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‘This is important, Xavier,’ Sophie warned, turning it off again.
‘OK, so I’m listening,’ he said tersely.
Taking a
deep, steadying breath, Sophie said bluntly, ‘I’m not engaged to Henry. I never have been engaged to Henry. We’ve known each other for years. The ring was a token of the friendship between us. That’s it.’ She waited for him to say something but, apart from a slight movement of his head, accompanied by a similar acknowledgement from his lips, he had no comment to make.
Well, she’d done it, Sophie reflected. What else could she say?
Xavier had difficulty keeping his mouth shut—had difficulty stopping himself from ramming the brakes on and seducing her in the truck. It wasn’t quite what he’d hoped for, but what the hell? The gear lever might get in the way, but he could kneel on the floor and there was a ledge under the windscreen to rest her feet on… Was he going completely loco? Probably, Xavier answered himself dryly. Sophie had told him exactly what he had wanted to hear—he just hadn’t anticipated hearing it quite so soon.
‘Are we coming to another village?’ Sophie said, breaking into his thoughts.
‘That’s right,’ Xavier said, pulling himself round with difficulty. ‘You must be hungry.’
His consideration was a straw suggesting they could remain civil with each other and Sophie grabbed at it. ‘I am,’ she agreed with a smile in her voice.
Xavier drew up in front of one of the many rough stone dwellings, and Sophie saw that the wooden entrance door was pushed a small way open. A soft glow of light came from the inside. ‘A café?’ she guessed.
‘My friend’s home,’ Xavier explained, as he reached over the seat into the space behind.
Sophie hadn’t noticed the bulging bag before, and Xavier offered no explanation as he threw the strap over his shoulder and climbed down from the truck.
As they went into the modest home together the warmth of the family’s welcome enveloped Sophie immediately. Escorting her to a comfortably padded bench at one side of the fire blazing brightly in the tiled hearth, they clustered around her like brightly plumaged birds concerned for their long-lost chick. The air was filled with the tang of wood smoke, overlaid with the aroma of something good cooking, and everywhere Sophie looked there were colourful examples of the local pottery, as well as the fabulous woven textiles everyone took for granted in Peru.
Xavier introduced her to Agustin and Francisca. Their six children ranged in age from a babe in arms to a serious-faced boy called Marcos, who Sophie judged to be around seventeen. The whole family was openly delighted by their visit, but Marcos especially seemed thrilled to see Xavier.
One of the older girls poured Sophie a drink from the pitcher standing on the wooden table, whilst another brought over a platter of fruit and cheese for her to pick at. Smiling her thanks, Sophie wondered if their distinctive dress was unique to that village. Rather than the usual jaunty fedoras, their heads were covered with a warm, heat-retaining fabric, similar to felt, with a heavy fringe around the edges, so that it resembled a soft and rather flattering lampshade. The girl with the cheekiest grin had decorated hers with a splash of vivid embroidery—personalised it, like teenagers everywhere, Sophie thought, smiling up at her. All the female members of the family wore colourful shawls similar to her own over red cardigans or jumpers, and their skirts were full, in dark grey edged with bands of red.
‘There’s soup,’ the father, Agustin, said with a kindly smile, ‘with vegetables I grew myself. I hope you will join us.’
‘I’d love to,’ Sophie said. ‘Your English is very good. I’m afraid I only speak the little Spanish I picked up on holiday in my childhood.’
‘But you are a doctor,’ he said gently, as if this was a place where no one fell short in any way. ‘And I work in the tourist industry,’ he went on to explain, as if his command of a second language was nothing special. ‘I work at—’
‘Rancho del Condor?’ Sophie guessed.
‘That’s right,’ he answered with obvious pleasure.
Sophie could feel Xavier watching her. Glancing up, she found she was right. He was pleased by her interest; she could see it in his eyes. She dragged her gaze away from him to listen as Agustin continued. ‘My wife, Francisca, speaks English too, and the children will learn,’ he stated firmly, as if that was a direct instruction to all of them.
Smiling back at Agustin and looking around at his family, Sophie felt the same tug in her heart she guessed Xavier felt whenever he came here.
She glanced over to where Xavier was sitting with the older boy, and was surprised when he looked up. There was something raw in his stare that commanded her attention, but then he too turned back to listen to whatever Marcos was saying to him. They were seated together in an area arranged for privacy. A colourful swag of the typical, mostly red Peruvian cloth was strung between two poles in one corner of the room, and their stools were pulled so close together that their heads were almost touching. And now she knew the secret of the bulging bag—medical books.
‘Well, I don’t need them,’ Xavier said with a dismissive gesture, when she asked him about it later on the way home.
