Aish winced as Sofia stood in front of him. “I couldn’t find you guys,” he groaned.
“You told Sofia you’d go back in fifteen minutes. You told me you were going back.”
“I wanted to.” Aish’s forehead clenched in misery. “But I started feeling shitty and...”
“I told you not to do those shots,” John said.
Aish squinted up at him. “We were doing shots?”
“You,” John said, looming over his best friend. “You were doing shots. You’re lucky she didn’t roofie you.”
Sofia watched these two indolent boys as the American sun beat down on her head and dehydration made her skin feel two times too small and endlessly old. And tired.
“Sofia?” Aish said, focusing on her.
She watched him and said nothing.
“Sofia,” he repeated, more urgent. He lifted the bottle over his head, upended the rest of it, and she realized then that his hair wasn’t sweat soaked. He’d been trying to sober up.
“I’m going to grab more water,” John said quietly before walking away.
Aish gripped the bench to keep from swaying as he looked up at her. “I’m sorry,” he croaked. “I fucked up.”
She dug her fingers into her biceps, squeezed her arms against herself.
“Could you...could you sit down? If I keep looking up, I’m going to hurl.”
She sat as close as she normally did, a stupid force of habit, and instantly smelled the strong scent of patchouli. It was coming off him. Aish—who never wore cologne, who smelled like salt and skin and sun, who had become her favorite scent—now smelled like another woman.
She quickly slid away from him and gripped her knees.
“Sofia...” It came out like a moan.
“What happened?”
“I...fuck... I don’t know. We went backstage and talked to the manager and it went well and then she gave us beers and, I swear, I know I only had one but shit started to go wonky and then...goddammit, I don’t remember doing shots...” There was real misery in his beloved voice. Sofia fought the horrifying inclination to soothe it. “The next thing I remember I was out here looking for you guys.”
“So you don’t know what happened with her?” She stared at the dirt between her sandals. Maybe she’d had too much to drink; she felt like hurling, too.
“Nothing happened with her.”
“You smell like her.”
“Fuck,” he cursed again, sharp and bitter. Like someone else had done this. Like he wasn’t responsible for this nightmarish moment. “She hugged me. She...kinda...was hanging on me when we talked to her manager.”
Then he’d gone back to say goodbye, did shots with her, and “forgot” what he’d been doing for the last hour and a half.
Sofia shot to standing. And found herself just as quickly in Aish’s lap.
“Don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t,” he chanted low, pleading, against her neck, nosing under her hair and getting to skin, his long strong arms belting around her waist and holding her against him. “Please, please, don’t, I swear to God, nothing happened, I know it didn’t, my body knows it, it couldn’t have, I love you, I love you too much.”
He was heat and strength and safety plastered up against her, rocking and squeezing her, and she had to bite her lip to keep from sobbing.
“Please, please, I know I fucked up but please, let me fix it, we gotta fix it.” His breath was hot and vibrant against her back, her shoulders. She clenched her eyes shut against the sensation. “Please, Sofia, mi estrella, estrellita, I need you, tell me, tell me what we can do to fix this.”
Her traitorous body was melting into the urgent curve of his. He’d made love to her this way, forcing her to sit still with him deep inside her, his hands free to touch and pleasure her everywhere. She’d come explosively without one thrust, sucking on his fingers as he fondled her clit.
“Tell me,” he’d purred into her ear. “Tell me what you want.”
“I gave him everything,” her mother had sobbed. “And he treats me like trash.”
She tried to get up and he pulled her back.
“Oh god, don’t, Sofia, please.” His voice was broken. “Please, tell me...fuck...fuck, I know...” And he dumped her on the seat next to him, his big body wild as he reached for his back pocket and then came back empty handed to punch at his thigh. “Fuck, I don’t know what happened to my phone.”
Then he was on his knees in front of her, gripping her hands in his huge ones. People walking by snickered and hooted.
