Silent Truths (74 page)

Going back to the kitchen she drank some more wine, then washed the lettuce in a bowl of iced water. She guessed he’d have dropped Max off by now so would be on his way back, and almost gasped at the sudden onslaught of nerves that the time was now so close. Recalling the journey in from the airport she pictured him at the wheel of the open-topped Jeep, his dark hair blowing in the wind as he passed the bull ring, then the sea-view cemetery, roadside cafés and artisans’ stalls, before speeding through long arches of overhanging trees, funnels of light brightening the road ahead. He’d have one hand on the wheel, an elbow resting on the doorframe where the window should be. She could see his face, taut with concentration, and knew that his thoughts were on her. Again her insides caught, this time on the desire that scooped her up like prey. No matter how much more experienced he was than her, she knew he wanted her tonight, and whatever he had to teach her, she would willingly learn, for she’d never felt such a physical longing for a man in her life.

By the time she finished lighting all the candles, and turned off the lamps she knew he should arrive
any minute. Not even a breath of air whispered through the garden, nor did a single cloud darken the half-moon. The only movement was the shimmering reflection of tiny white flames in the pool, and on the shiny surfaces of leaves.

Minutes later she heard the Jeep pull up outside and the engine die. As the car door closed she pushed a button on the tape player and the room filled with the magical opening to ‘
E lucevan le stelle
’, from Puccini’s
Tosca
. Already transported by the music, she turned to face the door, and took a step back into the candlelit foliage of a pink hibiscus. Her hand was resting where her sarong was tied over her breasts; her breath was so shallow and her heart so full that she could feel herself starting to tremble.

His key barely made a noise in the lock as Carreras’s majestic voice joined with the music, and as the door opened her throat caught on his surprise at the music, then the candles, then the vision of her, almost dreamlike, in the shell of foliage across the room. Carreras decrescendoed. Her hand moved and her sarong fell to the ground.

As the door closed behind him the Italian love song began to build again, its passion filling the air as he moved towards her, never taking his eyes from hers. She stepped forward to meet him, her heart buoyed by music and love.

He gazed far into her eyes, showing her without words how deeply he felt, how poignant this moment was for him too. Reaching behind her, he removed the clip from her hair and watched it fall around her shoulders. She put a hand on his chest, and as the aria reached its peak his mouth touched
hers with such searing tenderness she felt her own start to shake.

The heat of the music flared around them as he stood back to remove his clothes. Then, naked, he pulled her to him, his hands feeling her nudity as his skin embraced it too. Their bodies were bathed in soft, golden light, his so dark and masculine, hers so slender and female. His hands slipped down over her hips, then spanned her waist, bringing her harder to his erection. His lips moved to her neck and shoulders, then they watched his hands as they moved to her breasts, cupping their fullness, and feeling their weight. She lifted her mouth to his, and he drew her lips between his own, sucking them and biting them gently, until lowering his head, he did the same to her nipples. Her back arched towards him and her fingers slid into his hair, as her breath caught on the eroticism of their reflections in the mirror beside them.

His movements seemed as fluid as the music as he stood behind her, and turned her so that they could both look at her reflected nudity and watch his hands as they explored it. Her head fell back on his shoulder as his fingers touched her nipples so lightly that the biting desire for more made her gasp. He squeezed them hard, and groaning she turned her face into his neck. The scent of him inflamed her, and as his mouth sought hers, she kissed him with her lips and tongue until his hands on her breasts made her pleasure so heavy she could barely support it.

Turning back to the mirror she looked at his reflection. Behind her his erection was hard and strong and she wanted it so badly she was ready to
beg. Taking it he pushed it gently between her thighs, then they watched as his hands descended to her waist, over the soft skin of her belly to the place that was so ready for his touch she was almost afraid to feel it.

‘You’re perfect,’ he whispered. She raised her eyes to his in the mirror, then sobbed as his fingers opened her and began to stroke her, too gently to make her come, but enough to take her so close she could hardly bear it. Then, almost in time with the music, he scooped her up in his arms, carried her to the heavy oak table, and pushing aside the place mats and napkins, he laid her down amongst the candles.

