Chapter Eight
‘MY PARENTS WOULD give their eye teeth to see what I’m seeing right now.’ Erin was lying on a lounger, looking out at a sunset that lit up the clouds in tones of sherbet. A soft, impressionistic swirl of orange, pink and lavender was rapidly being swallowed up by a star-studded, velvet blackness.
Raffaele’s lounger was right next to hers and she felt his hand move to lightly rest on her stomach.
The yacht they’d rented four days previously was bobbing gently beneath them to the rhythmic lull of the waves lapping against the sides of the hull. They were both lying on their backs, looking at the same sunset, the same expanse of sky and the same calm ocean all around.
‘Do they know you’re here?’ Raffaele asked curiously.
‘Of course not.’ Erin wriggled onto her side so that she could look at Raffaele.
He was naked. Completely naked. So was she.
They were miles from any of the islands that made up the Grenadines.
If she peered through the gathering darkness, she might just be able to make out the silhouette of Bequia, where they had spent most of the day, but from here?
Just the ocean all around them. She could smell the salt from the sea. The horizon seemed to stretch forever. It was dreamlike. A bit like everything that was happening between her and Raffaele. Dreamlike. She didn’t want to wake up.
‘You haven’t told them that you’re having a fling with your boss?’
Erin heard the smile in his voice and shivered.
‘Of course I haven’t.’
‘Think they’d disapprove?’
‘I know they would.’
‘Why?’
Raffaele shifted so that he was lying on his side, looking at her. He ran his hand gently along her side, feathered over the dip of her waist and then stroked her flank until the usual responses were firing up.
Lust…desire…the spreading wetness between her thighs that longed for his touch, for his mouth…for the hard thrust of him inside her, filling her up.
Her breath hitched and she saw his eyes darken as he recognised what he was doing to her.
It was definitely a two-way street. She could see exactly what she was doing to him as well.
She felt languid. She wanted to be teased. She wanted to tease him. To talk while they touched one another.
‘Oh, you know…’
‘They disapprove of intra-office relationships?’
‘They’d disapprove of me doing this…just having sex without any commitment…’ She mirrored his stroking, running her hand along his thigh and liking the abrasive feel of hair-roughened, muscled skin.
He was fully erect and she teased the tip of his erection with her finger and smiled when he shuddered and clasped his hand over hers for a couple of seconds.
‘From what you’ve told me about them, I’ll admit I got the idea that they might have been a little more liberal in their thinking.’
‘Because they led an unconventional lifestyle?’ Erin thought about her parents, still crazily in love with one another.
‘They were soulmates. They literally only had eyes for one another. They had me later in life but honestly…they’re great believers in the power of love and all they’ve ever wanted for me was to find my own soulmate.
’ Erin hesitated. She’d told him a lot, but she hadn’t mentioned David, the guy she’d dated, the mistake she’d made. ‘Especially after David.’
‘Who was David?’
Erin flopped back onto the lounger and stared off into the distance. Darkness had roared in, extinguishing the russet colours of sunset.
‘Oh, he’s someone I thought was the real deal.
I was inexperienced. I built castles in the sky.
’ She smiled. ‘It was never the real deal. We were never a match and when we broke up, he said some pretty harsh things…’ She sighed.
‘I got over him and it didn’t take long to realise that he was toxic, passive-aggressive a lot of the time…
moody when he didn’t get his own way. I don’t think I was really myself when I was with him and never relaxed into the relationship.
I was in love with the thought of being in love so decided that it was okay to ignore red flags.
When we broke up, he was pretty callous, pretty scathing about me and that hurt.
A lot. So while that break-up was the best thing that could have happened to me in retrospect, I think it made my parents realise, and me as well, that the next relationship should be something healthy, a relationship with a future.
My parents might have been hippies and still are, to be honest, but they’d see this as me wasting my time. ’
‘And do you? Think that you’re wasting your time with me?’
The conversation was suddenly very serious. Thoughts that Erin had barely voiced to herself now rose to the surface.
