“Let’s make one thing completely clear, Caroline,” he said roughly. “What we have is a different kind of connection, no matter what we do in the bedroom. Or on the shower floor.”
I frowned. “But I’m afraid I’m going to do something desperate.”
“Like dropping everything and moving to Sweden?”
I closed my eyes and nodded.
“When I followed you to the Stockholm airport, begging you to let me come with you, I had no idea how you’d react. I felt vulnerable as hell.” Niklas paused, as if to consider his next words. “This relationship is moving really fast because it has to. But I’m not complaining. If we were just living across the hall from each other back in Stockholm, I’d probably still be coming home from practice, locking my door and getting myself off in the shower, thinking of you. The real thing is much, much better.”
The image of him in the shower, stroking himself, brought another wave of heat to my face.
Niklas smiled. “You like that? The idea of me getting off to fantasies about you?”
I wanted to look away, but he still held my face in his palms.
“I guess so. That’s part of the problem.”
He smirked. “The Catholic part?”
I smiled a little. “That, and everyone else who thinks women aren’t supposed to be so into sex.”
He let go and pushed my wet hair off my face.
“Who says that?” he asked gently.
“This whole country, practically.”
Niklas laughed. “You know I’m going to tell you that’s another reason to move to Sweden, don’t you?” He squeezed my thighs gently and rested his forehead against mine. “What we do together is just between us. You make me feel incredible, and by some miracle, I think I make you feel good, too. That’s no one’s business but ours.”
I smiled. Maybe this was a cultural difference. When I was in Stockholm, Veronica had told me that Swedes were much less embarrassed about sex than North Americans. But I wasn’t sure that was the whole explanation. Niklas was different than anyone I had met anywhere.
Niklas’s voice rumbled again in my ear. “Because you or I like certain things during sex, are you worried that this means we want the same things in the rest of our relationship? Or maybe we will sometime in the future?”
I leaned back a little to absorb the surprise of having my psyche, so nebulous to me, so neatly summed up.
“Yep, I guess that’s it.” I chuckled.
Niklas smiled a little, but he didn’t laugh. Instead he let his hands brush down my shoulders and arms until we arrived at my hands. He slid both of his palms under mine.
“Caroline, let’s just think about our relationship for a moment,” he said, his bright blue eyes intense and open. “Have I ever tried to push you into anything?”
“I guess not.”
He squeezed my hands.
“There have been things that I’ve wanted,” he said, “like you staying here in this house with me. But I don’t think I’ve tried to force anything on you.”
I snorted. “I probably would have run the other way if you did.”
“I know that,” said Niklas. “I know you were in the middle of taking your life into your own hands when I came along, and I want that for you, too.”
He leaned forward and let his lips press against mine. He moved back only a fraction to speak again.
“And that’s not going to change just because you’re staying at my house or because you want to suck me off in my car. Which has been on my mind ever since you mentioned it, by the way.”
“I can’t imagine,” I said dryly, smiling.
