Roman Crazy (21 page)

I knew without a doubt he would have stopped then, no questions asked. He would help me get dressed and we'd carry on our night as if the past ten minutes never happened.

“I need this. You,” I answered, and pulled his shirt over his head and tossed it onto a plant in the corner.

A surge lit him up from the inside out. “Thank God.”

If possible, he became more eager, more harried, grasping and clutching. My legs locked around his waist, my hands twisted in his hair, and my lips touched, kissed, and tasted everywhere they could reach.

My back was against the door again with a thud, and that damn door knocker was there, biting into my skin. One of his arms
held me while the other roamed, slipped, and brushed. He pulled the front of my shirt down, exposing my pink bra. He pulled back and took in the sheer fabric, muffling a curse against my chest.

“Hold on,” he ordered, not giving me any time to react. He stepped over the threshold and kicked the door shut before pushing me against the window beside it. It was cool against my heated skin.
Perfect.

Holding me with his hips, his hands snaked up between us until he gripped the top of the shirt—

“—wait, wait—”

—and tore. Tossing it off to the side to land on a lamp.

“That was Daisy's.” I laughed, pulling my face away from his needy lips.

“I will buy her a new one.”

I reached up and held his face in my hands. He turned his head to the side to kiss my palm once, then again, and held them there breathing deeply. It was a sweet gesture and such a strong contrast to the fevered kisses. I smoothed my hands over his shoulders, counting and remembering all the little freckles that were scattered across his bare skin. The scar on his shoulder had faded a bit since the last time I saw it, his body fuller and more muscular. My cheeks and chest were hot from staring at him. I reached down over his chest, then lower before gliding back up in a slow circuit.

My hands slid over his pecs, my thumbs rubbing just over his rib cage where he had a crop of tiny birthmarks. I realized just how much of his body I had memorized; there wasn't an inch I had forgotten. I tightened my legs at his waist while pushing at his shoulders so that I was at a slight angle.

His eyes were the darkest I'd seen them since arriving in
Italy. They were filled with a yearning that I missed. A want that I hadn't seen or felt in so long.

I wondered then what answers he was seeking.

But more than anything else, he looked like my lover from Spain. Felt like him, and made
me
feel like I was with him again. That feeling of us conquering the world was back.

“You are making me crazy,” he said, moving us down the hallway.

“You're the crazy Roman who started kissing on me the second he came in the door. Or was it before you even got in?”

“I'll give you
get in,
which room?”

“I don't care.” I gasped when his fingers slipped into my panties and cupped me, his thumb pushing against me
just so
. “Oh!
Dio mio.”

He smiled against my neck, the prickles from his scruff tickling the sensitive skin there. “I can't wait,” I insisted, wiggling my hips to prove my point.

He shook his head and repeated, “Which room?”

“Last door on the right.”

My heart skipped as he carried me into my bedroom. He looked around the room before settling me on the tufted club chair in the corner.

Smiling down at me, he smoothed my hair off my face before reaching for his pants button.

I moved forward to stop him. “Let me.”

My hands trembled, not from nerves but anticipation. Maybe he sensed my struggle, or maybe he was just as impatient as I was, but he brought his hands up and over mine to help. Together we unbuttoned his pants and slid them down before he kicked them off into the corner.

Marcello played soccer all his life and his legs showed it.
Toned, strong, and
just
the right amount of muscle. He must still play because he was just as fit as I remembered.

I toyed with the hem of his boxers, sliding my hands up and under, teasing. I loved the tightening of his muscles, the slight buck of his hips when I just barely brushed him.

“
Tesoro,
how you tease,” he purred, reaching out to slide my bra strap down. He repeated it on the other side before tipping the bra cups forward so my breasts spilled out.

His fingers lightly brushed over my nipples, between my breasts, and down until he edged along the top of my panties.

“Do you remember our first time together?” he said, settling down on the hardwood to kneel between my legs. His hands rested on my knees, thumbs brushing along the sensitive skin.

