She took the cloth from his hand and attached it, tight but not too tight, to the next trellis stake. She moved further down and Aish bent to attach it under the grapes. He could smell her, spicy and sweet, mixed up in the scents of green growth and ripe fruit.
“I should be annoyed that a rock star knows something about the wine industry that Mateo and I don’t,” she said.
He duck-walked to her in the dirt; the yoga he’d reintroduced into his morning routine made it easier. “I thought I noticed a tic in your brother’s jaw.”
“You saw that?” She grinned down at him. But then, as if realizing, her smile fell away and she turned her face back toward the canopy. One good day wasn’t going to erase ten years of hurt.
“Everything I know is because of Justin,” he said.
“You hadn’t planned on staying involved with the winery,” she said into the leaves, like maybe he wouldn’t hear.
“That was before I met you.”
They attached the cloth for a few yards in silence.
“What do I have to do with it?” she finally asked.
“You made the work interesting. Romantic.” He sped up talking to cover up that word. “You were the first person to point out how much he wanted my involvement and how lucky I was to have someone need me that way.”
He would call his uncle when he got back to his room and tell him he’d helped save a kingdom’s harvest. Hopefully. “He’s a successful Japanese-American winemaker whose mother was born in an internment camp. I don’t want that legacy lost, or worse, sold off to a conglomerate when he’s gone.”
He glanced at the fruit before he hooked the cloth underneath it; there were a couple of tired-looking grapes on the cluster, but not the intense shrivel he’d expected. “And when you take care of something like this, watch it grow, year after year, you feel essential. Like being a parent. You know what that feels like.”
Sofia had circled around the end of the row and Aish stood, flexed his legs, before moving around to join her.
She was staring stock-still into the canopy.
“Sofia?” he asked, concerned by the paleness of her profile in the spotlight.
She turned her face away and snagged the cloth on the pole. “Actually, I don’t know what that feels like.”
“Wha—”
“Bodega Sofia is important.” She was moving down the row away from him, and Aish crouched and hurried to catch up. “But if it doesn’t work out, no one will miss me if I’m gone.”
He plopped to his knees then reached over to snag her by her overalls pocket before she could move further away. This far into the row, her face was in shadow, with only touches of light coming through the canopy hinting at what was going on in her eyes, on her mouth.
“What are you talking about?” he asked.
He saw the slightest raise of her small, world-holding shoulders. “They’ll ‘miss’ me,” she said, putting the word in quotes. “But I’m not essential.”
He wasn’t letting go of her pocket and she wasn’t pulling away. “I was here when Mateo wasn’t,” she said in her academic away, diagramming it for him. “The villagers turned to me because they couldn’t turn to my parents.”
No wonder she hadn’t heard his music. While Aish was singing her songs and tattooing his body, Sofia was trying to keep a kingdom together.
“You would have been so young,” he said.
“When Mateo returned,” she continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “The villagers didn’t come to me anymore.”
Oh. Baby girl. First rejected by her mom. Then Aish. Then her people.
He could imagine her reaction if he offered pity, empathy, or to let her take him down to the cellar with a bullwhip. So he said, with a light tug on her pocket that he wished would topple her into his arms, “Well, you’re essential now.” He turned back to the leaves and hid the lump in his throat. “You’re essential—” To me “—to the growers whose fruit you’re saving.”
They started working their way down the row again. “And you’re essential to the relationship I have with my uncle,” he said as he sought the little claw on the next trellis stake. “When everyone else thought I was perfect, you were the one person who expected more out of me.”
He grunted, leaning into the greenery. Dammit, he couldn’t find—there it was. He hooked the cloth. He shuffled a couple of feet to the next stake.
“This shade cloth was a good idea,” she said quietly. “It was our only good idea.”
He paused and looked up. Her voice sounded daunting.
She was very deliberate as she attached the next section. “But I don’t want to discuss the past. That part of our rules still holds true.”
The fucking ground rules. Her mentioning them was like the twang of a broken guitar string. But, for once, he swallowed his frustration.
“Anything else?” he said tightly.
She dropped her hands against her pants and looked up into the dark sky. “I’m not...threatening you. I won’t do that anymore. #Aishia is the only thing we’ve still got working for us.”
Her dark eyes were troubled when she looked down at him. “Pero...seguiremos fingiendo, Aish.” She stroked the leaves like they comforted her. “It’s all pretend. Regardless of what we... I did to you in the cellar...the only way this can work is if we both agree it’s pretend.”
But it isn’t pretend, he wanted to demand. He needed her and, at the very least, she desired him. He wasn’t blind to the way she’d looked at him that evening.
But he’d already made her miserable this month with his impatience.
“Of course,” he said, his voice steady. “It’s pretend. We won’t talk about the past.”
They worked the rest of their way down the row in silence. He promised he would listen to her, he promised he would trust her wishes. He promised himself he would take responsibility for some of the fuckups that had happened here.
That didn’t make the work-warmed smell of her, the steadiness of her breath, the weight of her imprint in the soil any easier to bear. When they reached the end of the row, he marveled at how much temptation could be packed into a hundred feet. They had many more rows to cover before dawn.
