Page 65 of Brooke
“I am sorry for you as well, Brooke, but I will finish the tale so you will know. People stopped trying to figure me out when I was a child. My parents were among them. Truthfully, it was a relief. They didn’t hear the things I did, the way the leaves scraped over an icy snow or how the branches played percussion against the windows. I wasn’t like them. I wasn’t what they wanted. A living and breathing validation of them as human beings. I threatened that, simply by being myself.”
His fingers tightened, his glacier blue eyes brightening. “A child is as beautiful and honest as a growing tree. When you are a different tree, however, it makes some people uncomfortable. I drew up plans for houses made of ice with carefully thought-out ways to contain the heat of a fire while preserving the shape. I decorated them in my mind. And then I set out on a weekend with my sled to build what my mind had created, sometimes rather successfully. I included nature because it was all around me, and I considered it my friend. My only friend sometimes.”
The image of him as a golden-haired little boy, alone in his own world, creating a perfectly beautiful house made of ice,touched her deeply. She brushed a sudden wetness on her cheeks and realized she was crying.
He cupped her cheek. “You make my heart throb with life and warmth, showing such sadness for the boy I was. I learned how to be self-sufficient. I told myself every image in my mind was like a brilliant adventure, and so I created them to pass the hours as the other boys played at each other’s houses and told stories about the girls they liked.”
The tense lines on his forehead smoothed out as he gave a self-effacing shrug. “That is the creative boy who was wounded. But I grew up, my height overtaking that of everyone else my age. I wondered at times if I grew so tall because I considered myself more friends with the trees in my village than with the people who inhabited it. I am from a culture of large men, but when we moved to the United States, I stood out. I was like the unsettling piece of furniture you receive from a family member that you do not know what to do with.”
She gave him a frown. “Don’t say that. It’s not funny.”
“It is a little.” His chuckle was soft if not hollow. “Boys didn’t like me, resenting my height, perhaps. I scared the girls, whom I was beginning to find more and more interesting. They thought I was a freak. I hadn’t grown into my face yet. I was terrifying. Young children ran to their parents or nanny in Central Park when they saw me, thinking I was an ogre who walked amidst the trees. I’m mostly kidding about that last part, although it did happen a few times.”
Anger bubbled like hot water inside her. “That’s terrible of them. I wish we had met then. I would have been your friend. And perhaps more…”
Would they have suited then? Would he have met her in Central Park and held her hand as they walked? Or taken her to the pompous and boring prom she’d felt so unhappy to attend, especially since her mother hadn’t dressed her or taken her picture beforehand?
The touch of his fingers was featherlight on the back of her hand. “Me as well, but clearly it was not time for us.”
“Also… Listen up.” She straightened in her chair, finding strength at her core as she listened to the agony he’d been through. “I never want to hear you say you were terrifying.”
“Outrage, Brooke?” He shifted his chair closer so their knees brushed. “But it’s all true. I will show you pictures. My nose was too big, as were my ears, and my eyes were like narrow slits.”
Her outraged gasp shot through the room. “Stop saying that! You were beautiful. I know you were.”
His expression bordered on indulgent. “You will see. That is why I am not vain. I know people, women especially, call me a Viking god. I am some kind of fantasy for them, with my sheer size calling to something primal inside them.”
She wanted to slink down in her chair. “I need to go on record here. Oh God, how do I say this? I used to have a Viking fantasy man I thought about before I met you. His name is Ivar. He hasn’t been working for me since we’ve met, in all honesty. But I’ll understand if you never want to see me again.” She ducked her face to her chin, trying to show him she meant it as a joke.
His spurt of laughter eased the sudden tension in her frame. “Ivar, eh. Is he nice?”
“I’ve never thought about that.” She made the French sound,pfft.“But I wouldn’t let him into my fantasies if he weren’t.”
“Then we will say you were already predisposed to want me.” His massive shoulders shook with humor. “But if you call me Ivar while we’re making love, we will have to have another discussion.”
She tried not to smile as they gazed at each other. The reality of them becoming lovers hung in the air. They both knew her decision to stay, and his to share his story with her, made it an eventuality.
“Do I need to be concerned about anyone with you?” she asked with an amused smile. “Dare I hope you have a fantasy woman named Margaret, who is small and nubile with blond hair and green eyes and likes to power walk and dominate you in bed?”
He bit the bottom of his lip in the sexiest way as if he were considering it, making her feel all achy and restless inside. “Not Margaret. But there is a woman. She has no name or form. She is only a feeling. Being in my imagination, she is everything I desire. The woman I want most.”
Her mind immediately went haywire. Could she be that woman?
“You should know… I stopped having sex a year ago and started waiting for the woman with whom I could make a work of art. Because while sex is a basic human function, it’s also a connection between two people, and there’s the possibility of the transcendent, like how we feel when we savor watching a sunset.”
Wow, she thought.Mind blown. She hadn’t even known she was looking for that, but her insides were vibrating now, poised to leap. “Well, whoever she is, she needs to move over because I’m here and I’m staying. Tonight, in fact.”
His luscious mouth curved slowly, heat firing up in his blue eyes. “Good. I was hoping you were thinking along those lines. We have experienced the rawness of our wounds together, and now we will share and experience the rawness of our passion for each other.”
She suddenly felt faint, leaning against the arm of the chair for support. “Rawness of passion.Goodness, Axel, I don’t even know what that means. But I want to…and I want to give you everything your fantasy girl does and more.” Her diaphragm gave a couple of knocks and she straightened in her chair. “My personality runs toward competitiveness and making a splash, so I’m telling myself I’ve got this.”
He was clearly biting the inside of his cheek as he pattedher hand. “Good. I stand assured. Also, you should know that when you’re as big as me, you learn to be gentle. You will be safe in my arms.”
“I’ve never doubted it.” But she knew that was an old wound he carried around, one she planned to help him conquer all the way if it still existed. Okay, she was adding fixing him to her list, but she couldn’t help it. She cared about him, and to show him, she brought their joined hands to her heart. His thumb stroked the center, the delicious soft spot between her breasts.
“I have told you of my greatest shame with a woman in my past,” he said with a heavy sigh. “That is all I have to tell you for now. Are you ready to tell me your story?”
She took a deep breath and launched into it, outlining her parents’ divorce and how easily her mother had cheated on her father with the man she’d ended up remarrying. The divorce had been quick and easy because she’d relinquished custody without any argument. Her new husband already had two girls from another marriage and was disinterested in having another.
