Chapter 14 Velato or.Our Veiled Home #2
Even though Nel Cielo welcomed us in right away, I still wanted to take my time with each room. Allow it to get to know me as much as I was getting to know it. Nel Cielo was habitable, the kitchen and bathrooms worked, and Rocco and I both agreed the rest would work itself out in time.
Time.
I sighed.
On an evening when my husband was busy with the harvest, I was taking my time cleaning all the antique furniture in my writing room. I wanted to take a moment to do this before the important, traditional, and final grape harvesting celebration we were hosting.
In the meantime, every day, at midday, all the workers came together for pranzo di Vendemmia, where long wooden tables were set out for the communal meal.
Local dishes were spread out on these tables, the workers enjoying them with wine, and there was always a lot of laughter rising to our windows.
I oversaw two of them, and I thought I did well, but I wanted to know more about local fare and how I could honor the cooks that came before me.
Make sure I was doing the dishes of this region justice.
Sure, maybe my way of cooking said dishes might vary, but at the core—I wanted my hands to work in the traditional ways of the past.
Scarlett and Brando were coming by the next day to see the progress we were making, and since I’d be planning the main celebration, I had a feeling Scarlett was either coming over for moral support, or to help me if I asked for it.
My sister and brother-in-law had been over a few times, both helping, but I noticed that the family was keeping their distance, and when I broached the subject with Rocco, he had shrugged and said…
“They are giving us time.”
“Time to be alone?”
“Sì,” he had said, and then he set me on the counter in the bathroom and made love to me. There wasn’t a space in our home that we hadn’t made ours.
The times when they had come over, Scarlett and I had no privacy to bring up our last conversation, about the eerie feeling Luca gave me the night of the bayou party, Maggie Beautiful, and all the rest of the things I’d set in a dark area of my mind to pull into the light after Rocco and I had time just to be… newlyweds.
Sighing, I rolled up the sleeves of my long, mauve cardigan and adjusted the headband holding back my bangs. I tightened my ponytail and was about to get to work when I decided to walk to the double doors that led outside to the garden.
Rocco had prepared the soil for me, and together, we planted the butterfly garden I’d always wanted.
Mari oversaw it, and she agreed that early fall was one of the prime times to plant.
Though I couldn’t wait to watch it all grow, my feet took me to the edge of the garden.
A little beyond it, the land opened, and I was looking down on our own private world from the clouds.
Sometimes it felt like I was taking a walk through them.
Other times I felt like I was floating in them.
This time, when my eyes connected on a vision speaking to another man about the grapes he was so passionate about, it felt like I was inside of one, so high in the sky, I was almost touching heaven.
My husband.
He was focused on one of the grape plants, his dirt-smeared hand touching a bunch, while he was listening to what the worker was saying to him. He lifted the grape, crushed it between his fingers, chewed the pulp, and then shook his head.
The assaggio dell’acino.
Rocco was deciding if that particular grape was ready for the harvest.
My husband had ancient wisdom inside of him when he was making the decision of when to harvest. Too early or too late and the fruit wouldn’t yield its best product.
Rocco instinctively knew, and from what I’d heard from the family, his grandfather was the same when it came to the bounty of the land.
It was in their blood, especially something as romantic as wine.
I didn’t know how many times a heart could fall in love, but at that point, I had lost track. Couldn’t keep score. All I knew was that it continued to happen, and I prayed it would always happen. Just to see him was to love him. To fall even harder for him.
Even in small moments such as these.
No.
Especially in small moments such as these.
Nonna had always told me that, as the years go by and life shifts around us, what we have in the beginning looks a lot different in the end, and suddenly, you find yourself homesick for a time that no longer exists.
This, she said, is why we must immerse ourselves in the good moments.
The moments that continue to transport us back in time through reminiscing—make us, even for a second, remember the good times, and look forward to the good times ahead.
That was what this whole moment felt like to me. Like it was lodging itself in a place inside of me that couldn’t shift, even when the world around us did.
A drift of fog slow-danced in front of me, cloaking my husband before it revealed him to me. This time, he was looking straight at me, and my breath caught.
In a move that felt emergent, Rocco started for me, and rushing through our home, I met him at the door.
He swept me off my feet and carried me into the office.
In the center of the room was a small desk that I’d fallen in love with as soon as I walked into the room.
