It didn’t stop Aish from getting his mouth on her. He hunched over and sucked her into him, wringing a moan out of her.
“Fuck, your taste...” he said against her softness, his nose pressing against all that warmed-up Sofia smell. He remembered what his girl liked and he did it, wet tonguing to her nipple, soft sucks to the flesh around it mixed with bites. The teeth and the hair tugging—neither of them minded a little pain with their pleasure. “Remember when you’d lean over my face, tease me with these tits then slink down until just breathing on me would make me blow?”
He hadn’t known fucking could be an art form until Sofia showed him. She whimpered and dug her hand into his hair, shoved him against her body.
It helped to cool the possessive punch he’d felt when he’d seen the edge of that tattoo. It was new. At least, new to him. And she didn’t want him to see it.
He had to keep his head in the game. He flicked at her nipple like he used to play with her clit while he ran his palm down her, into her overalls, then swept his finger over her warm, wet slit through her panties.
Sofia sighed “Yes,” then staggered to give him room.
“Yeah,” he said, feeling like a king and conqueror and peasant at her feet as he rubbed his middle finger over this secret adored place, this place that had represented more than a good—great—lay for him. “Spread your legs for me, Sofia.”
She did, good girl, then twisted her hand in his hair until it stung.
“Don’t tease me,” she moaned above him as he found her clit through her panties, tight and eager, and circled it. “No me provoques. Por favor. Aish, por favor.”
And, fuck, he had to shake off her hand and let go of her tit because—fuck. Fuck her and her fucking mouth.
Her silence when they’d fucked in the cellar, when she’d poured hot, wet retribution over his cock, had been a blessing in disguise. They’d been chatty little Cathys in bed when they were young, so that silence had been one more thing that separated that fucked-up act from the true lovemaking they’d done as kids. Right now, her breathy words, her demanding desperation while she trusted him with the reins, felt like warm rain washing away that chilling reunion.
Still, this was so much less than he wanted. He wanted her to turn to him for more than a moment of forgetfulness.
He pushed into her panties, and for just a moment, held her. Held her crinkly hair and soft puffy lips and wet, warm cunt, protected this heart of her with his hand.
And then he stroked his middle finger.
She pressed her forehead to his neck and wrapped her arms around his shoulders. She held him—Sofia was holding him—and she kissed his neck. “Asi, asi, Aish. Like that, so good. Más, por favor.”
He had to stop again, tug his head away from her again.
“No...talking,” he growled. He’d weaned himself from coming too soon with her when he was twenty-one, and he didn’t need to start that shit again now.
He began to thrum at her, all his guitar-strumming skills focused on her eager little clit. “No kissing, no fucking, no light, and no talking.” He bit her neck for punctuation. “You wanted rules, Sofia. You got ’em.”
And he needed to lay down some speed bumps. He had to be more than a warm body she pretended with.
But he fondled her neck and loved on her pussy, let her dig her fingers into his shoulders as she panted into the air. “Do you still like it when...yeah,” he murmured into her skin. She still liked it when he played with her little hood, nudged and nudged it. “Your clit’s so happy to see me, just right there, out on my finger, I can’t wait to say hello with my mouth, I’m gonna taste her until she’s trembling against my tongue and—”
“You—” Her voice was high and tight and that was fucking magnificent. “You said no talking.”
“No talking for you,” he growled, then pushed into his girl.
In the fragile darkness before dawn, Aish squeezed her in his arms and stroked her breasts and kissed her neck and took his time pleasuring this woman he feared he’d never touch again into an agonized, bliss-filled orgasm that rang off her mountains.
September 18
Two evenings later, Sofia stood on the hospedería pool deck with her sister-in-law and Henry and tried to be surreptitious as she watched Aish laugh with his manager and the interns. He held a club soda and lime now. But earlier when she’d led the toast, she noticed that he clinked with a glass of her Tempranillo rosado that she’d poured to celebrate the success of their “crazy idea.”
The shade cloth worked. The Monte would lose about ten percent of that year’s harvest, but the cloth had protected the majority of the vulnerable fruit during the next day’s harsh sun. Without it, the losses would have been catastrophic.
Last night, the winds from the Bay of Biscay—tucked between Spain and France and just north of the Monte’s mountains—had finally found their way through the Picos de Europa to sweep away the heat wave. Temperatures had settled back to their September norms.
Harvest would start within the week.
This party thrown together quickly, with a village band playing in the corner and a spread of pinchos and paella on the other side of the pool, was as much a sigh of relief before the madness of harvest as a thank-you to the interns. Without them, Sofia had told them during her toast, they couldn’t have covered the numbers of vines they did during the critical short window.
The video of Sofia talking to her growers as well as the success of the shade cloth was the cleansing her image needed. In forty-eight hours,