But he focused on her like she was the only person in Golden Gate Park. “I’ve been looking for apartments for us in LA.” He looked manic, pale and wide eyed.
“What?”
“Yeah, I bookmarked them and I can show you...come live in LA with me. Then when you go to Bordeaux, I’ll live with you.” His black eyes crackled. “I mean, if you want. I’ll have to fly home a lot...”
“Dude!” John had come back with more water bottles. He glared furiously at Aish. “You told her about the apartment? The manager just said having a girlfriend is a bad idea when you’re starting out.”
“That guy doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” Aish said, swiping a bottle from him. His eyes were focused and ardent on Sofia. “We can make this work. I know we can. I love you. We can make this work.”
“I...” She was stunned. Shocked. Whiplashed. Everything she ever wanted was being laid out for her on a platter. All she had to do was reach for it.
He squeezed her hands like he could get their bones to meld. “I fucked up, Sofia, and I’m so, so sorry. I’m such a fucking idiot for letting her put a chink in your trust.” He reared up and pulled her forward, nestled as close as he could get to her without being inside her, cradled her face in his hands and trapped her eyes. The catcalling was a distant, uninteresting buzz.
“Nothing like that’ll ever happen again. You can trust me, Sofia, you know you can. I’ll never let down my estrella. I need your light. Say you’ll come to LA with me. Be with me. Stay with me. I need you.”
“Why doesn’t he love me?” her mother had cried.
Aish loved her, proved it by defying his best friend and this manager, and Sofia could put aside the idea that her mother’s tragic story was a blueprint for her own. He was going to fuck up. So was she.
But that didn’t mean she had to reject the dream he was offering her.
Trembling, speechless, she nodded and placed her hands on his glass-cutting cheekbones, pressed her lips to his, and accepted Aish Salinger and the promise of his constant love.
September 26
Sofia was surprised and impressed by the amount of sex they were able to squeeze in amid the million and one tasks of crush. When she’d spent half the day side-eyeing Aish as he performed punch-down, his muscles flexing as he used the metal, flat-headed tool to break up the cap of skins and seeds that formed at the top of fermenting juice, she’d eventually had to grab him and shove him behind a tank, strip off just enough grape-streaked clothes to access the needy parts, and plant hands over his eyes and mouth as she rode him hard. When they’d been hauling barrels out of the cooperage, she’d suddenly found herself in a dark corner, one small window letting a thin beam of light into the stone-walled room, bent over a barrel as Aish tasted then took her from behind. She’d felt pummeled by the scent of toasted wood and ocean-soaked man.
And at night, whenever nights happened for them, sometimes at 2 a.m. and sometimes just before dawn and sometimes seconds after the sun slipped away, they’d be in her bed, the countdown clock to the end of the month their excuse for attacking each other again and again, even when it wasn’t attack, even when being with Aish was slow and delicate and enormous. She traced him like she was blind, smoothing over the planes and outline of him to record in her mind’s eye something more perfect than what he could e
ver be in the light.
Something more permanent.
He murmured and kissed and held and gripped her and tried so, so hard to stay in her bed until the bright light of morning. Even if she fell asleep against him—sweaty, euphoric, once just passing out on top of him while he was still inside her—some preservative sense always had her waking up and kicking him out before morning fully arrived. His gorgeous body was a ghost of sleek muscles and indecipherable tattoo ink as he grumbled and gathered his clothes.
Her decision to allow them to have at each other was paying off in more than mind-blowing orgasms. #Aishia was a sensation. Happy, flirty pictures of the two of them painted every available corner of the Internet. The servers of a popular fanfiction site had crashed after they’d received a torrent of stories focused on Aish and Sofia happily-ever-afters. An American cable network had announced an unauthorized biopic about their long road to love.
More importantly, Bodega Sofia’s hospedería was now booked for a year after their spring launch.
