Chapter Eight
After a long and dreamless sleep, Livia awoke with a start.
The gentle rock of the boat and the soft bed and Gustav’s warm body pressed against hers had lulled her to sleep, but as she opened her eyes, alone, she felt exposed.
Maybe even dread. She sat up and warily scanned the empty cabin, trying to get a hold of the feeling that she was…
vulnerable. She clutched the sheet against her naked breasts, but it didn’t help.
The events of the previous day flooded back in vivid detail.
Gustav in the entryway of her apartment.
The king’s fury and Gustav’s self-satisfaction in that stuffy castle drawing room.
Promises whispered in the church. Accusations thrown with increasingly sharp aim on the boat.
And then the final twist: Today he was going to exact his revenge and explode her world. And Adele’s.
That explained the dread that was sitting in the pit of her stomach, buried under the sated pleasure of the previous night.
Last night she had lost track of her goal.
Was it too late? If she found Gustav and told him about Adele, would it be the perfectly aimed arrow that neither she nor her sister recovered from?
She wanted to believe their night together has softened his vengeful edges, but he had used her desire to press her about Edvin. She knew better than to trust him.
Livia climbed out of bed and opened the closet, choosing a red bikini and a sheer white dress to wear over it.
She made her way across the boat and up the stairs and found Gustav reclining on the aft deck, tapping away on his laptop.
As she stepped through the door, he set his computer aside, and his gaze raked down her body.
She could finally admit to herself how much she’d missed the way he looked at her.
She sat next to him in the warmth of the morning sun, and he poured her a cup of coffee.
After a long sip, she spread butter and cloudberry jam over a slice of the soft, warm bread.
The scent of butter and fruit mingled with the salty sea, and she was surrounded by the scent of Gustav—warm, masculine, both familiar and new.
For one deep breath, she wanted to enjoy it.
Gustav’s gaze swept over her, pausing on her breasts, then on her thighs. “You look…refreshed.”
“I haven’t slept like that in years,” she admitted. “It’s so quiet here on the boat.”
“I try to spend as much time as I can like this during the summer, when I’m not working.”
He looked so relaxed, so at ease. That thought got under her skin because she could not afford to be at ease. Not when the threat of his revenge plan still rested against her neck.
So she took another bracing sip of her coffee, then leveled him with her gaze. “Have you put in motion your plan today to destroy all of this?”
“Not yet,” he said, as if he was still weighing up the choice. “Though I couldn’t help noting that last night we never reached the part where you actually clarified what led to you agree to marry my brother.”
It was an opening, and Livia jumped on it. “Of course I could tell you more. If you give me one more night.”
He laughed, his amusement shimmering with desire, a dangerous combination. “And let me guess. We will get distracted once again, and you will need yet another night tomorrow.”
“Only if you’re lucky,” she said, sizing him up with the same assessing gaze he had used on her.
His smile widened, and she tried not to think about the way her future hung on his decision.
“One more day,” he finally said, his voice gruff.
She felt her pulse quicken, but she gave him a smooth smile. ”We can start whenever you would like. We can talk about what I’ve done since we last talked, my father’s change in fortunes…”
“I want you to start from the moment you met my brother. I want you to take me through exactly why you decided to marry him,” he said, and his jaw clenched as he spoke those words.
“I want to know how you made that decision. It’s against everything you used to believe in. Have you really changed so much?”
His voice was rougher now, as if this change bothered him, and something about that warmed her. He knew her better than he thought he did. But he still felt like a mystery to her.
She was ready for him to demand that she tell him immediately, but instead, he gestured out to the private inlet where they were moored. “But I see no reason not to enjoy our surroundings while you tell your story.”
He disappeared inside, leaving Livia with her thoughts.
Last night, she had learned that the moment she stepped into the bedroom with him, all rational thought left her brain.
As luck would have it, this had worked to delay his plan, but as a strategy it wasn’t very practical.
She couldn’t endlessly put off the future by having sex all day every day, could she?
A vision of him over her, his thick biceps flexing as he tilted his hips…
No. Even if she wanted to—and part of her really wanted to—her sister needed her.
Today she would tell him about his brother and find a way to do it without involving Adele.
But she had her own agenda for these discussions, to figure out what lay at the heart of his revenge.
And then thwart it. Because unless she did, he would use his power to wreak havoc on everyone around him. Especially her.
Revenge was a poison, one that she had seen her own father succumb to.
He had sought help for Adele from the school and been dismissed.
He was made to feel like a second-class citizen because the careless bullying that was crushing her came from well-funded students.
He had not been able to protect Adele from harm, so both her parents had built their whole lives around their own kind of revenge, dragging her sister into the mess.
And it had warped them. Even when her father was wealthier than most of the students at the boarding school where he used to work, it wasn’t enough.
Because no amount of approval could rectify what had happened.
No amount of vengeance would change the past. Her parents had succumbed to this never-ending hunger. Would Gustav, too?
She looked out at the hidden inlet where they had anchored.
On one side, a string of islands, some just bare mounds of flat rock that rose out of the water; others a little larger, where gnarled trees clung to crevices, persistent, finding a way to survive in the most difficult conditions.
She could see small wild flowers poking up as well, yellows and blues, on the thinnest of stems.
Gustav appeared moments later in just a pair of swim trunks that hung low on his tapered waist. His bare chest was powerful and toned, with well-honed muscles and ridges.
She followed a brush of hair that trailed across his chest and another trail down his stomach disappearing into his swim trunks.
Last night, she had run her hands over his bronzed skin, and it wasn’t anywhere near enough.
She had been staring far too long, and she quickly glanced up and met his gaze. He looked faintly amused but said nothing. The staff came through the door, breaking the silence as they brought out some sort of floating cooler and another raft with towels and other beach comforts.
The area that they had used to enter the boat cleverly doubled as a staircase that ended in a platform at water level. One of the staff lowered it and attached the last two steps into the water, all forming a small deck to make entering and exiting the water easier.
“Are we taking a boat to shore?” she asked, glancing at the tender that floated behind.
“We could…or we could swim.” He flashed her a boyish smile, and it felt like a glimpse at the part of him that she missed so much. Her heart skittered in her chest.
She stripped off her thin dress, revealing her bikini.
Gustav’s gaze raked down her body like one hot lick that set everything on fire.
She followed him down the steps and dipped her feet into the cool water.
Gustav stood next to her, and when she glanced up at him, his eyes were heated.
But then he flashed her another impish grin and dove in.
Water splashed on her hot skin, and she watched his powerful figure ripple and move under the water.
He came up and slicked back his hair, water glistening from his face and over his powerful shoulders. He turned around and gave her another smile. “Are you coming?”
“Of course.”
She dove in, letting the cool water rush over her, letting her plans fall away, just for now, allowing sensations to take over.
When she came up for a breath, Gustav swam close to her so that her hands and legs brushed against his warm body as she slowly treaded water.
Drops of water shone on his face, and his eyes were bright.
“I’ve imagined this before,” he said. “This and more.”
And despite the cold Baltic water, her body flashed with heat.
She had imagined so much with him, too. But before she could decide how much to say, he dove underwater again and swam back toward the boat.
He lifted himself onto the deck, the powerful muscles in his shoulders and back flexing, and lowered their parade of picnic items into the water.
Then he looped a sort of harness across his chest and jumped back in.
“Ready?” he asked, swiping a hand over her face.
“I didn’t realize you meant to swim our lunch to shore.”
“I could ask someone else to bring it,” he said. “But then I’d miss this chance to swim alone with my wife to my favorite place.”