At first, Ulf didn’t understand. It had got to the point that Sophia was thinking about drawing a picture, even though her art skills weren’t very strong, when, with the help of a bit of sign language, she got the message across. A broad smile lit his face. It was one of the positions which gave the most pleasure to women, he told her, beaming. Sophia beamed back, wondering how many women comprised the sample he was basing his research results on. They said you needed at least 30 participants to make a sample valid. Surely he hadn’t had that many women in his relatively short life, And, if he had, had he really gone to the trouble of asking them to rank-order their favourite positions? Perhaps he passed out a questionnaire to save time, she thought.
So the bakifrån position (as she later learnt it was called) it was to be. Ulf prepped himself with a few stretches, evidently believing that ensuring his other muscles were in proper working order would help his love muscle function at its optimal level. Ulf clearly wasn’t one for oral sex, or, if he was, he was content to dispense with preliminaries on this occasion. Lining up his schlong at such an extreme angle that he grazed Sophia’s asshole on the way down, he slowly eased himself into her tight passage.
‘God, that feels good,’ Sophia thought, channelling her inner Swede by refraining from making any declaration.
Ulf seemed to derive energy from their mime, moving his manhood inch by inch (or rather, in his terms, centimetre by centimetre) into the Englishwoman. In fact, he was the first party to break their mutual code of silence, commenting in favourable terms on the tightness of her pussy. This encouraged Sophia in the hope that he would compare her favourably to Petsi. She knew it was reprehensible, but, when her competitive juices started flowing, she just couldn’t help herself.
Speaking of juices, as Ulf journeyed further into Sophia’s tunnel, he perceived a change in the, so to speak, road surface conditions. They were slick with what appeared to be a mixture of oil and water. He would have to proceed with great caution; otherwise, he knew that he risked going into a spin. As a child, he used to watch motor rallying in the winter with his father from the side of a country road, and had looked on with awe as cars would fail to take the corner and go somersaulting into the distance through hedges and across fields. He realised that this was a very real possibility for him now if he allowed himself to lose control.
He wasn’t helped in his commitment to health and safety by his co-driver, who at this most critical of points chose to forget her role of helpmate and map-reader, and started acting in a manner guaranteed to put life and limb in danger. She’d even unbuckled her safety belt and jettisoned her crash helmet.
Despite this, Ulf thought he had reached his destination in one piece and was on the point of congratulating himself on a job well done, when the wheels came off. The road he was travelling along at high speed suddenly started to break up. As fast as he managed to avoid the potholes, new ones appeared – wider and deeper than those he had circumvented before. There was only one thing for it: he had to bale out before the car entered into a deadly spin. But he was too late. The landscape appeared to be unfolding around him and he couldn’t find the door handle, or even the door. Ragnarök was upon him: the twilight of the gods, the end of the world! There was only one thing for a Norse warrior to do: die with glory. Ulf did not disappoint his ancestors. Neither, he found, once he had awoken from his reverie, had he disappointed Sophia, who lay exhausted but sated before him.
As they lay on the bed in the Nordic version of coital bliss – saying nothing to each other – Sophia had two things on her mind. First, she mustn’t let Ulf go before he’d applied the varnish, or whatever it was, and, second, she wanted to draw him out a bit on Petsi. What was the deal with her? Had she dated a lot of men before Ulf? Did they have an open relationship? Was she into women? As always, she knew it was best to start by oiling the wheels with a bit of flattery.
‘That was fantastic. I came so hard.’
‘I learnt that technique from a Finnish girl,’ said Ulf in a monotone, having returned to his default state of inertia.
‘Are they different from Swedish girls?’ asked Sophia, her mind on one Swedish girl in particular.
‘They are not so emotional as us Swedes,’ replied Ulf, without irony.
‘I have always been considered unusual,’ he went on, his words flowing in an unwonted spate. ‘When I was young, they nicknamed me after a Swedish volcano because I was so emotional.’
‘And Petsi,’ Sophia asked, finally grasping the nettle. ‘She was able to cope with your emotional side?’
‘Petsi,’ Ulf replied flatly, ‘is even more emotional than me. I think that is why we sometimes have difficulties.’
‘Are you having difficulties now?’ asked Sophia, as if she were a marriage guidance counsellor.
‘Why else would I agree to put up your shelves?’ replied the Swede.
‘Thanks very much!’ thought Sophia, irritated beyond measure.
Not only had her ruse been so obvious, but his willingness to fuck her had more to do with his frustrations with Petsi than with her own intrinsic merits. Undeterred, though, Sophia ploughed on.
‘Is she seeing other men? Or other women, perhaps?’
‘I am plenty man enough for her,’ responded Ulf indignantly.
And then, after a pause, ‘As for women, she gave them up when she met me.’
Sophia was certain she’d heard that one before. In the gossip columns of a newspaper, in a film, in a book, from her friend Carrie.
‘Just a casual college dorm thing, was it?’ asked Sophia, fishing for all she was worth.
‘In her last year at college she moved in with the Feminist Studies professor. They were planning to get married, but Petsi doesn’t believe in marriage. In the end, things didn’t work out. Petsi never told me why, but I think the other woman objected to her capitalistic lifestyle and the fact she stood to inherit the family business.’
Sophia was stunned into silence by this revelation. But what it did mean is that if she played her cards right, she was definitely in with a chance with the willowy beauty. The fact that she was no smoked salmon socialist ought to give her an edge. If she just upped her wokeness levels, she might have a real chance.
‘It seems you may have saved her from a very perilous situation, Ulf. Even more importantly, you may have saved her from herself.’
Ulf kissed Sophia’s hair by way of saying thank you, and started to get dressed. The time had come to finish the shelves off and head home. Sophia asked him what he would like to drink, and he said he always had a beer after having sex. Although she never normally tippled in the afternoon, she decided she’d make an exception and join him in a libation. She got dressed, went downstairs, took a couple of bottles of pale ale out of the fridge and took them through to the study.
She had to say the shelves looked very good when they were assembled. Ulf said he’d return the next day to apply a second coat of the fancy oil and Sophia told him the morning would be best and to give her a ring first. As for payment, Ulf said he’d let her know the damage then too. Sophia gave Ulf a peck on the cheek as he left the house, knowing that they would never have sex again. Sometimes she wondered why she put herself through the ringer for this type of casual encounter, without being able to see what even the most disinterested observer would be able to see – that she was an addict. Not so much to the sex, perhaps, as to the thrill of the chase and, above all, the danger inherent in the undertaking. She was to sex what free solo was to rock climbing.