Tuscan Heat (10 page)

He started to say something and changed his mind. “Come. Let us stand over the Ponte Vecchio and be glad that it is no longer home to the butcher shops.”

We were passing dozens of paintings, and I still wasn’t really seeing them. Maybe he wasn’t just talking with Italian effusiveness and flattery. Maybe he was sincere.

And maybe it didn’t matter a fat damn, since I lived on an entire other continent. Florence was so much a part of him that he wasn’t going to leave. It didn’t make a difference where I felt at home, because I couldn’t afford to stay.
You were just supposed to be a hot holiday fling
, I raged silently.
I just wanted a tight ass and a big dick. You weren’t supposed to be artistic and funny and kind.

We turned the corner. The windows were small and square, and occasionally small and round, but when we got to the midpoint over the bridge, there were three enormous picture windows. We stood there, looking down at the wrought iron railing around a monument. It glittered with tiny brass locks.

Marco put his arm around me. “There is a story that if two lovers place a lock on the fence and throw the key into the river, they will never be parted.”

“Stop it. Just…shut up.” I shrugged off his arm.

“Sara, what—?”

“I don’t want to talk about all this gushy crap anymore, all right?”

“Excuse me?”

“I’m a fling you picked up in a bar, for crying out loud. You don’t have to lay it on so thick,” I snarled. As long as I could stay mad, I wouldn’t cry.

“I am not laying anything on thick.”

“Are you kidding? I’m wading in it up to my hips.”

“Why are you talking this way?”

“I just don’t want us to get sappy and stupid. Let’s have fun, for fuck’s sake.”

He was pissed now. “I am sorry if you are so American that you do not like having a real man be nice to you.”

“I like it fine in men who live in Maryland.”

“Maryland?”

“It’s the state above Virginia.”

“I know what it is, Sara,” he hissed. “I do not know what Maryland has to do with us.”

“There is no goddamned us!”

Below us, people were looking around for the source of the yelling. None of them looked up. I turned away from the windows and stuffed my knuckles into my mouth.

He walked a little way down the hall. “I am trying not to say anything very angry. I try to joke, but the words do not come,” he finally said. “I thought perhaps there was more between us than just a, how did you say it, a fuck’s sake.”

This didn’t strike me as the time to explain the idiom. “Well, there can’t be.”

“I am not used to being wrong about a woman.”

“Glad I could give you a first.”

“You did that at the Stibberto. I did not need for you to do it again.”

The way he added an “o” to a word that didn’t technically have one was adorable. I hated that he was adorable. I raised an eyebrow at him. “No one ever…”

“Not in public. I always wanted to do it in public.”

“That wasn’t public,” I scoffed.

“Oh? Then what about at dinner last night?”

“That was barely public. That tablecloth went all the way to the floor and the light was dim.”

He took a step toward me. “You do these things for me, but you do not like me.”

“That’s not what I said at all.”

“You reject my suggestion that there is more between us.” Another step.

“We live five thousand miles apart.”

“You say this is just sex, yes?”

He was stalking me like a tiger goes after a deer. His fists were clenched, but his glare was what drove me. I took a step back, but I narrowed my eyes. If I was going to end up as venison, he was going to have to fight for every bite. “Is there something wrong with that?”

“No.”

“Then what’s with all the bitching?” I took one more step, and realized I had been going at an angle instead of straight down the hall. My back was against a gigantic gilt frame, and if I moved too fast I was going to knock the whole damn thing down. I glared at him.

“I think you are scared.”

“Bullshit.”

“You deny what happens when I touch you?”

He reached out and rested one finger lightly on my lips for a moment. Then he drew a line over my chin, down my neck and over the embroidered border of my dress. Without pausing
he traced the outline of my left breast and down my ribs. I was frozen in place, but his touch burned.

He leaned in. “You do not like that,
Americana?
”

“Of course I do,” I choked out.

“But it is just sex.”

“Yes.”

“Now I say bullshit.” He reached out and grabbed me. I didn’t resist when he crushed our bodies together. Our lips met with such force that I whimpered, but my tongue entwined with his without hesitation.

He wasn’t holding back any of his power. He was devouring me, grinding against me. One of his arms kept me confined, and he forced the other between our chests. He got my breast out of the cup and over the low neckline of my dress, and bent down to suckle at my hardened nipple. The fine grit of his chin scraped against my tender skin.

