Sofia unbuttoned her pants as she relaxed her throat, breathed through her nose as she slid her hand into her panties and spread her thighs. A wisp of cologne—who’d dared to wear cologne down here?—had her pressing her nose against his skin. Aish’s sea-salt smell was the only oxygen she needed.
Tears streamed down her face as she fingered her clit.
With a grunt, Aish yanked on her hair hard enough to hurt and pulled out of her mouth, then fell to his knees in front of her. He surrounded her jaw in his big hand and titled her head to the side.
“I can hear you fucking yourself,” he said against her neck, his breath against her windpipe. “You’re sloppy wet.” He grabbed her hand, pulled it out of her panties, and raised it. Then Sofia felt his hot, wet mouth surrounding her fingers, pulsing over them as he sucked them clean. His dirty words, his rough grip in the dark, were her filthiest fantasy.
She whimpered as her hips gyrated helplessly, her head still caught in his big hand.
“Goddammit, Sofia,” Aish groaned against her neck, dropping her hand to grab at her hip. Now it was him who sounded like he hated her. “Goddammit.”
Sofia willfully ignored the reminder of what was inked under his grip.
And then he was lifting her to her knees so he could shove down her pants and panties and she was leaning behind to flip off one shoe and they were struggling together to free her leg and then he was pulling her into his lap, thrillingly strong when she’d assumed he was weak, making her straddle him where he kneeled, all of it in the deep cool dark, a secret they could hide, and his lean hips between her thighs felt like the best kind of dream.
The familiar but unbelievable heat when he slipped inside her slapped Sofia with an icy dose of pragmatism. Aish Salinger was the flame she couldn’t put out? Then she’d feed it, get it high and hot, and incinerate this want out of her.
But when he tried to tilt her lips to him, she wrenched her face away. “No me beses,” she hissed. “I don’t want you to kiss me.”
The sound he made against her neck was awful. But he moved. Lifted slightly to surge that thick, long, hot cock inside her, that cock she measured all others against. And gave the gentlest of kisses to her neck.
When he surged again, she fell forward, pulled his shirt to the side, and sank her teeth into his collarbone.
“Fuck,” he groaned. Then he grabbed her by her hips and began to use her like she wanted to be used, like the sex doll mailed to his house for his pleasure. His jeans scraped the inside of her thighs and his fingers gripped bruises into her skin and his cock flashed fast and deep into her pussy. So good and deep. She clung to his biceps and let him fuck her.
She went off like a rocket after ten strokes. He went off after fifteen.
Their orgasms were searing. Earth melting. And silent. Sofia bit her lip bloody to prevent herself from making a sound.
As she pulled off him and stood, the taste of warm iron was in her mouth.
She worked to keep her gasping breaths shallow as she fumbled her pants back on. Fortunately, she bumped the lantern as she moved around. She turned it on, but kept her back to Aish. Found her shoe and headed to the stairs.
At the top of the stairs, she flipped the lights on and forced herself to look down. There, in the middle of her Corinthian black marble, small in her mammoth cathedral space, was Aish Salinger, head bent, still on his knees.
Head held high, Princesa Sofia went through her cellar door then pulled it closed behind her.
Ten Years Earlier
Sofia stared fixedly into the bonfire and tugged on her own braid to prevent herself from looking for the millionth time to see if the only missing worker’s truck had pulled into its space. Her crew, unfortunately, had been one of the first back, and over the last couple of hours—while more and more workers had joined the bonfire to drink and get high because no one planned to sleep in the few hours before harvest began—Sofia had gone from chatting with her coworkers between glances at the gravel parking lot to morosely yanking on her hair to stop herself from obsessing.
Que estúpido. Being in love was stupid.
This hole in her stomach and buzz around her heart, this ache she’d pulled her thighs against her chest to soothe while she sat on the cold ground and watched the flames snap, it was like suffering physical withdrawal from the few-hours absence of a boy she’d known for a month.
She’d been surprised when she saw the roster this morning. Then hurt. Then worried. Justin had said he had no problem with Aish and Sofia working together to monitor the grapes as long as they actually completed their monitoring, and Sofia had been diligent about feeling every grape for texture and ease of skin collapse, performing every test that determined sugar and acid and pH levels, and tasting the grapes for that hint of black cherry and spice that was essential to Laguna Ridge Winery wines. Only when their work was done would she attack Aish.
Nights alone in the truck or the fields or whatever dark spot Aish chose had been a gift; privacy was hard to find living in a bunkhouse with thirty kids. They’d done it a couple of times with the covers over their heads, both of them biting back the moans and words essential to their lovemaking. “Tell me if you like...yes, there, faster...mi estrella...mi fuego.”
She wondered, for the millionth time that day, if she’d done something wrong. She was depending on Justin Masamune’s recommendation for her University of Bordeaux application; French winemaking academia were unimpressed by
