Chapter Seven #3
He caught her eye and his eyebrows shot up, feigning innocent surprise at her expression. ‘We’ve already been to the town but there are a couple of beaches, I’ve been told, which are only accessible by boat…?’
Voices faded to a blur.
She was doing her best not to look appalled but wasn’t sure what sort of job she was making of that.
She knew that at some point she was standing up, shaking hands with lots of the people there, making smiling noises about seeing them all again before she and Raffaele headed back to London.
When the door to the conference room was opened and people started filing out, she felt the blast of hot air rush in, cutting through the cool of the air conditioning.
Then the door shut, and she and Raffaele were alone in the room.
‘They’ve worked hard,’ Raffaele said. ‘They don’t need to keep disrupting their timetables to entertain us.’ Erin looked at him, her expression carefully guarded, as he walked slowly towards her. ‘I’d…like to have a chat with you, Erin.’
‘What about?’
‘Can’t be summed up in one word. It’s something of a spectrum.’
‘I have no idea what you mean by that. Should I be concerned?’ She laughed nervously and stared up at him.
‘I guess it’s a wait-and-see scenario.’
Erin kept a polite, curious smile pinned to her face but her heart was beating wildly as a million unpleasant outcomes raced through her head.
Top of the list was the sinking dread that he had somehow sensed her attraction to him and had been spooked by it.
He might enjoy a bit of light flirtation here, in a place that was alien to both of them, but was he now backing away at speed from the terrifying possibility that she might be yet another woman greedy for love and commitment?
Especially after what he’d shared with her?
All her insecurities rose to the surface with suffocating urgency.
She’d told him so much about herself and now she felt trapped by those unwitting confidences as though he could read her soul by putting together the path of breadcrumbs she had laid down.
As though he could just see that his idea of light flirtation with the secretary he now knew a little more about had provoked a disproportionate, inappropriate reaction within her.
‘How I love wait-and-see scenarios,’ she said with an attempt at her usual dry humour and he obligingly smiled.
‘Why don’t we take a walk? We can head in the direction of the waterfall. It’s probably quiet out there at this hour. People taking it easy after a day in the sweltering sun.’
‘Sure.’
It was cooler than it had been, with rain in the air. Still steaming hot, though, and here, without any pretty lanterns and fairy lights, the forest around them felt wilder and lusher.
There was no one on the path they took. No locals, no tourists.
They walked through a shadowy twilight semi-darkness under the canopy of trees with the squish of fallen leaves underfoot.
Occasionally the fading sun would penetrate the canopy, sending shards of pale light through the branches of the trees.
After a handful of minutes, during which they had walked in silence, they emerged into a glorious clearing where the waterfall, not very big at all, crashed over dark rocks into a crystal clear pool empty of people.
Erin walked down to the water, mesmerised by the thunderous sound of the falls and the way they cascaded down, rippling outwards until the turmoil gave way to ice-cold water as still as a swimming pool.
She felt Raffaele next to her and her whole body stiffened with tension.
‘Spit it out, Raffaele,’ she stated as she spun around to face him. ‘The suspense is killing me.’
‘I want you.’
‘Sorry?’ She twisted to look at him but he continued staring out at the water, his jaw clenched.
‘I want to sleep with you, Erin.’
‘What? Wait. What are you saying? No!’ Her voice shook. ‘That can’t happen!’
‘Because you don’t want to sleep with me?’
‘I don’t want to have this conversation. How on earth would we ever be able to carry on working together if we…if we…?’
This time he did face her and Erin’s pulse raced at the absolute seriousness on his face. The very face she had longed to touch for so many years.
Her lips parted and her treacherous body took a step towards him. She saw just the ghost of a smile on his face. It should have been a signal for her to break the electric connection between them, but she couldn’t.
He wanted her.
No misreading of signals, no imagination playing tricks on her. He wanted her and she wanted him right back.
She knew the dangers. She’d listed each and every one in her head a million times but crushing desire made a nonsense of all those rational concerns.
Crushing desire was already making an argument for doing exactly what they both wanted, was telling her that this was just lust, that lust couldn’t end up hurting her or derailing her hope of finding love with the right guy.