I cried out for more. He put his mouth back on mine to silence me, and he fumbled with his pants zipper. Then he brought both of his hands down to my ass. He cupped his hands and pulled me hard against his cock, shoving through the fly of his slacks.

He was already hard, and he thrust at me like a man about to lose his control. I strained to match his every move. I rose onto my tiptoes to get more pressure where I most wanted it.

I’d thought my ankle was fine, but with the added stress, I felt a lance of pain shoot through it. My sharp hiss didn’t sound anything at all like the other noises I was making, and Marco noticed.

He didn’t miss a beat. He reached down and put his hand under my knee on the side of my injury, and lifted my leg up to his waist.

It had the effect of exposing more of my pussy to his stiff cock. The interruption seemed to have cooled him, because instead of thrusting, he went back to grinding against me in slow, even circles. Every time I moaned, I could feel him shudder.

He could feel how close I was to the edge. The circles of his groin evolved back into thrusts. Gentle at first, and picking up speed with each word he dropped into my ear with a harsh whisper. “I know you, Serafina. Four days or four lifetimes, I know you. I know your body. You were made for me. I will fuck you, and I will also make love to you, and you cannot stop me.

“I don’t want to stop you.”

“Say it again.”

“Don’t stop. Please. Want—”

“What do you want?”

“You. God, now, you, please.”

He paused. “Sara, I do not have—”

I clawed at his shoulders. “I don’t care anymore. Just fuck me.”

He pushed me back far enough to pull up my dress and shove down my underwear. Then he spun me around until my back was against the wall by the picture windows facing west over the Arno.

I didn’t mind being trapped anymore, and I wasn’t frozen either. I shoved his pants down enough to expose his groin. Within a second I had my arms around him and my leg hooked high around his hip. My skirt was bunched up between our chests. He supported my knee with his arm until we got our rhythm back, but he wouldn’t enter me. His smooth, hard shaft rubbed against my clit.

“You want it? Or me?”

“Both.

“You cannot have one without the other,” he snarled.

“I said both, damn you.”

He reached down for my other leg. I wrapped my arms around his neck and held on until I was braced firmly against the wall. He made a few small adjustments until the head of his cock was against my opening.

“Say my name.”

“Marco.”

“Tell me you want me.”

“I do. I want you.” He pressed himself into me. I moaned at the feel of him, skin on skin. It was everything I’d dreamed of. The extra friction of his foreskin was exquisite against the tender flesh around my opening. When he was all the way inside, he paused for a moment.

“Now listen to me, Sara. I want you. I care for you. And you cannot tell me that I mean nothing to you, or you would not trust me enough to do this.” He pressed me to the wall so he could pull back ever so slightly, and thrust hard on the final word.

I couldn’t argue. His strong arms holding me, the sound of his ragged breathing in one ear, the city noises in the other, the feel of the cool plaster wall against my back—it all swirled into the sexiest cocktail possible. I drank it in with greed.

His steady rhythm overcame every thought. The world narrowed down to our bodies moving together. I clung to his neck and hovered on the edge of orgasm. I arched my back and cried out, a long low wail of pleasure. With one final push, I went over.

“I will not lose you, Sara,” he cried out, and his own climax tore through him.

We stood there, or rather he stood there holding me, until I noticed his arms quivering.

“Mmm. Put me down.”

Still joined, he carefully lowered my legs to the ground one at a time. He reached into a pocket as soon as he got a hand free. “I have a handkerchief,” he said. As soon as he wriggled it loose, he handed it to me. Only then did he pull out of my body.

I chuckled. Between the anger and the sex, I was too spent to really laugh. Remembering my pathetic attempt to pick a fight, I winced. “Oh, Marco. I’m an asshole. I am so sorry,” I said.

But he understood. “I blame Hitler.”

“What?”

“Yes. I blame Hitler and Mussolini. They are the ones who put in these enormous windows so they could admire the view while having secret evil meetings.”

I paused in the act of pulling my underwear back on. “Wow. A Florentine lair for Hitler.”

“Yes. Their evil spirits must still be here, making your temper very bad.”

“Did what we just did count as an exorcism?”

