He didn’t like this change.
She sliced a tomato carefully – with the skill of someone who rarely cooked – each movement of the knife tentative and uncertain.
Without giving a moment to consider his actions, he crossed into the kitchen and came to stand behind her, his hands moving to her sides and past them, so he could take the tomato with one hand and the knife with the other. He kept his head low, his mouth brushing the flesh of her cheek so he felt her tremble in response.
“Like this, cara.”
He moved the knife easily through the tomato’s flesh, forming perfect round slices until it was done. Then, he replaced the knife on the chopping board, moving his hands to her hips instead. He was tempted to turn her around so that she was facing him, so that he could ask her why she was so quiet, but instead, he moved his hand higher, inching over her tummy so he felt her harsh intake of breath, then higher still to the underside of her breasts. Her ribcage moved sharply. He dropped his head, his lips nuzzling the flesh in the sweep of her neck as his fingers lifted to her breasts, his thumb brushing her nipple, a smile forming as he felt how taut they were, buds pressed against the lace of her bra and cotton of her shirt. She made a panting noise and his cock hardened, aching in his pants. He pressed his hips forward so she could feel the evidence of his desire, and just like the night in the salon he felt a rush of desire that made no sense, that demanded immediate action.
He murmured into her ear, words that made no sense, low and soft, but she shook her head, stiffening in his arms, her body restrained, cold. Frustration zipped through him. If he turned her and kissed her, he’d carry her into this fever with him. He knew she would respond as she had that night, as she always did. But a sixth sense was ringing through him, telling him to wait. To talk to her.
“You’re very quiet,” he murmured now, moving his hands back to her hips, keeping his mouth close to her cheek because he liked the way it felt to be nuzzled in the crook there.
“Yes.” He felt her swallow. He heard the coolness in her tone. Expelling a sigh, he eased her around to face him, needing to understand. She didn’t meet his eyes.
“Someone will see.”
“There’s no one around.”
She swallowed again. “There’s always someone around.”
That was true, lately. While they’d grown up with domestic staff at Villa Fortune, the added intrusion of medical staff meant the communal spaces of the house were often crowded.
Fighting his own instincts, he took a step backwards, putting some distance between them. His body responded, his gut pulling as if to force him back to her.
He ground his teeth together, forcing himself to concentrate. Something had changed between them. But what?
“You’re different.” It wasn’t the gentlest questioning technique but it was a start.
She angled her face away. Frustration gnawed at his gut. No, she wasn’t different, she was the same – the same as she’d been when he’d first arrived and she’d been determined to push him away. It had bothered him then but now that he’d seen another side of her – been intimate with her – it was driving him crazy.
At least she didn’t attempt to deny the change.
“What is it, Lauren?”
Her eyes swept shut a second and she shook her head. Some sixth sense told him she was struggling to find a way to express whatever was bothering her. Every instinct he possessed told him to wait. Silence encouraged speech. He stood there, his body radiating an inner-tension. His nerves stretched tighter and finally, she turned back to face him.
“I think we should stop what we’re doing.”
He stared at her, completely blind-sided. “What?”
She nodded slowly, her eyes anguished. “Yeah. I think it’s better if we just…go back to…not sleeping together.”
Cristo. He had definitely not expected that.
“Lauren,” he ran his fingers through his hair. “Let’s take this back a bit. Tell me what brought you to this conclusion.”
The fine column of her throat shifted as she swallowed. “It’s not one thing in particular, so much as realising my first instinct with us was right. It’s better not to…get involved.”
“Well, we are involved. That horse has bolted.”
Startled, she turned to face him. “We can’t.”
“What’s happened?” Because surely something had happened, rather than Lauren just deciding out of the blue that she didn’t want to see him anymore? He wracked his brains but couldn’t find a single hint of what that could be. Two days ago she’d come to his house and they’d made love for hours. True, they’d barely seen each other since, but that alone couldn’t be responsible for this sudden about face.
“I just –,”
A noise from the door heralded someone’s arrival, a cleaner, smiling at both of them before moving towards the dishwasher. He turned back to Lauren but she’d spun away, back to the sandwich she was making. Her fingertips shook slightly. Impatience was like a time bomb inside of him.
Lauren concentrated on the simple act of putting sliced tomato with cheese and bread, cutting it and placing it on a plate – such a simple deed and yet knowing he was watching her made everything difficult. Her heart was racing, her mouth was dry. She hadn’t known, until she’d spoken the words, that she’d decided to end things. But seeing him dangling off the edge of the ravine had struck a sense of dread in her heart that was so intensely familiar.
Caring about someone and losing them was the hardest thing she’d ever had to do. She didn’t love Raf, but her body knew his intimately, and as part of that, her heart knew his heart. She’d felt it beat against her chest, each strike bonding them in some indefinable way.
He’d scaled the cliff face like someone who did it often. There was nothing tentative or uncertain, no damned harness or rope to protect him, because he evidently thought he didn’t need such a thing.
But what if he’d been wrong? What if he’d fallen?
And she recalled the first conversation she’d heard between Yaya and Raf, the way Yaya had shown a hint of worry for Raf’s hiking activities. Now, Lauren understood that pain.
