14 - ANYSSA/CAMILA
14
ANYSSA/CAMILA
I t’s a stroke of luck, really. A fifteen-minute walk down to the vineyard turns into an evening of bliss. I wanted to get some pictures to share with Camila, and I had no plans other than to return to the resort hotel for dinner at the bar and grille and perhaps spend some time on the beach this evening.
I’ve lost track of time taking pictures and selfies, but I know that no more than fifteen minutes have passed when I hear a grumble behind me.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
Spinning around, I see a scowling Nazár stalking toward me.
“Taking pictures of the vineyard . . . for research,” I say when I realize my grievous mistake.
“What part of ‘no film or pictures allowed’ do you not understand? Don’t you respect any rules?” he thunders, drawing the attention of some of his workers.
“Nazá—”
“Dammit, I said no pictures! No film!”
His rage is astounding and even a bit frightening. Okay, maybe I’d been careless and hadn’t been thinking, but I meant no harm. I can’t tell the man I’m taking these pictures for the real Camila, who will only use them to enhance her business, not when I’m supposed to be Camila.
“I just want to study the varieties of grapes that you have. I’m not trying to encroach on your business but rather figure out how to improve mine. These pictures are harmless, and I haven’t taken any others. Not of the property, the buildings, or the people. I swear. Look, I’ll even erase them,” I say, flipping to my camera and making a big deal of deleting the pictures and emptying the trash folder.
Holding my camera out to him, I say, “See, all gone.” The following pictures are just random ones of me on the plane. I stop flipping before he realizes this phone doesn’t have many pictures. It’s not my real phone, so I don’t need him figuring that out, either.
“I promise I won’t take anymore.”
His energy is dissipating, though his scowl is still intact.
“Nazár, I promise I didn’t mean to break your rules. It was an honest mistake, and it’s easy for people to forget a rule like that when it’s not the norm. Usually, when people are on vacation, they take plenty of pictures to commemorate their time. I’m not trying to do that. This was nothing more than trying to improve my processes for my business.”
He shoves his hands into his pockets, and I’m growing nervous the more he stands staring at me and not speaking. After all, Camila did say that he would kick people off the resort if they broke the rules. I don’t want that any more than she does, but for different reasons.
“I’m sorry. I’ll leave now,” I say, turning around and walking away.
“Camila!”
His commanding tone sends thrills of pleasure through me. I shouldn’t get excited at how he’s barking my name, but I can’t help that his aggression and commandeering attitude turn me on.
I wonder if this attracted my mother to my father for the first time. Was he domineering? Commanding? Was that what drew her in, making her blind to his personality flaws? I wouldn’t know, as she doesn’t talk about him. I only know a little about my father, and that’s not enough to amount to a hill of beans.
Slowly, I turn around and find that he’s standing in the same spot that he was.
“Yes, Nazár?”
“Have dinner with me.”
Of all the things that I expected him to say, it wasn’t that.
“Dinner? When? Where?”
“Yes. Now. Here.”
I look around and spread my arms. “I don’t see anywhere to eat.”
“That’s because you lack vision.”
I don’t know whether to be insulted or intrigued, but before I can respond, he’s pulled out his phone, and he’s speaking rapidly in Spanish to someone in that same commanding tone.
“Are you always this rude? Barking orders at people?” I ask when he ends the call.
“You call it rude. I’m simply protecting my investments and running my corporation.”
“Do you have to be so mean while you do it?”
“Do you think I’m mean?” he asks as he walks and leaves me behind.
I have to double my strides to catch up to one of his.
“If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have said it. It’s like you’ve got this Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde personality going on, but contrary to popular opinion, it isn’t attractive.”
“Who’s opinion? You think that I give a damn about opinions?”
“If you didn’t, why would you close off this resort to the world? Why keep people out and make all these peculiar rules?”
“To keep nosy people out of my life and to stop the speculations that—”
He cuts himself off amid an angry tirade but keeps walking ahead.
“Stop speculations that what?”
“Nothing,” he mumbles, shaking his head.
Reaching out to touch his elbow, I say, “I promise, Nazár, I won’t judge you.”
We stop, and he stares down at me, searching my eyes as though he’s trying to figure out if I’m sincere. I take a gamble that may cost me in the end.
“The speculations about what happened to your wife? The world will always look for gruesome or scandalous topics to gossip about. It’s the way the human psyche is made up, unfortunately. Not everyone, but most people are like that, especially when talking about a famous celebrity like Bella. People want to know. They want to feel sorry for her and think you’re a monster. The reality is your aloofness is probably out of self-preservation and hurt.