Marco laughed broadly. I wasn’t sure what to do with his hankie, a conundrum he solved by taking it back and using a dry section on himself. He folded it again, and shoved the cotton square into his back pocket. With that chore done, he picked me up and swung me around. “Yes, I think so,” he said. He sighed, his eyes wandering around the room.

“What else are you thinking?”

“I am thinking that if these walls could speak, what wonderful and terrible things they might say.”

I shivered. We stood in silence, hand in hand. I could feel my mood turning to one a bit more melancholy, and shook it off with a bright and brittle laugh. “I suppose that between the Medicis and Mussolini, our little discussion doesn’t even rate a footnote in the story.”

“I am sure we gave the people below a little thrill.” He winked.

“They probably wondered where the hell it was coming from.”

“It is a good thing my name is very common.”

“I was careful not to scream it out, I’ll have you know.”

“Sara?”

“Yes?

“Are there other paintings you wish to see?”

“I’m a little overwhelmed by paintings,” I admitted. “Some artist I am, eh?”

He sniffed. “You have the eye of the artist, not the critic. Let us go.”

After the solitude of the corridor, the crowded Uffizi was like going from a chamber music concert to a mosh pit. Both can be fun, but I wasn’t in the mood for people. Fortunately, being with a tall, broad-shouldered man is better than following a bouncer when it comes to getting through crowds. In a short amount of time, we were in his friend’s ground-floor office, returning her key. She was clearly in the middle of something, and we didn’t linger.

Marco started out of the room. I turned to follow him, and stopped when I felt a hand on my elbow. “Be…kind to him,
signorina,
” murmured the woman. She smiled gently at me and closed the office door.

Marco waited for me near the exit. “Is your ankle all right? You move very slowly.”

He must not have seen his friend speak to me. “No problems. So…”

“So.”

“Would you like to get lunch with me?” I burst out. I’d felt a little anxious when he wanted to cut short the time in the museum. Part of me was sure everything was fine. Sex fixes a wealth of problems for men. Still, another part of me was sure I’d ruined everything, and I wasn’t going to let my own pigheaded pride do the talking. Not all of it, anyway.

He smiled brightly enough to light the hallway. “Do you think you can wait an hour for your lunch?”

“Probably, why?”

“I would like to take you somewhere on the bike.” He frowned. “I have not yet seen you in jeans. Did you bring them, or did you believe the silly guidebooks that said Italians do not wear jeans?”

“I haven’t seen you in jeans, mister.”

He pushed open the door to the outside world. “I am trying to impress a woman. Besides, I have the armor for when I ride. You saw it.”

“I did. And I do. Have jeans, I mean.”

“Wonderful! Let us go.”

We stopped at my hotel for me to change and for him to retrieve the bike from the hotel’s parking garage. When I met him in the lobby, he clasped his hands to his chest. “You are a vision, Serafina.”

I looked down at my clothes and back at him. “You are so easy.”

“I know the American meaning of that word. And I am not easy. I am social.”

I smacked his arm. “Goon. You can’t seriously be impressed by jeans and a plain white button-up shirt.”

He whispered “I can when the body inside them is so perfect.” After a quick glance at the desk staff to be sure they weren’t watching, he patted me on the ass.

I wrinkled my nose at him. “Promises, promises.”

“Here, put on this coat,” he said. The garment in question was made of ultraexpensive mesh body armor, exactly like the one he had on.

I narrowed my eyes. “You have two bike jackets?”

Marco returned my stare with a bland expression. “But of course. The Tuscan summer is hot. If I go for a second ride in one day, I do not wish to wear something sweaty.”

He looked so innocent that I couldn’t think of what to say, even if this second jacket seemed brand-new and too small for his powerful torso. Instead I put it on. “So where are you taking me?”

Once we left the crowded streets of Florence, Marco hit the gas. The Harley shot forward like a leaping panther, purring and growling down the highway. All around me, the rolling fields were glazed with the hot summer sunlight. Rows of sunflowers faced the highway like cheering crowds. His machine was warm between my legs and his body hot in my arms. We swayed on the curves as if we’d been riding together all our lives. If I could have made myself heard over the engine, I’d have asked him to keep going all the way to Rome, just to keep the ride from ever ending.