Liberate Yourself (The Desires Unlocked Trilogy Part One) (44 page)

‘Of course I was watching you. Wasn’t that what it was all about?’

They stare at each other, eyes locked, and she can feel her heartbeat quicken.

‘I don’t really know what it’s all been about,’ she says quietly. ‘Why didn’t you tell me where you got the album of negatives from when you gave it to me? Why didn’t you tell
me they are pictures of my great-grandmother and a family heirloom? I thought it was stolen, like the paintings . . .’

‘I wanted you to discover for yourself, negative by negative. I thought it would be fun.’

There is that dreadful word again, reminding her of English tea parties and jolly hockey sticks.

‘Fun?’ she hisses, anger heating her blood again. ‘You went behind my back and visited my brother in New York. Why did you go and see him? Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘I knew that if I told you I wanted to see Mattia, you would tell me not to go,’ he says matter-of-factly.

She bites her lip. He is right. She would have ordered him to stay away.

‘Valentina,’ he says softly. ‘You changed.’

She looks up at him, uncomprehending. What does he mean?

‘As soon as I moved into the apartment, it was as if you froze up. You were so contrary. One minute you wanted to make love, and the next you would be angry with me for no apparent reason.’

‘But you are just as contrary,’ she defends herself, not willing to admit he is right. ‘With your secret art thievery, disappearing for days without telling me where you are, and sneaking off to see my brother.’

‘That’s different. I have always been consistent in my feelings for you.’ He pauses. ‘Right from the beginning, from the first night we met.’

She can’t help but snort derisively.

‘That’s ridiculous, Theo. How could you know how you felt the night you first met me? You didn’t
know
me at all. We didn’t even speak.’

He cocks his head at her and smiles, although his eyes look sad.

‘Maybe you are right, Valentina, for since the moment I moved in, you haven’t stopped reminding me that there is no way you can ever fall in love with me.’ He pauses, takes a sip of his espresso. ‘I was going to leave, after we came back from Sardinia, but then you had the miscarriage, and . . . well, I couldn’t go.’

The hurt in his eyes angers her. He has no right to make her feel so guilty.

‘I didn’t want your pity,’ she snaps at him. ‘How dare you stay with me because you felt sorry for me?’

‘Oh no, Valentina, you don’t understand me.’ He looks her in the eyes, and her anger begins to ebb. ‘I really wanted to try to find a way to make things work. It was so amazing when we first got together and I wanted to bring that life back into our relationship. That’s why I went to see Mattia. I wanted to find out more about you.’

‘Why didn’t you just ask me?’

‘Because you wouldn’t talk to me. Not about anything important, at least.’

She looks down at the table, her empty coffee cup. She is beginning to understand Theo’s motives, and yet she is not
sure how it makes her feel. She is still angry with him, for nosing into her life, going to see Mattia, and yet he has always had strong feelings for her, right from the very first night. Is that possible? Or is he deluded?

‘But why did you take the album from Mattia?’ she says, skirting around the issue.

‘He offered it to me. Said you could enlarge the negatives in your darkroom. And when I got it back here, and looked at the negatives on your light box, I had an idea. I thought this could be a very Valentina way of reaching you. If I could bring you on a journey through the pictures, you might hear my message. I thought it might be easier than trying to make you listen to my words.’

‘And what is the message?’ she asks him, stunned by the lengths this man will go to reach her.

‘Have you not worked it out yet?’

He catches her with his gaze. She remembers now how she often thought his icy blue eyes intimidating, but now they look so pure and clear, and her anger dissipates. She is suddenly ashamed of herself . . . her lack of trust, her non-communication, shutting him out . . .

‘It’s erotica from the twenties, so I guess it shows that my great-grandmother was quite a free spirit?’

She looks at the book still on his lap, unable to bear his gaze any longer.

‘And it’s quite incredible the connection I feel with her.’

Theo puts his hand on hers and she feels a charge through
her body. As if he has turned a light on in her heart. If they were not in Piazza San Marco in the middle of the day, she would jump on top of him, right now.

