Page 65 of Love on the Vine
“Jake, what is it?” Olivia was studying me with a curious expression on her face. “Where’d you go just then?”
“I was just trying to figure out what the hell I’ve been doing with myself this past year. Besides driving Jin into an early grave by overworking him.” I shook my head and reached for her.
“And yourself.” She perched on my lap and combed her fingers through the wet hair curling over the back of my neck. It really was getting too long.
“I’m not working now.” I fondled her breast through her T-shirt, watched as her nipple pebbled, then leaned over and sucked it until the material was clinging to her and she was panting, squirming in my lap.
“But we just finished,” she protested weakly. “We’ll have to take another shower. Think of the environment. There’s a water shortage.”
I flipped her over onto the bed and inched the T-shirt up her torso, licking a path up her skin as it was revealed.
“I never had you pegged as someone so . . . so . . .” She swallowed her words with a moan as I slipped a finger inside.
“So what?” I whispered as I nibbled on her earlobe.
“Insatiable.”
* * *
The gears ground as the car stalled in the middle of the road. I sat back in the passenger seat and watched Olivia yank at the gearshift, her eyes darting nervously to the rearview mirror.
We were alone on the country road, sheltered from the sun in a tunnel of plane trees. We’d left the house early and taken the scenic route toward the lavender fields of Valensole, an activity on Olivia’s bucket list. I’d suggested an outing today, not only because I wanted to make her happy, but to prove to myself that I was still able to do something other than sex in the shower, by the pool, in the cottage, on the couch.
I might be insatiable, but I still hadsomeself-control.
“It’s cliché, I know. But I’ve always wanted to see them,” Olivia had pleaded when I’d rolled my eyes at the suggestion of the lavender fields. In the end I’d agreed, but only if she’d let me teach her how to drive stick.
“Ugh! You better take over. I’m never going to get this,” she cried. She’d been saying the same thing for the last half hour since I’d handed her the keys. I wasn’t about to let her give up.
“No way. You got this. Foot on the brake, shift into neutral, and restart.”
“There’s a car behind us!” she protested, and I glanced in the mirror at the tiny moving speck cresting the hill in the distance.
“You’ve got time. Don’t worry about them.”
“I hate this.” She ground the gears but finally got the car moving again.
“You can’t be perfect at everything right away,” I said, laughing when she stuck her tongue out at me. “Careful, I might take that as an invitation.”
After another half hour of repeated stalling and lots of cursing, we were cruising along the serpentine roads toward the massive plateau of the lavender fields. With the top down I could smell the flowers before we saw them, an inland ocean of purpleframed by swaying fields of wheat with Mount Ventoux in the background.
“Oh, so pretty. Look!” Olivia gasped in delight as we descended a winding hill, the car taking on speed as we went. “Ah, what do I do?” she cried.
“Slow and downshift before the curve. And keep your eyes on the road, please. I’d hate to finish up in that ditch because you were distracted by flowers.” I tensed in my seat as she struggled with the gears again.
Somehow, we made it down the hill in one piece and pulled off the road, parking under some trees.
“You’re sure you want to ride in this heat?” I asked before unhitching the bikes. The sun was blazing in the nearly cloudless sky, but thankfully there was a small breeze.
“Yes, I have my hat.” Olivia pulled her straw hat over her hair, and we took off. The enticing view of her backside in her white shorts and smocked halter top as she rode in front of me was all the encouragement I needed to follow her. After a few minutes of pedaling, I realized that I was enjoying myself. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d ridden a bike recreationally and decided to do it more often.
We rode lazily for a while, stopping in a field where a harvest was taking place and chatting with the workers, then taking off again, the whirring of the bicycle wheels lulling me into a meditative trance.
When I spotted a line of leafy trees in the distance, I suggested we have our picnic there. All that pedaling had burned a hole through my stomach, and I was starving.
“Race you,” I said as I rolled past Olivia, now pedaling like mad behind me.
I reached the trees first and, after abandoning my bike in the dry grass, slid down against the tree trunk, and pretended tosleep. A smile tickled my lips when Olivia’s wheels screeched to a halt in front of me.
