“What’s the name of your dog?” he asked her, her head close to his.
“Benito,” she said.
“I’m sorry he pooped in your room.”
“¡Casi vomito!” Gabriel exclaimed.
Aish grimaced theatrically. “Yeah, it’s gross. I would have almost thrown up, too.”
Henry called from the other side of the room, “How’d you know what they were singing about?”
Sofia was slower to put it together. But when she did, she looked down at Aish.
He looked up at her steadily. “There never was a good time to mention that I’d learned the language,” he said in flawless Spanish.
Sofia was bombarded by several emotions. Anger that he’d never told her. Panic over what she’d said in his presence when she thought he couldn’t understand. Lust at those perfectly formed words coming out of his beautiful mouth.
And a full-body-warming surety that he’d learned those words for her.
The buzz of her phone surprised her. She looked down at it. “Carmen said there’s no more grapes coming in today. Everyone can take off.”
Henry came over to them. “I’ll let ’em know. I got to get the kids back to Helen before she sends out the cavalry.” He hunched down and picked up one bemoaning child at a time. He stood and looked at Sofia.
“You two, um...” Devilment glittered in his eyes. “Have fun.”
Sofia stayed standing and Aish stayed squatting as the door closed.
She crossed her arms. “Did you enjoy listening at keyholes?” she asked.
“Enough of the interns and journalists speak Spanish that no one said anything revealing.” He rested his elbows on his thighs, let his big hands dangle between them, like he was prepared to stay in that uncomfortable position at her feet all day. “Me knowing the language felt like the biggest reveal.”
Neither broke their stare.
“I want inside you so bad I’m dying,” he said, softly in Spanish, conversationally, as if the children were still in the room.
Sofia gripped her elbows. “You said you wouldn’t fuck me until it was more than a one-time thing.”
“I also said I wouldn’t let you tempt me with your voice.” He licked that delicious bottom lip. “And you said I couldn’t kiss you. Our rules work best when they’re broken.”
Helpless to it, Sofia said, “This is a really bad idea.”
When his mouth tilted up wickedly, she realized how far her answer was from “no.”
“Tell me you don’t want to feel it again,” he said, his black eyes beckoning. “Tell me you don’t want to know if it’s as good as we remember.”
She scraped her teeth against her lip. “I’m afraid it’s going to be better.”
And that was the thing, with an exhale of air, that knocked him back on his ass. He fell back to the floor and covered his eyes with one arm, covered his crotch with the other.
He was so dramatic. And she in no way wanted to rip open his jeans and palm his beautiful hard dick and sink it inside her, ride him in the afternoon sunlight, enjoy him and make him howl in full view of every intern and employee and reporter who cared to watch.
Harvest was winding down. Soon, all the grapes would be in and she’d begin the measuring, blending, and aging to turn the alcoholic juice into world-renowned wines that would reinvigorate her kingdom. It was the task she was put on the planet to do.
But perhaps tonight would be best spent letting some of the air out of her growing fascination with Aish Salinger.
“Tonight,” she said. But then stopped. Breathed. “Would you like to come to my room after dark?”
“Yeah,” he muttered, his arm still over his eyes, his voice gravel. “Okay.” And his fist, dangling over his crotch, was white knuckled before he unclenched it, stretched for just a moment, and then white knuckled it even tighter.
She wanted to get each finger wet with her mouth and then insert them into her body.
She forced herself forward, stepped around him and headed to the door. “Tonight,” she threw over her shoulder before she walked out of her office.
Sofia wanted to lay the ghosts of their painful past to rest. They could calm the allure of their current desires if they simply gave in to them, touched each other until their former touches no longer haunted, and then allowed themselves to fade into pleasant footnotes in each other’s stories. Tonight, she would take him into her bed and body and make him like every other man she’d entertained there. They would throw out his last rule, and have at each other for the rest of the month, while maintaining hers. She would only have sex with him in the dark.
In a cool and methodical way, Sofia would strip Aish Salinger of his power to ever hurt her again.
September 22
Part Two
Aish had eaten, showered, slept—which was pretty shocking considering the vibrato of lust rattling him ever since Sofia had invited him to her room—put on good clothes and even styled his hair by the time he watched the last centimeter of sun slide behind the mountains from a hallway window.
He turned to tap on Sofia’s door.
She opened it before he could, and they both startled.
“How long have you been here?” she asked. But then her eyes were moving over him and he leaned back on one shiny black loafer and let her look at his pompadoured hair and clean-shaven jaw, the crisp white shirt with collar unbuttoned just enough to tease at his tattoos, the perfectly tailored black tux, the silk pocket square as deep red as her flushed, pretty pussy.
“How long have you been by the door?” he countered, as pleasure—warm and excited and throbbing—filled him. She’d dressed for him, too.
He’d known it was possible that he come to her in his dressed-down tux and she’d be in overalls. But she wasn’t in overalls. She was in roses. Her dress was an explosion of red roses against a black, wispy-looking fabric, roses exploding over her torso and around her cinched waist and down the skirt to mid calf. Her arms—her beautiful, golden-toned, muscular
