by Savannah May
Then his fingertips delved into the fleshy orbs, probing and caressing until each grape was swelling ready to burst. I had a feeling this year was going to provide a sumptuous vintage under his stimulus. I almost envied the stupid fruit.
Why couldn't I fall in love with a man like Marc? He was easier than Valentine, less contorted without being boring. I’m certain he’d be phenomenal in bed if his prowess in a first class airplane seat was anything to judge by, talented and gorgeous in a rough Gallic way. I could see myself living in the southern part of France. The Europeans were always at the forefront of design. The French had commissioned that amazing courthouse in Bordeaux, a group of wooden pods on stilts like a futuristic African village.
I turned to look at Valentine again and was jolted by the realization that he'd moved from the desk to stand beside me. He too had been closely observing my meander through a joyful fantasy field of poppies where I was partner to a hunk who would encourage me to explore everything in life. Who would want to make every discovery at my side. My guilty secret ice cream and PJ movie was always one of those Indiana Jones, Mummy's curse movies where the feisty heroine is drawn into a rollicking adventure with a gruff hunk who melts under her special sauce.
Stupid I know, but I was searching for some semblance of that in my own life. Adventures, discoveries, but as the cherry on top, I might have to admit to wanting a man to fall in love with me for me. God he was so divinely handsome, my boss's perfect sculpted face sent shivers through my skin every time I looked at him. But right at that instant, catching my wistful gaze at Marc's expert fingers, his eyes were stone cold.
“You're craving them on you again?” he asked, making it sound more like a statement.
“On me, in me, everywhere,” I snapped. Fuck you.
“Perhaps you'd like to experience all four of those talented gentlemen caressing their hands across your ravishing body.”
Rage rose through my chest. It instantly replaced my daydream of Valentine and I as partners, replacing it with reality. We were trapped in our separate cages and examining the other, desperate to remain in safe self-protection, even if doing so was destroying our chances of happiness. Only fury toward him dominated and filled my breasts, then surged higher to fire across my cheeks. How dare this arrogant ass read my desires like he owned me? What in hell did I have to do to demonstrate that I was not Jay Valentine's personal property?
“My thoughts about your employees or anyone else, are none of your business. Stop trying to get inside and decipher me,” I hissed. Accusing him of doing exactly what I was to him. “Just leave me alone.”
“You have no idea how that kind of talk inflames me.”
“I am not interested in your feelings. In fact I'm fairly convinced that you aren’t capable of experiencing an actual emotion.”
“Ah, you return to your expert analysis of my character flaws,”he said sarcastically. “But, dear doctor Cannon, your judgment would be termed projection in any clinical setting.”
Triple arrgh. His smugness drove me crazy, mostly because he was right and I didn't want to admit it.
“I meant to share that it wouldn't be at all surprising for you to desire multiple male attention, after being denied multiple orgasms last night,” he continued. “And I can tell you haven't relieved yourself of the impulses lighting up your body.”
“How about we call a truce,” I offered with equal sarcasm. “I'll stop analyzing your personality defects if you stop picking my sexuality to bits.”
“I don't think I can commit to that,” he replied.
“There's a surprise.”
It was a low blow- weak, and I knew it but I always got snippy when edging close to the cusp of being hurt. I had to hold that shield up on my feelings. He didn't want me, he was tossing me out for dinner dates with other men and was now even joking about offering me up for a gangbang with his field workers.
He was beyond unbelievable and still I could not get across to him that he did not own me. This date with the billionaire Italian might be the only thing that I could use to get Jay Valentine to stop taunting me. It could be my free ticket out of the hell of living at Valentine Winery.
“I have to get to work now, if that's all.”
Valentine nodded minutely, his jaw gripping and releasing as he stared at his rows of vines bearing swollen luscious fruit for as far as the eye traveled.
Instead of going to the tasting rooms to supervise the construction crew, I turned the opposite direction and emerged into the golden syrup sunshine.
“Can I help?” I asked Marc as he tweaked a nub of hard fruit.
“Long time wizzout seeing you.” He looked up and smiled with genuine pleasure. I adored the way his mouth scrunched when he tried to say an English “th” and it came out “zz”.
“I've missed your composure,” I said, leaning in to learn about teasing grapes into abundance.
“You 'ave put a chicken in the coop of the master,” he said and grinned. “Is dat how you say it?”
“What the fuck is it with him? Is it a mother thing?” I asked, feeling as though my heart might explode inside me from utter hopelessness.
“What is that?” Marc looked up, a flash of distaste on his usually handsome face.
Our heads were so close together, buried under the leaves we could have pressed lips.
“You told me not so long ago that we Americans like to blame our parents. Is that what this is? His need to control women because of his evil unloving mother?”
“I believe he's rather fond of his mother.”
“Where is she?”
“Is this about all your American psychos?” Marc deflected. “Do many men murder ze mother?”
“Don't you have psychos in France?”
“Like the American Psycho, our best literary characters are rooted in nature.”
