Chapter Nine Guinevere
Chapter Nine
Guinevere
I practically vibrated in my seat the entire way to the Chianti region, where Raffa’s business associate Imelda had one of the country’s best wineries. It was impossible to sit still when I felt carbonated with giddiness and anticipation.
Raffa wanted to know me.
Why was that so much more alluring than simply saying he liked me?
Liking seemed so juvenile and inconsequential next to knowing .
One was surface shallow and the other bone deep.
I was tempted to lie supine before him and hand him a scalpel. Dare him to do his worst. Because I had the sense that in allowing someone like Raffa to know me, I would inevitably learn more about myself.
It was probably a good idea to play it cool. Act like I wasn’t about to burst out of my skin with eagerness to really start this thing between us, strike against it—against him—until all that delicious friction lit into flame.
But even though I was trying to be a different version of myself—bolder, braver, fearless—I was still me , so I couldn’t curb my enthusiasm and decided not to try.
Even after a week and a half, Raffa had to know I had an overzealous hunger in the pit of my gut that demanded more now that I’d started to feed it.
“Who were all the people on the terrace today? I thought it would be rude to ask in front of them, but it was strange to have them just walk out like they lived there. Wait.” I paused. “Do they live there? God, am I that unobservant that I just haven’t noticed before now?”
“ Calmati , Vera,” he said on a small huff of laughter. “They do not live with me, though they each have rooms if they ever want to spend the night. They work for me. You could say they are my executives.”
I considered the motley crew gathered around the breakfast table.
Ludovico was a big, quiet man with a crudely carved face and ears that stuck out too far.
I’d found myself liking him right away, though.
There was something in his manner that said he was the type of man to trap a spider under a glass and transfer it outside rather than kill it.
A form of innate kindness that showed through his dark eyes.
Carmine I did not enjoy after my first impression, even though I thought our differences might have been cultural. It was rude not to introduce himself and then to mock me when I was just a stranger to him.
Martina had told me he was harmless when she’d dropped by my room after the meal to chat, but she had also said that about Renzo, who was the largest man I’d ever seen, quilted in such dense muscle I wondered how many hours a day he spent in the gym.
I could have bought Raffa and Carmine as typical businessmen, but Ludo and Renzo didn’t have that look to them. They had to have physically demanding jobs, and for Raffa, I figured something solitary would be best.
“What is it that you do exactly?” I asked as he drove fast along the country roads with one hand on the wheel and the other braced on the edge of the open window.
The breeze ruffled his slightly wavy hair away from his face, and the sun lit the hair on his corded forearm to blue black.
His navy blue linen shirt was unbuttoned to the top of his sternum, revealing a wedge of tanned skin feathered in that same dark hair I wanted to tug between my teeth.
My eyes drifted down to his strong thighs beneath the gray trousers and the subtle but honestly mouthwatering ridge of his dick at the apex.
“I can feel you touching every inch of my body with your eyes,” he said, startling me from my survey. His voice was low and rich with sin, something too decadent to indulge in without adverse effects to your health. “Do not be afraid to touch with your hands too.”
I laughed, but it was a little shrill. “You are imagining things in your old age.”
“Says the woman who is so attracted to this old man that she is squeezing her thighs together to quell her ache for me.”
I gasped, but it wasn’t indignant the way I thought it should have been. It was soft, an exclamation like I’d heard actresses make in love scenes on-screen.
“ Si, cerbiatta mia , I told you I am attracted to you. I told you I want to know you, and that includes the place between your thighs that is growing wetter as we talk. One day, I will taste how sweet you are down there with my tongue. Would you like that?”
I swallowed, but there was no moisture in my mouth to ease the way, so mostly I choked.
His smile was small, but he switched hands on the wheel and moved one to squeeze my bare thigh comfortingly.
“Have I shocked you?”
“We haven’t even kissed yet,” I reminded him a little primly despite myself. “And you’re talking about kissing me there .”
“Your pussy?” he confirmed with a roguish grin.
I rolled my eyes but repeated, “My pussy, yes.”
“ La figa ,” he said in Italian.
I echoed him.
His eyes were sparkling as they slid to me before looking back to the road. “Should we spend our drive having a sexy lesson in Italiano?”
I laughed, and my nerves shattered like broken glass. “Yes, that sounds fun.”
“Mmm,” he hummed. “It does. Mi fai eccitare. Potrei guardarti tutto il giorno. You turn me on. I could look at you all day.”