* * *
Unfortunately, the night lasted longer than the cloth did. They were still a couple hours from sunrise as Aish sat on the open tailgate of a Bodega Sofia truck, trying not to look as mentally and physically exhausted as he felt as Sofia paced in front of him, on her cell phone to discover who needed help and if anyone had extra cloth. She’d already sent one crew to another vineyard, let the other crew go home, and now, he and Sofia were alone. They’d turned the spotlights off halfway through the night and Aish’s headlamp next to him in the truck bed created a dim glow in the deep darkness of the night. The stars were gorgeous, a million pinpricks in the sky high above him. But here, on the ground, he could barely see his hand in front of his face.
Sofia slid her phone into her overalls pocket, crossed her arms around herself, and rubbed her fingers across the line between her brows. It was the first time all day she’d shrunk to her normal size.
“Any luck?” he asked.
She stood near his knee, but the glow of the lamp barely touched her. She shook her head without looking up. “Everyone is running out of cloth and heading home.”
He wasn’t going to ask the questions racing through his mind. How much of her crop got covered? What was the weather report for the morning? There was no point. They’d made their one play; only time would tell if that play worked.
But he wasn’t going to just sit there as this tired and worried princess rubbed her forehead. “This is going to work, Sofia,” Aish said, voice strong with conviction he didn’t feel. She liked going after him for his sunny American outlook, his baseless positive assertions. He’d give her a target.
But instead of smirking at
him like he’d gotten used to, she kept rubbing. “Is it?” she asked. And it was the first time he heard this giant of a woman sound afraid. “I hope so.” Her breath shuddered and it fucking killed him. “I don’t know what we’ll do if it—”
No contract was going to keep him from touching her now. He grabbed her by her hand and pulled her to him.
“Hey, you’ve been going hard all day, and now that you can take a breath, you’re starting to spiral.” He settled her between his knees and briskly rubbed her arms, from shoulder to elbows. He could feel her warmth and tensile strength and trembling exhaustion. She didn’t look at him. “You’re tired, Sofia. Let’s get you home. Don’t make yourself miserable; you’ve worked too hard to let doubts kick your ass now.”
He’d watched her all day make huge snap decisions, drop buckets of money in a flash, direct and strategize and inspire a group of people who felt the universe was working against them. She’d been mammoth. Right now, she was fragile under his hands, between his knees. Right now, with the nostalgic scent of soil in his nose and the rustle of the breeze in his ears, she was the girl he’d fallen in love with and the woman, his instincts yelled, who needed him.
She listed forward, like a vine bending to the wind, and pressed her forehead against his chest. The heat, the pressure, felt a million times better than her desperate basement blow job. He put his hands on her narrow back, slowly, like touching a skittish animal, and began to rub her, comfort her by kneading with his palms when she didn’t shy away.
“Hey, hey,” he said. He had strong hands. He was good at this. He could give her this. “It’s gonna be okay. Tell me what you need.”
She gave a tight, hysterical laugh that made her more naked than he’d seen her in a decade.
“Sofia, tell me—”
She put her hands on his thighs and squeezed. “Por favor, stop saying that.”
He couldn’t say anything. Hot, hot hands on him made him lose the power of speech.
When she raised her head and looked at him, beautiful and steady and serious and regretful looking right into him, his whole body flushed hot. The feeling was rare. And remembered. This was exactly how he’d felt when he’d stuck his head into a wine tank and seen a half-naked girl cleaning it, her tiny body stretched out on her toes and her long multicolored hair beating against the back of her thighs.
“This is all pretend, verdad?” she asked, her voice so treasured and ephemeral he could have been dreaming it.
He gave a quick nod.
“It’s not fair of me to ask it of you. I shouldn’t—”
“Sofia,” he said, digging her name out of his chest, but it tried to stick low and gravelly in his throat as he fit his hands to her waist. His hands were a belt, a corset, the structure that would keep her upright if she wanted it. In the open sides of her overalls, only a thin cotton shirt separated her skin from his.
Her mouth trembled in reaction. She sank her white teeth into her bottom lip to hide it. He wanted to command her to stop it and claim her lip as his own.
“I don’t want to think, Aish,” she said, her strong fingers digging into his thighs. “That’s what I need.”
He promised he would listen to her. He promised he would trust her wishes.
This was all pretend.
“Yeah,” Aish said, low. “I get that.” He’d spent a year in his house; he knew all about not wanting to think. What if she’d been locked away with him? What happy, wild creatures they would have become.
He didn’t even realize he was pulling her toward him until she twisted her chin away.
“Don’t... I’m sorry but I can’t...don’t kiss me on the lips,” she gasped.
Her words punched him in the gut. He glared at her fine jawline as she denied him that wide, wet, pleasure-giving mouth. And he felt, couldn’t help but feel, her fingers make swirling, random, soft patterns on his thighs. She didn’t want to want him. But she did.
He leaned forward and bit her jaw. Nipped her to let her know he was irritated. Then he licked her earlobe and sucked it into his mouth, fondled it in that way that used to send her into full-body shivers.
It still did.
