Chapter 3
Time Lingers in the Big Easy
Aria Amora
The mood of the French Quarter had changed, just like the mood of the group.
Except where we were all quiet, not celebrating as we had been on the walk to the restaurant and during dinner, the French Quarter was in the throes of debauchery.
Pulsating neon lights that matched throbbing beats seemed to spill out of packed nightclubs and strip clubs.
Bouncers in tight muscle shirts with the name of the establishments they worked for hovered around entrances.
A man in a top hat offered our group of men the most sensual pleasures if they would only step foot inside his magic door.
A woman in skimpy white chiffon and lace, wings attached to her back, spun on a silver pole in plain sight.
Rocco kept his eyes straight, the vein in his head still swollen, his jaw ticking. He must have felt my stare on his face and looked down to meet my eyes. He touched my chin and said, “Solo tu, mia moglie.” Only you, my wife.
Almost home, a bachelorette party was doing some kind of dare scavenger hunt. The women were wanting beads, and a group of guys who held them yelled, “Show us your tits!”
The women did, and beads rained down around us, and then the women turned to us and flashed our group.
Then they started running for us, trying to kiss as many men as they could.
One of them held a stopwatch. The soldiers on the outside of the formation were getting attacked by lips, but these men were raised to respect women to a high degree, and were merely lifting their hands, letting it happen.
As far as I knew, these were all twenty-something Fausti soldiers who were unattached.
Until the crazed women—Those lips! The cologne!
The muscles!—started to push through to the middle, trying to get to all the attached men.
When the bride went after Rocco, I snagged her veil, ripping her head back along with a strand of her hair.
It wasn’t just me. All the women in our group started to swing on the bachelorette group.
And just like our men had done during the pepper picker fight on the island, they hauled us home.
It wasn’t my finest moment, and I could tell the other women were feeling the same way.
As we dangled, we locked eyes, as if it say, I don’t regret it, but I do.
I just couldn’t understand the disrespect. And if the shoes would’ve been on the other feet, the men around me would have killed a group of guys who had done the same as the bachelorette women.
As it was, I had no effing clue what Rocco was going to do about Remy. I just knew the rock-hard coldness hadn’t melted—but when it did, I didn’t think a head start was going to save Remy from Rocco’s wrath.
“Put me down,” I demanded after we entered the house.
Rocco ignored me.
“Put me down!” I started to fight against him, and instead of dealing with the tantrum, since we were one step away from climbing the ones to our bedroom, and no one was ahead or behind us, he hauled me over his shoulder like a caveman and hauled ass up the steps, my ass exposed.
Once we were tucked away in our room, his back to the door, we faced off.
I was starting to tremble from the fading of adrenaline and something I couldn’t identify—it was coming from my husband.
Trapped rage, maybe? He had it under control, but I could feel the need for its release beating against his muscles from across the room.
We stared at each other.
One breath.
Two breaths.
Three breaths.
We went for each other.
Except…our bodies were at war, but our hearts seemed to be sighing at the first touch.
We ripped at each other’s clothes, and I couldn’t help the words that left my mouth, I love you, I love you so much, only you, it’s always been only you, as he smeared my lipstick down my face with the force of his kiss.
He was speaking directly to my heart, my blood and my bones, down to the deepest part of my soul, his voice hot and molten, commanding all of me to all of him.
Mine.
Yours.
Mine!
Yours!
He set me down on top of him, wet and wanting, and pulsed his hips up so hard, I thought maybe the pulse between my legs flew into my brain.
It took control of me entirely—I was one red, neon, throbbing pulse.
It knocked the breath from my lungs, but when he ordered me to open my eyes, I did, and I started to move with him.
I was giving him as much as he was giving me.
Our bodies were slapping.
Our mouths inhaling.
Teeth almost clashing.
Our hands entangled.
My aching nipples found friction against his hard chest, my nails into his wide shoulders.
I couldn’t stop.
He couldn’t stop.
We were like wild animals that were fated to mate for life.
He pulled out some, back some. “Watch,” he ordered, rolling his bottom lip between his teeth. “Watch us.”