I nodded, inching my body slowly down toward his. Judging by the wry smirk on his face, he was relishing my eagerness.

Marcello kissed my knee before slowly dragging his lips up my inner thigh. I was so tightly wound that it was taking everything within me not to snap. To push him down to the floor and sink down onto him.

“With the moon behind you like that? You look so much like that girl,” he said between kisses against my thigh. Up, up higher with each kiss. “Wild hair, fiery eyes, and lips that would tempt any man,” he whispered against me,
just there.
Just when I thought he couldn't stretch out the delicious torture anymore, he dropped one kiss against the silk covering me.

“Please,” I begged, pushing forward against his lips.

With his hands under my bottom, he lifted me to his waiting mouth.

Mumbling against me, he stood quickly, picked me up, turned, and tossed me onto the bed.

I propped myself up on my elbows, quirking a finger for him to come closer. A wicked sparkle flashed in his eyes.

Leaning back along the bed, I loved the way my muscles stretched and drew his eyes, keeping him focused. He didn't care that my hair was wild or that my makeup wasn't perfect. Marcello only saw me.

“What do you want, Avery?” he asked, leaning forward to kiss one hip bone. Once, twice, three times before his lips danced across my stomach to the other. Strong fingers flexed and pressed. No thought, daydream, or fantasy compared to the feel of his callused fingers on my heated skin.

Sitting up, he smoothed my hair behind my ear and picked up a lock. Twisting a curl between his fingers, his eyes flickered to my mouth. “Tell me.”

I swallowed, desperate to find the words. “You know what I want.”

His chest rose and fell, fingers twirling the curl once more.

Pushing myself up, my fingers slid inside the waist of his boxers and down. His hips bucked.
Hurry
.

“I need to hear it,” he said, smoothing his hands over my shoulders. Everywhere his fingers brushed, fire erupted over my skin.

“You. Just you,” I said between peppering kisses over his stomach muscles. “Please.”

With a tug, the panties were torn in two and tossed to the side. He laid his hand flat against my pubic bone, fingers spread wide with his thumb smoothing over me in maddening circles. Now keeping his thumb still, he dipped a finger inside me slowly, lulling me into a rhythm before thrusting in faster. One became two and his thumb just pushed and held.

He wasn't speaking. Just heavy breathing, small grunts here and there. I wanted more.

“Talk to me, Marcello,” I asked, reaching up to touch his face.

“Say my name again,” he whispered, kissing my fingertips.

He nibbled down my arm and across my chest and held on to me while he used his teeth along my breasts. His muscles were shaking as he kissed my belly.

“Marcello.”

“Again.”

Each time I repeated it, he'd ask for it again.

Until he confessed, “I missed hearing you say it when I made you come.”

My head thudded back against the mattress when he hit the right tempo. Every fiber in me seized up and exploded around his fingers.

“That's my
tesoro,
” he said tenderly, leaning up to kiss me again.

Tesoro.
I remembered the word from our time together in Barcelona.

The moonlight slanted into the windows, the beams dancing across the bed over us. He just stared and smiled. “Avery,” he said between kisses across my breasts. He placed his lips directly over my heart and spoke reverently just one word, “Tesoro.”

“What does it mean?” I asked, holding his face and my breath, wondering what he would confess.

“Treasure.”

To have him repeat it again, after all these years. After all the mistakes, it meant something. When he said it in Spain, there was a palpable shift in the relationship. It moved from summer
fling to . . . Hope ballooned in my chest and I wondered, was history repeating itself?

Sliding off the bed, he rifled blindly through his pants and pulled out a condom.

“I want to memorize your body all over again,” he said, fingers traveling over my body.

“I've missed this. You. So much,” I admitted, pulling him over me.

He slid a pillow beneath my head and tucked both of our arms beneath it. With his hands holding mine and our lips just barely touching, he slid inside.

My gasp and his moan reverberated in the otherwise silent room.

