She looked up at him and smiled and he smiled back, the words not stopping and she was glad. She pressed her ear to his chest, the solid thumping of his heart adding extra texture to the moment.
They danced together for a long time, or perhaps time simply stood still.
“What about you, Lauren?”
His question surprised her. She hadn’t realised until then that she’d been almost asleep in his arms, blissed out after a delicious dinner beneath the stars, two glasses of wine and now this – dancing as the waves rolled in. She’d been so determined to put an end to what they were doing but she was so glad he hadn’t let her.
“What about me?” Her own response was soporific. He pulled back to look down at her face, his eyes roaming her features slowly, so she felt exposed to him completely.
“You’re a nurse. Did you always want to do that? Or was it because of him?”
She noticed that he didn’t mention Thom’s name. Did he know it? Had she used it when she’d told him about her marriage? She couldn’t remember, but it suddenly seemed incredibly important that he should know it, and should speak it as she did.
“Thom,” she inserted quickly.
He nodded once. “Did you want to become a nurse before Thom got sick?”
Her tongue darted out and licked her lower lip, as she tried to frame a response. “No,” she smiled as memories flooded her. “It wasn’t even on my radar until – then.”
“What did you think you’d study?”
“Gosh, it’s so long ago. I feel as though it happened in another lifetime.”
“A lot’s happened since.”
Her eyes widened. “Yes. So much. I can barely remember the person I used to be.”
“How are you different?”
She stared up at him and the word came quickly. She’d been happier. Before Thom got sick. Before their marriage and the waiting for the inevitable. Before she’d had a crash course in reality.
“I was less aware of life’s turns, I guess. I’d been pretty sheltered, growing up, and while my parents didn’t have a lot, and we didn’t have a big extended family or anything, we had each other and I thought it was all I’d ever need.”
“And you had Thom,” he murmured, and she was pleased at his observation and the way he’d voiced it so casually.
“Yes. We were inseparable. Life was simpler. Easy.” She put her head back against his chest, her eyes fixed on the gently simmering ocean, the frothy waves encouraging her to speak freely. “I grew up in Bickton on Thames, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of it?”
She felt him shake his head.
“It’s a small village, about an hour by train out of London. Most of the town was built in the nineteenth century, all stone buildings hobbled close together, tiny doors, fine-glass windows. It’s beautiful. Quintessentially British,” she added, pride infiltrating the sentence. “But at its heart there’s a church that was built in the thirteenth century. It’s beautiful and old, timber, and when I was a girl, only eight or maybe nine, it was painstakingly restored, beam by beam. I would walk past every day on my way home from school and stop to stare at it, to watch the work. I felt a great sense of ownership of the church, I suppose – all these workmen had come in from London, and other villages, and none of them understood – or so I arrogantly presumed – the importance of the building. So I would watch them, prepared at any point to chastise them if they weren’t taking enough care.”
She laughed softly and heard a similar sound rupture his chest. “And were they?”
“Oh, I guess so,” she wrinkled her nose. “At least, I never had to rouse at them, so that’s a good sign.”
“I’d have loved to hear what you might have said.”
She grinned. “Who knows?” She ran her fingers through the hair at his nape. “But I decided I wanted to do that for a living.”
“Do what, exactly? Yell at careless tradesmen?”
Her smile was wistful. “Restore old buildings. I became obsessed with architecture, and particularly historical reconstruction.”
“And now?” The gravelled question pulled at her.
She sobered a little. “It was just a pipe dream. A child’s fantasy.”
“Why?”
“Well, because – it was twenty years ago.”
He stopped moving, their dance ceasing. She lifted her face to his. “Have you ever chased down a path for some time and then realised it was the wrong one?”
His implication was clear. She’d followed the wrong path with her current occupation. She brushed the question aside. “Have you?”
He brushed his thumb over her cheek. “No.”
The answer surprised her. “No?” She bit down on her lower lip. “How is that possible?”
“I don’t have any regrets about my life, Lauren. I have strong instincts and act on them accordingly.”
She frowned. What would it be like to have that degree of confidence?
“I find that hard to believe.”
“Because you do have regrets?”
“I would have said everyone does.”
“No, not everyone.”
“Okay, tell me this,” she proposed, pulling away from him a little, so she could see him better – and think better as well. “The night I told you about Thom you said you were even less likely to want a relationship than me. Why?”
She felt him still. Nothing in his expression changed, it was a more subtle difference than that, but she was aware of it nonetheless. “It’s just the way I am.”
“No, that’s not a good enough answer.”
“I’m sorry, it’s the only answer I have.”
She mulled that over. “You know what I see in my line of work?” She didn’t wait for him to answer. “Connection. The importance of connection, and the innate need we have to reach out and connect. I understand my reasons for avoiding relationships, but not yours. You think you don’t make mistakes? Or won’t have regrets? Well, I think that’s a big one.”
