‘Riccardo…stop…’ she pleaded, making no effort to pull away from him. In fact, just the opposite. ‘If you don’t, I won’t be able to stop myself…’ She tugged his hand, and before he could return to his devastating caresses Charlie pushed him onto his back. Her near-climax was sending waves of sensation racing through her body, making her movements frantic as she did away with the clothes separating their feverish bodies. Then she slid onto him and flung her head back, eyes shut, her breasts bouncing as she controlled the rhythm of their lovemaking, until he shuddered under her just as she reached her body’s nirvana.
She sagged forward, spent, and enjoyed the gentle touch of his hands on her breasts as he came down with her from his own personal peak of satisfaction.
‘Have I told you that you have beautiful breasts?’ Riccardo asked, and Charlie subsided onto him with a smile.
‘I believe you have. But please don’t let that get in the way of repeating yourself.’ She grinned and nuzzled him on his chin, loving the way the faint abrasive feel of his bristle felt against her smooth skin. She didn’t think that any of the boys in her circle of university friends had bristle. Ever since she had become involved with Riccardo, she had blithely lumped all her male acquaintances into some indistinct category with the heading ‘young and therefore immature’.
Of course, they would be, she thought guiltily. They were, after all, only eighteen. The same age as her. Not that Riccardo was aware of that little fact. She quickly shoved the thought to the back of her head and concentrated on the matter in hand—namely trying to find out how he felt about her. And not just the lust bit.
She clasped her fingers together under her chin and surveyed him seriously.
‘Will you miss me?’ she asked.
With her breasts squashed against his chest, and in the languorous aftermath of unbridled passion, Riccardo didn’t find it too hard to tell her that he would.
‘Not that I would call three days a lifetime,’ he teased, brushing back her hair.
‘I know it’s not a lifetime, but it’s a long time. I mean, we’ve been in each other’s company for weeks. It’s just going to be a little…odd, working here at the vineyard and not seeing you around and about.’#p#分页标题#e#
In my vineyard, Riccardo thought proudly, although she wasn’t aware of that. As far as she was concerned, he was just bumming around, doing a bit of this and a bit of that on the production side. Since he had never in his life done any bumming around, he was quite charmed to be thought of in that light.
More realistically, there was no way he was going to give her any inkling as to what he was really all about. Gold-diggers swarmed around wealthy men like flies to a honey pot, and it was refreshing to spend his time with a woman without crazy suspicions proliferating in his head.
‘It’ll give you time to catch up with those friends of yours.’
‘I guess it is only a few days,’ Charlie sighed. She slid off him. ‘There, you can breathe now that I’m off you.’ She reached for her tee-shirt and he stopped her.
‘Not yet. I like looking at you naked.’
‘Just a shame most of it has to take place outdoors,’ she said wistfully. ‘Honestly, the amount of times I’ve tried to hint to Jayne and Simone that they should go spend a night somewhere so that we could have the place to ourselves…’
‘A night where?’
‘Oh, I don’t know.’ She giggled. ‘Wherever it is people go to when they want to give other people space in a cramped flat.’
‘Ah, that mystery place. I suppose if they knew of its existence they might have been more obliging.’ He linked his hands behind his head, comfortable in his own nudity, and appreciated the lines of her body. The sun had turned her skin a healthy golden colour, which suited her long, streaky blonde hair and wide blue eyes. He thought, not for the first time, how much younger she looked than her twenty-four years, but then that was probably because she wore next to no make-up, which was always ageing on a woman.
‘And also,’ Charlie ventured tentatively, ‘I’m not going to be around for much longer. I have to get back to England.’
‘Yes. And that will be exciting for you. Taking up a new job, meeting new people.’
‘Um, yes,’ she said indistinctly, thinking of the university life looming in front of her. Two months ago, she couldn’t wait to get there. Now she was dreading it after her heady summer in the sun. ‘And then you’ll be off as well…Do you realise you’ve never actually told me exactly where your next port of call is going to be?’ Although, she now thought, she had told him practically everything about herself. About her dad dying when she was six, and being brought up by her mother who had worked her fingers to the bone so that her two daughters didn’t have to do without. About her mother being the victim of a hit-and-run accident which had put Charlie off cars for a long time. About her sister now living in Australia, happily married and with a brand-new baby whom Charlie had never seen except on her computer.