My eyes disconnected from his and watched as he slid in and out of me, his cock slippery with my want, moving inside of me.
The scent of our sex overpowered his scent, my scent, and together, the air was heady with our scent, making me high.
His nostrils flared as he scented it, and it drove him higher—I was bouncing on his cock, my breasts jiggling with the impact, the noises we made as wild as our bodies.
He couldn’t control himself with me, and he growled, lifting me up, turning me over, like he needed to be inside of me ten times at once.
I needed it too.
So, so, so bad.
The want was wild, and neither of us could completely satisfy its…
ravenous hunger. We would feed it, and it would come back even stronger with only a look.
It seemed like we tossed, we turned, we stood, we rested, backs against the bed, against the wall, doing the only thing we could to relieve it—caress, bruise, bite, lick, kiss, squeeze, slip, pound, fuck and make love.
So, we gave in to it, unable to fight it.
Refusing to.
We offered more than our bodies to it.
Completely.
It consumed us.
The magic we could only create together.
It moved through us, absorbed in us, and locked us inside this room, just like we had been locked in that room at the castello on the island.
And as the morning light burned through the fluttering lace curtains, we melted with it, making love so achingly slow, it almost seemed like this was the pain to the pleasure of making love.
This was when my heart tore itself open and he buried himself so deep inside of me, the pounding organ felt like it was made of elastic and expanding—and just when I thought it might pop, it ballooned, deepened, carrying his love as my womb was created to carry a child of his blood.
Gabriel’s music floated through the breeze as he serenaded his Evangeline with “True Companion.” Luca had sung the same song at our wedding. The song was meant for lovers, and, as if ardor had a voice, it was serenading all of us with it.
We faced the light, my husband’s strong body behind my soft one, his fingertips caressing my arms and back, his lips over my pulse.
Me? Languor had me in its embrace. This was adoration in its physical form, and I refused to move, to shy away from it. He craved to show it to me, and I offered myself up to that hunger—willingly, and for the rest of my life.
Rocco sang to the settling pulse in my neck in soft Italian, and my eyes completely shut out the light, more than willing to brave the darkness for just a moment of this pure bliss in time.
This.
This was a moment to die for.
To live for.
He was giving me a lifetime’s worth of them to collect.
Mine.
Then, the morning faded completely into a scalding hot day, and my husband picked me up and carried me out to the balcony facing the bustling street.
We ate breakfast, then showered and got dressed for the day together.
Rocco had told me we were going to get my things from the storage place.
He wore a t-shirt and sweatpants. I decided to slip on a black jumpsuit, an off the shoulder thin sweater with it, and a pair of tennis shoes.
I pulled my hair back into a high ponytail, my bangs framing my face.
Rocco watched every move, every step, like he was transfixed by me getting dressed. It stole my breath, and when I went to take the comb to his impeccable hair, he grabbed my wrists.
Our eyes met.
I breathed out.
He breathed in.
“Mine,” he said, his voice rough, applying pressure to my wrists, over my radial arteries.
“Yours,” I breathed out, leaning down, closing my eyes, placing a soft kiss between his eyes.
After I combed his hair some and spritzed myself with a little perfume, his nostrils flared, like he was making sure the manufactured scent hadn’t covered up his claim.
Satisfied that I was still covered in his armor, he handed me my crossbody purse and we left the house hand in hand.
I dug in my purse and handed him his sunglasses, then slipped on my own.
Even at the beginning of September, the humidity made the air feel heavy and hot.
Occasionally, a wind would sweep down the street, teasing with hints of smoke and rustling brown leaves for the autumn to come.
But anyone who has ever lived in New Orleans knows—seasons are a magical creature.
Who knows if summer would linger and we’d skip fall and go straight to winter?
We walked to Café Du Monde on Decatur Street and grabbed two coffees to go.
More milk than coffee for me. More coffee than milk for Rocco.
We loafed around for a few minutes. I pointed across the street, past the line of carriages waiting to be rented, the artists with their canvases filled with paint hanging from the black wrought-iron gate around Jackson Square, to the St. Louis Cathedral.