19. Matteo
— ? —
Matteo
We’re halfway back to the dock when I realize I can’t wait any longer.
The lantern is still visible above us, a tiny point of light among the stars.
Ursula is sitting across from me in the bow of the boat, wrapped in the blanket, her face soft with something I’m only now learning to recognize as happiness.
She’s been smiling since we released the lantern.
Actually smiling. Not the ice queen smile she wears like armor, but something real and warm and devastating.
I’ve been rowing with mechanical precision, trying to focus on anything other than the way she looks right now. The starlight caught in her hair. The curve of her neck. The way her eyes keep finding mine in the darkness.
“You’re watching me,” she says.
“I’m rowing.”
“You can do both apparently.”
“I’m a man of many talents.”
“Modest too.”
I laugh, and then I stop rowing, and the boat drifts on the still water. She raises an eyebrow.
“Is something wrong with the oars?”
“The oars are fine.”
“Then why did you stop?”
“Because if I don’t kiss you in the next thirty seconds, I’m going to lose my mind.”
Her smile shifts into something else. Something that makes my blood run hot.
“The cabin is very close,” she says. “We could wait.”
“I don’t want to wait.”
“The boat is very small.”
“I’ve noticed.”
“And the water is very cold.”
“I’ll keep you warm.”
She laughs, and the sound is so beautiful it makes my chest ache. I set down the oars, carefully, and move toward her. The boat rocks alarmingly.
“Matteo, if you capsize us...”
“I won’t.”
“You’re already...”
I kiss her before she can finish the sentence.
Her mouth opens under mine, warm and willing, and I forget about the boat, forget about the cold water, forget about everything except the woman in my arms. My hands find her waist, pull her closer, and the boat tips sideways with a violent lurch.
We break apart, grabbing the sides to steady ourselves.
“I told you,” she says, breathless.
“You did.”
“This is a terrible idea.”
“Probably.”
“We should wait for the cabin.”
“Probably.”
“Matteo.”
“Ursula.”
She’s looking at me with those green eyes, near-black in the dark, and I see the moment she decides. She moves toward me, the boat rocks again, and this time neither of us reaches for the sides.
“If we drown,” she murmurs against my lips, “I’m blaming you.”
“Fair enough.”
Logistics in a rowboat are, as it turns out, complicated.
The blanket keeps getting tangled. The oars keep getting in the way. Every time one of us shifts position, the boat tips dangerously, sending water sloshing over the sides. At one point I nearly roll us both into the lake reaching for the button on her jeans.
“Left,” she gasps. “Move left. No, my left. Other left.”
“There is no other left.”
“You’re sitting on my...”
“Sorry.”
“Just...”
The boat lurches again. She grabs my shoulders to steady herself and we end up nose to nose, both of us breathing hard, both of us laughing.
“This is ridiculous,” she says.
“Completely ridiculous.”
“We should definitely stop.”
“We should definitely stop.”
Neither of us stops.
I finally manage to get her jeans off, which requires a complicated series of maneuvers that nearly tips us twice and results in one of her shoes going overboard. She’s laughing so hard she can barely breathe, which makes me laugh, which makes the boat rock even more.
“My shoe,” she gasps. “You threw my shoe in the lake.”
“I didn’t throw it. It jumped.”
“Shoes don’t jump.”
“This one was suicidal.”
“You’re insane.”
“You love me anyway.”
“I do.” She pulls me down to her, her hands in my hair, her mouth hot on mine. “I really, really do.”
We figure it out eventually. The bottom of the boat is hard and wet and uncomfortable and I’m pretty sure I’m lying on an oar, and none of it matters, because I get a hand between her thighs and find her already slick and swollen and ready, and the sound she makes when I push two fingers into her drowns out every complaint my spine wants to file.
“You’re so wet,” I say against her jaw. “We haven’t done anything and you’re already dripping for me.”
“Then do something.” She grabs my wrist, grinds down onto my hand. “Stop narrating and do something.”
I laugh, and I line myself up, and I press into her slow and relentless, and her bossy little mouth falls open on a gasp.
She’s tight around me, clenching, her heels hooking behind my thighs to drag me deeper, and for a second I have to hold still with my mouth pressed to her temple just to keep from finishing on the spot like a teenager.
“God.” Her voice is a whisper. “How are you so...”
“Shh.”
“I’m just saying...”
“Shh.”
I move, and she stops talking.
The boat rocks with each thrust, water sloshing over the sides, the whole thing threatening to tip us into the lake, and I do not slow down.
I can’t. I brace one hand on the seat above her head and fuck her in the bottom of a rowboat under a sky full of stars, her tits bouncing with every drive of my hips, her nails carving lines into my shoulders.
She’s chanting my name and something filthy and something that might be please, and I would have waited another thirteen years for this. Another thirty, a lifetime.
She’s worth every second.
“Matteo.” Her nails dig into my back. “More. Harder. I’m so close, don’t you dare stop.”