“Nazár, you can’t live your life behind iron bars trying to keep people out. Instead, you should learn how to say, ‘Fuck them.’ In time, it will pass, and no matter whether you keep them out or in, people will believe, say, and think what they want, and nothing you can do will ever stop that. If anything, let this beautiful property be a legacy of your love for her.”
He’s back to staring at me again, and no words are coming out. I don’t know what to think. Did I cross the line and say too much? Did I offend him?
“You’re a bold woman, Camila,” he says as we begin walking again.
Shame runs through me when he calls me her name.
“Not really. I’m just as cowardly as anyone else. Maybe more so.”
“No, you’re not. You said to me the things that people want to, but they’re scared to. Instead, they generate conversations with my staff, hoping to glean a nugget or two from them.”
I shake my head and say, “I don’t care about that. I’m here to learn how to expand my business while enjoying a vacation. It’s just a perk that the property owner happens to be handsome.”
The dark cloud hovering above him lifts for the first time, and he smirks at me. The wink he sends me shoots heat straight to my core, and I want him so badly.
Stopping at a row of vines, he stretches his hand out and says, “Flattery will get you a delicious meal, Ms. Martinez.”
I step around him and look down the row and see a white tablecloth-covered table with two wrought iron chairs set up in the middle of the vineyard. There’s a bottle of wine, two covered platters, and two wineglasses turned upside down on linen napkins.
“How . . . where did . . . Were you expecting me?” I ask, turning accusing eyes his way.
There’s no way he could have expected me when I hadn’t even expected to be down here today. This was a random, last-minute decision to visit the vineyard.
Chuckling, he says, “No. You’re the most unexpected person I’ve ever met, Princesa.”
A fire lights in my belly when he calls me that term of endearment in his gravelly tone.
“Then how did this come to be?”
“It came as the result of running a well-oiled ship and my staff knowing that I expect nothing but the best from them.”
“Do you, in turn, give them the best?” I ask as we make our way toward the table.
“They wouldn’t be here if I didn’t. They also wouldn’t be as faithful as they are,” he says.
When we reach the table, he pulls out a chair for me before seating himself. This man is doing everything to my heart.
We have grilled tomato, chèvre, thyme baguette sandwiches, creamy squash soup, and a side salad. The food and wine are delicious, but the company is even better.
“You have the best selection of wines. I swear, each time I taste one, they only get better,” I say after dinner.
“I have one that I’d love for you to taste. It’s in my private selection.”
“Oh? Well, bring it on.”
“It’s at my house.”
His eyes glow, and against my better judgment, I accept the invitation.
“I’m ready whenever you are.”
We rode a golf cart back to his place from the vineyard. He’d gone into his cellar and returned with a premium bottle of Pinot Noir, and I couldn’t help but notice the year nineteen-ninety-nine marked on the label.
“You had to have been a kid when this wine was produced,” I say as he pulls two glasses from a cabinet in his kitchen.
Smiling, he says, “I was. It was a stock from the wine served at my parents’ New Year’s Eve party. They preserved it all these years and gave it to me when I bought this property. I’ve kept it in the cellar all this time.”
“This has to be what . . . a ten- or eleven-thousand-dollar bottle of wine?” I balk.
“Eleven-thousand-three-hundred-seventy-four, to be exact. That’s the price I could command for this.”
“Why are you opening it now?” I ask as he takes the wine bottle from me and pours some into the glasses.
His gaze deepens as he says, “A special wine for a special occasion. Good company deserves good wine.”
He holds a glass out to me.
“What’s the special occasion?”
“Cultivating a beautiful friendship,” he remarks, lifting his wineglass.
Hesitantly, I clink mine to his and inhale the fragrance.
“Musk and leather,” I murmur appreciatively before I take a sip. Closing my eyes, I allow the dry wine to coat my palate before I open my eyes and find his resting on me.
“Well?”
“It has a soft entry . . . The concentration just hit my palate. It has harmonious notes of leather and plum with a sweet finish. I like it. It’s complex and multifaceted with a long finish. Excellent.”
“Thank you.”
Turning around, I set my glass on the counter before murmuring, “Still don’t know why you wasted this expensive bottle of wine on me.”
I feel his heat encompassing me as he steps closer, and I’m afraid to turn around. The touch of his fingers on my arm incinerates me.
Nazár traps me between the counter and his hard body when he places a hand on either side of me, gripping the edge so I can’t move.
“It’s never a waste. Not when the company I’m keeping is worth the wait,” he whispers.
My head tilts forward, and my eyes close at the touch of his lips against the nape of my neck. He trails a finger down my arm to my left ring finger.