My head thunked back against the headrest, my mouth parting on a sigh.
“Repeat after me, Guinevere,” he demanded, and that cold edge made me hotter than his compliment.
“ Mi fai eccitare. Potrei guardarti tutto il giorno. ”
“ Grazie tante ,” he teased, thanking me for my compliment. “Very good.”
I squirmed but didn’t stop his hand as it traced languid designs on the skin of my thigh, moving slowly higher and higher up under the fabric of my dress.
“ Scommetto che hai una bella albicocca ,” he said, so husky it was almost a growl. “I bet you have a pretty pussy.”
“ Albicocca? ” I repeated, more than a little breathless. “Apricot?”
“ La figa is the most popular, but a pussy can be as sweet as albicocca or fragola , as lovely as a farfalla or passerina .”
Fig, apricot, strawberry. Butterfly or sparrow.
“Everything is so beautiful in Italian. Pussy and cunt sound so much coarser,” I admitted, gripping his wrist not to stop him but to ground myself in the moment as his fingertips brushed the tender skin beside my groin.
“ Si , something so sweet and juicy and pretty pink must be spoken of like poetry,” he agreed, but his eyes were dark as they left the road to watch his fingers ruck my skirt up to my hips.
The pale blue of my panties was exposed to the heat of his gaze, and every molecule in my body seemed to buzz with its own electrical current.
We still hadn’t even kissed .
Why did that make this sensual Italian lesson so much more erotic?
“ Che bella ,” he said, and he didn’t have to translate for me.
What beauty.
I blushed so deeply I worried the color would be tattooed on my skin. There was a squirmy sensation in my gut that was an intoxicating mix of arousal, daring, and lingering shame. A small noise like a whine leaked from my throat as I struggled to voice any of my desires.
“Slide your hips down for me,” he murmured.
I obeyed without thinking, settling deeper into the seat so I could spread my legs wider.
This was the kind of encounter I’d dreamed of late at night in my bed back home in Michigan when the winters seemed as endless as my loneliness. Warm summer air and the heavy weight of a man’s hand on my skin.
I sucked in a deep breath when Raffa brushed his thumb down the center of my fabric-covered groin, pressing into the damp spot at the apex. When he pulled away, I almost protested, but my words died on my tongue when he pressed the tip of his damp thumb into his mouth and sucked it clean.
“ Hai un buon sapore come immaginavo ,” he said. “You taste as good as I imagined.”
“Like apricots?” I teased, surprised by the confidence I felt, half lying in my seat with my wet underwear exposed and my taste on Raffa’s lips.
“Like sin,” he corrected. “It is addictive.”
There was a brief pause that felt like a prelude to something dangerous. I held my breath.
“Tell me, Vera, have you ever tasted yourself?” he asked finally in a low purr.
“No,” I said on an exhale of shocked laughter.
He groaned then, lowering his hand to adjust the huge ridge in his trousers to lie down one thigh. “You are killing me.”
“How?” I licked my dry lips, wishing we were somewhere he could turn the full weight of his attention on me and my curious, aching yearning.
“Imagining all the things I could teach you. The ways I could corrupt that pure mind of yours. I want to feed you the seeds of a pomegranate from the underworld even knowing you can never go back after tasting them.”
“I prefer to think Persephone chose to stay half the year with Hades,” I said, finding the courage to reach between my thighs to cup my sex. “I think she couldn’t live any longer without knowing what it was like to taste the dark.”
Raffa shot a quick glance to my hand and rumbled low in his chest. “Do you want me to teach you how I like my cock to be sucked? Show you how many times I can make you come on my tongue? You wanted adventure, and I am happy to be your guide.”
“You hate being a guide,” I quipped, even as I rubbed lightly at the growing damp spot on my panties, blushing as the smell of my arousal filled the car.
“I truly cannot imagine anything better than guiding you through this,” he admitted baldly as he abruptly swerved the car, and I realized we had driven into the gravel parking lot at the winery.
Before I could fully remove my hand, Raffa’s large palm was pushing it back against my pussy.
“Seal our deal with your first taste,” he coaxed, splitting our fingers over my mound to dig beneath the edge of my panties.
I gasped, neck going limp as my fingertips dipped into the hot well at my entrance. Raffa pressed his forehead to my temple, his breath hot on my neck, his eyes fixed to our connection between my legs.
“ Bellissima ,” he muttered.
Beautiful.