The Ring Road – Part 2: Midnight Light

Mark kissed her. It was a slow, warm, thoroughly married kiss, one that knew all the corners. But under it was something newer. Leila felt it in her stomach and in the back of her knees, and she laughed against his mouth.

"What?" he whispered.

"I feel like we're twenty-two."

"You're thirty-nine."

"And you're forty-three, and the roof is on your head."

"Worth it." He lifted her chin and kissed her again.

The campervan was small, true, but that turned out to be the point. There was nowhere for either of them to go, nothing to interrupt, no one to knock. The wind whistled around the walls. The lamp swung gently on its hook. Their hands, so familiar, found each other as if remembering a favourite song. They moved slowly because the bed demanded it, giggled when elbows collided, whispered ridiculous things in the dark. The wool blanket smelled of tea and lava dust. The fjord lapped quietly outside.

"Is this all right?" Mark murmured, once, between kisses.

"It's wonderful. Don't stop."

He didn't.

Afterwards they lay tangled in the little bed, her foot on his shin, his arm under her neck, watching the sky through the roof window. It never got fully dark. The sky stayed a long pearly blue, pricked with stars.

"We should do this every year," said Leila.

"Different country each time?"

"Same bed. Different view."

Mark grinned at the ceiling. "Done."

In the morning they drove to the last waterfall on their list, a long white curtain of water falling into a mist of rainbows. They stood at the edge holding hands, soaked and laughing, while a gull wheeled overhead.

"Eleven years," Leila shouted over the roar.

"And I'd pick the biscuit tin again!" shouted Mark.

She kissed him in the spray. It tasted of rain and the open road.

More married couple romance: The Cruise · Couples Retreat · The Second Honeymoon