“Are you married, Camila?”
“I think that you already know the answer.”
“You’re right. I do. I’d just like to hear it from your lips,” he says, his finger grazing my lips.
I find myself licking my lips and clenching my thighs as fire shoots to my pussy, causing it to throb. “No, I’m not.”
He bites my neck, and I purr, “No. No. And no.”
“What were the other three ‘nos’ for?”
Nazár kisses my jaw and then licks along my earlobe.
“No, I’m not engaged. No, I don’t have a man. And no, I’m not dating.”
“Proactive.”
“Are you going to deny that you were going to ask?”
A growl grows in his throat, and he trails a finger down the front of my sundress through my cleavage before he pinches one nipple and then the other.
“I don’t give a fuck if you do.”
“Then why ask?”
“Only asked if you were married. That’s the only union I respect. The rest only means you’re open season.”
He hitches my sundress around my hips and pushes me forward, my breasts pressing into the counter. Large, coarse hands smooth over my ass cheeks, cupping and grazing them before he parts them.
He slides my panties down my hips and to my thighs.
“What are you doing?” I moan as he slides a finger inside of me.
“What does it feel like I’m doing, Camila?”
“Seems to me like you’re taking liberty with something that doesn’t belong to you,” I purr as he slides another finger inside me.
He chuckles, and the air fills with the sound of my panties ripping.
Spinning around, I ask, “Nazár, what the fuck!”
He spins me back around just as quickly and pushes me against the counter again.
“Not taking liberty with anything. I’m just indulging you in what you want and what I need.”
He plunges two fingers inside me, and all protests slip from my mind as my eyes close again, and I rest my cheek against the cold counter. With one hand, he rubs my nub, and with the other, he continues to pump in and out of me, increasing the pace as the sloshing sound of my juices being stirred fills the kitchen.
“Nazár, I can’t,” I murmur just as I’m about to come.
He leans forward, his back resting against mine and his erection pressing into my thigh.
“You can and you will, mi amor. Give me everything, Princesa. Every drip, every drop, every ounce of you,” he says.
My hips jut back as he continues thrusting his fingers inside of me. I don’t feel the pain of my breasts pressed against the counter, the pinch of my eyelids closed tightly, or the numbness creeping into my fingers as I grip the counter tightly.
I simply spread my legs wider, allowing him to insert another finger inside me, wishing it were his dick.
“Oh God!” I cry out as he inserts yet another finger inside me; before I know it, he’s filled me with four thick digits.
My orgasm takes over every sound, thought, scent, and awareness I should lay claim to. A gasp creeps from my throat. I lie with my face and tits pressed into the counter, my mouth agape until I hear a sucking noise.
Standing, I turn around to see Nazár sucking my juices from his fingers, and the fire in his eyes looks as if he wants to consume me. Before I can fix my dress, he lifts me onto the counter, spreads my legs, and pushes me back.
The wineglasses shatter to the floor, but he doesn’t seem to care. With my feet on the counter, legs propped up, I find my hips arching into the air as Nazár shifts his hands under my ass to lift me slightly.
With his head buried between my thighs, Nazár sucks, licks, and compels more juices from my pussy. I had no idea that I had anything remaining. Pleasure and tension are at war in my body, and I’m powerless against both.
The pleasure he brings as he eats my pussy like he’s just worked a hard, long day and he’s a starving man leaves me breathless. The need to feel him inside me, stroking and digging, increases the want.
His hands and forearms wrap tightly around my thighs, and I know he’ll leave marks there. The scruffiness of his growing beard tickles and scratches, but it feels so damn good. The grunts and growls he releases are satisfying, knowing I’m the cause of his sounding like that.
His sucking tongue and lips on my pussy lips, paired with his burrowing nose and finger against my nub, drives me insane. My pleasure is heightened when he slides a finger inside my ass and begins to thrust and slowly circle there.
My heart tightens in my chest, and I can barely breathe. It’s as if Nazár senses this because he picks up the speed and intensity of his tongue, lips, nose, and fingers, driving me to higher planes.
He wraps long, tapered, coarse fingers around my neck and squeezes. I call his name in a loud, keening screech I don’t recognize.
“Nazár! Fuck!”
He steals my breath and gives it back to me in one swoop, restricting and releasing my airway. His fingers, tongue, and lips overwhelm me until I can’t take anymore. He hums against my pussy before he sucks it. His fingers pulse inside me as he returns to humming—the pace and intensity of his sucking increase. I hold my breath, waiting for the ecstasy to end, for the climax to be ridden out, and Nazár squeezes again and then releases.
I shudder and shudder . . . until I pass out.