This was so fun, flirting under the guise of reading matter. I hoped Valentine was observing us from his gloomy office, he might learn how to make a woman a friend. I actually loved talking to Marc, his intelligence merged with a double entendre of sexuality that made my pussy pulsate with mini thrills. Aside from being super sexy with confidence in his experience that came from maturity, he was completely unaffected by everything that happened around him. He didn’t need to throw up walls at every hint of invasion.
Another surge of wanting to throw myself into his embrace lurched through me, to have him tug me into his solid chest and surround me with his wiry strong arms. The curling tendrils of dark hair starting to sprinkle with tones of gray called to my daggering fingers.
Just to touch him. To touch another human being in a manner that didn't involve punishment. I needed love, yearning like a hiker in the outback would kill for a taste of cool wet moisture, I wanted a moment of affection.
“He demands implicit trust and loyalty but is incapable of giving it,” I murmured, half to myself. My mind forever drawn back to thoughts of Valentine. “He must have experienced betrayal somewhere in his childhood that he withholds love so hard.”
“I know he had a woman he loved once.”
“And what happened to her?” My interest leapt, eager for insight.
“You are correct in deduction- she betrayed him.”
I looked at Marc, my eyes round, willing him to divulge more.
“She had him and his brother fighting over her.”
“And who won?”
“Neither, in the end. I think she died.”
“Oh shit, how? What happened?”
“I 'sink it was a drowning accident but no one is quite too sure.”
Later I realized that, like Valentine, Marc was brilliant at diversion during a conversation. I was examining my body for damage in the antique mirror, so massive, at least a dozen men would have been required to lift it up the stairs to my room. I thought we'd shared truth, but Marc had deflected all my other questions about our employer. I still knew nothing about him other than an ex had slept with his brother.
31
I tried Josh again, but he was still not picking up. He was similar to Marc, I realized, in averting any delving into his past. Now that I'd gained some distance from the intensity of our coupling, it was clear that Josh had kept me isolated from the man inside.
He'd responded to every idea or hope with displacement, turning my questions back on themselves. I hurled the velvet palette of my fave Naked eye shadow across the room and caught a shadow.
“People usually knock before entering,” I shouted. The fury hurtled back into my chest as I pulled my underwear back up, smoothed down my skirt. “Or, shock horror, even wait to be invited in. Talk about lack of respect.”
Delilah took my indignation as blank-eyed as a replicant. She wasn’t programmed for respect, regret, empathy, or any of the finer human qualities relating to treatment of others. Did she too view me as something created for her amusement?
“You are required in the cellars,” she said flatly, without her usual malicious glint as she twisted a solid gold collar in her depraved fingers.
“No freaking way,” I snapped. “Tell your boss I'm not playing any more games.”
“Oh, did you think this was for you?” she said, so that a burst of jealous gunfire blasted in my lower stomach. Had he found someone to replace me already? Of course- Valentine could summon any woman from any corner in the world with a quick flick of his whiplash. “He wants to discuss a detail of the tasting rooms.”
“What detail?” I snapped, not trusting her in any way.
“I couldn't say. I'm just the lowly assistant, I know nothing of architectural design but he has some of the construction guys waiting to hammer out the issue so you need to get down there.”
“I will only go downstairs under my own free will,” I snapped. “I will not submit to you or any of his supplicants. If he wants to deal with me on a basis of business equality, I'll go to the meeting. Otherwise I'm staying here and I don't care if he leaves me to starve in my attic.”
So I was slightly dramatic with the Gothic heroine fantasies playing in my mind, from reading too much wronged woman fiction of late. Valentine was no sullen but sexy boss who's been lost his entire life until the poor governess slave (me) appeared to educate his children, lick his boots or design his tasting rooms.
Seriously my imagination was running riots since being stuck in this new world Bluebeard's castle and regularly locked into the dungeon of my own desires.
“Okay, keep your knickers on,” Delilah said, for the first time betraying the lick of a British accent. Unsurprising, as they were known for maintaining a stiff upper lip while flogging in secret. It began in school for the English. “Go down of your own volition if you like. He wants to see you and I'm sure you'll be excited by what he has to say.”
“You know what it is?”
If she said she was in on the plan then I was not leaving the room.
“No. But everything Sir Valentine offers is somewhere high on the excitement continuum. He's waiting in the wine cellar.”
Whatever bitch. Just get out of here and take your erotic infatuation for your master elsewhere.
Delilah turned on her seven inch heels and stomped along the corridor. With the clack of her heels penetrating the handmade silk runner into the old floorboards, I could have sworn I heard her mutter under her breath; “Bitch, you know you enjoyed it.”
There was no denying that her touch had elicited a violent reaction through my sensual depths. There was no way I was going to let her luxuriate in the knowledge that she'd turned me on. I was blindfold at the time.
Only once I heard her disappear into the other wing, did I retrieve my powder palette and make up my face ready to present to my employer.
“Two times in one day,” Marc said when I came into the cool stone room.
“Are you here for the meeting with Valentine?”
His assistants were at the far end of the cellar, testing acidity levels and temperature in a giant oak cask.
“I 'ave not seen Jay today. We are just finishing up with sampling.”
