If possible, his expression became even more glacial, his voice frigid and decisive. “I already told you once before. I’m not. I’m just not interested.”
Narrow, Arctic pools of clear blue ice captured her eyes and held them for a beat before looking angrily away, but not before she’d seen what she already knew to be true. He was lying. Love terrified him.
She had pushed him too far.
“We don’t have to talk about it anymore.” He didn’t respond and shifted away from her. She tried again. “Your mother sounds amazing.”
“She was.” He didn’t look up and his tone didn’t brook further inquiry. He’s really angry.
“You could practically be an English professor. I’ve never met anyone who…” He didn’t acknowledge her comment, so she let her voice trail off.
She had offended him, and she was sorry. She was caught up in the excitement of the subject matter, yes, but more than that, she couldn’t resist the opportunity to try to get to know him better, to break down the wall that he kept maintained so meticulously around his heart and find a common ground between the man who made her insides so hot, but kept his feelings on ice. She searched her mind for a way to find the teasing banter she had killed by confronting him so baldly. Then she had an idea.
“Last question…”
He gave her a sour, bored look askance, but didn’t turn away.
“Favorite scene in Lady Chatterley’s Lover?” She licked her lips, then bit her bottom lip, and lifted her eyebrows in challenge, teasing him to answer honestly. If he was forced to read the others, he would have eventually gotten around to that one, maybe as she did, under the covers, with a flashlight, insides turning to jelly at the sheer eroticism of the writing.
He stared at her, shifting his body back toward her, eyes slowly dilating, flicking his glance from her eyes to her lips, then back again.
She watched the transformation of his face with fascination, the shift from cold to cool to warm to hot, from closed to open, from angry to pliant. His tongue darted out to wet his lips, which sent a tremor through her, spiraling out from the depths of her body, her nerve endings at attention, hopeful, wishful.
Still holding her eyes, he whispered with a low, thick, deliberate rumble. “Under the trees.”
Katrin didn’t realize she was holding her breath until it came out in a single, urgent release, hot on her dry lips. She picked up her water glass and sipped it, watching him over the rim of the glass.
He stared at her, holding her eyes mercilessly as his lips moved, softly reciting the words that led to Lady Chatterley and the games keeper, Mellors, incredibly explicit, insanely erotic tryst under a copse of trees. “‘She didn't have the heart anymore to fight...She saw his eyes, tense and brilliant, fierce, not loving.’ Shall I keep going?”
“N-no,” she murmured with wide eyes, tilting back her glass for another sip. Fierce, not loving. No wonder he had memorized that line. It was everything Erik wanted to be.
A slow smile—lazy, sexy, confident—spread across his face, and she felt her cheeks growing hot under his scrutiny. Under the trees. In the history of time, had words ever been so sexy? So unbelievably hot?
She finally put her glass down and looked away from him, out at the lake, fingering the cold droplets of condensation on the side of her water glass. The intensely erotic scenes from the book were cycling through her head, but she wished she could think of something else so that her heart would stop thumping and she could compose herself.
The waitress appeared and they ordered quickly. Erik turned to Katrin, gesturing to the wine list in his hand, his wolfish eyes flicking to her breasts and lingering before slowly looking up at her face again.
“Should we get a bottle?”
She shook her head, mutely. She didn’t realize the door she was opening when she asked her question. She meant to cajole him from a dark mood, but she had instantly changed the vibe, the electricity, between them. With unintentional accuracy, she had uncovered another important piece of information about Erik Lindstrom: This is how it is with him. Sex is the key to breaking down his walls. Being emotional is off-limits, being physical is safe.
He folded the Wine List closed and returned it to the waitress, keeping his eyes trained on Katrin, staring at her like a predator, like she was dinner.
“Quit it.” She tried to sound confident.
“Quit what?” he asked, but his eyes crinkled at her command, which made his face seem more approachable, less stark and hungry.
“You know what I’m talking about.”
He shook his head back and forth slowly, eyebrows raised. “Nope.”
“We’re friends. You don’t want anything more than that.”
“I never said that.”
“You did so. In the car.”
“No. You misunderstood. I said I didn’t want picket fences.”
“Oh,” she murmured, nodding, feeling more confident, more in control. “I see. You don’t do commitment, but everything else’s up for grabs? Is that about right?”
He shrugged, holding her eyes. “I’m easy.”
“No kidding.”
Erik chuckled at her, and just like that, the tension started breaking. “No kidding, Älskling.”
“Hmm.” Älskling, again. He was as confusing as hail in the summertime. Icy, but hot. Frightened, but strong. Physically available, but emotionally closed. Full
