Mimi had Sunday to herself, a precious day free from meetings and sales pitches to do everything she usually missed in the week. She had planned to draw and read and catch up on all of the TV she had missed but found that Sven had beaten her to it. He was still in the t-shirt and boxers he'd slept in sprawled across the sofa and smiled at her as she came out of the bedroom, sat up.
"Morning." He smiled. "I thought I'd let you sleep. You seemed tired last night."
Mimi nodded. "I was. Better for it, though." She nodded to his mug, "Any more coffee going?"
"There's some in the ma- oh." He looked up at her, paused the television, realised she had asked him on purpose so that he'd get it for her. There was, after all, always coffee in the machine. "I'll get you some."
Mimi smiled, settled into the sofa, grinning. "Thank you." She watched him pull a mug out of the cupboard, fuss about in the kitchen. On screen, some kind of high intensity stake out was happening.
"What is this?" Mimi asked, "Another of your crime serials?"
"It's good." Sven planted the mug on the table. "It's been on about half an hour, there's some pretty big names in it. The detective's daughter gets caught up with drug dealers and then they kidnap her and his partner." He explained, yawning. "That's as far as I've got."
"Okay then." Mimi nodded thoughtfully, blew on the steam and settled down to watch.
The action restarted and an actor whose name Mimi had forgotten dashed across the screen, pistol raised. He proceeded to shoot the lock off an office door. Behind it was a bloodied and half clothed Jake O'Mara, a well-known TV actor who appeared frequently in the tabloids usually attached to his older, more successful wife, a news presenter on Channel 4.
"Hot damn, Jakey." Mimi grinned. "I like this show already."
"Knew you would." Sven laughed. "You missed this hot as hell interrogation scene earlier."
Mimi pouted, pulled an expression filled with mock disappointment. "I did?"
Sven nodded, sipped. "The gangster's wife kept threatening to burn his chest with a lit cigarette."
"Oh really?"
Sven nodded, looked at her with narrow, wolfish eyes. "She had this low cut dress on."
"Sounds like you liked it."
He nodded. "Yeah."
Mimi watched him colour slightly. "Oh." She hesitated, waited just long enough so he blushed a little more, looked down at her. "You really liked it."
Sven nodded, affecting nonchalance, "Yeah. I suppose."
"Heh." Mimi planted her cup on the table. "Good to know." She said. "Good to know."
* * *
She didn't raise it again until later, when Sven wondered out of the bathroom in a towel, his hair still wet from the shower. Mimi was only half focused on the copy of Artists and Illustrators Monthly she was reading.
"Hmm." She looked up, watched him dry off. "If only I had a chair and a pack of cigarettes right now."
Sven laughed, a low noise that came straight from his gut, all nerves and pure delight. "I have never been so glad and so disappointed you quit." He teased.
Mimi nodded, "Me too, though with your chest hair perhaps not. You'd go up like a Christmas tree in February."
"And I'm tired." He said, lay out on the bed, one arm jammed under the pillow.
"You are?" Mimi rubbed his arm and settled down next to him, let the magazine fall to the floor. "Sleep well, then." She kissed him and reached over to turn the lamp off.
"Hey." He pulled her down, the room sinking into darkness, streaked with shadows. "I'm not that tired. I was hoping for at least a little something before bed." Sven nuzzled her neck, planted a kiss against the triangle of flesh behind her ear. "If you like."
"Yes." Mimi turned in his grip, kissed him again, luxuriated in the way he smelt, his skin still fresh from the shower. "That would be nice."
She rubbed his side in gentle, languid strokes, sighed happily as his hand edged its way under her t-shirt.
"Nice day today." She whispered, the words sinking into his skin like oil. "Sometimes it's good to just do nothing."
He nodded, "Yeah."
For a long while they were quiet, happy to savour the feel of one another, moving occasionally to touch or kiss or shift position in the dark, their bodies close and warm.
"What's your earliest fantasy?" Mimi asked, her voice a low whisper, her hand now flat against his belly. "I mean of submission."
Sven opened his eyes, looked at her. "I was really young. About eleven or twelve, I think." Sven's voice was steady in the dark, his hand never wavering from Mimi's hip, his mind shrinking back to his tiny, attic bedroom in Rivaz with its view of the grey fields and the lake beyond. To his narrow bed and finally, to the ache in his chest, like the past fifteen years hadn't happened, like the old ghosts of shame and fear had stood up and rattled their chains. "I used to read a lot of adventure comics as a kid. I think it might have been Superman, I can't remember," he explained, "but there was an issue where he was kidnapped by Amazon women and it stuck with me."
"Really?" Mimi grinned in the dark. "For me it was tag."
"Tag?" Sven rolled over, looked at her. "Really?"
Mimi nodded. "We used to play with the kids in the village. Kiss chase, stuff like that. I don't remember what happened exactly but I do remember running after this boy called Adam, pinning him down." She said, "Right in the gravel, poor kid. I thought about it for weeks afterwards and I never quite knew why."
"Lucky boy." Sven smiled. "I never played that game."
Mimi laughed, "There's still time. I'll teach you, if you like."
"You will?" he propped himself on one arm. "Thanks."
"Tell me more about the Amazons. I'm curious."
"You would be." Sven leant forward and kissed her on the mouth, his hand pushed into her hair. "Well, I was kidnapped obviously. I think I had this thing, particularly as I got older and the fantasy got more complex, where I'd be overpowered and fucked."
"Hot." Mimi's hands edged lower, settled on his hip. "Then what?"
"Then," Sven continued, the air hissing through his teeth as Mimi grabbed his cock. "Oh, you can't." he breathed.