Along for the Ride Read Online Free PDF Page B

caught the note of determination, steel-edged, in his casual tone. “You are here…legally?” she inquired, as off-handedly as she could.
    Rafi sighed almost imperceptibly. “You must understand, this thing, this citizenship, it is not what you call a black and white issue. One does not wake one day and find oneself an American. One lives for months, for years, in the gray area, working, saving, sacrificing. It is not for the faint-hearted, and that is why even the lucky ones fail.”
    “Lucky?”
    “Like me. A man with a little money, some friends, the ability to communicate with those in charge. I know what I must do, and I am doing it. I do not complain when my papers are misplaced or a case worker is suddenly transferred and I must begin again with someone new, someone who may know less about the system than I do.”
    Lauren felt angry on his behalf and marveled at his patience. “How long?” she asked, her voice little more than a whisper.
    Rafi shrugged. “Two more years. Perhaps less, if I am lucky. Or longer if luck is not with me. But I wait. It will happen. And of course,” he added, glancing sideways at her and easing his crooked grin, “there are many fortifications along the way.”
    They had come to an area of grasses, a place unfamiliar to Lauren. A stream bubbled through, the ice breaking and floating away in spaces so they could see the surprisingly rapid current below.
    A small footbridge crossed the stream, and it was here that they stopped. The grasses, some taller than a man, waved lazily in the breeze. Through their stalks they could see a meadow that sloped away to a distant row of topiary, looking spindly and frail in their winter dormancy.
    Lauren rested her elbows on the handrail and gazed at the tableau, lit pale golden by the breaking sun. The pink and scarlet bands had faded, leaving the sky a confection of pastels, with the first rays of the sun streaking across the frost-covered meadow.
    Rafi, behind her, took her in his arms, and she could feel his breath on the back of her neck. She shuddered at the sensation, longed for him to kiss her there, and he obliged. He carefully gathered her hair and arranged it to one side, then nuzzled her. The sensation of his beard, shaven just hours before, against her delicate skin was unbelievably sensual, and he sensed her reaction and scraped his chin a little more firmly in the hollow of her neck.
    “Those plants,” he murmured next to her ear, “that they grow into shapes—what are they called?”
    “Topiary,” Lauren said, her voice a hoarse gasp.
    “Ridiculous, I think.”
    He ran his hands up her arms, and slid then under her lapels, easing her coat off of her. To her surprise, she didn’t even feel the chill any more, especially when he folded her coat and laid it on the splintery wood of the rail she rested against, and then surrounded her in his own coat as he held her.
    “To train something wild into something so—what is the word?—disciplined. Forcing the buds and branches in directions they do not wish to go. One should not control a living thing’s natural desires. You agree, Lauren?”
    Lauren could not manage an answer, for Rafi had begun to move against her, a barely perceptible rhythm pressing his obvious arousal against her buttocks. She longed to meet his subtle attentions and realized that her own body was rocking, practically writhing to feel his touch. His hands found her waist, and gently tugged out the tails of her silk blouse, and then his hands traveled up and found her breasts, kneading and stroking. Lauren felt her nipples harden and respond, and realized that she rocked back against him, longing to feel him between her legs, where her arousal had deepened to a throbbing ache.
    “I wish to love you here,” Rafi murmured against her. His lips found her lobe, nibbled gently, and then his tongue traced the shell of her ear.
    “But what if someone comes by?”
    Rafi gently separated her legs with his knee, and