She felt him move behind her and her body lurched in response, every single cell vibrating with a physical need that made her knees shake. His voice was a low grumble, his accent pulling at her senses, robbing her of breath.
“This isn’t over.”
He left the kitchen and she exhaled, something like a stitch holding her heart tight.
“Okay, what’s going on?”
She started, surprised to find Raf waiting for her when she slipped out of Yaya’s room, but not surprised at the same time. They’d spoken hours ago and somehow she’d managed to avoid seeing him until now. But at just after eight o’clock at night, she realised she’d put this off as long as she could.
Her eyes lifted to his and she felt the intensity of his gaze, so her pulse fired up, her heart stuttering.
“Not here,” she shook her head, quickly casting a glance over her shoulder towards Yaya’s room.
“Fine,” he compressed his lips, putting a hand in the small of her back and propelling her further down the hallway.
“Someone will see—,”
“Right now, I don’t think I give a damn.”
He turned a corner of the villa then pushed a door inwards. It took Lauren a few seconds to realise this must be his bedroom. Her heart skidded against her ribs.
It was so very him. Uber masculine, stylish, dishevelled in a way that spoke of a person who was always moving and busy. There were books beside the bed – a detail that made something in her stomach go all squishy and soft. She didn’t know he was a reader. His laptop was set up on a desk against a wall near sliding doors that led, she guessed from the room’s position in the villa, to the citrus grove.
The door clicked shut and she spun to face him, her heart beating over-time.
“So?” He crossed his arms over his chest, drawing her attention
, for a brief moment, to the strength of his physique. She forced herself to concentrate on his face.
“What do you want me to say?”
“I want you to tell me what happened?” His brow furrowed and despite his obvious frustration she could see him trying to calm his tone. “The night before last everything was completely fine. I know I’ve hardly seen you since but –,”
“It’s not that,” she shook her head.
“Then what is it?”
There was no reason to lie to him. She jammed her hands into the pockets of her jeans, fixing her gaze on his with determination, working to keep her voice level and detached. “I saw you climbing today. I watched you for a long time. I didn’t like it.”
His features rearranged themselves into a mask that was pure confusion. “Che?”
Of course he didn’t understand. How could he?
“You were dangling off the edge off the cliff and I realised that if you lost your grip, you would fall and you would die, and it’s all I could focus on. I thought I was going to vomit. I watched you hang there and it was as though time stood still, and I couldn’t believe anyone would take that kind of risk. Of all the selfish, stupid –,”
“Wait, wait, enough,” he held his hands up to silence her, confusion still apparent. “You’re ending things with me because of my hobby?”
“No,” she hissed, shaking her head. “I’m ending things with you because you have a death wish and I have no interest in getting any more involved with you than I already am.”
His eyes swept shut for a moment and a muscle in his jaw throbbed as he nodded. “I was in no danger at any point today.”
“No danger?” She expelled harshly. “How can you say that? I watched you hang there. I watched you scale those rocks with nothing but your hands to catch you. No harness. No rope, nothing.”
“Fine. You perceived a danger. Why does that mean we can’t keep sleeping together?”
She flinched involuntarily. “Because I don’t want to sleep with someone who has such a disregard for human life. I spend my life watching people die, Raf. That’s what I do. I watch people fight disease and have it wreck their bodies and slowly they have to loosen their grip on life and accept the inevitability of what’s coming – I refuse to watch someone flirt with death for fun.”
He moved closer to her, his face impossible to read, his eyes guarded. “I know you have a unique perspective on this, but believe me when I tell you: I don’t want to die, Lauren. I climb because I love the challenge. I climb because it makes me feel more alive than anything else.”
“That’s the rush of cheating death,” she said, more loudly than she’d intended. Then, with a frustrated shake of her head she stalked across his room and opened the French doors that led, as she’d guessed, into the wide lawn filled with rows and rows of lemon, orange and clementine trees. The fragrance of blossoms wrapped around her as she moved outside. He was right behind her.
“Don’t walk away from me again.”
“I’m not,” she hissed, her eyes scanning the villa. Lights glowed warm from various rooms. “I’m taking us somewhere we can talk without the risk of being overheard.”
There was a full moon and it cast the orchard in silver light. She moved deeper through the rows of trees, anger making her stride long. He kept pace with her easily.
Finally, deep in the rows of Clementines, where the moonlight struggled to permeate, she stopped walking. Words came to her without prior thought. “I watched someone I love die, Raf. I watched him die for years and it was the hardest and longest goodbye of my life.” Tears made her voice husky. “You aren’t sick. You’re young and fit and healthy with your whole life before you and to see you treat it with such cavalier disrespect makes me so angry I can barely breathe.”
“What are you saying?” He asked quietly. “That you’re in love with me?”
Her eyes flew wide, the denial fierce and instant. “Absolutely not; no way! You know that’s not…anywhere in this equation. This isn’t about you and me. It’s about – it’s the fact people are dying who would give anything to live and you’re treating your life as though it doesn’t matter.”
His expression tightened. “What I did today was perfectly safe.”
“How can you say that?”
