“Que bueno,” she bent over to whisper into Gabriel’s curls before she kissed them.
Liliana leaned her whole weight on Aish’s side, so he had no choice but to put his arm around her.
“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 arms with her The Queen is Dead tattoo—were bared by cap sleeves. The dress’s deep V showed off the sleek skin of her chest and soft sides of her breasts.
So much delicious skin.
Her tawny hair was softly swept back from her face and her wide mouth glistened with gloss and she’d put little shiny black stones in her ear and she’d done this for him and he just wanted to...just wanted to... He was seconds from falling to his knees.
Her voice, when she whispered in Spanish, sent shivers over his skin. “Do you want to go at it right here in the hall or would you like to come in?”
He kept his shit together. “I think I’ll come in. It’s drafty out here.”
He watched her pause, press her delicious lips together. Then she stepped back.
“Let’s stick to English,” he said, a touch of gruff in his voice, as he walked past her. She smelled so sugar sweet.
“Yes, let’s.”
He could glory later in what the tapes and tutors and true fascination with the language had earned him—her surprise, hopefully her admiration, and maybe her insight into how much she’d meant to him. Perhaps she even realized that he’d hoped—planned—to share his new linguistic skills with her one day. But right now he couldn’t speak Spanish with her, not with the way it made her look at him. Right now, he couldn’t give her the green light to speak it, not with the way her voice sparked over his body.
He was an amateur at this long game, so he needed to keep his act together before he began blubbering everything he needed and wanted into her rose-covered lap.
If through her body was the way back to her heart, then he had to be delibera
te in his journey.
When he turned to look at her, her hand was already on the light switch.
“What are you doing?”
“Making it dark.”
“Wait, wait, wait.”
He walked quick steps back to her, pulled her hand from the wall and against his chest, tried to think fast when his brain felt stuck in a molasses of want and hope. The twilight glow coming through the sheers of her closed balcony doors gave him something. “It’s not dark enough yet. And...um...” The palm pressed against his chest, the fingertips that had ended up just inside his collar and touching his skin, weren’t helping him think.
Why wasn’t he pushing her up against the wall and lifting that dress?
“And, yeah.” He kept a hold on her wrist as he tugged her into the room. Away from the wall. “I had a rule and...”
The smile growing on her face, amused and sexy, stopped him short.
He cupped her hand and kissed her cinnamon-scented palm. “This is more than a one-time booty call, Sofia.”
“Vale. Okay,” she said, still sweet, still amused, before she slipped her hand from his hold and moved to a heavy black sideboard where decanters of wine and water and a tray of fruit, of crostini, queso and cured meats waited.
It settled him, centered him, that she’d anticipated at least a break in their lovemaking—a quiet moment to eat and drink—instead of expecting him to fuck her then get out.
When she pointed at the decanters with a questioning look, he asked, “Is the wine yours?”
She nodded.
“Then pour me a glass.” She turned away from him quick enough, but he still saw the pleased quirk of her lips.
When she walked back carrying two glasses, he took in the soft swish of her dress and the smoky look in her eyes. She handed him a glass and then took a seat on a black-leather-topped wooden bench near the balcony doors. Here they could both watch the light. Sofia urging it to fade to black and Aish using every bright second.
He unbuttoned his jacket and sat next to her, swirled the wine in his glass and took a sniff before drinking. He felt her eyes on him as he did it.
He nodded down at her arm, inches from him. “Your tattoo hasn’t faded.” The neat script, the blood-red words The Queen is Dead on the inside of her forearm were as sharp as ever.
She ran a thumb over it. “I keep it vibrant with vitriol and malice.”
Because he couldn’t help himself, he ran two fingers over it, too. The skin was seductively silky. “Thank you for letting me see it again.” She let him stroke her, feather back and forth over those angry words, and the comfort and ease of it was jarring. Mind-blowing.
She’d granted him this little bit of a second chance. He was so fucking lucky to be here.
She moved her arm away. “You’d never mentioned wanting your own tattoo,” she said.
And he hadn’t. At twenty-one, Aish could no more have imagined covering what he’d thought was a pretty ideal body with ink than wearing a blue wig over his hair. But after his first sex with someone other than Sofia, he’d staggered still stinking from the show into a tattoo parlor in Dallas and gotten a compass on his forearm in the same spot as Sofia’s tattoo.
He’d been such an idiot to think it would lead him back to her.
But that story would have her shutting down and kicking him out. So instead, he just said, “I liked yours. I got one. Then I didn’t stop.”
Her hmm of a response had Aish wondering for the first time why she’d insisted he cover his tattoos. He’d assumed it was another degrading restriction in a list of them, the clear line to announce what she thought of him and how little she trusted him. But maybe she liked the idea of ink tracing over his body too much.
It wasn’t time to heat up. He took a sip of wine to cool down and savored the taste.
“Do you like the wine?” she murmured.
“Yeah,” he said. The sky outside had become plum.
“What...um...what do you like about it?”
He turned to look at her. Then he stood up, straddled the bench in his tux pants, and sat down facing her.
“Sofia,” he said, his grin growing. “Are you hunting for compliments about your wine?”
