Along for the Ride (6 page)

“Oh, Rafi. I—I’m at work.”

“Yes.” There was a note of triumph in Rafi’s voice, a trace of wickedness. “So you are. A shame. I too am working, driving, and I can only imagine how I will take you next. But you’ll return to work, Lauren, and you’ll forget me for now, put this conversation out of your mind. You have things to do, responsibilities. And that is as it should be. Do your work, and I shall do mine. But, Lauren—the next time I see you I intend to have something very special in mind for you.

“That is a promise.”

CHAPTER FIVE

It could not have been a more perfect day. Spring had finally begun in earnest in Chicago. The smell of moist earth and new buds mixed with the sharp scents carried from the coffee shop down the street, and crocus lifted their leaves to the sun, which was just cresting the roofs of the buildings.

But Lauren barely noticed. She hesitated, locking the door of her apartment carefully, then taking a deep breath before she turned to face him.

He hadn’t called again, not since that afternoon last week when he’d set her smoldering in the tiny cubicle in New York. The rest of the work week had passed, and the weekend; each day she replayed his words, his insinuations. And she was ready to hear them again. Needed to hear them again.

He hadn’t called. Nor had he promised to. She had merely thought—

But she had no right to think that way. They weren't dating. For all she knew, he had a girlfriend, someone his own age, someone with whom he planned a future. Lauren realized she might just be a passing fancy to him. Some men, she knew, had a curiosity about older women the way others longed to bed a flight attendant or an athlete.

It shouldn't matter if Rafi was just indulging a whim. Clandestine love affairs were exciting because they were illicit, because lovers had to endure separations. After all, didn’t she want him all the more the longer she waited to see him again? His touch—oh, it would be like salvation, like water slaking a bottomless thirst. No doubt he knew this.

It was the affair she needed, Lauren reminded herself. Passion, forgetting old wounds, uncovering new pleasures. Not
love
, but mutual pleasure. She was lucky to have found herself in the capable hands of a man of experience and skilled far beyond his years.

So she would remember and heed the rules.

“Ms. Sherman,” Rafi greeted her. His hand rested on the door. The door of the back seat of a shiny black stretch limousine.

Lauren froze, stricken.
Ms. Sherman
. What had happened? What had she done? The beautiful, understated town car had been replaced by this vulgar thing, and she was being relegated back to the role of the passenger, the client. Rafi's eyes were unreadable behind his dark glasses.

Lauren took a step, stumbled. Rafi caught her elbow, opened the door for her, and bent to help her in.

“It’s all right,” Rafi whispered in her ear. “Trust me.”

Only after he slid in next to her did she realize they were not alone.

“Ms. Sherman,” Rafi said, settling next to her, “I do hope you don’t mind. This is Benito, another driver at the service, and his cousin Alexandro.”

From the front seat, through the open screen that separated the body of the limousine from the front, two men turned and smiled at her. The driver was round-faced and close-shorn, the other man a near replica, dressed in brightly colored cotton shirts, gold chains at their necks.

“Such a coincidence,” Rafi continued. “They are going to Racine also this morning. Alexandro’s mother is in the hospital. Benito needed someone to return his car. I thought…”

Too confused to respond, Lauren merely nodded, then forced herself to speak. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I hope it’s nothing too serious?”

“A broken ankle,” the man replied. “The doctor says it will heal, but she will need help at home. Her apartment has so many steps.”

“We’ll fix her roof while we are there,” Benito added. His eyes were apologetic, kind. “A little painting, maybe. You know how it is.”

“If you don’t mind, Ms. Sherman, we can help them get there this morning,” Rafi interjected. “I told them you are a long-standing client of mine, and very kind. Otherwise they must wait until tonight.”

“My sister, she cannot leave work until six,” Alexandro said. He, too, seemed chagrined to impose.

“Of course,” Lauren said, projecting an enthusiasm she did not feel. “Of course. It’s no trouble.”

Next to her, Rafi stretched comfortably. “We can relax on the drive, no?”

Lauren turned to him, open-mouthed, in time to see him wink.

