“Already?” she said, but parted her legs eagerly.
“It’s an obsession, the way I want you,” he said, “too hard to wait.”
He sent one hand down to open her labia while his other continued to play with one of her nipples. The scent of her became so sensually intense it brought on the shakes and he didn’t care because as she slumped back against him he felt something similar racking her body and he loved that they were in sync.
They were on a whole new plane of arousal, watching their hands working together between her legs. He was attentive to her slightest shift, so in tune with her movements he seemed able to read where her fingers would be even before she knew, ensuring every pleasure point was covered to maximize her arousal. He alternated between directly caressing her and trailing his fingertips across her own stroking fingers, so that at any given instant, her clitoris was circled or stroked.
Knowing he couldn’t last much longer, he dipped inside her to spread her moisture where he wanted her to concentrate. He kissed then licked the side of her neck as he jerked rhythmically, helplessly, behind her. He knew he had to get this done before he came on her back, which he was not allowed to do because this was not about him. He lowered his other hand, reaching between her legs.
“Play with your clit, Veronica. Bring it on so I can feel you squeeze my fingers.”
“Your fingers?”
And he slid two fingers into her so that she understood, and she arched her back for him, then flexed her hips, seeking more.
He looked at her, his eyes fierce in the mirror. “Look me in the eye. I want you to know it’s not only me, it’s us.”
She nodded, kept her eyes on his, her fingers flying now. Flying, gliding, slick and fast, and then she lay right back against him, and while one of her hands kept up the pressure at her clitoris, the other came up and reached behind his neck, pulling him in and holding on—and that was his gift, the trust she had in him. He could feel her climax coming, both fast and slow, wild and relaxed. Voluptuous, to be held by her like that, to have her display herself, to watch three hands between her legs.
He saw her eyes start to close as the peak raced for her, but she forced them open, kept them open, and then said his name. “Rafa.”
“Yes, yes, mi vida, I’m here. I’m here, let go.”
It was his permission to close her eyes, and as she did so, the orgasm came, wrenching her enough to make her shudder, hard enough for him to feel that shudder all the way through to his heart.
Waiting through her recovery, knowing she would have fallen if he hadn’t been there for her to rest against. Loving her with everything he had. She opened her eyes and he had to wonder if she could see that love because it was so obvious to him. She smiled sleepily, and he realized she couldn’t see it—maybe because he’d always looked at her like that so there was nothing new to see, maybe because she didn’t want to see it. In either case, he still had a long way to go.
He lifted her in his arms, carried her out of the bathroom, to the bed, lay her down then turned to leave.
“Where are you going?” she asked groggily, and he turned back to find her up on her elbows, frowning at him like a rumpled kitten. “It’s not four o’clock.”
“Go to sleep, Veronica. I have one more hand job to attend to.”
“But I—”
“No, I can do it. I’ll be gone early in the morning, so I’ll see you tomorrow night.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
RAFAEL WAS HAPPY to see a box of condoms beside his wineglass when he entered the kitchen for dinner on Thursday night. But when Veronica came to the table, bringing a tureen with her and putting it beside the box, he was even happier to be able to say, “Not needed.”
She checked briefly. “The soup?” she asked. “You didn’t eat the spaghetti last night. You’re going to starve if you don’t start eating more.”
He repressed a shudder at the memory of the over-salted Bolognese. “I wasn’t hungry last night,” he lied. “And anyway I’m not talking about the soup—” glancing into the tureen and repressing another shudder “—I’m talking about the condoms.”
Something like panic chased across her face, fast as quicksilver, before her eyebrows arched up like a shield. “I see,” she said coolly. “Fine by me. But just so you know, Melissa has spoken to Bryan.”
“I know.”
“What I’m saying is that I’ve held up my end of the bargain even if my services are no longer required.”
“Er—”
“And it’s not my fault last night was disappointing!” Slopping a ladle’s worth of soup into his bowl.
“Um—”
“I mean—what?” Another ladleful of soup “Am I supposed to be in charge of dinner and condoms?”
“Ah, I think you’re laboring under a misapprehension, Veronica. The reason I don’t need the condoms isn’t because I don’t want to have sex with you—” easing up to remove a piece of paper from the back pocket of his jeans “—but because of this.”
She dropped the ladle into the tureen and took the paper from his hand.
“Test results,” he said.
As she unfolded and read the page, he gamely picked up his spoon to try the soup, hoping her preoccupation with his all-clear results would distract her from any gagging he might be betrayed into. The tiniest taste told him it was worse than Monday night’s chili, on par with Tuesday’s overcooked steak with the horrendously gluggy gravy she’d buried it under, and better—but not by much—than last night’s spaghetti Bolognese. He put the spoon down. “I got tested in Leeds today.”
She looked at him. “So you’re definitely not leaving me?”
“Do you want me to?”
And when the merest hint of a smile touched her lips, he decided that was enough of an indicator for him to push his chair away from the table and that disastrous soup, pull her onto his lap and make his case. “If I admit to being an idiot, and beg you to take pity on me, can we give up on the timetable?”