It was vintage, made of dark wood that matched the beams above our heads, and it still had boxes stacked on it from the previous owner.
With one swoop, all the boxes crashed to the floor.
He set me down, and our lips met halfway.
He was breathing heavy.
So was I.
Our hands…our hands were as ravenous as our eyes.
I couldn’t close mine to his, and he couldn’t close his to mine.
My hands roamed up his strong back to his neck, then to his shoulders, and my engagement ring and wedding band caught the light and shimmered, along with the band on my right hand—emeralds, diamonds, and rubies, which stood for not only my husband’s roots, but mine too.
Even without a word spoken between us, our bodies together were telling a story. He was too far from me, and I was too far from him, and the distance felt like a killer between us.
He removed his dirtied shirt, flinging it to the floor, and then removed my cardigan, throwing it over his shirt.
He ripped my jumpsuit like it was made of paper, and when my breasts were exposed to him, he growled low in his throat.
Like the hunter he was, he went straight for my neck, sucking on my pulse, while my legs came up and pushed his pants down.
This wasn’t about taking things slow.
This was about pure instinct.
His nostrils flared, and without having to touch me between the legs, he instinctually knew—I was so wet, and so ready for him.
I was almost begging him to take me, to fill me up, to never separate us again.
He entered me in a stroke that had my nails sinking into his warm flesh.
He stilled, his lids so low, he almost looked drunk, before we both closed our eyes to the immense pleasure that filled me up.
It started in my toes and went straight to my head.
I was so dizzy.
The world was spinning around this man, and he was the only solid foundation keeping me from being flung out. And the space between his body and mine kept shrinking, until I knew the moments were going to make us fade into each other. I was already there, just by the look in his eyes.
Like I was the consuming passion he’d always craved to be consumed by, just as I craved with my last breath to be consumed by his, but at the end of it, we’d only be fused to each other.
“Yes,” I breathed out. “Deeper. Go deeper.”
He adjusted his position and mine, and even that slight difference made me feel him deeper than anything I’d ever felt in my life. My legs locked around his waist, and when he started to truly move, I cried out.
“You missed me, my wife.”
“More than you’ll ever know—ah!”
His thrusts were perfect, stretching me, sliding against every sensitive nerve inside of me. I could barely catch my breath, but his mouth on mine gave me life. I pulled him closer, moving my hips with his.
“Tell me again.”
My eyes slowly opened to his when his hips slowed. What I found in there was vulnerability, longing, and ache I felt beyond my flesh. It hit bone.
“I missed you,” I whispered, feeling cool tears slide down my warm cheeks. “I missed you my entire life, my husband.”
He leaned in, his mouth claiming mine, but it wasn’t a punishing rhythm. It was slow, sensual, and it owned my entire body. He owned my entire body. My entire heart.
Our souls…those were tangled, secured together, one always a part of the other.
He made a strangled noise in his throat before we both started to move harder, faster, and he picked me up, set me against the wall, and pushed into me so hard, it felt like my eyes rolled behind my lids.
He kept up this pace, and I could’ve sworn what I felt was the opposite of longing—it was finally finding what he had always been looking for buried deep inside of me.
“I am home,” he said in breathless Italian. “I am finally home. All that I am, all that I give to you, is safe within your walls.”
His words were my undoing.
My thighs started to tremble, and I grabbed his back, sliding my nails against his skin, my mouth panting for breath, before my entire body gave into his—or his entire body gave in to mine, and we came together in a crash that sent stars swirling behind my eyes.
We reveled in the quiet stillness between us, even though the outside world suddenly seemed so loud—the workers calling out to one another, the unmistakable snip of secateurs, the sound of grapes hitting the bottom of secchielli (small buckets), even my husband’s unsteady breaths.
It wasn’t from Rocco’s physical status, either. It went far beyond that for both of us.
He tucked his face between my neck, breathing me in, his tongue tasting the salt on my skin.
After a moment, he spoke to my frantic pulse, telling me that his heart had desired me even before I was created, and then I was created for him out of every desire of his heart.
He continued to tell me things, long after the sun went down.
In the cloak of darkness, all his secrets were shared with me, all that his heart still desired, and as the fog moved across our windows, it protected his secrets as I would—for the rest of my life and beyond.