Tuscan Heat (9 page)

“Or like this?” He thrust his hips against me, and things were getting blurry. “Oh, yes. I can feel how much you want it. Tell me.”

“Want it. Want you. In me, please. Please.”

He slammed against my body over and over. With my hands over my head and his weight on me, all I could do was feel. The burning heat of another orgasm began.

Then he stopped. “Now you are ready.”

“No…so close,” I whimpered.

“Roll over.”

My eyes widened and something in my pussy convulsed. “Marco—”

“No arguing.”

I turned over. My nervousness must have shown. He smacked my ass, and I squealed. “Marco!”

“Trust me.”

I heard the condom wrapper rip open, and I grinned into the towel. “I do.”

“I do not think you are truly a bad girl.” He stretched out on top of my body until his lips were next to my ear. I shivered. “But maybe you are a little dirty.”

“Maybe.”

“For me?” He sat up. He knelt over my thighs, and I felt the hot head of his cock resting against my skin.

“Right now I’m anything you want me to be.”

Something warm poured onto my back. I opened one eye and saw him putting the olive oil back down. His strong hands massaged my ass and lower back while he spoke. “I meant to start with a real massage, over your entire body. You distracted me.”

“Then I
am
a bad girl.”

“How bad?”

His thumbs slipped into the crack of my ass. I tried not to jump. “I have a very dirty mind.”

“I think you like to talk dirty…”

“Sometimes.”

“You say such filthy things at dinner. It excited you.”

“Yes.”

He slid his hands from my back to my ribs, brushing the sides of my breasts. He pressed his length in between my ass cheeks. “I want to hear more.”

“I wanted you in the restaurant.”

“And?”

“I wanted to climb under the table and take you into my mouth.”

“Like you did at the Stibberto.”

“But I also wanted to lie back on the table. Let you fuck me in front of all those people.”

His cock shuddered, and he tried to catch his breath. “Maybe I should have.”

I thought he would take me then, but he held off. He went back to rubbing my ass, sliding between my cheeks, and ever so slightly grazing the tight puckered hole. “Marco, I…”

“My turn, Sara.” He pushed his slick finger against the sphincter muscle, trying to gain entry.

“Oh!” I cried out. He’d gotten in.

“No one has ever done this to you.”

“No.”

“But you like it. I can feel your body quiver.” He slid his finger in and out, and he was so slow and gentle that I relaxed enough to feel a wild kind of pleasure. I had never known how connected everything was, the way a finger back there could make the feelings in my pussy so intense.

“Yes.”

“Someday, I will fill you back here.”

I whimpered and raised my hips toward him.

That gesture was the final straw for Marco. He pulled away and rose up on to his knees. He tugged at my hips, and I knew what he wanted. I got onto my own knees and elbows and put my head down.

“Yes. I like you submitting to me, Sara.”

“I am.”

He reached around and pressed his hand against my pussy. “You are so wet. My girl likes sex.”

“With you. All for—” My words turned into a moan. He slid into me, filling me up with his thick cock. I’d been aching for him for hours, and finally he was there.

Marco pulled almost all of the way out, and drove into me with his own guttural cry. “Ahhhh. Sara. Yes. All day I have wanted you.”

“Take me, then. Take me.”

He stopped for a moment and grabbed the oil. It trickled down into my crack, and then his thumb pressed against my anus. “You want this?”

“I don’t know.”

“We’ll see.”

He didn’t try to push. He just kept up the pressure while he moved in me, controlling the pace.

“Tell me what you want, Serafina.”

“Hold on to me, just like that, and fuck me. Give it to me hard.”

I was begging, but there was no need. He filled me again and again. I opened to him, braced against his power, and he entered me in both places. I felt so full. I wanted to give myself to him over and over. I rocked back and forth, with a wild keening cry.

“Yes. Yes. Come, Sara.”

The orgasm rushed over me. The minute I thought I’d peaked, he slowly pulled out his thumb, which pushed me even higher. At long last he came, his own cry of triumph echoing through the courtyard.

It took a few seconds before he could talk. “My God.”

“Marco?”

“Sì,
tesoro mio?
”

“I’m about to collapse.”

We laughed together, and somehow he disengaged and tumbled me over until we were both lying on our backs. Our bodies were slick with sweat and oil. A brief flash of my last lover went through my mind, his horror at the smells and sights of making love. Marco’s warm body was between me and the memory.

“
Grazie,
Serafina. You are magnificent.”

“You’re not so bad.”

He swatted at me, his chuckle rumbling through his torso. “I will show you this not so bad, you terrible woman.”