The car started, and pulled smoothly away from the curb. Lauren’s head spun with doubts. Racine was nowhere near the airport, was in fact an hour and a half north of the city. Had Rafi done this to ensure that they would not be alone together? But that made no sense—why not just send a substitute driver, if he had wanted to break things off?

Yet that seemed impossible, given the way he had talked to her, made love to her over the phone. Even now he edged closer to her, until she could feel the heat of his body next to her own. Though he looked straight ahead, she could tell he wore a faint hint of a smile, almost roguish.

Making their way through traffic, the men in front began to talk quietly, comfortably. Their soft voices rose and fell, breaking now and then into laughter, ignoring their passengers.

Soon they turned onto the highway, and, sighing comfortably, Rafi eased his hand onto Lauren’s knee.

The move was so unexpected that she nearly jumped, but a glance at Rafi cautioned her to be still. He shook his head slightly, and quirked an eyebrow. If he was asking permission, it was with the certainty that her answer would be yes.

His confidence provoked something inside her. With no warning he had thrust her into this situation, turning her expectations upside down, eroding what little remained of her confidence by bringing strangers into their midst.

“Something I’ve never done before, I believe you said,” Rafi murmured, sliding his hand a little higher on her thigh.

And suddenly she understood. He had done this on purpose. This crazy scenario, this false destination, these other people. Rafi had come up with something new. And while Lauren couldn’t make sense of it, as his fingers caressed the skin of her inner thighs, heat and desire rocketed through her body.

Lauren licked her lips, stared at Rafi’s hand and watched in fascination as he explored the skin of her thigh with seeming leisure. The interior of the limousine was darkened by the tinted windows. The seats, arranged along the length of the car, were plush and comfortable, but Lauren was far from relaxed.

Rafi continued to look ahead, or glance now and then out the window at the drab Midwestern landscape passing by. He appeared uninterested in her as he hummed tunelessly.

His fingers told a different story.

At length they traveled higher and discovered Lauren’s secret. For the first time in her life, she was wearing garters. Her silk hosiery had been an indulgence far beyond her usual sensible underwear, the black garters and matching tiny scrap of a thong from a European shop she’d never before entered.

Lauren had imagined lifting her skirt to reveal these offerings to her lover, when she was ready—not having him discover them this way, when she could neither move nor speak. She wanted to protest, explain.

But the low sound Rafi made in his throat—a rumbling almost guttural in its hunger—stilled her anxiety and replaced it with raw need. Rafi slipped two fingers under the lace-covered elastic, tugged gently. He played with the soft band for a while before abandoning it, almost reluctantly, to renew his explorations.

His fingers neared the cleft between her legs, but stopped short. He sank his fingers greedily in her flesh and kneaded, stroked. Lauren caught her breath as he stroked higher, and frantically glanced in front to see if the two men had noticed.

They had not. They talked on, their unfamiliar language almost song-like in its cadence. If they turned in their seats, they would see exactly what was going on, Rafi plundering, Lauren immobilized with need. The mechanism of the limousine’s screen took up some space, it was true, but the opening was still ample to see everything that was going on.

The screen
. It could be closed, ensuring their privacy. But of course, that wasn’t part of Rafi’s plan. The presence of witnesses, oblivious as they were, was what he had meant…the thing he hadn’t done before.

It would have been inconceivable to the old Lauren to let a man caress her in public, even semi-concealed as they were. But now she was not only allowing Rafi to touch her, she found herself parting her legs, straining against the taut fabric of her tailored skirt, and praying that he wouldn’t stop.

As if in response to her unspoken plea, Rafi slid his fingers up to her panties, damp and hot with her desire. He traced their scalloped edges, made his way around the tiny triangle, and she heard a ragged breath escape his lips. She turned and met his eyes. They blazed nearly black with heat and longing, and he did not look away as he found the thin ribbon that held the silk in place and twisted it, almost savagely, in his fingers until she heard the faint rip of the fabric.

Still he held her gaze as he tore them again until they came away in his fingers. She felt them slide against her skin and then they were crumpled in his fist. She couldn’t break her stare even when he folded the black silk into a small square and lifted it to his face. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, and she thought she saw him tremble slightly.