‘That’s what I thought,’ he says. ‘When I looked at the negatives I could see they were really erotic. And I remembered those pictures you took in Venice, and I thought, here is a way I can speak to you. If you can see the connection between yourself and this amazing lady from the past, your own ancestor, Valentina, maybe you will hear my message.’

Of course, these pictures are more than just images from the past. They are a part of
her
history. They are a part of who she is.

‘So?’ Theo asks again, suddenly leaning forward and cradling her chin within the palm of his hand, tipping it towards him, looking into her eyes again.

He is forcing me to show him my heart, she thinks, desperately trying to remain in control.

‘What did the book tell you?’ he asks, his voice low and husky.

She pulls her head away, confused and strangely nervous.

‘It’s very sexy?’

He frowns. She knows her answer is lame.

‘Is that all?’

She stares at him, holds his gaze. Her mouth has suddenly gone dry, and she licks her lips.

‘What do you want me to say?’

He looks a little disappointed. He brings her hands to his
lips and kisses them. She feels herself stir, and she looks with longing at his lips. How she wants to feel those lips upon her body. She has such an ache inside her, such a yearning for her lover.

‘Theo,’ she whispers. ‘Let’s go back to Locanda La Corte.’

As soon as the hotel room door clicks behind them, they fall into each other’s arms. They embrace, kissing deeply, all the while walking as one, slowly towards the bed. It hits the back of her knees and she drops down on to it. She pulls off her jacket, and he undoes her trousers. She hastily undoes his jeans, and within seconds they have stripped each other of their clothes. They pause, connecting once again with each other’s naked body. She strokes the tiny scar upon his chest; he caresses her hard nipples, and brings his lips down to kiss them, pausing in between to speak.

‘Did you miss me last week?’ he asks, with such feeling it almost stings her.
Yes, yes, yes
, she chants inside her head. Yet she resists the temptation to let him know.

‘Why did you stay away for so long?’ she counters, finding it hard to conceal the hurt in her voice.

‘I was there all the time, Valentina,’ he says in a low voice, and she looks at him intently. Yes, of course he was. Yet her thoughts are fading away as her body takes over. She wants to give Theo so much pleasure that he will never abandon her again. She has never felt such an intense physical union with any other man. She feels as if she will never have her fill of
him. She begins to crawl down his body, kissing his arms, his chest and nipples, his legs, slowly approaching his penis. She pushes him inside her mouth, and it feels so good to taste him again. Theo is touching her, but he spins her around now and she knows what he wants to do. She stiffens for a second. Will she let him? She let Rosa and Celia kiss her there. Why not a man . . . why not her lover, Theo?

‘Will I?’ he whispers. She pulls back from his penis, hesitates before speaking.

‘Okay.’

She tries to concentrate on adoring Theo’s penis, licking him, caressing him with her tongue, pleasuring him all the way to the edge, and yet at the same time she feels herself slowly losing control. His tongue is flicking inside her, making the tension of her passion fade, until she feels it transform into a river of want flowing into him. She is letting their essence unite.

And now she imagines they are not just on any bed in a hotel in Venice, but on their marriage bed. They are making love as if for the first time, the scent of wild roses mingling with the pure tang of their arousal. This day she is free, for the moment Theo said
I do
, her fear disappeared, and the knot of their love tightened around her heart. She imagines a glittering day in Venice, sunlight streaming through the open window, holding up her hand, and a gold band upon her finger, shining with promise.

They are falling, cascading together, as tender on each
other’s naked bodies as soft rain on a summer’s day. She is stunned by the release she feels. She has never felt this way before.
I love you
. The words are so crystal clear inside her head she is not sure whether she has actually spoken them out loud. Yet her lover is silent, caressing her, holding her within his arms, unaware of her silent declaration.

Gradually they untwine from each other’s bodies and sit back against the bedstead. Theo puts his arm around her shoulders. She would like to stay like this forever, in the comfort of stillness after such passion, listening to the sounds of Venice: the clatter of footsteps outside and the voices of Italians and tourists all mixed up, the lap of the canal, and the odd motorboat buzzing past, a clock striking two, and the ghosts of past lovers whispering through the windowpanes. Yet Theo stirs, breaking through the surface of their silence.

‘Have you considered my question, Valentina?’

‘What question?’ she asks lightly, stroking his bare shoulders and inhaling his longed-for scent.

