8. The Gala #3
She grips the brass railing with one hand. My shoulder with the other. Her head falls back against the mirror. Her legs are trembling. Her breathing fractures into short, hard bursts that fog the gold glass behind her.
I add pressure. My thumb on her clit, two fingers inside her, curling forward. She bites her lower lip hard enough to whiten the skin. Her hips rock against my hand. The railing squeaks against the wall.
"Niccolo."
My name. In her voice. In this elevator. The sound of it dismantles something inside my chest I didn't know was load-bearing.
She comes with her back arched against the mirror, her mouth open, both hands gripping the railing behind her.
The sound she makes is quiet. Controlled.
Like even in this, even with her body shaking against my hand, she is managing how much of herself she lets out.
She allows a moan. One. Low. Then she presses her lips together, breathes through her nose, rides the last of it against my fingers in silence.
I feel her pulse through my hand. The flutter of it. Hummingbird-fast. Then slowing. She opens her eyes.
We look at each other.
My hand is still between her legs. Her dress is pushed up around her thighs.
Her hair is displaced across one shoulder.
My suit is wrinkled where she gripped my shoulder.
The mirrors around us hold the image from every angle, a man in black and a woman in blue, breathing hard in a box between floors.
She reaches past me. Presses the button for four.
The elevator hums. Begins to move.
She straightens her dress. Smooths the fabric over her thighs. Pulls her hair back behind both ears, the gesture automatic, muscle memory. Opens her clutch. Puts her glasses on.
I adjust my jacket. Run a hand through my hair. Straighten my collar.
The elevator opens on the fourth floor. An empty hallway. White marble, sconce lighting, the muffled bass of the orchestra two floors below.
She steps out. Turns. Looks at me standing in the elevator with my hands at my sides, my pulse still elevated, the scent of her on my fingers.
"You should probably wash your hands before you shake the Cardinal's," she says.
I stare at her.
She almost smiles. The scaffolding. The foundation. Then she lets it happen. A real smile, full, her whole face opening in a way I've never seen, warm and startled and a little wild, like she can't believe what just happened any more than I can.
"Come on," she says. "We should go back before someone sends your man in the bad suit to find us."
"Which one?"
"The one by the east door. His jacket pulls at the left hip. He carries on the right side, crossdraw."
I step out of the elevator. The doors close behind me. The hallway is empty. She is standing three feet away in a midnight blue dress with her glasses on, telling me which side my bodyguard carries his weapon.
I have no idea who this woman is.
I have never wanted to find out more.
We take the stairs back to the ballroom. We enter separately, thirty seconds apart. She goes to the bar for water. I go to the Cardinal, who is discussing the monastery's drainage issues with the chief of staff. I shake his hand. The Cardinal's, not the chief of staff's. I washed my hands.
The rest of the gala passes in a blur of handshakes, donor conversations, and the specific performance of a man who controls a room while his mind is somewhere else entirely. In an elevator. Between floors. Against gold mirrors.
At 11 PM, my driver brings the car around. I find Valentina near the coat check, holding her clutch, her hair slightly less composed than when she arrived. She's taken her heels off. She's holding them in one hand, barefoot on the hotel marble, three inches shorter than she was all evening.
I don't say anything. She doesn't say anything.
We get in the car. The driver takes us through Naples.
The city at night, lit and loud, the eternal noise of a place that refuses to go to bed.
She sits close but not touching. I sit close but not touching.
The space between us is six inches of leather seat that might as well be the width of the bay.
The car stops at her building. A narrow door on a narrow street in the Sanità, laundry above, graffiti below, the smell of garbage and jasmine from the courtyard.
She opens the door. Pauses. Turns.
"Thank you," she says. "For the evening."
"Thank you for the security assessment."
She laughs. A real one. Quiet but real, her shoulders shaking, her glasses fogging slightly from her own breath.
She gets out. Closes the door. Walks to the building entrance barefoot, heels dangling from her left hand. She doesn't look back.
The driver waits for her to go inside.
She goes inside.
We pull away.
I sit in the back seat with her name in my chest, the scent of her still on my right hand, the memory of her pulse against my fingers, the sound of my name in her voice in a stopped elevator between floors.
I press two fingers to the scar on my forearm. Trace it. The old habit that means I'm thinking about something I can't solve.
The elevator changed everything.
I know it. She knows it.
Whatever this is, it isn't fake anymore.