AllFreeNovel
Share Us
IT WAS UNLIKE ANYTHING Lauren had ever felt in her life. She wrapped her arms more tightly around Raf’s waist as he took a tight corner, so their knees dipped towards the road and she found it almost impossible to believe they weren’t going to slide onto the road. A noise filled her helmet and it took Lauren a second to realise she was laughing.
The sound of the motorbike, the sight of Tuscan cliffs falling away to their left, the verdant hills to their right, and the setting sun spraying beams of gold over them, Lauren clung to Raf almost as if she feared this was a dream or something. The pressure of the bike between her legs stirred memories and desire deep inside her, making her impatient to be off this thing and back in Raf’s arms.
Yaya had still been tired today. She’d slept late, but when she’d woken, she’d been full of talk of ‘her boys’. It had been all she’d wanted to talk about and Lauren had popped in and out, her blood heating whenever Raf’s name was mentioned and memories of the time they’d spent at his home ran through her mind like a movie on repeat. Every muscle in her body felt different, she was aware of her nipples, her thighs, her lower back, every inch of her that he’d touched and kissed and made a part of him.
In the afternoon, Yaya had eaten a small omelette and been left to the care of the nursing staff, meaning Lauren was at a loose end. And Raf was only too obliging in tying it up.
“Where are we going?” She asked but it was impossible – of course he didn’t hear. She reconciled herself to simply waiting and seeing. A short time later, he pulled the bike onto a dusty mountain track cutting across a gentle slope. Huge trees loomed over them, some olives, some oak, and a little squirrel scampered out of their way as they roared past. Lauren held on more tightly. Finally, he slowed down and pulled the bike to the side of the path, killing the engine. There was silence at first, but only while her ears grew accustomed to the lack of the motorbike’s roar. Then, she heard the choir of noises – birds tweeting, trees rustling in the dusk breeze, crickets throbbing with their high-pitched, rhythmic call.
She stepped off the bike first; Raf followed as he removed his helmet, then turned towards her, his fingers finding the release of her helmet and pressing it, lifting it off her head. Without moving away from her, he reached behind himself to place the helmet on the bike, then pushed his fingers into her hair, loosening it around her shoulders. She stared up at him with a strange feeling inside her chest.
This is temporary.
It doesn’t mean anything.
I love Thom; this means nothing.
Her smile was over-bright, hiding the feelings that were permanently at war within her. The sense of betrayal had ebbed slightly, at the start of their agreement, but that wasn’t a permanent state of relaxation. If anything, it came back with a blinding intensity whenever she found herself having too much fun. She tried to ignore the gnawing sense of guilt, but it was right there inside of her.
“Come on,” his voice was husky. So, so husky. Her stomach tightened in knots. He was ridiculously hot. Impossibly sexy. An incredible lover. She needed to remember that this was just sex, a purely physical connection, and then the guilt abated. It was the polar opposite of what she’d shared with Thom. That had been based on love and life-long affection, on respect and friendship. Sex had been very beside the point for them – his illness had necessitated that.
Raf was definitely nothing like Thom. Where Thom had been gentle and cerebral, bookish and sort of a dweeb, Raf was pure alpha-male.
She breathed out slowly, calming down with all the reassurances. She let him lace his fingers through hers and pull her gently away from the bike, further from the path on which they’d driven. Through a row of oak trees, to a gently sloping hill. After a few minutes he slowed, released her hand and shrugged out of his leather jacket, laying it on the ground.
He gestured for her to sit and she did, stretching her legs in front of her in an attempt to catch the last of the late-afternoon sunshine. The hill was covered in the softest, most lush grass, creating the effect of a pale green blanket, interspersed with tiny blue and white flowers, spread like confetti. Lauren reached for one absentmindedly, picking a blue flower and twirling it by the hair-thin stalk between her fingertips and thumb.
Beyond the hill lay a tapestry of greens, different shades and shapes, some covered in grape vines, others in poplar trees, with pale grey roads winding through them in whimsical loops. There was a town a little way off in the distance, and from up here it looked like something Thom might have made as a model – another of his habits. Tiny little brown and rust-red buildings with their tiled rooves, bursts of colour at the windows courtesy of boxes overflowing with geraniums and lavender.
She closed her eyes for a moment and drew in a breath, inhaling the fragrance of the summer evening, the flowers, the air, the masculinity of Raf as he came to sit beside her, casually placing one arm in the space behind her back, creating a frame for her, close without being overbearing, as though he instinctively understood her need for room.
“This is beautiful.”
“Si.”
“Where are we?”
“On a hill, on the outskirts of Amarona.”
“Amarona?”
With his other hand he gestured to Thom’s little model village. “There. Can you see it?”
She nodded, but it was difficult to concentrate now with Raf so close. “Yes, I do.” She angled her face, and they were suddenly so close that breathing became difficult. “Do you come here often?”
He reached for her chin, tilting her face towards his. “Not often, no. When I was younger – a teenager – I did more so.”
“Why?”
He frowned, his eyes a little distracted. “I liked the space.”
She couldn’t help but smile at that. “As opposed to the tight confines of Villa Fortune?”
“It’s more confined than you might think,” he responded with a lazy grin, before laying back, his hands behind his head, his eyes fixed on the dusk sky overhead.
She wriggled down to the ground, propping herself on one elbow so that she could see him clearly.
“What, miles and miles of outdoor space with a villa that could better be described as a mansion at the centre?”
