43. Christiano
Chapter Forty-Three
CHRISTIANO
D reaming of a better time when she was here and we were happy.
“ C hristiano, look!” Annie cries out, leaning forward in the gondola.
I turn my head, smiling as I put my arm around her and follow her pointed fingers. “It’s a bird, Bella.”
She shakes her head and leans into my shoulder. “Nothing is just a bird anymore. Everything is so beautiful here.”
A tugging at my chest pulls a kiss from me onto her head, the short light red waves of her hair blowing and tickling my lips. “You are as fresh as this breeze. You make me very happy,” I whisper into her ear, out of range of the gondolier hearing. What’s ours is ours, and not the world’s to know.
“You have no idea how strange it is for me to hear things like that.” She smiles against my neck and kisses it. Her arm slides around my neck and I bring her onto my lap. We ride like this with the sunlight warm, and the buildings drifting by us just like time.
“Christiano?” a voice says, calling me to consciousness.
Opening my eyes to the morning sunlight of present day, I roll over to look for her. “Annie?” The pillow beside mine is empty yet again. Looking to the clock I see it’s just after eight o’clock. I must have finally fallen back to sleep after our phone call. I never thought I would, tossing and turning for what seemed like a lifetime. Even as I stretch my limbs to rid myself of the dream, discontent will not leave me.
I stare at a ghostlike memory of her sleeping beside me with her mouth slightly open, a small space between her lips. The soft sounds of shallow breathing. The feeling of her hand on mine. Closing my eyes, I try to shut it out, and fail.
Naked, I trudge into the bathroom to wash my face with cold water. The pipes don’t disappoint; the fresh burst is icy, the shock so good that I splash myself many times. I don’t like having no choice in this. I want to go to her. I want her here.
None of this is right.
My face in the reflection is enough to make me want to break the mirror. Discouragement and frustration stare back at me, water dripping down the lines of a forty-six year old man. You don’t look a day past sixty-two, Annie would say, teasing me when I would bring up our difference in age. Staring at myself now, I feel I finally look that old. Missing someone takes away the light from your eyes.
I wipe the drops from my face with my hands, too impatient for a towel. Stopping in the doorframe, I stare at the bed, remembering the first morning she was here. I’d stood where I am now, unable to believe I had made such a grave error in judgment. She had been sleeping there, right there, on her stomach, her head faced away from me. She had one leg bent and the blanket only covered half of her bare skin. I'd taken her three times that first night. We’d been caught in the newness and excitement of a chemistry I had not expected when I walked up to find her asking for directions from Adolfo.
I had leaned against this very doorframe with my arms crossed across my body, wearing nothing, just like I am now. She’d stirred, turned her head, and her nose flattened for a moment against the pillow. Through a sliver of waking eyes, she spied me staring, and a slow smile spread her lips. Her hair, that wretched black mess that made her oddly adorable, was pointed in all directions. The paleness of her skin was so young, with freckles like lightly sprinkled cinnamon. The sight of it gave me great guilt. I felt sure I’d taken advantage of a child by bringing her into my bed.
I would have to let her go. But even the thought of it, made me unhappy.
“How old are you, Bella?”
Her smile grew into a sexy, sleepy grin and she said on a laugh, “Kinda too late to ask me that now, dontcha think?” She waited for a smile to be returned, and was disappointed. “I’m twenty-three. You?”
I shook my head wearily, afraid that confessing would be the moment she ran screaming, making up excuses why she must leave and never see me again. With a heavy conscience, I had to admit that I had opened the discussion. “Forty-one.”
“Forty-one?” She stretched her arms high above her head and pointed her toes, reaching far in both directions. “That won’t do. You see, in my Italian lovers, I need them at least seventy-three, seventy-two at the youngest. It’s over, I’m afraid. Call me in thirty-one years. And it was so fun. Pity that.” She sighed and peeked to see my reaction.
“Is that so?” I couldn’t help but smile.
When she saw, she was pleased. “It is very so. That’s what I was looking up yesterday, in my language translation book. I was trying to say, Put that cigarette down and make love to me!”
I laughed. “Adolfo would have chosen the cigarette.”
She grinned playfully and laid her head on the pillow. “Adolfo? Well, I would have knocked it out of his hand and had my way with him by force! But then you came and stole me from him. He’s lucky to have escaped. You? Not so much.”
I knew I was the lucky one. I knew this, and I was drawn to her, because the look in her eyes was so different than the women I knew. Often from them I felt I was a prize to be won, not a man to be loved. But this young American girl looked at me without motive. Staring at her then, my mood changing with her reassuring words and languid body, I traced the lines of her breasts with my glance, still struggling for which direction to take.
“I am wondering if I made a mistake bringing you back here, young one.”
She frowned into the curve of pillow and touched the blanket, playing with the fabric between her finger and thumb. “Oh.” She bit her bottom lip. When her eyelashes swept back up, there was determination. “I don’t think it was a mistake. I don’t care how old you are. It feels good to be around you.” Her eyes flashed away, as though shyness suddenly took hold. Barely loud enough for me to hear, she muttered, “I can leave.”
I knew I didn’t want her to, but I stood my ground, a decision still not made.
Once more her eyelashes swept up to me. Her bright blue eyes sank me deeply and almost against my will, into her sweet vulnerability. Without words, she begged me to let her stay. The sight moved me. She bit her lip as she slowly pushed the blanket down, revealing her light, ginger-colored triangle, the curve of her hip, the soft crease where her legs met. The blanket hovered in her fingers at the middle of her thighs and she released it. I breathed in deeply as the need for her filled me. She held my eyes with an open invitation.
This can only end in heartbreak, I thought to myself as I climbed onto the bed and pulled her into my arms, taking her. Even as I pressed deeply inside, even as I saw her head fall back as her body opened to me in every way… I thought the heartbreak would be hers.
