaned over, about to kiss her in the afternoon light that poured through the tall windows around them. She didn’t quite understand what he meant, about her even existing, but she didn’t want to admit how clueless she was.

She closed her eyes, expecting a kiss, but she only heard him gasp sharply. She opened her eyes and saw that Sloan had grabbed a fistful of his uncle’s long hair and pulled himself to a standing position, using it as leverage. Talvi groaned and winced in pain. Carefully he unwound the small fingers that threatened to give him a bare spot on the side of his head.

“You’re a better chaperone than your mother, aren’t you, you wretched little maggot? Now when am I going to have Annika and nearly the entire house to myself again? You completely ruined it for us today,” he told the little boy, who smiled like he’d planned it all along.

The three of them walked to the kitchen where the smell of something delicious was coming from the oven. Anthea was talking with her mother while Stella clutched at her dress. She turned around with a smile on her face.

“There’s my handsome little boy! You must have had a good nap. You look so happy,” Anthea said and took him from Annika. “Thank you for watching him. I was able to get so much done in the greenhouse, and then we made eggplant and zucchini lasagna for dinner. You’re just in time.”

“Well thanks for cooking. It smells delicious,” Annika said graciously.

“After dinner, would you like to accompany Finn and I to the village? We could find the girls,” Talvi offered as he gathered some plates and silverware.

“You know where they are?” she asked. “I thought you said you didn’t know!”

He smiled sweetly at her.

“I didn’t know where they were
today
, but as long as Runa and Yuri are together, they’ll be at the Tortoise and Hare by sunset.”

“If we’re going out, should I dress up?” she asked.

“No, you can wear that if you like. It’s nothing fancy; it’s a pub. We’ll just have a pint.” Anthea burst out laughing at this comment.

“With you it’s never just a pint! Why else would Dorsey put up with your antics? What you’ve spent in the past year and a half alone could support that establishment.” Talvi stuck his tongue out at his oldest sibling while their mother’s back was turned. “Back when I used to go to the Tortoise and Hare, we were happy with a couple of pints. Now it’s turned into this
event
,” Anthea added and kissed her little boy.