Page 40 of In A Faraway Land

He patted his knee. “Come here.”

That throatiness in his voice sounded almost like when he used to tell her to take her clothes off while he watched.

Flicka drained the last of the whiskey in her glass and walked around the small table to him. Dieter spread his knees apart, and she sat on his leg.

He asked, “All rightso far?”

She nodded, but even just sitting on his leg, her heart felt tight.

“So, safe words,” Dieter said.

Flicka laughed. “I’d forgotten about those.”

“I hope you never forgot them in London.”

Grinning, she said, “If I had, I would have been lying there, tied to the bed, shouting, ‘Lutefisk! Trombone! Proust!’ And you would have been so confused, you would have stopped.”

He chuckled, andhe ran the backs of his knuckles down her arm. Shivers erupted on Flicka’s skin, both the scared kind and the good kind. “So, what is your safeword now? Or do you want to keep your old one?”

“Yes,” she said, “the old one. And I still remember yours.”

Sitting on his leg as she was, Dieter’s eyes were just a bit below hers, and he looked up at her. His soft lips parted, and he said, “I rememberit, too.”

“Okay,” she said, mesmerized that she was somehow sitting on Dieter’s lap with one of his strong arms around her waist as if years had fallen away.

His hand stroked up her arm. “Sit facing me.”

To do that, she had to straddle his hard thighs, and her slim skirt rode up to the tops of her legs.

Dieter ran his hands up her legs like he was chasing the hem of her skirt. “Just as muchas you want for now.” The rasp in his voice sounded like he was reminding himself more than her. “And I’ll stop. If you say your safeword, I’ll stop. You need a slow word, though.”

“Slow?” she asked, getting lost in his hands stroking her thighs. The calluses on his palms were rough on her skin, almost scratching her. She held onto his shoulders and slid one hand over the heavy pectoral musclesof his chest, round under her fingers. The cotton shirt he wore was still crisp, and the buttons were hard knots under her palm.

He said, “To slow down, to pause, but not stop. Choose one.”

Flicka closed her eyes, shutting out the tiny townhouse, decorated in desert tan and dusty sage green, and the darkness beyond the horizontal blinds over the windows. His chest warmed her hand. “Abdicate.”

He chuckled, a deep sound that thrummed in his chest under her palm. “Agreed. Abdicate means to slow down.”

Whiskey-warm breath touched her neck. “What’s yours?”

“I don’t need one,” he growled against her skin.

“That’s the game,” she said.

One of his hands curled over her backside, cupping her ass. The other slipped under her blouse in back and traveled slowly up her spine. He whispered, “Geneva,”near her throat.

That—was interesting.

Dieter’s hands and lips on her skin gathered all of her attention and held it, and she forgot to wonder whyGenevawas a word that he wouldn’t want to say.

Trembling started in her chest, somewhere below the whiskey fog.

His hand pressed her backside, and he lifted his knees.

She slid down his legs, closer to him.

His chest pressed against her stomachand breasts, and his arms wrapped more tightly around her. He mouthed her neck, his breath humid and warm on her skin.