She wouldn’t drop her chin or her gaze from the window. He should have been sitting this way the whole time. She looked so pretty and indomitable, sitting here with her stubborn chin and heavenly dress in the hotel she created.
He thought about the other thing he’d been craving since harvest began.
“I’ll tell you what I think about your wine if you tell me what you think about my music.”
It had been a lucky break when she hadn’t blamed him for the Young Son songs pouring over the winery’s sound system. He knew the acoustics in the large facility made it difficult to hear them. But he had noticed her, more than once, humming along in her tone-deaf way. Did she like the songs? Had she heard any of the lyrics?
He scooted gently closer, until his knees touched the softness of her skirt.
She dropped her eyes to her glass. “That’s not a fair bargain, you know.”
“Why?”
“I have told you what I think of your music.”
Aish opened his mouth to object. But quickly closed it.
She’d spent hours and hours that long-ago fall listening to his music, playing him her favorite bands, critiquing a lyric or a hook, listening and loving every chord he strummed on the guitar, every note he sang. She’d believed entirely in him. Her faith in his destiny had been absolute.
He’d treated her praise like it was his due.
She didn’t want the apologies he felt like he could scoop out of himself in buckets. So he picked up the pale red wine that he’d been savoring because he wouldn’t pour himself another glass although its taste made him want to.
He sniffed it again, caught something sweet. Vanilla-ish. “It’s spent some time in American oak,” he said. She nodded.
He took a good drink.
I could drink a case of you, Joni Mitchell sang in his favorite song.
“My palate’s gotten used to fruit bombs, those big chewable Napa Valley cabs and Sonoma County pinots,” he said. She tucked her hair behind her ear; she was listening although she wasn’t looking at him. “This is...restrained. Delicate. Unique. You’ve got a little tobacco, a little acid. They balance each other nicely.”
He could see the pleasure on her cheek even if she didn’t smile. Then she stood, slid her leg over the bench and faced him too, letting their knees touch as her skirts fluttered around her lap. She could have slapped him, her move provided that much power and surprise.
“I was impressed by the variety of instruments you’ve incorporated into your music,” she said softly, eyeing him. “I always thought you planned on being more of a four-piece American rock band.”
Because he couldn’t not, he gently slipped his hand under her skirt to cover her knee. When she didn’t pull back, he slid two fingers under the bend, feathered them across the thin, ticklish skin. “We were an American rock band. With, like, fifteen pieces.”
She tilted her head to smile at him. “And a bagpipe.”
He dug all of his fingers between her leg and the leather, loving the weight and warmth of her, being able to claim and hold her this way, and took another drink of wine. Her eyes, as still and watchful as a cat’s, followed him.
He wanted to press her back and whisper love words about aroma and mouthfeel and finish against her skin.
He rolled the wine around in his mouth and swallowed. “You know what I really think, Sofia?” He gripped her knee and made his thumb memorize the bones. “I think your wines are fucking incredible. I think you already know that. And I don’t think you need to hear it from me or anybody.”
“No, I don’t,” she said imperiously, lifting her nose and exposing all tha
t gorgeous skin—her neck, her chest, the sides of her sweet tits—to the lamplight. “But you owe me some fawning.”
He finished his wine in two big gulps. Then he thunked the glass on the floor and, his hands now free, slid them over her thighs, over the delicious fabric and warmth and softness, to her hips. She was so small in his big hands. Her waist looked as delicate as the wineglass stem. He met her eyes.
Her smile, the challenge and excitement in it, reminded him how that little nineteen-year-old girl had mastered him entirely.
“You want some fawning,” he said, lifting her and pulling her onto him, her thighs sliding over his, her weight in his lap. He gripped her thigh in one hand and her waist in the other as he looked up at her.
Slowly, lazily, she laid her arms around his shoulders. As if, of course, yes, like a thousand other men, she knew he adored her.
He smiled up at her with all the joy of being here. “You’re an artist with the grapes. Tasting what you created makes me want to cry. Once people get their heads out of their asses, you’re going to be queen of the wine world and I’m going to be some has-been in your liner notes.”
She shifted, just a little, but enough to push her closer to where he was hardening up for her. “You don’t get to feel sorry for yourself, not with the music you’re capable of.” She leaned in and feathered a kiss at the top of his cheekbone, letting him get lost in the smell and tickle of her hair. “You have a talent and a skill that’s a gift from God.” She kissed his bridge, the tip of his nose, rubbed her lips over an eyebrow. “If you waste it, or let this scandal distract you from it—” her hands, those small world-dominating hands, tugged back his head so she could smooth her mouth along his jaw “—then yes, you’re just a sad little man who buried that bold joyous boy.”
She bit the vein of his neck and he let his hands meet over her skirt and under her tight little ass so he could push her tight against him.
“Is it dark enough now, Aish?” she purred in his ear.
Without even looking, since her room was the same layout as his, he reached over and slapped at the light switch by the balcony door, bathing the room in darkness that he didn’t even care about as he wrapped his hands around her neck and took her mouth with his.
Hate Crush (Filthy Rich) Page 21