She looked up at him, and felt so full of emotion that no words would come. Her legs were parted, he was standing between them and she knew that at any moment he would enter her. Leaning over her he kissed each of her breasts, her belly, then the place where his tongue could exploit her harshly. She moaned and sobbed beneath him, grasping his hands hard and opening her legs wide. The music was now pulsing through her with the same relentless force as the sensations. The sounds were as tangible as touch, the orchestra as powerful as the climax she was nearing. She gasped and cried out, then tightened her grasp on him, so hard that he could make no mistake about how far he had taken her.

He stood up and looked down at her. She was dazed by sensation, so close to the brink, yet starting to fall away with the diminuendo. He watched her, waiting for her eyes to come to his. When they did, the opening bars to
Si, mi chiamano Mimi
began, and as the exquisite female voice merged with Carreras’s powerful tenor in one of
La Bohème
’s most stirring arias, she felt him moving slowly, inexorably into her.

She watched his face, and held his hands, every muscle tensed with the pleasure of him filling her. Already he was so big inside her that she could feel him taking her in a way she’d never been taken before. His eyes remained on hers as he raised her knees, and pulled her right to the table’s edge. He pushed again until finally he was all the way in, then easing back he began the sublime penetration all over again. He did it again, and again. Slowly, tenderly, lovingly. Rotating his hips, then rocking them, watching her face, kissing her hands until the music suddenly galvanized his movements and he thrust into her, so hard that she cried out – and he kept her crying out as the rhythm carried them in a frenzy of harmony and sensation, to a tremendous, explosive climax that seemed to have no end.

Lifting her up, he held her and kissed her mouth. The seed was still bursting from him, the pulsing grip of her inner muscles hadn’t even begun to subside. The opera swirled around them as they clung together, their bodies damp with sweat and bruised with love. The candles flickered, the moon gleamed above and the pool shone like glass. There was no way for either of them to express the beauty of this, their first experience together. They knew only that the other felt its power too, and that nothing they had imagined had even come close to being this good.

When at last he stopped kissing her, and looked down into her eyes, she smiled blearily up at him.

‘I love you,’ he whispered.

‘No more doubts?’

He shook his head. ‘They were never real.’

Her eyes were mischievous. ‘But I almost had to get killed to bring you to your senses.’

For a long time they just looked at each other, cherishing the moments as they passed, feeling the emotions in their hearts, occasionally kissing, never wanting to let go. Then, holding his face between her hands, and feeling the strength of him still there inside her, she said, ‘I’m going to love Puccini for ever.’

His eyes were suffused with humour, then his mouth closed brutally on hers and the turbulence of renewed desire moved between them like the opening gusts of a storm. Lifting her up with her legs around his waist he carried her to the grassy mattress next to the pool and laid her down.

‘I bought
two
tapes today,’ she told him as he lay on his side next to her.

‘Oh?’ He was watching his hand moving over her belly.

She waited for his eyes to come to hers, then smiled as she said, ‘The other one’s Wagner.’

Humour was deep in his voice as he said, ‘So while the world reverberates to the shock of our revelations, we’re here making love to
Tristan und Isolde
?’

‘Nothing so tame.’

His eyebrows flickered upwards, then, guessing, his face tightened with desire. ‘If I’m right,’ he said, ‘then you know what it means.’

‘It’s why I chose it,’ she responded.

For a while they only looked at each other,
imagining the eroticism of what was to come, knowing the positions they would take, and feeling its promise beating through them with a harsh and brazen power. Letting her go, he lay on his back, gazing up at the stars, as she went to change the tape. Then the first triumphal sounds of Wagner’s greatest masterpiece began.

‘Do you realize,’ she said, coming back to kneel beside him, ‘that in England the papers are about to hit the stands?’

He was already reaching for her, moving behind her to cover her body with his. ‘Then I guess we could say,’ he murmured, as the music’s rousing drama began to encircle them, ‘that the opera really is about to begin.’

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Copyright © Susan Lewis 2001

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