I started to make a joke about being dirty. I blushed instead. Some things are much easier to say when you’re an inch from an orgasm. Marco guessed what I was thinking. “Thank you for playing along with my mood.”

“It was a new experience for me,” I confessed.

“I could tell.”

“In more ways than one, I mean. In the past, I’ve almost always been the…aggressor, I guess you’d call it.”

“I like that you are sweet, but not always. I like that you are a woman who takes charge sometimes, but that I can be on top other times.”

“Keeping balanced?”

“There is too much pressure when you must be one thing all of the time.” He sighed.

“What are you thinking?”

“Family things. Which is foolish, considering that I am holding a beautiful naked woman.”

He clearly didn’t want to talk about it. “So, how deep is the fountain?”

“Deep enough.”

I rolled into the water while he took care of the condom. It was much deeper than it looked, something Marco must have known because he entered the water with a mighty cannonball dive. We splashed and played like children, until I realized that I was completely and totally exhausted. So was he.

We weren’t so tired that we couldn’t dry each other off. I bundled my hair into a bun and tried to look ladylike. Well, as ladylike as someone whose panties are rolled up into a towel can be.

It was late when we got back to the hotel. The only person to see us was the sleepy night clerk, who only waved when we walked by.

Marco stood in the doorway of my room, strangely shy. “Well. Here we are again.”

This time I was past caring. “Unless you live across the street, come in. You’re too tired to take that motorcycle anywhere.”

I brushed out the worst of the tangles in my hair, but that was all I could be bothered to do before I crawled into bed beside the best lover I had ever had. I curved into him as if I’d been made for him.

He wrapped his arm around me. It felt heavy, as though he were already asleep. I was close myself. I felt rather than heard him humming. It was that song again, the one he’d performed standing in my hotel bathroom.

“Marco?”

“Tu, mia luna, tu sei qui con me…mio sole, tu sei qui con me…”

Then he really was asleep. Two days ago, he said it was a song about going places that didn’t exist. For a moment, all I wanted was for him to take me along.

I stretched and yawned in the morning sunlight, and bolted upright when I realized I was alone. Before I could freak out, I saw the note.

I sighed. I really did need to learn Italian. For all I knew, he was calling me a crazy cat lady.

Okay, so he probably wasn’t calling me a cat lady. I felt a little dizzy at seeing
amore
in black and white. I didn’t need a translator for that one.

It was probably just more Italian hyperbole. Yeah. Maybe it was for the best that I wasn’t going to see him until we met for dinner. All this time spent together was like growing a plant under glass and speeding up the blooming process.

I stuck my head out the window to check the weather and winced. The sunlight poured down with such intensity that it had a nearly amber color, mixing with the dust and shadows of the city. It was as sultry as a greenhouse at ten in the morning. I put on a white peasant dress with embroidery around the collar and hem—a nice floaty thing that said “virgin farm girl” to people who had never laid eyes on actual farm girls. That was okay with me. I wasn’t a virgin either.

I belted the dress with a brightly colored silk scarf and headed out. The outfit was a perfect choice for the heat, but I didn’t have long to congratulate myself for good choices. I arrived at the Piazza della Signoria to see an enormous line. It snaked past the replica
David,
around the famous loggia with its statues, and back on itself again. Just to be sure, I sauntered up to the base of the
David.

The line was definitely for the Uffizi. I had a sinking feeling that I should have listened to Marco and made a reservation. A pigeon perched on David’s shoulder added his own punctuation to that thought. I barely got out of the way in time.

It was clearly an omen that I should get a pastry and maybe a cappuccino at Rivoire, bask in the sunshine like a lizard on a rock, and let the line go down a little. I walked right up to the counter and took the bitter drink without sugar. I even pulled out my sketchbook and recorded a bit of the scene. I felt very Italian.

An hour later, it occurred to me that pigeon omens are notoriously unreliable and that I was a pretty poor reptile. Also, a real Italian would have made some freaking reservations. The line for the one tourist thing I really wanted to do was even longer than before. It crisscrossed the piazza until it was nearly to the
Fountain of Neptune
. I sighed and gave in.

Everyone around me seemed to be American and I lost my feeling of belonging. I was a tourist instead of a traveler. After another thirty minutes, I’d exhausted my capacity for small
talk with the retired couple from Iowa in front of me and the college students from Oregon behind me. I had moved exactly seven flagstones, and due to the way the line had evolved, I’d actually moved farther away from the Uffizi.

I had a mental image of Marco being romantic and riding up on a white horse and scattering the crowd. I squelched that thought. This crazy country was eating my brain. I didn’t want to see him until we both had a chance to sober up from the intoxicating sex.