“Beg on your knees?”
“I’ll beg any way you want me to beg,” he said huskily—and he hoped she got that what he was really doing was conceding defeat.
“How about in Spanish?” she asked, and even though she was stringing things out, the way she was rubbing her core against him told him the end was inevitable.
“Te ruego que no me hagas sufrir más y te entregues a mí,” he said promptly. “And I’ll say it in English, too, if that’ll speed things up. I beg you to put me out of my misery and give yourself to me.”
“What about saying it in—?”
“Veronica! Either say yes or get off my lap before I come in my underwear.”
“Yes, in that case,” she said, with a breathless laugh. “Yes, because I want to stay here. Yes...as long as I can have more—and I’m not talking about the soup.”
“Definitely not the soup,” he said, shifting her on his lap so she was facing the table away from him and pulled her in tighter, higher, until she was leaning forward, hands on the edge of the table to brace herself. God it felt good to have her jammed up hard against his cock.
“I’m going to be embarrassingly quick,” he warned.
“Me, too, and I want it to be like that. I want to come fast and hot and bright like lightning.”
“Then beg me, the way I begged you.”
“Rafael!” she cried.
And he laughed—torture and surrender in one. “That’ll do it—you see how easy it is for you to do what you want with me?” He reached down a hand to free his cock and used his chin to nudge her hair away from the back of her neck so he could fasten his mouth there and suck, and suck, and suck. He wished he could keep sucking until she bled into his mouth.
One hard grind edged her thighs apart and he wanted to weep at the heat of her as she moved restlessly on his lap. He imagine
d her on her knees ready for him, knew he was going to take her like that tonight, and as she pushed back against him, he slid a hand under her dress, tugged her panties to one side, and eased into her.
He stilled for a moment, positioning his hands on her hips to guide her as she moved on him, going deeper, deeper still, raining kisses over the back of her neck, murmuring to her in Spanish, words he hoped she couldn’t translate because they were about his need for her, his unending love, his hungering soul.
But when she came a scant moment later and cried out his name—not Rafael but Rafa—he wished he’d said those things in English, too, so that there was no doubt she understood every word.
* * *
Veronica wasn’t quite sure how it had happened, but the moment they’d ditched the schedule and the condoms, everything else changed.
It started with him taking over the cooking the night after that fateful Leeds trip.
She’d arrived in the kitchen ready to make meatloaf, only to find him there before her, bending low to look in the open oven door.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
He closed the oven door but kept peering through the glass. “Isn’t it obvious?”
“Um, yes. Looking at what I think is a chicken.”
He stood and faced her. “Correction. I am baking a chicken. And potatoes. And I’ve already prepared a salad, which is currently residing in the fridge.”
“But it’s my job to get dinner ready. Part of the deal.”
“Hmm, how to break this to you...” He sighed. “You can’t cook, Veronica.”
“Yes I can! I’ve been cooking since Sunday night!”
“You’ve been putting ingredients together—not quite the same thing.”
“But...but...Piers and Simeon never complained about my cooking.”
“They were clearly besotted with you. Or they had cast-iron stomachs. Or no taste buds. Or a combination of all three.”
“How do I know you can cook, smartass?”
“You’ll find out tonight. But if you want advance reassurance, cast your mind back to our DC days and you’ll remember that I occasionally shoehorned Romy out of the kitchen to prepare my mother’s Arroz Con Pollo, and it rivaled Romy’s paella for Cordon Bleu status. Not to mention beating the crap out of Matt’s overspiced hot-sauce omelets.” Pause. “And I worked as a fast-food cook for a while after college, so I learned a few things.”
“Oh you...you did?”
“I did.”
“What else did you do? After...after college?”
“Lots of things.”
“I guess...I guess you wrote about that period. I haven’t read Liar, Liar yet, so—”
“I’m not in Liar, Liar, Veronica. It’s not like Catch, Tag, Release.”
“But I thought you said it was about what happened when the tagged fish got a new lease on life. Wouldn’t that mean—?”
“I’m not the fish in question,” he said, heading off any questions by bending down to look in the oven again. “But back to the chicken... It’s looking good. Smelling good, too.”
“All I can smell is you,” she said, and tried to laugh as though nothing was wrong as he automatically straightened to lift his arm for a sniff. “Gotcha!”
“Yes, you’ve got me.”
“I...I only meant I c-could smell the lemony aftershave you use. I mean... Well, you know you’re paranoid about being clean.”
“Clean for you, yes, because I love the way you smell.”
“Rafael!” she said—a plea to pull back, because she knew there was something beneath the words she wasn’t ready to hear.
He leaned back against the counter and looked at her with that...that look. The rueful smile, his lip caught between his teeth.
She took a step backward, because even though he didn’t make even one move toward her, it was as though he were prowling around her. “I’ll let you take some of my vanilla oil when you fly home.”
“I like the vanilla oil, Veronica, but what’s underneath it is what I’m interested in, so if I could take that home...?” He trailed off, leaving a question hanging between them.
