Love in the Vineyard (Tavonesi #7)(61)

Had she really thought he’d brought her to the cave for sex? Was she teasing him? He couldn’t tell.

“No. I’d just thought to show you this place. Ohhh,” he growled when she reached behind her and fingered the slick hood of his shaft. “Stop that or—”

“I can’t imagine a better surprise,” she purred. She closed her hand around his hard shaft. “I haven’t had a lover for five years.” She bent and teased her tongue along his lower lip. “And I’ve been tested.”

Suddenly his argument for his perfect health record seemed unbelievably urgent.

“And I haven’t had unprotected sex since I was eighteen,” he bit out as she tried to wriggle free of his grip. It was the truth. He wouldn’t have dared. All he needed was a palimony suit slapped on him. He’d never met a woman worth the risk. Not until Natasha.

“Then it would appear we can have a happy ending.” She raised up and, lightning fast, dropped her hips and enveloped him.

Her tight warmth as he speared into her made him convulse and cry out her name. It had been a decade since he’d been flesh to flesh inside a woman. He’d forgotten the world-shattering rush of direct contact.

“Slowly, Natasha.” He stilled her hips with his hands and restricted her movement. “Slowly.”

He wanted the moment to last. As he rocked her, his thoughts, his plans—everything but the connection of their bodies—melted away. And below the blaze of desire, an unfamiliar feeling flooded into him, at first elusive, and then, like a camera coming into slow focus, he recognized the feeling.

Love.

He’d thought he’d known the territory of his heart, thought he’d known what the word meant. Yet discovering that love and sex and ball-busting pleasure could be wrapped up in a single moment, in a single woman, astonished him.

And he knew in that moment that his plan was a perfect path forward for a life with her. It had to be, because he couldn’t imagine a life that didn’t include Natasha Raley.





Chapter Seventeen



THE BLASTS OF EMOTION THAT HAD ROCKED Natasha while making love with Adrian should have scared the dickens out of her. But as she lay in his arms in the candlelit cave, she didn’t feel fear.

She felt changed.

As they donned their clothes, she caught her reflection in a mirrored pane in a cobweb-covered hutch leaning along one wall of the wine cave. An inner shining reflected back to her as if calling to her to trust her heart, to trust life. But how could she trust anything she felt right then? She felt untamed, set loose—maybe even unmoored. How could she trust herself when she’d made such a mess of her life?

Like a thread of dye in a glass of water, fear began to release its poison, spreading slowly and coloring every thought and feeling in its path. She wanted to scream. She wanted to stop time. She wanted to start her life over, to get it right, to be born as a normal child without a disability, a woman with a normal family and an education. A woman with a future that didn’t terrify her.

She touched her hand to her cheek and then to the mirror. The pane came loose. Her body braced for the shatter as it dropped to the clay floor of the cave.

But it didn’t shatter. It rested, intact, against the leg of the hutch.

Adrian curved his arms around her from behind and touched his lips to the nape of her neck.

“You just avoided seven years of bad luck.”

Natasha let out the breath she’d been holding. “If only our wives’ tales and fairy stories were true.”

He turned her to face him. The gentle kiss he brushed to her lips had tears welling. Tears that she was determined this time not to let loose.

“I’d like to think they are, Natasha. I’d like to think that life brings us gifts that lead to joy.”

Some cynical part of her rose up, some part of her still angry for what had been, some part of her that didn’t believe in what could be. The part of her fed by fear.

“We don’t live in the same worlds, Adrian.”

The hurt in his eyes made her wish she hadn’t said anything. Some truths hurt more than the value of their telling.

He touched his finger to her heart. “We live in the world we choose to live in. The rest is details.”

Details. Details like money for food and shelter, for an education for your children. For being able to pursue passion and dreams. She wanted to push at the walls of reality going up all around her. She didn’t want to be angry with him. He hadn’t chosen his parents, his station in life. He was a good man, a man she shouldn’t have let in so close. A man who would continue to live his life as it was meant to be. A life that she knew wouldn’t, couldn’t, include a woman like her.

She couldn’t look him in the eye. If she did, every confused emotion would pour out of her mouth and she’d regret spoiling a moment that should have its place without all that. A moment she could call up later, tugging the memory around her like an antidote when darkness threatened. She tried to step away from his embrace, but he snuggled her against his chest.

“Natasha.”

He paused. She loved how he said her name, how he said more with his tone than most people could with hundreds of words. As if her name were the beginning of a refrain of a song. A song she hoped never to forget.

“I have to go away again,” he said quietly. “For two weeks. I—”