Chapter 40
Chapter Forty
Flora
My early worries and insecurities had passed and now, naked and lying beneath Maurizio, I felt reassured that there was no need for me to worry about Sophie.
Had she maintained contact from the start, she would have been someone I crossed paths with regularly, but for whatever reason she hadn’t, so this, her being involved was new, or at least that’s what I told myself, not that I didn’t think being in the same house as her, working with her children and sleeping with her husband wasn’t a weird combination.
“Flora,” Maurizio groaned my name as he moved lower, capturing a nipple between his lips before drawing it into the wet heat of his mouth where his tongue lapped against the sensitive, bullet like nub.
My groans were the ones I heard now as he sucked harder before allowing his teeth to graze over the tip.
“Maurizio, please,” I begged, needing more.
More of his touch and attention, everywhere.
The moisture between my thighs was increasing and as I attempted to close my thighs, to tighten them and squeeze them together, to gain some relief, his hand set about pinching and rolling the other nipple whilst never taking his eyes off my face.
The obstacle of his body lain between my spread legs was counterproductive to relief.
“Not yet, but soon. I’m going to make this last because once I make you call my name and come apart for me, I am going to need to be buried inside you, fucking you, until you’ve screamed yourself hoarse, and then I will be powerless to do anything beyond filling you with my cum.”
The things this man did to me with his words alone should be illegal.
I stifled an internal giggle to think that even if they were illegal I would still do them and as he was such a great barrister, he could get me off.
The sensation of Maurizio’s fingers moving slowly through my arousal made me realise that I wasn’t far from getting off instantly.
“Like that, yes,” he encouraged, his fingers beginning to make their way into my molten centre while his thumb focused on my clit.
“Maurizio!” I cried, my volume increasing with every touch that drove me ever closer to release.
“Come, for me, show me how I make you feel!” His words were spoken with dominance and authority and that along with my own body’s reaction to them were my undoing. “You are fucking beautiful,” he told me as he crawled back up my body until our noses touched. “I want you so much.”
“You have me.” A broad grin cracked his face.
“I do, don’t I?”
I could feel the tip of his erection nudging my entrance and then he was gone, kneeling up on my bed while I lay before him, spread out like a meal.
That wasn’t the worst idea I had ever had.
His laugh caused me to look up at him questioningly but clearly my thoughts had been written across my face.
“My tongue is going to savour every inch of you later, but for now . . .” He pulled me into a sitting position. “Turn over, on your hands and knees.”
I dutifully obliged and almost immediately heard the sound of foil being torn. Until that second I hadn’t even considered if there were condoms in my room. The sensation of a hand coming to rest on my hip triggered a low moan of anticipation.
“You keep making those noises and I am going to embarrass myself before I’ve even entered you.”
“And then we’d have to do it again, slower.”
“Good point, so make all the noises you want because they, like you, are as sexy as fuck.”
I deliberately repeated my earlier moan and was rewarded with a low chuckle and a single smack to my behind and then the sensation of being stretched and filled.
“This hadn’t been my intention when I came back up here. I wanted to talk, just talk.”
If the depth of sincerity hadn’t been present in Maurizio’s voice, I might have thought he was backtracking and was about to tell me that the kissing and the sex had been a mistake, but it was there.
“Are you regretting it?” I asked with a smile and a giggle as I rolled onto my front and looked at him propped up on the pillows of my bed where we remained.
“What do you think?” He pushed the hair back off my face. “In fact, I think you said we should do it again.”
“That was if you embarrassed yourself and it was over all too soon, and you didn’t.”
A smug and cocky smirk curled his lips. “Is that a complaint?”
“No, but I have just done myself out of seconds, haven’t I?”
He threw his head back and laughed and the tiny fragments of doubt and concern over this whole thing dissolved. “Maybe not.” He paused. “You’re okay though, about us and Sophie being here for however long she’s here?”
The last bit threw me a little. I had no idea how long she planned to stay, but neither did he.
I was missing something here. “It will be weird and perhaps a little awkward, but I guess it’ll be okay for a few days.
” He looked horrified. “A few weeks.” I was fishing and his face said it might be longer than that. “Maurizio, please.”
He interrupted. “Flora! I don’t know how long she needs to stay here.”