He handed me a tasting cup and I took a tiny amount in my mouth, cringing back from the sour tooth-drying juice of the previous sample.
“Wow that's divine,” I said, swallowing a deeper swig of the full-bodied red nectar.
“Yes, it 'as matured, you have a good nose,” he said. “More time in the barrel, better body in the mouth.”
“It must be fun getting to sip and savor all day long.”
“It is stimulating until it all goes bitter,” he said with a cryptic smile.
What does it take to be able to wrestle that battery acid into this vintage delicacy?”
“A great deal of training although I don't think winemakers can be taught. It requires all the senses, not just the mouth.”
He pronounced the words “Ze mouss” and I felt the delicious ripple of falling into flirtation with Marc again. My breasts filled and peaked inside the tight white shirt I had put back on for the meeting to show Valentine I was all about the business. Marc was so gorgeous but it had to be a French man thing. He had the ability of flirting without sounding like a douche.
Marc emanated a twinkle of pleasure for the enjoyment of the sensual arousal, just as he took a great wine on the tongue, the way he enjoyed the exquisite meals served at the chateau to all the workers. Valentine was a very generous and magnanimous boss- everyone was treated with equal value. Until they were dragged into the dungeon.
“Which other senses?”
I took the tiniest involuntary step forward, or maybe merely leaned in, my body craning toward his muscular lean chest. The yearning to be scooped up into his hold was stronger than the raw wine, still fermenting in the cask.
“The smell of the aroma, the sight of the color.”
“Anything else?”
“Perhaps the most important sense we possess – the sixth one in your gut telling you which is the right way to go, which will be a great vintage in the end, with patience and which will be a flashy fake requiring a clever label to push sales.”
“Have you ever been able to choose just one great wine?”
“I am far too much of an admirer to take only one. I want to taste many different varietals and vintages.”
In the instant his arms encircled me, crushing me into his hard torso, I knew it was more than his affection I thirsted for. My breasts returned the pressure from his chest ten fold, rising up and pounding with hot desire to be cupped and tweaked like swollen fruit.
“Marc, I want you. Please hold me, please-” my words were cut off by the moan escaping from my mouth when he clasped the underside of my full breast and rolled the protruding nipple in his thumb and index finger.
His other hand reached up my back to fill his palm with my thick hair, entwining it between his fingers to tug my head back and trail a line of nips the length of my neck. My arms clung around his neck as I pushed my pelvis into his, feeling the hard blade of his shaft pulsing with need for me. And then the explosion in my mouth when he swirled his tongue around mine like savoring his best vintage.
I had almost forgotten what it was to be kissed. It had been an age of Sundays since a man had shared that sensual intimacy, allowing me access to his desire. I splayed my fingers through his lush glossy hair, curling around the back of his head to pull him deeper into my mouth, as though I could swallow him up and savor the tobacco tannin of him always.
We stood in the cellar, the chill of the room emphasizing the heat rising from us like thunder crashing and drank each other up with a bottomless thirst until voices from the end of the row of old barrels reminded us we weren't alone.
Marc cupped the back of my skull in the most solicitous way. His touch brought the prickle of a tear to the corner of my eye as he maneuvered us along the edge of the massive wooden cask. When my back reached the end and turned the corner, Marc pressed me into the flat end hidden from the main area and mounded both breasts into his hands, pushing them up to his lips to kiss along
the bulging fleshy tops.
Both my hands sworled his curls in my grasp, holding his head into my cleavage while he licked at the mounds and pressed the flesh out of the balcony cups to suck first one peak then the other into his burning lips. My panting exhaled faster and harder so that my breasts hurled at his mouth, urging him to pull me further into him.
By pressing my shoulders into the wood and arching my back so my hips pressed hard forward, I felt Marc's powerful need for me in the bulging shaft trapped in his pants. He pushed back against me and I ground my hips in response, begging him with my body as my clit shivered with every abrasion on his hard pole.
“Andie, Andie, we cannot. We ‘azz to stop this,” he moaned. He pronounced my name ‘Un-dee’ like always.
“No, I don't want to stop,” I whimpered from the force of my body's hunger.
“You must.”
“Why?”
“You will make more trouble than either of us can handle.”
I was alone that night yet again, and the following one, my misery compounded, my confusion making me almost as delirious as my aching clit. Josh still didn't answer calls so I was sure he was ignoring me. Valentine was absent, never showed for the meeting he demanded. Marc had pushed me off – I'd never felt so unwanted. It was contagious because I couldn't even work up the desire to pleasure myself, preferring to wallow in a vat of misery.
Fuck I hated all three of them- Valentine, Josh, Marc Chapelle, they were molded from the same last and I could not get away from their sick mind games fast enough.
32
When I emerged from the milky oil bath, an outfit had appeared, laid out on the extravagant silvery bed. My head whipped around the room, making sure the irrationally detested Delilah wasn't lurking in a corner ready to dictate my life, using her boss as her foil.
But the room was empty, I was alone with my trepidation at what this evening held waiting for me. Could I dare hope for a straightforward date where we ate and talked, gradually revealing the snippets or ourselves we thought were most likely to endear.