“I love my life. I like being single. It’s not so much as a choice not to be in a relationship as it is to enjoy being carefree. I travel, all the time. As you pointed out today, I indulge a penchant for adrenalin sports. Present circumstances excluded – Yaya’s stroke has changed things – I work incredibly long days. I’m talking eighteen hours at my desk much of the time. How does a relationship fit into that?”
“So you do want a relationship, you just don’t know how to juggle it?”
“If I wanted to be with someone, I’d make it work. But I don’t. I’m happy with the way things are.” He laced his fingers through hers, pulling her closer to him, staring down into her eyes. “I like meeting beautiful women and getting to know them. I like having the freedom to sleep with someone I’m interested in for as long as that interest lasts, then move on with no hurt feelings when it burns out – which, in my experience – it always does. I like knowing that I’m not making commitments to anyone. I can’t see anything in my choices that I could ever regret.”
It was all so reasoned. Her stomach felt strangely unsteady. She nodded jerkily and turned to study the waves once more.
“You’re frowning.”
“It just seems like kind of a waste.”
“Oh?”
“I think you have a lot to give. I think you’d be an incredible partner.”
Where had that come from? But she didn’t stop.
“Being single is lonely,” she whispered, her heart heavy suddenly as the reality of that doused her like a bucket of water.
“The way you’re single is lonely,” he corrected gently. “Until me, you’d lived utterly alone. You travel for work, meaning you don’t forge any lasting connections. And I’ll bet that you represent a time in most people’s lives they’d want to forget so that even if you did grow close to someone while you were working with them, they’d probably choose not to have you in their life afterwards.” Again, his perceptiveness surprised her. “I’m not alone, and I’m not l
onely. I have my family, friends, and I date as much as I want.”
She knew why her stomach lurched this time. His use of the word ‘date’ was so obviously a euphemism for ‘sleep with’. She had no doubt he had sex with total abandon. A wave of nausea flooded her. She didn’t want to contemplate that, and felt even more reticent to analyse her strong emotional response.
“What I avoid doing is making promises I have no interest in keeping. I like to move on when it suits me. That’s why I can safely say to you, Lauren Monroe, that I have no interest in relationships.”
She was quiet, wondering at the sense that she’d swallowed a tonne of rubble.
“It’s why I could promise you earlier tonight that this will all be okay. You need this, Lauren. You need me.”
It wasn’t arrogance. He was right.
“You need to remember what it’s like to feel the strength of intimate, human connection. You need to remember what it’s like to have someone you can talk to who’s not grieving and depending on you to make everything okay. You need to remember what it’s like to be kissed beneath the moonlight and to swim naked in the waves,” he prompted, looking towards the ocean so her pulse became thready and her heart stammered.
His words were wrapping around her, binding her in a way she didn’t understand.
“And when it’s time for me to leave, you won’t try to see me again,” she murmured, wondering why her chest was hollowed out with the delivery of the words. Wondering even more so why she held her breath waiting for his response.
“Promise,” his grin showed he didn’t have any of the emotional ambivalence that was forming like a localised tornado in the pit of her stomach.
“Swim with me now,” he said, his hands finding the hem of the t-shirt she wore – her clothes had been too wet from the sprinklers so she’d thrown on shorts and a shirt of his when they’d arrived – both were far too big. He removed them easily and she allowed that, lifting her arms when needed, standing still as his hands gently eased the shorts down her legs then stepping out of them.
“I’ve never done this before.”
“Swum at night?” He prompted, though she suspected he knew what she meant. She shook her head slowly from side to side.
“Swum in Italy?”
“You know what I mean.”
“Ah.” He threw his own shirt to the ground and stepped out of his jeans. She’d seen him naked enough times for his body to be imprinted in her memory bank, but seeing him like this, his honed, athletic frame cast in silver by the moonlight, her breath burned in her lungs.
“You’ll like it. I promise.”
He didn’t need to promise. She knew she would.
Cristo, she was beyond beautiful. That was a word that he’d used often to describe anything from women he was seeing to art he admired, to business deals he was in the process of negotiating. Lauren Monroe wasn’t anything so pedestrian as beautiful. She was enchanting. Fascinating. Consuming. Yes, consuming. He watched from a distance as she walked into the water, a few metres to his side, her body bathed in the night light, her fingertips brushing the top of the water as she moved deeper, a wave crashing against her mid-section made her laugh so her breasts shifted and his eyes traced the outline of them, her nipples, hunger stirring in the depths of his soul. Her hair was pulled over one shoulder, loose and dry now with the hint of a wave, her lips parted in profile as she stepped deeper still.
He went at her pace, wanting to savour this experience through her, to feel it as she did.
Another step and she was up to her belly button. She turned towards him, a smile lifting her lips, changing her face. He slowed, stopped walking and stared, before continuing after her. A second later, her fingertips pushed through the water some more but faster this time, splashing him.
Surprised, he tipped his head back and laughed. She splashed him again.
“Oh, really?” He grinned, changing course and closing the distance. She squealed as he reached for her, splashing him again at close range. He scooped her naked body out of the water, holding her against his chest, his eyes boring into hers as he walked deeper into the ocean. A wave came towards them and he turned so his back bore the brunt of it, but the foam still cascaded over his shoulders, covering her in a disappearing blanket of bubbles. She squealed a little more as the water receded.
