Forty-Six

ARIANNA was glad that when they arrived last night, after a critical look thrown by her mother that took a small moment, she smiled graciously at Eric and the pizza boxes and ice cream he was carrying. There was also an expensive vegetable salad plus a healthy smoothie especially for her mama.
Tommy was all about the takeout.
She managed to breathe again, though that didn’t get her to relax completely. Only after she was in bed and she wasn’t quizzed after Eric had left that she calmed down.
The next day, Enrique left for the city with Señorito Brad. Or his good friend Brad. She supposed she should also get used to that?
Though she would really rather not see the man so much, since she still felt so awkward around him due to the fact of how he knew about her.
Not to mention the other fact that Eric’s former fiancée was his cousin. There was much of him that could make her feel uneasy in his presence.
And their days in the house went back to normal, with the slight difference that Don Sylverio, or Papa Sylver—she still stumbled over calling him this—now had lunch with the other workers in their yard.
It would have been easier had their neighbors been used to the fact she was a favored girlfriend of the son of the Señor. But they tease her every time she reverted back to calling Eric’s father Señor or Don Sylverio.
After three or four more days of him there daily, Arianna was starting to get used to his cheerful voice and his guffaws, or the serious talks with the Chairman and others about hacienda affairs while they drink coffee after lunch wherein he appeared solid in his authority she wondered if Eric would be like him when he grew old.
She didn’t dwell on the little pricks of pain she felt thinking this.
At the end of the first week, a worker from the office brought two boxes to the house. He said one of the family drivers brought them from Manila with an instruction from Eric they were brought to her house.
The small box had a Kindle reader inside, with books already installed in its library for her to read, a jacket for it, and then a note that told her if she ever really liked any book from the library he would buy the physical copy for her.
“You did tell him you read at night. He’s sent you a library,” Tommy said, awed at the gadget.
He was a voracious reader, too, but not of fiction. He would read any book he could find about aquaculture from the Chairman’s office now. He would read any non-fiction book he could put his hands on.
They got this from their father. Their mother would prefer religious or spiritual books. She read her Bible every night and her other religious books over and over.
So she was reading on her Kindle that night when she got his call while holding the huge hugging pillow of a cute crocodile that came out of the big box.
That he had spritzed it with his favorite perfume.
“So that’s why you asked me my favorite genre and authors,” she told him after thanking him for the gift. “I love it. Really.”
“Good. I’ve been thinking of getting you books but I was sure you would rather pick them yourself so, for now, that’s what I got for you. We can wait while you catch up with all the backlist titles you haven’t read.”
“I don’t think I can finish all these in ten years! Are you kidding me? There’s like thousands of eBooks here!”
He laughed. “We will know that in ten years, won’t we?”
She was suddenly quiet.
“I told you. I get worried when you’re quiet.”
“You fuss. Yes,” she teased.
“I don’t fuss.”
“You do.”
He laughed softly. “I miss you.”
“You do?”
“Yes. I miss kissing you, hugging you, smelling your hair, kissing your neck…” He sighed. Then he lowered his voice. “I miss kissing you between your thighs…”
“Eric!” She laughed. Then looked down at the stuffed crocodile she had in her arms. “Well, there’s someone definitely between my thighs now… you know?”
“U-huh…” His voice was almost a purr now. “Let me guess… it’s green, has scales, smells like me…”
She smirked. “So that’s the plan?”
“I’d like you to think of me when you have it exactly where it is right now.”
“I named it Riqui.” She then spelled it to him. “So I have something to call it when I whisper dirty secrets to it at night.”
He moaned. “Really…?”
She heard him move, and she listened further. It was about nine pm. “Are you in your bed?”
“Yes…”
Just that answer in his sexy voice and she could picture his long, naked body in silk sheets. She almost groaned herself. And it suddenly was warm in the room.
“So what dirty secrets are we talking about…”
Oh my god… she gulped. “Like… how I miss you, too. How I miss your pissed-off face when you think I’m doing something stupid again. Or when you’re being an idiot yourself.”
He groaned, and she giggled.
“I can smell your perfume here, but I miss the smell of your sweat. The feel of the skin on your neck when I rub you there with my nose…”
She could hear him inhaling on the phone, and though he still breathe regularly, each one had become deep. “What else do you miss, baby?”
She thought about it. “I miss having my thighs around you.”
He groaned louder. “Video,” he choked.
She smiled as she bit at her lower lip, then checked the phone screen for video.
He appeared. And his eyelids were all droopy and his eyes roused. He was indeed on his bed, naked shoulders. She wasn’t sure if he slept nude, but those three times she was in his house at the back of the hacienda, he mostly stayed in his robe.
Because they didn’t need too many clothes, anyway.
“What?” she asked him. As if she didn’t know!
“Get your earphones on, babe.”
She reached for them and slid the jack into its slot underneath her phone. Then she stared at him, and she could imagine how round her eyes were now.
“I want to see you,” she heard him say in her ears in a tone that had very loud meaning.
She bit at her lower lip. “Now?”
He nodded. “Please…?”
She gulped. “How…?”
He drew in a long breath, deep, then blew it out again. “Naked,” he said in almost a whisper.
“Eric…”
“You can see me, too, if you want to…”
She blinked at him. That, she wanted. “Let me just lock my bedroom door,” she told him. She heard s small, surprised laugh as she got up from the bed to go to her door as quietly as she could to lock it.
She hoped that her brother was busy with his laptop inside his room because if he knocks and found the door locked, he would ask why.
She didn’t know if she could answer him without blushing.
She got back to bed. Only the bedside lamp was turned on. The curtains to the windows were drawn closed. There was nothing else she could think of doing.
Except shed her clothes.
She stared at the screen at him. And got shy. “You do it first. You’re already naked,” she told him.
He smiled at her, adjusted himself on his bed, and pulled the blanket off of him.
And there he was, in all his naked glory.
He really had nothing else underneath.
And she stared at his beauty, her hand going to her mouth, her insides quaking. “Oh my god…”
“Your turn,” he said in both her ears.
She shook her head. “I don’t think I can do it.”
“I’ve seen everything in you,” he protested but in a teasing voice.
She shook her head again. “But that’s different. You’re here. It’s different.”
“Baby, we’re talking right now on the phone, in real-time. I’m with you.”
She shook her head. “No, it’s not the same. I can’t touch you. I get… it’s better. I feel… more confident. I’m sorry.”
Those eyes watched her, seeking, from his bed. Then he nodded. “Don’t worry, baby. You don’t have to if you don’t feel comfortable. We can just talk right now.”
“Wait!”