8. The Gala #2
The speeches begin. I give mine. Three minutes.
Thank the donors. Reference the historical significance of the Certosa.
Make a joke about Neapolitans being better at building things than maintaining them.
Polite laughter. Checkbooks tighten or loosen depending on the quality of the wine, which tonight is excellent because I chose it.
I return to the table. Valentina is watching me with an expression I haven't catalogued yet.
"What?" I say.
"You're good at this."
"Speeches?"
"All of it. The room. The people. The way you make them feel like they're choosing to give you what you want."
I sit down. "That's either a compliment or a warning."
"It's an observation."
"From a woman who makes a lot of those."
She holds my gaze for two seconds longer than conversation requires. Then she reaches for her wine glass, takes a sip, sets it down.
"I need some air," she says.
"There's a terrace on the fourth floor."
"I was thinking somewhere less public."
My pulse does something it hasn't done in years. It accelerates without a threat to justify the response.
"The elevators are past the bar," I say.
She stands. Picks up her clutch. Walks toward the bar without looking back to see if I'm following.
I follow.
We pass Michele, who clocks our movement with a glance. I give him a look that means stay. We round the corner past the restrooms, past the coat check, into the alcove where the service elevator sits beside the guest elevator. She presses the call button.
The guest elevator opens. Empty. Gold mirrors on three walls, a marble floor, a brass railing at waist height. We step inside. The doors close.
She presses four. The elevator moves.
I don't press four.
I press the stop button.
The elevator jolts. Settles. The hum of the motor dies. The silence is complete, sealed, a box of gold mirrors and marble with two people in it and nowhere to go.
She looks at me. Not surprised. Expectant. Like she's been waiting to see which one of us would break first.
"This is forward," she says.
"You said you wanted somewhere less public."
"I said less public. Not stalled between floors."
"Do you want me to start it again?"
She takes off her glasses. Folds them. Puts them in her clutch. Without them, her face is different. Open. Unarmored. Her eyes are larger, or they seem larger, dark and focused on mine with an intensity that wasn't visible behind the lenses.
"No," she says.
I close the distance in one step. My hands find her waist, the midnight blue fabric warm from her body, the curve of her hips beneath the silk. I press her against the wall between two mirrors. Her back hits the brass railing. She exhales. Short. Sharp.
I kiss her.
Hard. Not polite. Not the way you kiss a woman at a charity gala in a rented ballroom while a cardinal eats sfogliatella fifty feet away. I kiss her with the accumulated force of every dinner, every almost-smile, every half-second where she stood too close while pouring wine and didn't step back.
She kisses me back harder.
Her hands come up to my jaw. Both of them.
She pulls me down into her mouth like she's been thinking about this, planning it, running the scenario the way I run operations.
Her lips are warm. She tastes like the Barbaresco.
Her tongue finds mine and the sound she makes, low, involuntary, barely audible, goes through me like a current through copper wire.
I pull back enough to see her face. Her eyes are open. Watching me.
"Tell me to stop," I say.
"No."
My mouth goes to her neck. The spot below her ear where the skin is thin and the pulse lives close to the surface.
I can feel it against my lips. Fast. Faster than mine.
I drag my mouth down the tendon of her throat, slow, feeling her swallow against my lips.
She tilts her head back. The mirrors on both sides multiply her, this girl in midnight blue with her head back and her throat exposed, reflected infinite times in gold glass.
My hand slides down her hip. Finds the slit in the dress. The fabric parts over her thigh. My fingers trace the inside of her leg, moving up, slow enough that she has time to stop me.
She doesn't stop me.
Her skin is smooth. Warm. My hand moves higher. The inside of her thigh, the soft skin there, and my fingers brush something I don't expect. A raised line. Then another. Old scars, healed into smooth ridges beneath my fingertips. A map of something I don't understand.
She tenses. A full-body contraction, brief, controlled. She catches my wrist. Not to remove it. To pause it.
"Don't ask," she says. Her voice is steady but her eyes are not.
I hold still. My fingers resting against the scars I will not ask about. She grips my wrist firmly.
"I won't," I say.
She releases my wrist.
My hand continues.
Higher. The silk of her underwear against my fingertips. I trace the edge. The elastic at the crease of her thigh. She inhales through her teeth. A sound like a door being opened against resistance. I press my fingers against her through the silk. She's warm. Wet through the fabric.
"Dimmi cosa vuoi," I say against her ear. (Tell me what you want.)
Her breath catches. "Toccami." (Touch me.)
I pull the silk aside. My fingers slide against her, slick, bare, her hips tilting forward into my hand. She gasps. Her nails dig into my shoulder through the suit jacket. I find the rhythm she wants by listening to her breathing. Slow circles that tighten as her legs begin to shake.
"Così?" I ask. (Like this?)
"Sì. Non fermarti." (Yes. Don't stop.)
I don't stop. I press closer. My mouth on her neck, my voice low in her ear, words in Italian I don't plan, that fall out of me the way they used to fall out of my mother when she sang to herself in the kitchen.
The language of unguarded moments. I tell her she's beautiful and how she feels against my fingers.
I tell her I've been thinking about this since the first dinner when she corrected my tip, standing in the middle of the dining room with her apron and her glasses and her mouth half-open like she couldn't believe the number on the receipt.