‘So, Marcos—’
‘Wants to be a doctor,’ Xavier said, anticipating her question.
‘But how—?’
‘There’s a scholarship.’ He left it at that.
‘The Armando Martinez Bordiu Scholarship?’ Sophie said gently.
‘That’s right,’ he said.
When the lights of the clinic came into sight Xavier slowed the truck before they got there and, finding a clearing at one side of the road, he pulled in and cut the engine.
‘Where are we now?’ Sophie asked curiously.
‘Somewhere,’ he said, turning to look at her. ‘Does it matter?’
Sophie’s heart had picked up pace until she could hardly breathe. ‘Of course not, I just wondered.’
Leaning across the seat, Xavier began toying with the soft fringe that, as usual, had tumbled into her eyes.
Automatically reaching up to push it away, Sophie’s fingers encountered his. Moving of their own accord, or so it seemed to her, they twined through his and rested there for a while. Just having their hands locked together was enough to make her breathing ragged. It sounded loud in the silence of the darkened cab. Raising the game, Xavier began caressing her palm with a sensitive, compelling touch, and then he moved on to stroke the blue-white veins showing her raised pulse clearly beneath her fine, sun-blushed skin.
‘So, why are we here?’ Sophie managed in a voice that sounded faint against the heartbeat thundering in her ears.
‘Because I’m not ready to go back yet,’ Xavier said, steering a glance at her.
‘But why—?’
‘Has anyone ever told you that you ask too many questions?’
‘Yes,’ Sophie admitted softly, ‘you.’
‘Well, you haven’t changed a bit since the day I first met you, Sophie Ford. You still ask far too many questions.’
His voice was low, little more than a whisper. Sophie felt her level of awareness soar to match his.
‘Are you seriously telling me you have never done this before?’ Xavier demanded softly.
‘Done what?’
His answer was a kiss. His mouth barely touched hers. He held himself back deliberately, knowing the moment he stopped kissing her she would want more.
‘Kissed in the back of a car,’ Xavier continued, teasing her mercilessly with the lightest brush of his lips on her face, her neck, her eyelids, ‘or the front of a truck, in this case,’ he murmured, his quiet laughter mingling with her sighs as Sophie swayed towards him, groaning in need. ‘What is it, querida? Do you want this?’ he murmured, returning to tease the seam of her lips with his tongue.
Sophie could only shudder out a sigh, but she was trembling with sensation when he moved away again, this time to drop kisses along the line of her jaw.
‘Or this?’ he suggested softly. Having reached the lobe of her ear, he took it delicately between his lips to suckle, the heat of his breath causing every fine hair on her neck to stand erect. His kisses on the nape of her neck
made her move languorously on the seat. She seemed to have lost all semblance of control over her body, and could only writhe in anticipation when his searing glance challenged her to deny the extent of her arousal.
‘Or this—’
She cried out as his powerful hand enclosed the soft swell of her breast, and in the next moment she was pressing against him, not caring what he might think of her, linking her hands behind his neck, dragging him to her, seeking his mouth and kissing him hard, opening her lips beneath his, inviting his possession, relishing the erotic clash of his tongue against her own. She didn’t want any more talk, any more teasing… She wanted the touch of his hand nursing her breast to last for ever. She loved the fact that he found her nipple unhesitatingly through her clothes and that he knew just how to touch her, how to make her find extremes of pleasure she had never known existed. She was greedy, she had been starved of physical love too long and, ripping her shirt open, she seized his other hand and made him claim her neglected breast, folding her own hand around his to increase the pressure and leave him in no doubt that this was what she needed.
‘Or is this what you really want?’ he murmured, easing her thighs apart.
Sophie gasped. Even through the fabric of her summer-weight jeans she was sure they could both feel the heat and, in the slanting shafts of moonshine streaming into the cab, see the swollen signs of her arousal. But, as her hands rushed to the top button above the zip, Xavier stopped her, and firmly moved them away.
‘Not yet,’ he warned softly. ‘We’ve a long way to go before we get that far.’
‘What do you mean?’ Sophie groaned breathlessly, writhing a little beneath his firm touch. ‘I want… I need—’
‘I know,’ Xavier said soothingly. ‘I know exactly what you need.’ And then one of his hands was between her legs, and his long, lean fingers began stroking—lightly, rhythmically so that Sophie could only issue little surprised cries of pleasure and relief.
He brought her to the edge with unhurried ease, and when he tipped her over the small cab echoed with her cries and then with her whimpers of exhaustion and delight as the violent waves of pleasure subsided gradually into eddies of contentment.
