The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 5 Read Online Free Page B

forward to cup her face. She had a wide, mobile mouth and preternaturally huge brown eyes.
    She spoke. He couldn’t guess the language; his puzzlement must have shown because she leaned across to finger his dry sweater. Then she brought his hand to her breast to touch her bulky pullover. The wool was soaked, but her slender hand held fiery heat.
    He had no idea what to say in the face of intimacy. “Uh, George,” he said, because he had to say something, awkwardly pointing to himself, the blood rushing to his cheeks. “My name is George.”
    “Ah-ha,” she repeated: “Jhoorj.” And then she put a second warm hand over his. “Merete,” she said. He flinched, but managed not to pull his hand away.
    He pointed. “Merete?” Her head bobbed. Through the layers of wool, his imprisoned hand felt the unmistakable nub of her nipple.
    The next day began under blue skies. The knife-edged volcanic ridges of Skaftafell National Park glowed emerald, crosslit by the early light. Tatters of cloud still clung to them. The campground was spread with gear and clothing, waiting for sun to reach the valley.
    His tent was almost packed, his gear ready to hit the trail. Solitary and preoccupied in the midst of the bustle, he felt a touch – and of course, when he turned, it was the elf, hand on hip. The day before in the crowded lodge they had not been able to interpret a single word each other said beyond their names. George guessed she was Danish. Or maybe Dutch, though for a time he’d wondered if her strange vowels and convoluted consonants might be Portuguese. She leapt and swerved through her sentences; when she talked he was able to do nothing but watch her bright lips and pink, pink tongue. She’d worn a gold band on her delicate brown fingers and nodded when he tried to mime
husband
, but then she put his hand over her breast again and tossed her head.
    Now she danced around him, waving toward the far reaches of the valley, walking fingers along her forearm with one eyebrow arched into a question.
    “You . . . want a hike?” he said. His first impulse was to decline, to flee, but as her ring flashed he became conscious of the ring missing from his own finger. A shadow passed over his face as he remembered the brief happiness of that single year, now half a dozen years distant.
    “Hi-ee,” she said, poking him to regain his attention. “Hieek!” She scampered away, but returned in moments carrying a scuffed leather knapsack with brass buckles. She mimed eating, waggling her eyebrows. He understood that she had food, but beyond that his comprehension would not go. She had the most beautiful tongue he’d ever seen.
    “Jhoorj,” she said, tugging at his hand, “Hieek!”
    They sat crosslegged in the midst of the Baejarstadaskogur, Iceland’s only forest. Beneath pale birches, most scarcely a dozen feet tall, the grass was starred with the blue and white of Canterbury bells and sandwort.
    He spread jerky and dried fruit on his parka, brought from the States for his solitary summer. She had a small, tough loaf of rye bread and at least three kinds of cheese. They talked and chewed, and he began not to care that neither of them could understand a word. She sat close, thigh pressed against his; the contact warmed his whole body.
    Their mutual incomprehension made it easy for his words to pour out. He confessed he’d come to Iceland to be lonely, shyly told her of his passion for wild places and his hunger for solitude. And he spoke of his larger solitariness, its longings and hesitations. He told her of the weeks alone hiking the ffordlands and the desolate interior, encountering swans and Arctic foxes and fumaroles and vast, distant icebergs calved from Greenland. He spoke of the contrary happiness his loneliness gave him. And the sadness. He told her everything.
    He had no idea what she told him. She stopped in mid-speech when she caught him staring at her mouth, and then laughed and put her warm hand on his thigh. Her