She trembled, her breath hitching, as Raffaele lowered his head, and the cool feeling of his lips on hers kick-started a cyclone of pent-up arousal inside her.
She moaned into his mouth and stepped closer to him, her slender body pressed against his hard, masculine, much bigger one.
She reached up and sifted her fingers through his dark hair as he continued to send her senses into spinning meltdown, first with his mouth, his invading tongue lashing against hers, and then with his hand, moving underneath her top and finding the cup of the swimsuit she’d worn under her clothes.
‘This is too much,’ he growled. ‘We have to get a room.’
‘Raffaele…’
‘Come… I know where we can go… Jesus, I’ve never felt so turned on in my life before… I can barely get my thoughts together…’
Erin followed him blindly. He was saying something about the ledge he’d found behind the waterfall when he’d been on one of his earlier journeys of discovery.
The noise of the waterfall thundered around them. Sure-footed and agile, he held her hand as he led the way to the smooth, cool ledge behind the falls, big enough to sit and have a picnic with friends. Hidden from view by the wall of water a mere handful of feet away.
This was peace, privacy, a cool, misty respite from the stifling humidity.
There was nothing cool between them, though. Erin was burning up.
Her clothes were sticking to her like glue.
She began stripping off. Part of her could scarcely believe this was happening. Another part revelled in it, revelled in the freedom of being reckless for the first time in her life.
The ledge, smooth and flat, should have been uncomfortable, but it was lovely and slippery and cold underfoot. Erin found herself wondering how many couples had sneaked behind this waterfall over the decades to do exactly what they were doing now.
They didn’t speak. The sound of cascading water feet away from them would have drowned out their voices anyway.
Erin liked it that way because she just wanted to feast her eyes on Raffaele and enjoy him in perfect, blissful silence.
When the last of his clothing was off, her mouth fell open. He’d worn swimming trunks underneath, black and navy blue, and as he kicked them to the side, to join the rest of his discarded clothes, she breathed in sharply and trembled.
He was impressive and there was no mistaking the fact that he was turned on.
She had begun undressing already. Now she couldn’t wait to get her clothes off completely. She scrabbled at them while he stood exactly where he was, watching her with his hand resting idly on his erection.
She had never been so turned on.
He walked towards her and then held her. Their bodies glistened with perspiration and spray from the waterfall. She could smell the humid air and the scent of earth.
It felt as though time stood still as he began touching her, exploring her nakedness slowly with his hands while he kissed her. She had to reach up to him, half on tiptoe, her hands wound around his neck so that she could pull him tighter towards her.
Her breasts pressed against his hard chest. She felt the scrape of his hair against her nipples and rubbed herself against him so that the sensation was amplified.
He cupped her rounded bottom and massaged it, ran his hands along her waist and felt her shiver and then curved them around her breasts, inching slightly away from her so that he could rub the stiffened peaks of her nipples with the abrasive pads of his thumbs.
‘I don’t want to rush this,’ he groaned. ‘Would you rather we take this to a bed in one of our cabins? Although I’m not sure I can make it that far…’
‘I want to stay here.’
‘Then let me spread some of clothes out… We can lie down…’
It took Raffaele seconds to haphazardly spread some of their clothing in a reasonably good semblance of a sheet, but it felt like hours. Finally, it was done and they were staring at one another across the tumble of clothes on the ground.
Naked. With the spray from the waterfall on them and the cool of the grotto on them.
They moved towards one another in unison, eyes locked.
‘I want to take this slowly,’ he breathed into her ear, wrapping his arms around her in a caress that was almost chaste. ‘I’ve been thinking about this…wanting it…wanting you… I want to take my time and pleasure you until you want me to carry on forever…’
Forever…? The word lingered in Erin’s head, pernicious and heady, until she dismissed it because she wondered whether that was a word Raffaele would ever really understand.
They lay down together, adjusting their bodies until they found their comfort zone and then they began to explore one another.
