with another man because you thought that sex with a man would be like mating was with Devlin and Dalia?”
And no man could match up to Rais’ manliness, she thought silently. “That and other reasons. But yes. So when you want me to give you a number, I can’t do that. Nor can I be casual about sex like you are.”
He pulled her closer, kissing her shoulder softly. “I don’t think there would be anything casual when I finally get you into bed, Rachel.”
She swung her head around, looking up at him with an anxious expression on her face. “When? Not if?”
He shook his head. “We will happen, my dear. And it’s going to be soon. But I promise that you won’t be scared and you will enjoy every moment of it along the way.” He was thinking back to Saturday morning and the way she’d responded to his touch, begging him in her sleep to keep going. Yes, she would be doing that with him again. Very soon, he thought.
He dropped his hand and stepped back. “In the meantime, let’s have lunch and you can help me decide on which wine to serve.”
She breathed a bit easier now that he was walking back towards the lunch table. She thought it was sweet that Lucy had chosen the pink roses to decorate the table and she walked closer. “These are my favorites,” she said, touching the delicate petals of one of the perfect, pink roses with just a hint of red on the tips of each petal. “I remember the day you brought this plant here to your rose garden. I was so excited to see what it would be like after you described it to me.”
“I remember the day,” he replied with a nostalgic smile. He’d made a special trip to German to find this particular rose, wanting to surprise her with it. Almost all of the roses had been his gift to her, although she didn’t even know it. When she was fourteen years old, he’d hired a man to find a special rose bush for her. When he saw how excited she was by the roses, how she preferred to do her homework in the rose garden, he’d built up his collection of roses, trying to find unique and hardy flowers she might enjoy. “I like the ones that have a stronger scent, but you want the ones with the most vibrant color.”
Rachel laughed and pulled her hand away. “I used to love just laying in the garden and smelling the roses. My dad would find me lying in the dirt, homework still not finished and he’d drag me back to the stables so he could monitor me while I finished.”
Rais remembered several occasions like that. He would chuckle from his office window as he watched her father storm up to the rose garden, irritated that he’d had to come look for her. But she was always there.
“He used to call them ‘damn girly flowers’ whenever he found me over there.” She smiled at the memory and sat down at the table, pulling the linen napkin onto her lap.
Rais opened another bottle of wine and poured a bit of the white into a glass. “I don’t really like this white, but let me know what you think.”
She squinched up her nose and shook her head. “A bit too dry and tart for a dinner, don’t you think?”
“It goes well with cheese,” he suggested.
“Not everyone will be eating cheese,” she pointed out.
Bottle after bottle, they sipped and laughed over the various descriptions. Rais already knew which wine he wanted at the first party, but it was a relaxing way to spend the afternoon. And he could tell that she was getting a bit tipsy, which was even better. He wanted her relaxed and enjoying herself.
He encouraged her to eat the braised chicken Lucy had made them for lunch, and they both drank plenty of water to hydrate themselves and ate bread to keep the food in them. But as the afternoon continued, he stopped opening new bottles and just kept topping off their glasses with the one wine they both enjoyed.
Rachel knew the moment that the afternoon changed. The relaxed feeling shifted slightly. As did Rais. They had moved from the dining room table to the living room with the soft, leather sofas. She realized suddenly that he was sitting much too close to her and, as she looked down at her legs, they were actually across his