“More rules, Sofia?” Aish said into her ear. God, he loved her haircut. It made her ears, her neck, her pulse, all those places that made her boneless, so fucking accessible.
Then he lifted her chin with his thumb and made her look into his eyes. “I got a rule, too, Sofia.” Slow and deliberately, making her watch him do it, he unclasped one side of her overalls. “I’m not going to fuck you until we agree this is more than a one-time thing.”
She gave a tremor, just like she used to, at fuck falling out of his mouth.
He slipped his hand under her shirt, stroked up sleek skin, and groaned at what he found: soft, warm, naked roundness. Her breast was bare under her shirt. Her nipple, that sweet eager bit of her that he’d missed so much, was diamond hard.
“But don’t worry, pretty girl,” he said, stroking her nipple, watching that mouth fall open and those eyes go half-mast as he did it. “I remember all the ways to make you come.” He said come through gritted teeth and it made her gasp, made her roll her hips between his knees.
He scooted forward on the tailgate to press against her.
Years of fantasies and one-days and memories that at times haunted him so cruelly that he just wanted to forget them, and now she was here, against his body and under his hands, smelling like she’d been fashioned from the soil specifically to please him. This was nowhere close to paradise. But her nipple was hard between his fingers and her neck had goose bumps when he rubbed his nose against it, and she molded her hands—those delicate and mighty hands—against the muscles of his thighs. She had her rules but she needed him and she was giving herself to him and he would take her. Any way he could get her.
She didn’t want to think? He’d tease and touch and taste her until he’d cleared her mind of anything but him.
He lifted one side of her shirt so he could expose her breast to the warm air and his eager mouth. He had to see her again.
But he only caught a glimpse—caramelly skin, that sweet boob with its dark nipple, the bright lines of a tattoo at her hip—when Sofia gasped, “Light. No light,” and leaned over to fumble at the headlamp. The light clicked off, and the darkness surrounded them.
It didn’t stop Aish from getting his mouth on her. He hunched over and sucked her into him, wringing a moan out of her.
“Fuck, your taste...” he said against her softness, his nose pressing against all that warmed-up Sofia smell. He remembered what his girl liked and he did it, wet tonguing to her nipple, soft sucks to the flesh around it mixed with bites. The teeth and the hair tugging—neither of them minded a little pain with their pleasure. “Remember when you’d lean over my face, tease me with these tits then slink down until just breathing on me would make me blow?”
He hadn’t known fucking could be an art form until Sofia showed him. She whimpered and dug her hand into his hair, shoved him against her body.
It helped to cool the possessive punch he’d felt when he’d seen the edge of that tattoo. It was new. At least, new to him. And she didn’t want him to see it.
He had to keep his head in the game. He flicked at her nipple like he used to play with her clit while he ran his palm down her, into her overalls, then swept his finger over her warm, wet slit through her panties.
Sofia sighed “Yes,” then staggered to give him room.
“Yeah,” he said, feeling like a king and conqueror and peasant at her feet as he rubbed his middle finger over this secret adored place, this place that had represented more than a good—great—lay for him. “Spread your legs for me, Sofia.”
She did, good girl, then twisted her hand in his hair until it stung.
“Don’t tease me,” she moaned above him as he found her clit through her pantie
s, tight and eager, and circled it. “No me provoques. Por favor. Aish, por favor.”
And, fuck, he had to shake off her hand and let go of her tit because—fuck. Fuck her and her fucking mouth.
Her silence when they’d fucked in the cellar, when she’d poured hot, wet retribution over his cock, had been a blessing in disguise. They’d been chatty little Cathys in bed when they were young, so that silence had been one more thing that separated that fucked-up act from the true lovemaking they’d done as kids. Right now, her breathy words, her demanding desperation while she trusted him with the reins, felt like warm rain washing away that chilling reunion.
Still, this was so much less than he wanted. He wanted her to turn to him for more than a moment of forgetfulness.
He pushed into her panties, and for just a moment, held her. Held her crinkly hair and soft puffy lips and wet, warm cunt, protected this heart of her with his hand.
And then he stroked his middle finger.
She pressed her forehead to his neck and wrapped her arms around his shoulders. She held him—Sofia was holding him—and she kissed his neck. “Asi, asi, Aish. Like that, so good. Más, por favor.”
He had to stop again, tug his head away from her again.
“No...talking,” he growled. He’d weaned himself from coming too soon with her when he was twenty-one, and he didn’t need to start that shit again now.
He began to thrum at her, all his guitar-strumming skills focused on her eager little clit. “No kissing, no fucking, no light, and no talking.” He bit her neck for punctuation. “You wanted rules, Sofia. You got ’em.”
And he needed to lay down some speed bumps. He had to be more than a warm body she pretended with.
But he fondled her neck and loved on her pussy, let her dig her fingers into his shoulders as she panted into the air. “Do you still like it when...yeah,” he murmured into her skin. She still liked it when he played with her little hood, nudged and nudged it. “Your clit’s so happy to see me, just right there, out on my finger, I can’t wait to say hello with my mouth, I’m gonna taste her until she’s trembling against my tongue and—”
Hate Crush (Filthy Rich) Page 17