Tentative…eager…slowly…hungrily…
They clung and kissed, at first urgently, limbs tangling but then the kiss softened as they tasted one another, neither wanting to break apart but both eager to explore more, to touch more.
Raffaele had never felt anything like this, anything so wild and powerful and consuming. Each time Erin whimpered, he had to steel himself against rushing everything because all he wanted to do was to reach his orgasm as fast as he could.
Every tiny movement she made against him sent his senses reeling.
He cupped her small breast in his hand as he trailed kisses along her neck and when she arched back, he obligingly took her pert nipple into his mouth and sucked hard on it.
She was so slim that he could feel the outline of her ribs under his hand, could feel every thrilling response to what he was doing, every small shudder.
He touched her lightly, ran his fingers in a feathery motion over her stomach as she sucked in her breath and then he dipped his fingers into her, into her wetness, feeling a slippery way to touch the spot that made her groan and begin to buck against his hand.
‘We can’t take this where I want to take it,’ he groaned with anguished frustration, even as he continued to tease her, tickling the stiffened bud of her clitoris and feeling it pulse to his touch.
He briefly propped himself up to look down at her flushed face.
‘Don’t stop.’
‘I don’t have protection with me.’
‘Arghh!’ Erin likewise propped herself up on her elbows, her chestnut hair tumbling around her face, her mouth parted with desire. She pushed her hair from her face and stared at him. ‘And I’m not on any contraception.’
‘Wouldn’t matter. I always make sure to be responsible for my own protection.
You’re beautiful, Erin.’ He smiled when she blushed.
‘Never mind. I know a million other ways we can satisfy one another and when we get back to my cabin…we can pick up where we left off. Might be fun to have some delayed gratification.’
‘Says the guy who’s probably never had to experience that in his life before?’ she teased huskily.
He smiled back at her, appreciatively, eyes devouring her. ‘Change is as good as a rest… I’m certainly finding the idea of delayed gratification a big turn-on.’
He stopped talking and began exploring, this time with his mouth and his tongue. He pushed her thighs apart and smelled her musky scent as he delicately licked her.
When she trembled, he could feel something intensely and gratifyingly masculine tear through him, a feeling of powerful possessiveness.
The thought that this was his prim and proper secretary was a turn-on like nothing else he’d ever experienced in his life before.
He stroked her thighs as he continued to tease her clitoris and then when he knew that she could no longer fight the surging, pulsing need to come, he thrust his fingers into her so that he could pleasure her with more than just his mouth.
Erin was taken to Heaven and back.
She arched back, detached from everything around her, lost in sensation, barely recognising her own guttural moaning as she came against his mouth.
The wall of cascading water cocooned them. It made the experience feel unreal and yet incredibly erotic.
Outside, the fading sun threw everything in that intensely private space into misty twilight.
It was surreal.
The noise of the waterfall…the humidity…the spectral light…and, as Erin surfaced back to reality, this glorious, beautiful man who had only ever existed for her like this in her deepest, darkest dreams.
She touched him all over, the way he’d touched her. Every bit of his naked body was a revelation and a delight.
She explored him, eyes open so that she could see what she was touching.
She lost herself in the feel of him, hard and muscled under her exploring fingers.
When she licked her fingers and gently stroked his flat, brown nipples, she thrilled to the way he shuddered and then gripped her hand, guiding it to his erection because he couldn’t stand being teased any longer.
She enjoyed him the way he had enjoyed her, and loved pleasuring him the way he had loved pleasuring her.
She had no idea where this freewheeling sense of freedom was coming from. Maybe because for the first time in her life, she was giving herself permission to do exactly what she wanted without counting the cost.
She was expunging the crush she had had on him for such a long time. She had never foreseen any of this happening but he had extended his hand. She had taken it without thinking about repercussions because, at least on the emotional front, she was safe.
He was a commitment-phobe. He could never be the sort of guy she would ever contemplate being a lasting feature in her life.
On a work front… Well, that posed a number of thorny issues, but for the moment, Erin decided that she would delay thinking about that.
There was a cabin to get to. There was hot, steamy, wonderful, wild, taboo sex on the menu…
Thorny issues were for another day.