“Sorry,” she said with an airless little huff of a laugh, “peeling off a layer of skin to send along with it is a little too Silence of the Lambs for my taste.”
“Maybe you’d better make me a voodoo doll, then. Twist a bit of your hair around its head, dot a couple of turquoise chips on its face, dab some vanilla oil between its legs, and I’ll be all set.”
“I’m not sure I should encourage you to stick pins in me.”
“You know it’s not pins I want to stick in you, Veronica.” And now he came for her. Step, step, step. But he didn’t touch her. “And you?”
“Me?”
“Are you still sticking pins in me?”
She swallowed as her face heated but she didn’t play coy. “No,” she said. “I don’t want to hurt you. I... No.”
He touched her face with his fingertips, then leaned down to kiss her. That’s all—just a kiss. No jerk into his arms, no tongue. A kiss leading to nothing else. And then he took her by the shoulders, turned her toward the door and gave her a gentle push, with an instruction to be back at seven o’clock.
After that, she couldn’t find a way to get things back on track.
So when his washbag found its way back into her bathroom, and his clothes found their way into her wardrobe and bureau, she said nothing.
When his emptied suitcase turned up in her room, neatly positioned beside her own cases, she left it there.
When he stopped disappearing to the other bedroom to sleep, she never kicked him out. Even if they only did it once, even when they didn’t do it at all one night, he’d simply curl around her and...well, stay curled around her.
They ate breakfast together before he went to the second bedroom to write and she took herself off to the living room with her laptop to edit. They told each other if they were going out—whether it was just for a walk around the estate or driving into the village.
He still ventured into the living room for any number of stupid reasons. She found herself seeking him out, too, asking questions about things she didn’t need answered just because she missed him, and questions about Stomp she wished he’d answer but which he always managed to brush aside. It was strange to see him sitting at the big desk he’d had installed, when in college they’d worked together at the dining table—but it felt right, that they each had their own space. Like real life. Like now life, not then life.
Was it only nine days ago that she’d watched Rafael across the dance floor, feeling stuck in a time warp while she waited for that defining moment when her life might begin again? How strange to know that the moment had become a series of moments—a progression so gradual she didn’t immediately realize her life had begun again.
In one way, she and Rafael had reverted to the couple they’d once been, but what was happening felt like more than that. They never talked about the past, or the future, and even their present was missing full and frank disclosure, because she hadn’t finished Catch, Tag, Release, hadn’t started Liar, Liar, and had finally given up asking about Stomp. But it didn’t seem to matter that the world was spinning without them. It was like she was living an idyll, and if she could just hold everything and everyone at bay, if she could just keep Rafael in this cottage alone with her, that idyll would become the rest of her life.
All that soul-searching she’d done on the subject of whether or not she’d made a mistake seemed obsolete. Because that was then and this was now and he was hers again. She knew what Scarlett would say because she’d said it after Veronica’s divorce from Piers when Veronica had started thinking Rafael might come back for her.
I gotta tell ya, Veronica, lots of women whose partners have left them have a moment when they want to take him back, have another go,
whatever. They think the sharpest pain is gone and they’ve grown as people, and because they’re going back on their terms, it’s going to be different. But you know what? It almost never is. A guy who cheated on you is probably going to cheat on you again. A guy who’s lied to you is probably going to lie to you again.
She’d replayed that so often in her head, she could practically be a therapist...and yet it didn’t seem to fit her situation with Rafael. Because he’d left her for a damn good reason and they hadn’t consciously decided to get back together, it had just happened—like fate.
Everything was perfect.
Until, suddenly, it wasn’t.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
EARLY THURSDAY MORNING, Veronica emailed her suggested revisions to Tori Jayle and packed away her laptop.
At a loose end, she snuck upstairs and listened for sounds from the second bedroom, but an absence of cursing and the quiet clacking of Rafael’s keyboard warned her to leave him to it. The epilogue. Stomp.
It had shocked her when he’d raised the subject of Stomp with no prompting from her during dinner last night—almost as though he’d wanted her to ask him about it. She hadn’t asked, though—how bizarre was that, when he was finally giving her an opening? And so the conversation they could—maybe should—have had started and stopped with him telling her he needed to get it to Bryan ahead of their meeting in Harrogate tomorrow. Once it was gone, he’d said, he would teach her how to make chocolate mousse—which she could take as an indication of just how happy he’d be to see the last of the damn thing, because the thought of letting her near even one ingredient was enough to prematurely age him.
She smiled as she remembered how he’d laughed when she’d called him a smartass. Then how he’d looked at her when she’d suggested she wear her maid’s outfit for the cooking class. Then what he’d done when she’d asked if he wanted to bend her over the couch for some writing inspiration...
Whew!
She crept quietly back downstairs, and as she paused with her foot raised above the fourth step—the one that creaked when you stepped on it—she felt suddenly nostalgic for this cottage. Which didn’t make a lot of sense, given they weren’t leaving for three days!
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