A deep, softly accented voice spoke in my ear. “It is beginning to be silly, the way I always run into you.”

My heart started pounding, but I kept my face straight. “Now who doesn’t say hello?”

“As I said, you are contagious. But I do not wish to be cured.”

I faced him. He gave me a wink and held out his arms. I couldn’t resist either the expression or the offered embrace, and threw my arms around his neck with a stifled squeal. “How did you find me?”

He didn’t answer. Instead he bent me over backward and laid a kiss on me that brought whistles and applause from the college kids.

“That wasn’t an answer.”

He nuzzled my neck with such fervor that I was glad I’d put my hair up. “It is not so very silly, no matter what I say. I decided that the meeting could wait one more day, and I asked Vittoria if you had made a reservation.”

I pulled back and looked up at him. “Vittoria?”

“The concierge.”

“Do you know every single Florentine?”

“I keep telling you,
Americana,
Firenze is a very small town.”

I grinned. “Well, I’m glad it is, or I wouldn’t have your company in this horrific line.”

“Line? Oh, yes. I am sorry, for a moment I thought we were simply in a crowd. Come.”

“What, here?”

He threw his head back and laughed. “Ah, my beautiful Sara,” he said. “Nothing is too good for you.”

He pulled my hand through his arm and deftly steered me through the crowd. In less than a minute, we were standing at a doorway off to the side of the ticket office. A guard in period-correct Renaissance costume sat nearby under a golf umbrella, and unless I missed my guess, he was sending text messages. As soon as he tapped a final key, he looked up.

“Ah, Signore D’Alessandro. Come sta?”

“Sto bene, Paolo, grazie.”
Marco glanced at me and switched to English. “Will you let us in?”

“
Sì, sì,
of course.” The heavy brass key Paolo unclipped from his belt was easily twice as big as the cell phone he still held in his other hand. It was one of those contrasts that made me love Florence even more.

The door swung open, and he waved us in with a theatrical gesture. Marco smiled and gave a slight bow. “Tell your wife I said hello.”

“I will.”

Marco made a quick hand gesture that I didn’t understand. “Tell your mistress I said to stop sending you so many messages when you are at work.”

The guard cracked up. He shook a finger at Marco.
“Non mi rompere le palle, signore.”

Marco just smiled and put his hand on my back to propel me through the door. As soon as the door closed, I tapped his arm. “I have to ask.”

“If Paolo has a mistress?”

“What he said to you.”

“He told me to be nice.” He patted me on the ass and started walking.

“Uh-huh. Did you really just jump in front of a million people waiting in line?” We were winding our way through a hallway that could have been any passage in any museum back in the States.

“You cannot call it jumping. There was no line at the door we came through, Serafina.”

“Marco.”

“It is entirely all right. They know me here. I keep telling you, Firenze—”

“Is a very small town,” I finished.

“Exactly.”

“Except it’s not. I don’t see every local getting the red carpet treatment. It’s just you.”

His eyes sparkled. “Maybe I am just charming.”

Before I could argue further, he tapped on an unlabeled door. The woman who answered wore glasses and a large apron, and conversed with Marco in rapid-fire Italian even as they exchanged air kisses. She glanced at me partway through the conversation with a sisterly look of approval. She vanished and reappeared with a key. “Have a good time,
signorina,
” she said with an accent as thick as
mozzarella di bufala.

Marco shoved the key into his front pocket with a happy whistle. There was more air kissing, and we resumed our walk. “Do not even ask, Sara. It is to be a surprise.”

“Who was asking? Was I asking?”

We climbed two flights of stairs and emerged into a long gallery with tourists and windows. “So, Sara. You say you did not study art history. What do you know of the paintings in my museum?”

“I’ve got some books. I know my medievalism from my Mannerism.”

“Then let us enjoy the gallery in order.”

I had noticed groups of people stumbling out of the rooms into the long, sunlit hall looking overwhelmed, but I didn’t know why until I did it myself. The most famous, most iconic art in practically all of Western civilization were on the walls with slightly less pomp and majesty than I used in hanging up posters. A miniscule number of these priceless paintings had been lent over the years to museums in the U.S., and each one had been tenderly placed like a gemstone in a gorgeous setting, with tons of supporting context and multimedia pizzazz. Not here. Here the art spoke for itself.

The other thing that blew my mind was the size of each painting. In a book, everything is more or less the same size and the dimensions are hard to register. In person, you see a fourteen foot painting and realize that it really was meant to play to a cathedral-sized crowd. A portrait—that, in the book, was pasted side by side with the wall-sized art—would turn out to be mere inches on each side.

