The notebook fell to the floor as Kennet devoured the rest of the sentence, sliding his hands into Astrid’s hair and crushing her lips with his. Their feet trampled pages as they stumbled backward, kissing open-eyed and ravenous. Kennet got his palm behind her head just in time to keep it from banging hard against the wall. Her arms wrapped tight around his neck, her knees climbing his hips as if he were a tree. Her tongue was in his mouth and her skin in his hands and all of her was dancing up into his nose and down the back of his throat, catching hands with chocolate and fruit and all of it was close enough to taste.

“Leave now or I’m taking you right here,” he said, his hands full of her breasts.

“No more leaving. Stay still…” Her hands were burrowing underneath his sweater, simultaneously pushing it up and pulling it off. She said something else but he was stuck in the neck hole, ears folded forward.

He popped himself free, crazed. “What?”

“Lås dörrjäveln.”

Lock the fucking door.

The time it took to turn the lock and switch off the lights was entirely too long. In only the glow of the radio’s luminescent dial, Kennet and Astrid flung themselves at each other, cracking and coiling like two whips. Out of patience, his hands ripped the front of her dress open, buttons spattering like water in oil. They reached up her skirt and tore the underwear clear off her legs. She laughed and laughed as he swept an arm across his workbench and laid her out before him like a project.

“Come get your treasure, pirate,” she said, reaching.

But Kennet had left piracy and was approaching something closer to a Cossack, or a Vandal. He scarcely recognized himself, holding Astrid down with one hand, spitting in the other palm and slicking himself up. He slid deep into her body, palms now braced on the rough tabletop. Tongue swirling luxurious circles on her breasts before gathering a nipple in his mouth and sucking hard. Her skin filled his head like a forgotten dream. Soap and powder and perfume and Astrid.

“I never stopped wanting you,” he said hoarsely.

“Don’t stop.”

She squirmed this way and that. He could hear minute ripping sounds as the rough wood of the bench laddered her stockings to shreds. He withdrew and reached to set her heels on the table top. Winding her garters around his fingers, he bent to drag his tongue against her wet heat. Over and over, lost in the taste that came and went and came again. As Astrid came and went and came again, just the way he wrote it. Gushing raspberries and cream, dark beer and champagne and cold, clear spring water.

“God, I can taste you,” he gasped.

“Kiss me.”