Page 59 of Our Secret Summer

Because Raffo had learned two very valuable lessons at the tender age of thirteen. No matter that she’d been too young to understand back then, when there was only pain and loss and grief. She knew now.

Life was short, and love was never a given.

Then, Dylan’s fingers slipped inside her panties and met with Raffo’s wetness, and Raffo lost her mind completely.

CHAPTER 39

Dylan had waited weeks for this moment. At last, it was happening. Raffo’s strong fingers curled around her wrist. Dylan wasn’t sure why she was so hung up on this specific gesture, because Raffo had done many other things to her in Big Bear, yet this was the one her mind had been stuck on. Maybe because, subconsciously, it claimed a kind of ownership that was unthinkable outside of the bedroom. It drove Dylan wild when Raffo held her wrists above her head, even though her grip wasn’t that tight and Dylan could easily shake herself loose, yet that was the very last thing she wanted to do.

Or maybe it was because it made her breasts jut out, vulnerably, but also irresistibly, to Raffo, who was as crazy about her breasts as she was about Dylan’s personality.

The evidence was on display on the opposite wall to the bed they were in. Raffo had painted that topless image from a raw, primitive instinct. From a place inside her she couldn’t hide from. Dylan had spent many hours staring at that painting, and she’d given it a lot of thought. That was the only and inevitable conclusion she had drawn.

And now, she could actually ask Raffo. They could lie in Dylan’s bed together and study the painting and spend hours discussing its myriad meanings—Dylan looked forward to how adorably uncomfortable that would make Raffo.

For now, she lay panting in Raffo’s grasp. Dylan tried to steady her breathing, but it was futile. Her body was all revved up from watching Raffo climax earlier, her voice deliciously low and her face all tortured satisfaction.

Raffo caught Dylan’s hard nipple between her lips, then swept her soft, warm tongue over it. It was, contained in one second, the very thing that made Raffo so enchanting. She was soft and hard all at once, her hardness an undertone that never overshadowed the softness at her surface.

One night in bed in Big Bear, Raffo had told her a few things that she and Mia had done in bed—from what Dylan could gather, mostly on Mia’s insistence. Although, from the start, Raffo had struck her as someone not easily swayed by what someone else wanted from her. But maybe that was the power Mia’d had over her at the dying end of their relationship. Maybe giving in to Mia’s whims—for whips as well as open relationships—had been Raffo’s last-ditch attempt at trying to salvage things. And she had learned the hard way that it didn’t work.

Just as Raffo’s grip on Dylan’s wrists wasn’t one-sidedly tight, and the clasp of her lips on her nipple wasn’t just agonizingly sharp, Raffo was so many delicious things gathered in one person. Principled enough not to date her best friend’s mother but also strong enough, when she simply couldn’t take it anymore, to change her mind and stand up to Connor. To do that for Dylan—for them. No wonder Dylan hadn’t been able to get over her.

Dylan no longer had any intention of getting over Raffo. Sure, she was aroused to the point of no return, because Raffo’s hand was traveling across her belly, leaving a field of goose bumps in its wake, but it wasn’t just infatuation tingling in every one of her nerve endings. When Dylan had seen that card from her son, when she’d gotten the permission she had hoped for, in a flash, Dylan had known.

Raffo was the one.

She could fill a dozen sheets of paper with an endless list of reasons, but the reasons didn’t matter, in the end. The only thing that mattered was how she felt. How her body had told her, as she sat opposite Raffo, that despite everything, despite the glaring obstacle that her own son represented, this was the only way it was meant to be. Despite their age difference and Raffo only being Dylan’s ‘third woman’, they were meant to be together.

Dylan wasn’t so deluded that she believed she and Raffo would magically be together forever—she didn’t have a crystal ball, and life had taught her better than to make such silly, absolute predictions. Yet Dylan knew, in every fiber of her being, that she should be with Raffo now. That Raffo was the one for her now. That she could no longer date—what had Con called them?—mediocre middle-aged men and expect to feel the same way she did when she was with Raffo.

Oh, how Raffo was the one for her. Being with her was like experiencing all over again, as though for the very first time, how utterly breathtaking sex could be.

Right now, Raffo clasped Dylan’s wrists above her head with one hand, while her other reached the apex of her thighs.

Dylan’s clit thumped wildly.

Age melted away as her body responded with the vigor of someone three decades younger. Although she would need lube. There were some things that would always betray her age. But Dylan didn’t want to be younger, and clearly, Raffo didn’t need her to be younger, either.

Raffo gazed down at her with her bottomless, pitch-black eyes. She tugged at her lower lip with her teeth, as though an idea had just occurred to her. Or maybe she was trying to figure out where the lube was—mercifully, it was right there on the nightstand. After their encounter at Connor’s house, Dylan had needed copious amounts of it to quiet her needy body. Instead, Raffo sucked her index finger between her lips, and the sight made Dylan’s clit beat in triple time.

Raffo brought her wet fingertip between Dylan’s legs and, ever so gently—with that soft, tender touch she had—circled it around Dylan’s pulsing clit.

A deep groan escaped Dylan. She’d dreamed of this moment—had actively envisioned it on the backs of her eyelids—countless times. The more profound her desire, and the wilder her fantasies had become, the less chance they’d seemed to have of coming true. But this was very real. Raffo’s body was warm against hers. Her dark gaze was intoxicating and her face only a fraction removed from Dylan’s. Her grip around Dylan’s wrists was far more arousing than the one in her imagination. And that fingertip edging along her clit was about to drive her to utter delirium.

The half a million dollars Dylan had lost seemed like a small price to pay for this—for her dreams coming true. She would never have gone to Big Bear if she hadn’t lost the money. She would never have spent all that time with Raffo. She would never have fallen in love with her. Dylan would give every last penny she possessed for a night like this with Raffo. And she had every intention of turning one night into many.

“Come for me,” Raffo said—instructed, really.

Dylan nearly lost her mind entirely.

Raffo’s finger grew a little more insistent but this wasn’t about the pressure of a finger on Dylan’s clit, it wasn’t even about how her hands were held above her head. It was all about how Raffo looked at her with that glint in her eye that told Dylan everything she needed to know. It was about the two of them in this bed together finally being able to give in to what they’d both wanted. It was only about Dylan’s dreams coming true, because that’s what being with Raffo felt like.

So, of course, Dylan came. She cried out as the orgasm washed over her, as the pleasure took her, as her body surrendered easily and desperately to Raffo’s touch. To all of Raffo.

Dylan believed she must still be dreaming when she opened her eyes because Raffo was lying next to her.

She blinked several times, then trailed a finger along Raffo’s arm to confirm this wasn’t a dream. She was very real. All of this was real. And they were no longer in Big Bear. They were back in real life. Connor knew about them. Dylan would call him later to thank him for his grand gesture because, without it, she might never have given herself permission to do this. Perhaps she and Raffo would have sneaked a desperately illicit kiss at an event some time, but Dylan would never have invited Raffo into her home—into this very bed—without Connor’s approval. The ambivalence of being in love with her son’s best friend hadn’t suddenly disappeared after last night. It was still odd and tricky but, now, it was also possible and something they could all work with instead of something to avoid and most certainly to never speak of again.

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