In uncharacteristic silence, we wandered from the representational art to the flowering of the Renaissance. Tucked by a door, my favorite painting caught my eye. All at once, I had to know what he thought of it, but I was afraid to ask.

He ended my internal conflict by flashing a brilliant smile. “Ah, now, this is my favorite painting in the whole gallery.”

I felt faint. “Really?”

He mistook my expression for disbelief. “I know, I know, Botticelli is more usual. But there is something about this little painting. Her face is so real to me, because—”

“She looks like a new mother, a little overwhelmed and confused,” I whispered. “She’s someone real, who gave birth to a son, not the messiah. She loves him, you can see it.”

“Yes. Yes, that is it exactly.”

I gave him a little smile. “It’s also technically brilliant. That light gauze on her headdress is astounding when you see it in a book. It’s even more amazing in person.”

“My favorite thing is the face of the angel.”

“His expression makes the whole painting work. He’s so happy, and real. This theme borders on the saccharine, kind of removing it from the realm of the possible for mortal men and women. But he’s balancing it out, anchoring it here on earth. And that face! He’s like the bubbles in a glass of champagne.”

Marco didn’t answer right away. He moved up close behind me and put his arms around my waist. “The artistic eye.”

I blushed. “I get carried away. Only this has been my favorite painting for as long as I can remember.”

“Do you know much about the painter?”

“Not really.”

“The Madonna is his wife, and the angel is his son.”

I leaned in closer to read the inscription. “The card says ‘Fra Filippo Lippi.’ I thought Fra meant he was a monk.”

“He was. His wife was a nun.”

“That’s hysterical. How did he get away with that?”

“The Medicis thought he was a pretty good painter.”

“Man, money really can buy anything,” I said with a snicker.

His body tensed. “Not quite.”

I wasn’t sure how what I’d said bothered him, but I wanted to get back to the feeling of being synced with this gorgeous man. It was not a feeling I’d had all that often in my life. “Okay, not everything. But it can apparently allow a man to be called a monk while he makes a baby with a nun. That’s something in my book.”

He laughed then and released me, but only so he could take my hand. The time spent communing with the young mother broke the artistic ice, and we made our way through the maze to the Botticellis. The scale of these masterpieces made our favorite painting look like a miniature.

“What do you think of this one, Serafina?” He pointed at one of the most famous paintings in recorded history.

“Venus on the half shell? Not bad.”

He guffawed. Then he leaned in. He nibbled at my ear. “She reminds me of you.”

I shivered. “I’d better start growing my hair. But I’d rather be her,” I said. I pointed at the female wind spirit, who was entwined with the male spirit.

He checked his watch and grimaced. “Sara, I do not wish you rush you, and I would very much like to continue that line of reasoning,” he said. “But I must show you your surprise and return the key to my old classmate before much longer.”

“Lead on.”

We made our way back to the hall and walked around the bottom of the U until we were in the west corridor. Before we went more than a few steps, Marco stopped and fished out the key. He unlocked the door with a furtive flourish and hustled me inside.

“It is supposed to be closed and off-limits today. I promised I would not attract any attention,” he said by way of apology.

We stood at the top of a flight of stairs. The purple carpet runner was held in place with brass bars. There was an elaborate coffered ceiling, and the white walls were lined with portraits. Arm in arm, we descended.

“What gallery is this?”

“It did not start as a gallery. This is the corridor that the Medicis built through mansions and churches and over the Ponte Vecchio so that they could go from the Pitti Palace to the Palazzo Vecchio without mixing with the common people. Even now, few people get to see it.”

We emerged into a long corridor lined with paintings, none of which I could see very well due to the way my eyes were watering. “And you fixed it so you could bring me.”

“Yes. Sara,” he said, stopping in his tracks. “It was not planned. I thought perhaps I could bring you here another day, but when I saw you in the piazza, with your lovely dress and your beautiful smile, it hit me. You will be gone soon.”

I tried to swallow the lump growing in my throat. “Yeah.”

“I wish…”

“What?”

“I wish it was not so.”

I squeezed his hand. “I’m trying not to think about it,” I admitted.

“You seem like you belong here. Your country, it does not truly exist. There is only Firenze and you and me. I know this to be true.”

“I’ve only been here four days.”

He made an irritated hand gesture. “When something is true, one does not need months to know it. Do you need to think to know if one and one are two?”

“The only math I need to know involves a nonrefundable airplane ticket and how I don’t have enough money to buy a new one.” I was getting my control back, a task made infinitely more difficult by his warm brown eyes.