“Because I’m experienced. Because I do it all the time. Because I would never attempt something if I didn’t think I could handle the challenge.”
“That’s arrogant in the extreme.”
“Fine,” he dipped his head in a gesture of agreement. “There’s a risk, but Lauren, there’s risk in every little thing we do in this life. There’s risk in walking down the Goddamned street, risk in flying, risk in eating, risk in everything. There’s risk without activity – risk in going to bed each night that your heart might stop beating. You cannot live a life without risks; it’s just not possible.”
“But you can mitigate them where possible,” she responded stiffly.
“How can you be such an expert in death and yet know so little about life?” He demanded with a deep, rumbling tone of disbelief. The words pulled her up short.
“What?”
“You think I take too many risks, fine. That’s your opinion. But at least I’m grabbing life with two hands and living it to its fullest. You shuttle yourself from patient to patient, wrapping yourself in other people’s grief as an excuse to avoid living your own life.”
Her lips parted on a swell of indignation but there was another powerful emotion there too: acceptance. There was an element of truth in what he said. She dropped her head forward, unable to breathe, her eyes misting with stinging tears.
“You avoid meaningful relationships because there’s risk inherent to caring for another human being. Isn’t that why you’re doing this? Because you realised today that you’re starting to care about me?”
Another intake of breath and now her tears fell unchecked. He was too perceptive and he knew her too well. How had that happened?
“It’s okay, Lauren, it’s okay.” But it wasn’t okay. She was the one who was falling off the edge of the cliff.
“I can’t –,”
“Yes, you can,” he promised, bringing his body to hers, catching her face in his hands and lifting it, his thumbs wiping away her tears, his lips brushing hers. “You can because I’m right here and I’m not going to let anything happen to you. This is okay.”
She sobbed and he shook his head, kissing her lips slowly, a kiss of gentle reassurance. “It’s okay to be happy. It’s okay to care about me. Nothing changes what we agreed to, and what we’re doing.”
She wanted to tell him this wasn’t about that, but it was. Of course it was. He’d pulled apart her explanations and seen right to the heart of her biggest fear. She didn’t want to care too much.
“This is just sex,” she said firmly, needing to cling to that now more than ever.
But he brushed it aside. “No, it’s not. It’s two people who like each other and are having fun getting to know each other while having sex. It’s not as neat as we thought it was going to be, but it’s still okay. I promise.”
Lauren cried as she kissed him, her footing slipping, the danger palpable. She should stop this. She needed to stop it, didn’t she?
Chapter Nine
HIS HANDS MOVED FAST, pushing her shirt up over her head and dropping it so that it landed with a silent whoosh against the dewy blades of grass at their feet. His mouth devoured hers, his hands reassuring her with their steadfast worship, the earthly pleasures of this act something he had faith in – and needed her to as well.
It wasn’t clear if Lauren moved first, or Raf, but they came to the ground together, on their knees first, so the dew soaked his jeans and he barely noticed, much less cared. He kissed her all the way to the ground, laying her back amongst the citrus, breathing her in, her sweetness mixed with the blossoms that surrounded them. She made a noise, shifting slightly, and he stopped at the abrupt movement.
“What
is it?”
She held up a twig, a piece that had snapped from a nearby tree, with a thorned barb at the base. Taking it from her fingertips, he tossed it aside before reaching for her bra straps and pushing them down her arms impatiently. Need drove his actions. He didn’t reach behind her to unclasp the thing, simply kept pushing until her breasts tumbled over the top. He made a noise of relief before cupping them with his hands, his mouth seeking hers again, his body pressed to hers, his legs straddling her, pinning Lauren to the cool ground.
Her own hunger was just as urgent; her hands pushed at his jeans impatiently, fumbling with the button so he moved one hand to help her, releasing them and pushing them lower, kicking out of them and ripping his shirt from his head, throwing it somewhere near where hers had landed. Only the sound of their frantic breathing filled the orchard.
He lifted her hands so her arms were above her head and pinned them there with one hand, his fingers curved over her wrists as his body tormented hers with his nearness. He pressed his arousal to her sex, too many clothes preventing them from being together. That didn’t stop her from crying out his name and lifting her hips in a desperate invitation. He kissed her hard, needing her to understand. Understand what? That sex was sex and that this would end but that for now this was perfect. Life was full of chapters – some of them good, some of them bad – and the only way to survive the bad was to enjoy the good to their fullest. This wasn’t ending before they were ready.
He made the promise to himself and to her, his free hand pushing at her jeans, lowering them down her body. She lifted her body to help, kicking her legs, his foot did the rest. They were so close to naked. He brushed his arousal to her and she whimpered, trying to pull her hands free; he understood. No more waiting. He disposed of his boxers, the agony of so many clothes one that only enhanced his anticipation of possession.
He nudged her legs further apart with his knee then drove into her, keeping her arms right where they were, his mouth claiming hers, his body melded to Lauren’s, something so primal and perfect about making love to her like this – the absolute surrender to the imperative of what they shared. God help him, he wanted to do this forever. Not forever, but for an eternity in this one night.
Nothing Lasts Forever (The Montebellos Book 4) Page 10