Lauren glanced again to the front, but the two men took no notice. The unfamiliar sensation of her own nakedness under her clothes was maddening. Rafi tucked the silk into a pocket, then rested his hand on the seat between them. He teased her with a look, an unspoken question; she responded by moving her hips closer to the edge of the seat. She had to have his touch, or she would fly apart.

He did not disappoint her. His fingers glided once more along her thighs, and this time they stopped only to shove her skirt roughly higher, allowing him access. She was exposed now, not only to his touch and to the view of either man who might turn around, but also to the cool air circulating in the car. The sensation was excruciating, the air laving the wet heat of her longing.

In the next second his fingers had found and entered her, gently but boldly. The suddenness of his move shocked her out of her semi-stupor and she startled, but he did not yield, and in seconds she stopped resisting and moved against him. A second finger joined the first, and then his thumb found her nub of pleasure and began circling slowly.

Lauren gasped. She couldn’t help it. She longed to cry out, but the cry strangled in her throat by her sheer will.

“Take your pleasure, Lauren,” Rafi whispered out of the corner of his mouth. Lauren barely heard him at all above the whirring air conditioner and the conversation from the front seat. “Take it, here. I want to watch.”

Lauren let her eyes drift closed, sank a little lower in the seat, and let the sensation wash over her. His skilled touch brought her to the edge and then, magically, he somehow knew exactly when to pull back, teasing her and drawing out her longing until she had to bite her lip to keep from moaning.

The sound in the car blurred together as Lauren felt tears of frustration wet her lashes. When she could bear it no more she lifted her hips to Rafi’s touch, met his gentle thrusts with her own urgent ones, not caring who might see. She gritted her teeth together, and then she came, sensation shattering her ache until pain and pleasure mixed together and she pressed herself against his palm, taking him as far as she could and drowning willingly in her own thundering gratification.

Dimly she was aware of her skirt being tugged gently into place, of Rafi’s arm supporting her shoulders. She heard him clear his throat.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “the lady has a migraine. I wonder if you would mind closing the screen for her.”

Benito only glanced back briefly before murmuring his assent and then the opaque screen slid noiselessly into place.

Rafi gazed, with no small measure of satisfaction, at Lauren’s face. It was flushed with pleasure and exertion. Her eyelids gleamed with the sheen of her effort, and a few strands of her hair clung to her cheek, her parted lips.

He wanted to kiss her. He wanted to hold her against him and murmur in her ear. Damn it, for some insane reason, he wanted to tell her he loved her when she was like this, vulnerable and satiated and pliant in his arms.

Instead, he chose his words carefully. “Did that please you, Lauren?”

She opened her eyes and stared up at him. “You know it did,” she accused.

“Of course.” He allowed himself a small smile; his little scenario had been successful beyond his hopes. “I could not disappoint you, after all.”

“You certainly didn’t.” Lauren’s eyes widened as she looked at him, and then she reached up a hand and caressed his face, lingering at his lips, rubbing a thumb slowly between them, parting them. “The screen—is it soundproof?”

Rafi raised his eyebrows, caught his breath. “Yes,” he said, “completely.”

“Good,” she said. She wrapped her arms around him, tugging him toward her. He went, willingly, ready to take her full lips in a hungry kiss, but at the last moment she ducked, pressing her face to his throat instead.

“When you…take me that way,” she said, softly, uncertainly, her breath hot against his skin, “it makes me need you. Again, inside me.”

Rafi felt his mouth go dry at her words. He had been prepared to forego his own satisfaction to see her pleasure, but it had been more difficult than he imagined. His engorged shaft strained painfully against his pants.

“Lauren,” he began, kissing her hairline, but she only burrowed closer against him.

“Not…”

He felt her swallow.

“Not gently,” she finally whispered.

Rafi froze, then willed himself to speak. “Ah. I see.”

Her words were not what he expected. Not wanting to betray his shock, he lifted her face to his, and this time she let him. At the last minute, before she joined the embrace, she looked at him, a look full of raw hunger and challenge.