In a matter of a few days, days when Sofia’s morality or talents or goals hadn’t changed, fickle world opinion aligned on her side and dragged the wine world along with it. Namrita was busy organizing late fall private tours, hospedería stays, and Sofia interviews for some of the world’s top wine writers and producers. A Burgundian winemaker Sofia had known for years, who’d been too busy to take her call a couple of months ago, told Wine Spectator that Bodega Sofia was a textbook example of how to lead with innovation while honoring tradition. Letting bygones be bygones, Sofia had sent him a quick email promising him a case of their first official vintage.
All this because she’d decided to let Aish bone her whenever their little rabbit hearts desired.
She’d muttered that once, her forehead resting on the sleek skin of his pelvis, the epic blow job she’d been giving interrupted by the urgent and repeated ring of her phone and the five-minute conversation she had to have with a New York Times reporter before they went to press. Aish collapsed laughing to the seat of the Bodega Sofia truck, parked in the large, dark garage where they’d hid, and Sofia found him so irresistible that she blew him until he begged.
He never once brought up the fact that he’d been right about the potential of #Aishia if they worked together. She never once mentioned how intolerable the thought of #Aishia had been.
People didn’t “know” they were fucking. Namrita had coached during the worst of times to stay coyly mum about the specifics of their relationship, and she doubled down on that advice now. But they weren’t doing much to hide their fascination with each other. Why should they? They were two consenting adults. Even now, as Sofia stood in the ancient courtyard of El Castillo, their family’s six-hundred-year-old castle designed by Moorish architects as a gift from Queen Isabella, Sofia knew their behavior was drawing the curious eyes and teasing grins of everyone attending the annual end-of-harvest party.
“Hate your dress,” Aish murmured as he handed her a glass of wine. Globe lanterns and up-lighting transformed the already magical courtyard of tinkling fountains, intricately patterned tiles, and lemon trees into something fairylike. Aish looked like a rock god Dionysus in the middle of it, devilish and tempting with his dark scruff, perfectly coiffed hair, no tie, and one-button grey suit that sleeked over his long body.
His smile was so banal he could have been talking about the weather. “Your dress makes me wanna rip it off, sink my teeth in to hold you still, and fuck you in front of all these people.”
Sofia smiled calmly to hide her shiver. “I’m not stopping you,” she murmured. “There’s a reason I’m naked beneath it.”
She watched his tongue tap at his thin upper lip. Met his dark eyes to see how close to the edge she’d pushed him. Then he moved in a whisper of languid body and fitted suit and sun and salt smell to stand by her side.
“Just came,” he said, low and dusky as he took her arm and wound it through his. “Feeling better.”
Sofia tucked her laugh into her wineglass.
He said he liked her neck, so Sofia gave him her neck in a shoulderless silk dress that matched the summer tan of her skin. It covered her torso and arms sleekly, banded at her waist, and fell to the ground. But it left her shoulders, chest, collarbones and neck bare. She’d emphasized her nakedness by loosely pinning back her hair at her nape, leaving off necklace or earrings. She’d put on a light touch of bath oil to make her skin gleam.
She’d dressed up for her people, the tireless villagers and growers and employees and interns celebrating the success of what could have been a tragic season. But she’d selected this dress for him.
She raised her glass to Manon, the French hotel executive who was watching the two of them, and gave a sympathetic grimace. Manon was stuck in a conversation with Juan Carlos Pascual and the queen.
Manon winked back.
“What’s he doing here?” Aish asked, openly glowering at Juan Carlos.
Sofia couldn’t help the cheap thrill it gave her. “He has every right to be here,” she said. “Whatever our differences, Consejo board members are still my people.”
“That asshole doesn’t know how good he has it,” he grumbled. “He doesn’t deserve your devotion.”
The declaration warmed her through.