Never once did it occur to me that it would be mine.
Blinking away the past, I look down to see I’m erect, just as I was then. The memory reached into me and pulled out desire for her as she was then. I’m aroused by a fantasy! Anger pulses through me. I am alone and dreaming of a woman who no longer wants me. She says it may still be between us, but what evidence do I see since she left? How long have I been standing here? It feels like an hour but the clock says only ten minutes have passed since I awoke. How can that be? I have to start my day alone. I’m hungry. I need coffee. I need to eat. What good am I? Did I not give her everything? What will it take to make such a woman as her, happy?
Rage builds stronger and carries my feet hard against the ceramic tile, leading me quickly into the long hallway outside our room. I stop at a framed, hanging photograph of us at El Duomo in Firenze, her hair long then. When was this? Last year? Did I know she planned to leave me then? I look happy, so I think I must not have known. While her mouth is smiling, her eyes are not. She must have known the end was coming. How did I not see it? How could I have been such a blind fool? With a fierce grip, I pull the photograph off the wall and throw it to the ground. The release of broken glass exploding into tiny pieces around my bare feet is not enough. My skin is hot. The house feels like a jail I cannot escape from.
Crashing past the glass, I fly into the kitchen and freeze, my body tight with surprise.
There’s a carton of eggs next to olive oil, beside a pile of fresh basil leaves from my garden. A package of bacon from the butcher sits close by, still wrapped. Bananas, melon, and apples, are sliced and waiting, laid out beautifully on a plate next to blueberries and grapes. Sophia’s eyes go large and shocked as she takes in the sight of me ferociously looking at her.
“Ho pensato di fare la prima colazione,” she murmurs as her eyelashes fall to my cock, her glance escaping quickly back to my face. She’s never seen my body without clothes. The knife she holds is suspended in air, her breasts rising and falling faster now.
She thinks I’ll cover myself. She thinks she’s intruded. She thinks wrong.
I go to her, take the knife out of her hand and throw it down, never taking my eyes off hers, my erection hard and high. I’ve surprised her so much, it’s wiped away the cunning, experienced look she too often holds dear. I’m looking now instead at the girl I knew when we were kids, the one who didn’t waste time on frivolity or what other people thought of her. The girl who ran with me to the lake and jumped in without regard to clothing, leaping into the warm water in just our underwear. The girl who laughed more than the woman she’s become, ever has.
I pull that Sophia to me and kiss her hard. Her hands land below my collarbone in surprise, and she returns my kiss, gasping against my urgency as our mouths move feverishly together. I explore her body as I never have. Before this, we have never even kissed. She joins me, sliding fingers down this line and that. The blood rushes through us as our hands move, searching. Our tongues lunge and lash and stroke and my hands slide over the sensually large fullness of her breasts, the hour-glass shape of her, full hips and all – they are a tonic to my senses. The softness of her skin and the way she opens to me makes me roar inside myself. I grab the bottom of her summer dress and pull it up, the white cotton ripping. We ignore the sound, crushing each other’s mouths. With one hoarse low grunt of urgency, I sit her on the kitchen island, her ass pushing back the cutting board and the handle of the knife, fruit falling to the floor, rolling off behind her in all directions.
Her fingers claw at my back. Her legs wrap around me. I touch between them, discovering there are no panties to block me and I growl against her lips, rocking my hand into her, cupping her to feel the heat increase. She’s wet, so wet, and her eyes gaze at me submissively before she throws her head back and I release her to wrap my fingers around myself, stroking once as I thrust my hips forward and push inside her body. A low gorgeous moan rips through her as I take her. To see it, drives me insane. I pound into her slowly and fast and slow again, watching her gorgeous voluptuous curves arch upward. Her breasts rock with me and every sigh, every moan, every cry of ecstasy she gives races through me, matched. With firm slick strokes I fuck her, my strong fingers holding her tight, gripping and yanking her hips. Her head swings up to gaze at me, encased in pleasure. I growl again, like it’s our language, like I understand. There is nothing else but this feeling – this adrenaline and passion. She rises and presses into me, her mouth open and hoping I’ll take it again with my own. I latch my lips onto hers and she moans into my mouth like she has always waited for this moment. I unleash into her, letting go of all the rage, feeling like I’m wanted and needed and loved. She reaches for a handful of grapes and pushes them into my mouth, coming in and biting some for herself. Her hands slide down my chest, both of us chewing, the beads of sweat smearing under her fingers as she looks at them in awe. Watching her, I move slower and work my cock with deeper thought. Each time I push in, she reacts in a different way and I follow her gasps, her moans, her shutting eyelids to the point where she can no longer hold anything from me. As I thrust into her hard and rough, she shakes in the deepest regions. Her full luscious mouth is beautiful and I lean in again to kiss her hard. She begins to quake and pulls me with her. I yell out loud as we explode. The pulsing of me and the throbbing of her is everything that matters. I push up as deep as I can, an ending to the fidelity of a dream. With this moment, I slap the face of the woman who has no idea what I am doing, who would hate this. Who saw it imminent all along.
As we pant, I pull out of Sophia, the memories of arguments slamming into my mind.
Annie knew this would happen.
She told me so, many times.
I’ll not let her win.
Sophia’s panting, too, and her legs are weak and hanging off the kitchen island. Her hair is a beautiful mess of dark sultry waves. She stares at my face; unsure of why I’ve shut her out again.
In English, I tell her, “I’m not hungry anymore. Please leave.”
She stares at me with eyes big, confused, and hurting.
Looking away, I walk back to my bedroom.
Soon I hear a slamming door. I ignore the pang of longing in my chest. I will not let this be. It shall not be.