The rain began before dusk.
Not the London drizzle she once knew — no, this was a fjordstorm: biblical and bodily. Thunder that sounded like a moan trapped under a ribcage. Lightning that licked the lake like a hungry tongue.
Astrid stood at the window, watching the sky bruise.
The air smelled like wet stone and pine needles. Her body, still warm from the floating sauna the night before, tingled with something unnamed — a tension that neither sleep nor solitude could dissolve.
Then came the knock.
Three taps. Bare knuckle. Familiar.
She opened the door to find Liv, Mattis' wife, barefoot, drenched, her linen dress stuck to her like second skin. Brown curls plastered to her cheeks, droplets sliding down her collarbone like stories waiting to be told.
"I didn't bring an umbrella," Liv said, smiling.
"You didn't bring shoes either."
"Do you mind?""Come in."
Liv moved like someone who knew she was being watched.
She peeled off the dress slowly — not for seduction, but for truth. This was Løvlund. They did not hide. She stood in Astrid's hallway in nothing but freckles and the stormlight that poured through the windows. Her nipples were hard from cold, or maybe not cold at all. Her hips curved like punctuation marks at the end of secrets.
Astrid tried not to look.
And failed.
They sat on the couch under a thick woolen blanket. Liv's skin radiated heat, her thigh brushing Astrid's with every sip of tea. Outside, lightning arced across the sky, illuminating their bodies like a photographer's flash: one frame at a time.
"I was told," Liv said, "that you write stories no one else dares."
Astrid scoffed. "I used to. Before I got too scared to."
"And now?"
"I think I'm starting again. Or maybe this is the story."
Liv turned to her, their knees now aligned, nothing but shared breath between them.
"Do you want to write me?" she asked.
Astrid blinked. "Write you?"
"Touch me like a sentence. Let your fingers decide where the commas go."
She didn't answer with words.
Her mouth found Liv's collarbone — slow, reverent. Her hand moved up a thigh, across ribs, pausing where the heart lived. Liv's gasp was soft and open, like a line break.
They didn't rush.
They read each other.
Liv tasted like rain and clove tea, her skin humming under Astrid's tongue. When she opened her legs, she didn't guide — she offered. And when Astrid lowered herself, lips parting, she felt it again: not lust. Not even hunger.
Something holier.
Liv's fingers tightened in Astrid's hair, but she didn't push. She trembled. Moaned once — "mmnh… Astrid…" — as if saying her name was a kind of letting go.
The storm outside crashed. Inside, there was only breath and slick warmth and the way Liv's body arched when Astrid traced her with the tip of her tongue like calligraphy.
Not rough. Not frantic.
Just true.
Later, tangled together on the floor, the tea cold, the windows fogged, Liv whispered:
"He told me you would be gentle. But I didn't want gentle. I wanted real."
Astrid kissed her forehead.
"I don't think I know how to fake it anymore."
Outside, the storm drifted back into silence.
Inside, two women slept in the scent of each other's trust.
And the fjord — quiet now, but never sleeping — held their sounds like scripture.