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He rolled her with him so he lay on his back, loving her weight laid out upon his, and she pressed herself against him all the more while his head rolled back, her mouth finding his throat.
He gasped like a drowning man, holding their cores together with the firm pressure of his hands spread across her back.
The growl in his throat as she mouthed his earlobe and bared her teeth against his skin was enough to send Alex reeling and all thoughts of her old life left her consciousness.
All their awareness reduced to only the heat from the fire, the hardness and softness of each other’s bodies as they pulled away winter layers and took in every tiny detail of the other’s skin and how it felt to collide and sink together under green, blue and red Christmas lights.
For Magnús, there was nothing but Alex, the woman astride him, her white-blonde hair falling over his chest. There was no mermaid, no mysterious runaway, no faraway bookshop, failed or otherwise, and none of his old bruised ego either. There was only their fingers clasped tightly, palms pressed together, their kisses and gasps mingling over now distant music.
For Alex there was only their bodies rolling together like the ocean tides and deep, unthinking, breathless pleasure and the promise of a long stormy night ahead to do it all over again and again.
As the fire grew low and Alex shifted in the spot on the hearthrug where they’d both collapsed into a sleepy heap, Magnús lifted his eyelids drowsily.
‘Are you cold? We can move upstairs,’ he said.
‘Not cold,’ she murmured. ‘Happy.’
‘Mmm.’ Magnús held her close, his hand across her stomach. ‘Alex Robinson?’
‘Hmm?’ Her eyes were closed again.
‘I like you.’
‘Mmm,’ she smiled, absorbing the words.
‘I like everything about you,’ he said again, softly kissing her shoulder.
Alex’s sleepy, dopamine-soaked brain mulled this over and her smile spread. He liked her. Not love, thank goodness. Liking everything about her somehow sounded much,muchbetter than love. A sore spot at the back of her brain wanted to know whether she had been much liked before now, but she was too relaxed to follow the thought.
‘I like you liking me,’ she said in a whisper, squeezing her shoulders closer to Magnús’s chest. He brought his legs up to cradle hers all the more.
‘OK then,’ he murmured, low and dozy.
‘And you are also nice,’ she said in a robotic voice, making him laugh.
‘I don’t talk like that,’ he protested.
‘I like how you talk. I like everything about you too.’
She kissed his wrist and tucked his hand into the spot below her chin, holding him tight before they feel asleep once more.
Magnús, thinking himself a changed man, smiled in his sleep, knowing that tomorrow they would lazily eat breakfast and light the fire once more, turn the sign on the door, and open their shop and café again, ready to welcome last-minute gift shoppers braving the weather.
It would be another perfectly happy day, he told himself, and not one brooding, dark synapse in his sleepy brain fired a warning, like it would have done on any other night of his life, to remind him that nothing good ever came this easily to tormented, striving Magnús Sturluson.