“But—”
He cut me off completely now. “I have said I do not know and there is nothing more I can add. Sophie has her reasons and they’re not mine to share.”
Okay, so there was something I didn’t know about and he wasn’t going to tell me. It was frustrating and yet reassuring at the same time that he would keep her confidence and whether it was wise to do so, I decided to take a slightly different route.
“What happened with you and your wife?”
“Can you not call her that, please? It’s like you’re accusing me of doing something I shouldn’t be, and I’m not.” Maybe this was a bad idea, but I had committed to it now.
“She is your wife.” I was poking the bear because although she was technically his wife, he had given no indication in the time I had known him that he viewed her in that way.
“Flora!” He snapped and ran a hand through his hair whilst giving me a warning stare.
“Sorry. What would you like me to call her?”
“Sophie will suffice.”
“What happened with her, between the two of you?” I sounded nervous rather than angsty now and judging by the butterflies fluttering in my stomach, I felt as I sounded. She hadn’t been a threat to whatever was happening between Maurizio and me until earlier that day.
“Happened? When? When we met, the end, the in-between?” His voice was flat, any feelings he might have on the subject of Sophie, indecipherable now.
Fighting the urge to say all of the above, I settled with the truth. “I’m not really sure.”
“Sophie was no longer happy or fulfilled by our marriage is the crux of it, but it was more than that.”
I nodded, knowing that based on things I’d heard from Maurizio, Bea, Carrie and even Carmella, his summing up seemed accurate.
“I guess we had a fairly typical history. We met, fell in love, and I think we believed we wanted the same things.”
Obviously they had been in love, but hearing him say it hurt me, there was no denying it but I attempted to mask it so he would continue. “You believed?”
He nodded and looked a little sad. “We didn’t. I wanted a home and a family . . .” A loud sigh sounded around us. “The children weren’t planned and although we both wanted them, Sophie struggled with the loss of control. She was ambitious and knew her career would be compromised by being a parent.
My frown caused Maurizio to laugh. Loudly.
“That is not me being chauvinistic, I swear, but Sophie would need to take some time out to give birth at the very least and no matter how brief a time, she knew it would impact her career. The compromise to that was a nanny. Bea. Twins was something of a surprise and the effect physically was significant for Sophie. Even so, she returned to work when the children were three months old.”
“Wow.” I had nothing else to say. I couldn’t imagine having that professional determination or wanting, or perhaps for Sophie, needing to return to work, missing out on those early weeks of her babies’ lives that passed by so quickly.
“It was a lot for us both, but Sophie found it hardest; to be who she needed to be in her career that in a matter of a few months had moved on so much without her, and to fit that in with being a good mum, and she was. Don’t let what has happened since our marriage failed to distort how good a mother she was.
Our separation was hard on us both, but I think especially on Sophie. ”
I inadvertently rolled my eyes, irritating Maurizio in that second.
“Flora, you’re really not in a position to judge Sophie. You weren’t here and you do not know her.”
His sharp tone stung. He was pissed off and now I was confused.
Was he defending her and chastising me because he still had feelings for her or maybe with her back in the house he was remembering happier times and considering putting his family back together?
Perhaps now wasn’t the right time for this conversation assuming any time ever would be if it was encouraging my insecurities to resurface so soon.
“I wasn’t judging.” My protest sounded weak, but why?
Had I been judging her? Although I wasn’t a parent, I couldn’t imagine ever leaving children behind by choice, and in the event that I had to .
. . I couldn’t think of a situation that would make that a reality .
. . but if I did, I’d maintain contact and co-parent, so, I didn’t understand her motives and as such, yes, I was judging her.
My thoughts and judgement were also partly due to trying to work out where Maurizio and I realistically fitted into the new picture of a present Sophie because we had never discussed this scenario. I hadn’t even considered it.
“You were.” His tone was softer again and as I watched him rock his head from side to side and flex his jaw a couple of times, his hair mussed by his hand running through it as he briefly closed his eyes and looked down at me.
“I get why because I judged her, rather harshly, but now, she is trying under difficult circumstances. For that, for my children, I am grateful because they deserve to have two parents and Sophie deserves to be their mother and to have her career.”
He pulled me close and held me tightly, almost like he was rocking me. He kissed me on the top of my head and I was unsure which of us needed this the most.