The Consejo had been surprisingly subdued in recent days, either bowing to the direction of the wind or simply too consumed with their own duties to harass Sofia. While most of the Monte’s residents could relax until the next growing season began with pruning in late winter, winemakers and their employees would be busy the next few weeks with fermenting the must, pressing to separate the wine from the skin and seeds, transferring the wine into barrels for aging, racking the wine to clarify it, blending when warranted, and, ultimately, bottling for longer aging.
The extra hands of the superstar interns would be sorely missed at Bodega Sofia when they left in four days.
Sofia had four days with Aish standing tall and solid and supportive by her side.
When she realized the queen was closely mimicking their stance, her naked bronzed arm wound through Juan Carlos’s, Sofia tried to withdraw her own. But Aish caught her hand and gently held it against his bicep as he looked down at her.
“She should be so proud of you,” he said quietly. “Not...” He nodded at the spectacle of Queen Valentina in a teal gown cuddled up to a man who’d said horrible things about her daughter. The king and queen had separated to opposite ends of the party the instant they’d arrived in a blast of fanfare trumpets blown by men in livery. Her parents had clung to those red-and-gold flouncy uniforms like misers when her brother tried to eliminate them.
She couldn’t track when she’d given up on having a relationship with her father. Maybe she’d never entertained the notion. But her emotions for her mother were complicated. Sofia cursed herself for still needing affection...admiration...something from her after so much proof that she was never, ever, ever going to get it.
“You’ve got to be one of the more accomplished princesses in the long line of them,” Aish said.
Sofia tried to shrug off the intensity of his gaze. “Don’t be so sure. Princesa Margarita founded a leper colony and washed the children herself. And it is said Princesa Fabiana invented the radio five years before the Americans. Princesa Martina de Rosa conquered more women than Casanova.”
Aish huffed. “Okay. Other than Martina de Rosa, you’re more accomplished. Why does your mom have to be such a bitch?”
Sofia lowered her eyes to her wineglass. “I know her secret.”
“What’s that?”
He was too close and his gaze was too direct and his hand was too comforting. She met his eyes again. “Why would I tell you?”
To his credit, he didn’t flinch. But his hold on her hand became less possessive and he straightened.
“I was getting pushy again,” he said, and Sofia c
ould just hear his low voice through the merriment of the party. “Sorry.”
She would not let his respectful retreat make her feel guilty.
Yes, he would be leaving in four days. And Sofia would wave him goodbye, following the exit strategy Namrita had planned in the initial #Aishia negotiations. They would allow distance, careers, and banal press releases about “still friends” and “hopes for the best” do the work of their “breakup.”
Because regardless of the amount of sex they’d been having and the perfection of the orgasms they shared and the fact that Aish had truly committed to the work here, she still hadn’t forgotten what he’d done to her. She would never forget, and if all of these laughing, smiling, winking, nudging people knew what he’d done, what he’d said to her as she lay terrified in an American hospital, they wouldn’t have thought of this as some fairy-tale reunion either.
They would see it for what it was: a cold business arrangement with a positive outcome, her winery and his reputation pulled out of the mire and given a sparkly glow. She tapped her wineglass against her hip as a reminder. He had no right to ask questions about her feelings, her challenges, the obstacles in her life.
For the next four days, she and Aish could have closeness. Physicality. But they would never again have real intimacy. She would never again reach toward the fire for warmth and only get pain and a palmful of ashes.
Her grey thoughts were interrupted by Roman, Namrita, and Carmen Louisa coming toward them, their gorgeous party outfits disrupted by the worried expressions on their faces.
Aish saw them, too. “Should I...?” He began to motion with his thumb out of the area, but then stopped.
Sofia realized she was squeezing his bicep harder.
She let go but said, “No. Stay.”
He’d been helpful before. Whatever this was, he could be helpful again.
Roman, Carmen Louisa, and Namrita surrounded them.
“One of the workers was attacked at the winery,” Roman said, low. “He’s going to be fine, just a mild concussion and a few bruises. But I’m taking my team over now. Castle security alone will have to manage the coverage here.”
Hate Crush (Filthy Rich) Page 23