With the moonlight on his face, I felt deep in my chest how much I had missed him. He wasn't slow or tender. Everything about his pace had become frenzied, powerful, and we were climbing. He was chasing our release with every thrust. Every grasp of his hands over mine made my body sing.

Marcello kissed me, bruising my lips with his intensity. A bite, then a peck, before his tongue swept into my mouth. He was reaching his end when his movements became more frantic. He pushed himself up onto his arms, muscles flexing before reaching one hand between us.

“Yes, yes,” I chanted, my head shaking side to side. “That's it, Marcello.”

“
Tesoro
 . . .”

My hands reached up, cupping his face as I spiraled. He looked down, smiling, before dropping his lips to mine.

I was feeling the highest of highs when he collapsed next to me, just for a second before he scooted off to dispose of the condom.
When he returned he flopped into bed, making sure to pull me into his side. This was familiar, too, the after. He always kept me near, making me feel so treasured. His
tesoro.

He rolled me over to face him and brushed his lips against my neck, over my shoulder, and across my chest. Light, tender kisses that stirred a long-ignored need deep within me.

“When can we do that again?” I asked, brushing the drooping hair from his forehead. He was spent, smiling and so cute, I could barely take it.

IT'S FUNNY HOW YOU CAN
become what you see every day. Since I'd arrived in Rome, I'd been observing couples in love, couples in lust, couples that had either just had all the sex or were on their way to having all of the sex. They were the ones draped around each other like sexy little jackets, the ones with their hands in each other's pockets and their lips on permanent meld. The couples where he seems fascinated with a lock of her hair and studies it as though it was the most incredible piece of art. The couples where she can't stop touching him, letting her fingers linger on his shoulder, his elbow, the back of his neck, that spot on his chest when she can feel his heart beating and she knows its beating faster because her hands are on his skin and isn't that the most adorable thing you've ever seen?

Well, it
was
the most adorable thing until Marcello and I hit the streets. We now held the title of Sexiest Couple in Rome.

Famished, we dragged ourselves from the apartment and walked a few blocks down to the neighborhood trattoria. We moved slowly, our steps in sync in a natural way. His arm was wrapped around my shoulder, cuddling me close to him like a blanket he didn't want to be without. My arm was around his
waist, his hip bumping into mine with every step. He pushed me into a doorway to ravage my neck for one or fifteen minutes.

It was sloppy, all dreamy eyes and roving hands and quiet, contented sighs.

I'd been to this trattoria a few times with Daisy. Being here with Marcello felt totally different. The candles that seemed sweet and airy now felt sensual and dark and cozy. The tables pushed close together had seemed communal and quaint; now they were simply a reason to sit closer, skin to skin, tucked in to each other to conserve space. Everything on the menu even seemed sexier. Luscious strands of tagliatelle, looped in sensual curves around lusty tomatoes and spicy garlic.

Hungry? I was. For more Marcello.

Other than a few months in Spain with a certain neck ravager, I'd never felt comfortable sharing affection in public. But being with him again made me remember the sexier side of myself, the woman and not just the girl. I could feel every inch of my skin, my curves, every one of them this man had been intimately reacquainted with only a short while ago. My breasts pushed at my cotton shift; plumped by his kisses, nipped by his teeth, they were sensitive and just so very there. All the tiny scrapes along the inside of my thighs from his scruff, not to mention a tender spot that still throbbed with every heartbeat where he'd bitten down high on the inside of my left thigh while I cried out. Every part of my body felt alive, used in the best way possible, the way that it was meant to be used. For pleasure, mine and his.

He sighed while biting into a piece of crusty bread, mimicking the exact sigh he made when he slid into my body for the first time in years. Hearing it again made me warm all over.

“How do you feel?” he asked, pushing the strap of my dress
aside so he could drop a kiss on the exact spot where my neck met my shoulder.

Underneath the table, I placed his hand on my knee and slowly slid it up my thigh. “You tell me.”

His eyes burned. His touch seared. I gasped as his fingertips ghosted higher along my skin, pressing and circling, underneath my dress now.