He drops his arm from around her shoulders and turns to her, looking at her earnestly.

‘The one I asked you ten days ago, when I had to go away.’

She shakes her head, trying to look as if she has forgotten, as if it’s not important now.

‘I want you to be my girlfriend,’ Theo says, stroking her hair. ‘Can you trust me now? Do you think you can love me?’

Again inside her heart she hears a tiny voice,
oh yes, yes, yes
. A voice long silenced, put out in the cold when she was
young and forgotten about. She wants to let it speak. Only this morning she decided she would tell him she loved him. While they were making love, the words sang out within her body. Yet now Valentina cannot bring this voice past the lump in her throat. She cannot open her lips and give Theo what he wants. To hear her say it.

‘Valentina,’ says Theo, giving her a blinding look, ‘I love you. From the moment I saw you on the metro, I have loved you . . .’

She sits back against the pillows as if he has hit her, forcing him to drop his hand from her hair.

‘No, it’s not possible. Don’t say that,’ she whispers hoarsely, trying to fight back the tears.

‘I love you,’ he repeats, transfixing her with the passion of his gaze. ‘I know you don’t think you are worth it, but you are. Can’t you see what all this is about?’

She shakes her head, unable to speak.

‘The night I met you, I fell in love with you because you are such a free spirit. Finally I had met someone who didn’t want to possess me, or control me. You let me be free, Valentina. And I loved you for it.’

She looks at him in awe, beginning to comprehend.

‘Do you remember how it was? When we used to play games with each other, meet up in hotels, make love? It was erotic, so thrilling, it heated my love.’

‘Of course,’ she whispers hoarsely. ‘But you can’t do things like that for ever. It’s not normal.’

‘Why not? Who says that fifteen years from now, we couldn’t be doing exactly the same thing? Playing our game of secret lovers?’

He sighs.

‘I fell in love with that Valentina. Free spirited yet shy; liberated yet elegant; passionate yet never cheap. I never wanted her to change.’

She looks at him questioningly.

‘But you did, honey. As soon as I moved in with you, you shut yourself away from me. You suppressed that girl. Why?’

His words pierce her heart, and she looks up at him, her eyes loaded with unspilt tears.

‘I don’t want to become my mother.’ Her voice cracks.

‘I don’t know what you mean, but then why would I?’ He sounds bitter all of a sudden. ‘You have refused to tell me anything about her. Everything I know about your mother is from a conversation I had with Mattia.’ His voice softens. ‘I hear she is a difficult woman.’

‘Very,’ Valentina says tightly. ‘I think she drove my father away. She was so obsessed with her freedom, with never being tied down. She treated her lovers very badly.’ She pauses, taking a breath. ‘I asked you to move in with me because I was afraid I was going to turn into her.’

‘Not because you wanted me to move in?’

She shakes her head dolefully.

‘Not then, no. But now I do want to live with you.’ She
turns to look at him, hoping he can see the truth of her statement in her expression.

‘What’s changed?’ he asks her.

‘This week. Before you went away, I thought I had to suppress who I really was to make it work. It was driving me crazy. Deep down I knew I was like my mother really. And it made me angry not to be able to be myself.’

Theo picks up her hand and holds it in his.

‘That’s all I have wanted, for you to be yourself. But you wouldn’t talk to me, tell me what was wrong.’

She twists round to look at him, plants a kiss upon his shoulder.

‘I’m sorry. I promise I’ll try harder.’

Theo smiles at her sadly.

‘I want it to be effortless for you. I want you to understand that my love is unconditional. That is what the erotic album meant, Valentina. Those pictures were taken by your great-grandmother’s lover, and even back then you can see how that man worships her free spirit. I wanted to show you that you are like her, and there is no shame in that.’

‘Is that why you were in the club; is that why all those things happened there?’

‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Leonardo is an old friend of mine. I asked him to help me.’

She raises her eyebrows at him. She can hardly believe what he is saying.

‘And you didn’t mind that we had sex?’ she asks him
incredulously. ‘Or that I slept with those two women, Rosa and Celia, or that I was Leonardo’s submissive? You didn’t mind what I did in the Dark Room?’