Where was this going? How had that bridge to be crossed at some point in the future suddenly materialised under her feet? Was it because feelings she had dismissed as no more than a trivial crush were turning out to be something a lot more dangerous?
Her heart picked up pace.
Was she falling in love with a guy whose only commitment to her had been to take a few days off work? All so that they could prolong their time in this little bubble where reality could be suspended?
Raffaele hadn’t even discussed what would happen when their time on this yacht was at an end!
And she’d just gone along for the ride because he was addictive. She’d squashed all her qualms when they’d tried to nudge through and told herself that she was in control. And why had she done that?
Because she loved him.
And the alternative of stepping back and taking stock was inconceivable, so she’d pretended there was no need to look beyond the moment. She’d dumped every principle she’d had when it came to men, lock, stock and barrel.
And now she was terrified.
Her mouth suddenly felt dry. ‘Why would I think that?’ she managed to say.
‘Well, it sounds as though after the break-up, you programmed yourself to think that the only way forward would be with a guy with an engagement ring in his back pocket.’
His voice was light and amused but Erin thought she could pick up something in his voice, a wariness, the cautious testing of the ground. The hint of unspoken questions. Was his secretary beginning to get unrealistic ideas about what they had? Which was, essentially, nothing? Should he be worried?
It wasn’t as though he’d said anything about a future…no plans beyond how they would occupy the next hour or so…
‘Programmes have a way of changing,’ Erin mused thoughtfully, absently, while her heart beat fast and wild against her ribcage.
‘Your programme also changed, didn’t it?
But here we are.’ She shrugged and smiled and then provocatively traced a line with her finger along his arm.
‘I reckon this is just what I need. Something temporary…a fun stepping stone to the committed relationship I really want. I mean, I fell into the habit of taking time out from guys after my break-up. It was easy and it was lazy and I’m honest enough to admit that.
’ She smiled ruefully, something in her chest aching.
She loved this man… How could she have let this happen?
‘“A fun stepping stone…”’
‘That’s it. A wonderful game. Wouldn’t you agree? I mean, neither of us saw this coming and now we’re here, it’s almost as though we’re not actually in the real world.’
‘I can agree with that.’ Raffaele smiled, trying to cover over the unsettling realisation that it was pretty much the only thing Erin had said that he was inclined to agree with.
Wrong. He could theoretically agree with all of it. He just didn’t like every word he’d just heard.
A stepping stone? A bit of fun? Before she found Mr Right?
Was that the sound of a woman who was using him?
And why was it such a big deal? It was discomforting to think that that was precisely how he usually approached his relationships, although he baulked at the thought that he was using those women. Fair was fair: he always warned them in advance of his intentions, or rather the lack of them.
The perfect gentleman.
He didn’t feel like being the perfect gentleman with Erin, and that confused him. He wanted something more…but what? Not to be written off as an amusing footnote? Was he that much of an egotist?
He wanted to shake his head clear of a murky swirl of thoughts he couldn’t quite pin down and couldn’t quite rationalise.
‘You asked me if I’m wasting my time. Not a bit of it,’ she reiterated.
‘My feelings precisely.’
He skimmed her thigh with the flat of his hand and decided that there was such a thing as too much conversation.
He was a doing kind of guy. Sex was much easier. He didn’t want to tackle uneasy thoughts.
Two loungers weren’t ideal when it came to making love but they could have a little fun on them for a while.
He toyed with her breast, teased her nipple until it was stiff. When she began breathing quickly, he moistened his finger with his tongue and continued to play with her nipple. He was propped up on one elbow, looking at her with intense satisfaction.
Why was she so obsessed with the perfect guy? Couldn’t she see that that was all just an illusion?
He cupped the mound between her thighs and then levered himself off the lounger, never removing his hand from its resting place.
Night engulfed them but a full moon threw her slender body into silvery relief.
Want slammed into him. He gently tugged her a little, urging her to slither a little lower down the lounger, legs splayed on either side so that she was open like a flower for his mouth.
He wondered, fleetingly, whether he could ever get enough of the taste of her. For a second, he just breathed her in and then darted his tongue along the slippery groove that shielded her clitoris.