“Don’t play with fire unless you are prepared to be burned,” he warned with a small laugh, before unceremoniously lowering her into the water up to her neck.
She pushed a hand out and splashed him but it didn’t matter now, they were both wet. He made sure she could touch the bottom before releasing her completely – she took a second to find her footing and then splashed him again. He did the same and on it went, splash for splash, until they were both drenched and laughing, breathless and alive. Only then did he reach for her beneath the water, his fingers catching her wet, smooth skin and dragging her closer to him, his lips finding hers on autopilot, kissing her as thoroughly as he ever had, his tongue warring with hers, his hands lifting her out of the water, holding her body against his until her legs wrapped around his waist and she held on for herself, her hands gripping the back of his neck, her lips as hungry for his as his own were for hers.
He groaned into her mouth – or was that her groaning into his? – and dropped them lower in the water, so it came to their shoulders. It wasn’t enough – it was never enough with Lauren. He wanted her with a ferocity that took his breath away. He shifted himself a little so his arousal nudged at her sex then pulled back, breaking their kiss so he could look down at her with silent inquiry. She nodded, just a small shift of her head, her response to the silent question given quickly and freely. She wanted him.
It was mutual.
They were as trapped by this storm as each other, and he was glad.
He drove himself into her tight wetness, her muscles squeezing him in welcome, her body so familiar to him now, so perfectly, completely familiar. He hitched himself into her as far as he could, feeling every sensation the moment provided – from the gentle lapping of the waves to the rush of her breath against his neck, the dig of her nails into his skin, her ankles pushing at the small of his back, her hips rocking back and forth, moving as she needed to have him move, taking him and releasing him, driving them both inexorably closer to release.
He groaned as his own pleasure rose to a crescendo, his fingers driving through her hair, tilting her head back so he could kiss her better, his body taking charge now, his hips pushing forward, rocking against her, pleasuring her until she was calling his name into his mouth, over and over, her body wracked with silent cries of pleasure and need. His fingers took one of her nipples and plucked it, pulling it in a way he knew would drive her wild with a mix of pleasure and something close to sensual pain, spiking shockwaves through her body that he felt reverberate in his. She moaned and he moved to the other nipple, his arousal driving into her as he kissed her and his hand tormented her and finally she was free, crying out as pleasure exploded through her, bursting from her like a tsunami, leaving him to follow in its wake, his own release powerful and overwhelming, so he held her tight, kissing her as the waves rocked them, together, then receded, easing them back to a hint of normality. He kissed her again but slowly now, gently, as if to say he understood – they’d weathered that storm together, as they would more before she left. And she would leave – and he would watch her go for good that time – because nothing, even something as mind-blowing as this, could last forever.
Chapter Eleven
“WAKE UP, SLEEPY HEAD.”
He watched as she shook her head and then buried it beneath one of the white linen pillows. “Later,” she mumbled, her voice barely audible.
“No, now.”
There was no answer.
“Lauren…”
“It’s the middle of the night.”
He grinned. “It’s almost six, and you wanted to be back –,”
She squawked. “Almost six? What k
ind of evil blackout curtains do you have?” Her voice was husky in the morning, coated by sleep. She blinked at him blearily in the light cast by his bedside lamp. Raf reached over and pressed a button, the thick black blinds slid upwards mechanically, revealing the glow of dawn breaking over the ocean.
“Is that better?”
“No, we have to go.” And then, as if realising they were in bed together, she paused, looking at him a little self-consciously, her lips parting on an exhalation. “Yaya will be up soon, and we always have breakfast –,”
“I know,” he nodded, leaning forward and brushing a kiss on her lips. “Why don’t you shower and get dressed. Your clothes are dry and folded in the bathroom.”
Her eyes widened. “You did that?”
“Surprised?”
“I guess I shouldn’t be,” she murmured, offering him a small smile. “You cook, you clean, apparently you do laundry… you’re a domestic God.”
“That’s a pretty low bar,” he laughed.
She leaned forward and kissed him. “I’m impressed, none the less.” She scrambled out of the bed and regret shifted through him. His mind began to tick, formulating ways he could organise for her to stay over and not have to get back at the crack of dawn. Having got her here and into his bed, the last thing Raf wanted was to let her go again so quickly. No, this day should have been a slow exploration of one another’s bodies, more pleasure, more enjoyment.
He was still thinking about that when she appeared in the kitchen ten minutes later, hair pulled into a ponytail, wearing the same clothes as the day before.
“I’ve been thinking.”
She nodded, holding a hand out. “Good, but we should go.”
He laughed. When was the last time someone had steam rolled over him when he’d been trying to express an idea?
“In a second.”
“Ra-af…”
He moved around the kitchen bench, pressing a finger to her lips. “We’ll go in a minute. Once you’ve agreed to my suggestion.”
“What suggestion?”
“More of a request.”
Nothing Lasts Forever (The Montebellos Book 4) Page 12