Thank you so much to my editor Incredimeters
There is sex in this story but it is not the focus of the story
Book 2
Sometime in the night, Elsie woke up and found Josef sleeping next to her. He was a trapper, hunter, and recluse, whom she had just met. Doing her best to not wake Josef she had cuddled up closer to him and even gone so far as to drape his arm around her midsection. Josef instinctively pulled her close which was exactly what Elsie was hoping for. His embrace felt so warm and safe.
Elsie dozed and eventually must have fallen asleep. When she awoke later, she found Josef nuzzling her hair. "Good morning my, Queen," Josef whispered in her ear.
Elsie was used to sleeping on the ground so sleeping on a soft straw mattress had been more than comfortable. She stretched and if possible cuddled closer to Josef and pretended to go back to sleep.
"Elsie," Josef called in a sing-song voice. "Time to get up."
"Why," Elsie replies in a mock winy tone. "What do we have to do today."
Josef looks over at the pile of wood that the day before had been his desk and table. "Well for one, I have a new table to make."
And a new door,
he thought.
Elsie winced. "Sorry about that."
Josef started rubbing her back. "I'm not. It gave its life for a good cause."
"Oh, that feels good," Elsie moaned and rolled her shoulders. Then she moved away from Josef just a little to give him a better angle to rub her back. "I could get used to waking up with you."
"I hope so," Josef added as he moved down her spine.
Elsie could not believe how at peace she was with Josef. Her emotions had been far easier to control over the last 24 hours. In the past she had been given to making rash choices like freezing fiords, waking spirits, and running into burning forests. But with Josef, it was far easier to discern the emotions she was truly feeling and deal with them properly. She had figured out that she loved him and wanted to show him, but the thought of being intimate with him was filling her with trepidation.
Elsie could tell from last night that Josef was a man who was skilled in taking care of a woman's physical and emotional needs. In contrast, Elsie had been locked in her room for 12 years after the incident with Anna. She had no physical experience with men. She played house with her dolls but her parents never even had, 'The Talk,' with her. What if sex hurt? What if she wasn't any good? What if she lost him because she couldn't meet his needs? She knew of course that these ideas were absurd, but they still lingered in the back of her mind.
Josef could not believe how lucky he was. He had spent the whole night waking up every so often not because he couldn't sleep but because he was afraid, he was asleep. Having Elsie here with him had been a dream come true and if this was a dream, he was going to hold onto it for as long as he could.
He was down to her lower back just above her waist when he absent-mindedly asked, "What was Anna right about?"
Elsie turned over to face him. The sight of her naked body made his heart skip a beat. He wondered how long the sight of her naked was going to do that to him. Probably forever. Elsie's started running her fingers through his chest hair. Her tone was guarded, "Anna is right about a lot of things. What thing in particular are we discussing?"
Josef's mind had gone blank at her touch. It was several moments before he was able to remember what they had been talking about. "When I startled you last night. Right before we had the misunderstanding about my marital status." Elsie blushed, gods she was so cute when she did that. "You said, "
Oh Anna, you were right."
Elsie was still blushing when she pushed him onto his back and laid on top of him. Josef was trying to think about anything other than how much he was enjoying her on top of him. "She said that it was ok to want to marry someone you just met if it was true love."
"That was the whole wanting to marry that jerk from the south thing, right?"
Elsie smiled. "That would be the one. She was wrong about Hans, but she was right about Kristoff. They had just met too but they knew. The trolls knew. Anyone who got within ten feet of them knew it was only a matter of time."
"Before they got married?" he finished her sentence.
"Exactly."
"But that's not the way it is for us," Josef said.
The blood drained from Elsie's face and the look in her eyes told him he had better choose his next words very carefully.
"Because we didn't just meet." Her look of confusion told him he was going to need to expand on that statement. "Little over a year ago I had a load of pelts and I went to trade them. But Oaks was closed because he had been invited, by the Queen, (Elsie pantomimed haughtiness) to the castle for a big birthday party she was throwing for her sister Anna. I was so mad I had to go all the way to town, at least several extra hours walking, because of you. (Elsie pressed her hand against her chest and mouthed "Me") I was furious. I rehearsed the entire way exactly what I was going to say to you if and or when I ran into you."
"Oh really?" she asked her mood back to playful.
"Yes. Really." Josef gained confidence. "I was going to tell you what a stuck-up, spoiled little brat you were and ask you where you got the nerve to shut down a whole town just so you could flaunt your own self-important to your peasant, sycophants."
"Well." Elsie pondered that for a minute while tapping her forefinger on his chest. "I was a little sick that day but I am pretty sure I would have remembered a speech like that."
The truth was the only thing she remembered about that day was how nice it was to have someone take care of her. She couldn't remember ever being sick before that. Anna had insisted she should rest. She hadn't realized it at the time but that would come to be one of her best memories. How much she longed to have Anna here right now, so she could ask her what she should do with Josef and how exactly.
"The reason that you don't remember it," Josef's voice brought Elsie back to the present, "Is because I never gave it," Josef explained.
"Oh good. Because knowing you as I do now, I would've really hated to have you exiled," Elsie joked.