“Anything.” I get a thumb on her clit and work it in time with my hips, and I feel her start to come apart around me. “Everything. Come on. Come on my cock, let me feel you.”
She shatters with my name in her mouth, clamping down so hard it drags me right over the edge with her, and I spill into her with my face buried in her neck, hips jerking, both of us shaking in a boat that is somehow, against all odds, still upright.
We lie there afterward, tangled together in the bottom of the boat, staring up at the stars. The lantern is gone now, carried away on the wind, but its light seems to linger in the sky.
“That was,” she starts.
“Ridiculous?”
“I was going to say amazing.”
“Both can be true.”
She laughs, turns her head to look at me. “We lost my shoe.”
“I’ll buy you new shoes.”
“It was part of a pair.”
“I’ll buy you two pairs.”
“That’s not how...”
“Shh.” I kiss her forehead. “Let me spoil you.”
“You already spoil me.”
“Not nearly enough.”
Voices.
We both freeze. Somewhere on the shore, maybe a hundred yards away, people are talking. A dog barks. Footsteps crunch on gravel.
“Don’t move,” I whisper.
“I wasn’t planning to.”
We lie absolutely still, barely breathing, naked and tangled in the bottom of a rowboat in the middle of a lake. The voices get closer. The dog barks again, sharp and excited.
“If someone sees us,” Ursula breathes.
“They won’t.”
“If they do...”
“They won’t.”
The footsteps pass. The voices fade. The dog’s barking recedes into the distance.
We look at each other.
And we burst out laughing.
“Oh my God.” She’s shaking with it, tears streaming down her face. “Oh my God, we almost...”
“I know.”
“If they had seen...”
“I know.”
“We’re terrible people.”
“The worst.”
“We’re in our thirties, making love in a rowboat like teenagers.”
“To be fair, I never did this as a teenager.”
“Neither did I.”
“Then we’re making up for lost time.”
She reaches for me, pulls me down, kisses me with a hunger that reignites everything I thought was satisfied.
The laughter fades. When I slide back into her it’s nothing like the frantic scramble from before.
It’s slow and deep. I take her one long stroke at a time, drawing almost all the way out before sinking back home, watching her face tip up toward the stars the entire time, and she holds my gaze and lets me see all of it, every flicker, nothing hidden.
Her breath catches on each thrust. Her fingers lace through mine.
When she finally tips over the edge this time she does it quietly, a soft broken sound and a full-body shudder, still looking at me, and I follow her into it saying her name like the only prayer I know.
Lovemaking that leaves marks on the soul.
“I love you,” she says afterward, her head on my chest, her fingers tracing patterns on my skin. “I love you so much it scares me.”
“Don’t be scared.”
“I can’t help it. The last time I loved someone this much, he destroyed me.”
“I’m not Bennett.”
“I know.”
“I would never hurt you.”
“I know that too.” She lifts her head, looks at me. “That’s what scares me. That I believe you. That I trust you. That I’ve given you the power to break me, and I’m not even worried about it.”
“You’ve given me the same power.” I cup her face in my hands. “You could destroy me, Ursula. You could walk away tomorrow and I’d never recover. But I’m not scared. You know why?”
“Why?”
“Because I know you won’t. Because I know you love me the way I love you. Because for the first time in my life, I trust someone completely.” I kiss her softly. “We’re both terrified. We’re both vulnerable. We’re both risking everything. That’s what love is.”
She’s crying. Or maybe I’m crying. Maybe we both are.
“I want to marry you,” I say.
She goes still.
“Not right now, not in a boat. But someday, soon. I want to marry you and grow old with you and build something real. Something lasting. Something neither of us has ever had.”
“Matteo...”
“You don’t have to answer now. I just needed you to know.”
“I was going to say yes.”
Now I go still.
“Yes?”
“Yes.” She’s laughing through her tears. “Yes, I want to marry you. Yes, I want to grow old with you. Yes, yes, yes.”
I kiss her. And kiss her again. And somehow we end up making love a third time, slower now, savoring each other, until the stars have wheeled halfway across the sky and we’re both too exhausted to move.
“We should probably get to the cabin,” she murmurs eventually. “Before we freeze.”
“Probably.”
“And find my shoe.”
“In the morning.”
“It’s already morning.”
She’s right. The sky is lightening in the east, the first hints of dawn painting the horizon pink and gold.
“Then we’ve stayed up all night,” I say. “Like teenagers.”
“Like idiots.”
“Like people in love.”
“Same thing.”
We dress awkwardly, find the oars, row to the dock with considerably less grace than we left it. Her single remaining shoe makes walking difficult, so I carry her up the path to the cabin, both of us giggling like children.
“This is very romantic,” she says.
“I’m a romantic guy.”
“You’re a ridiculous guy.”
“Also true.”
The cabin is warm and welcoming, the fire I laid earlier still smoldering. I put her down on the bed, cover her with blankets, and climb in beside her.
“Sleep,” I say. “We’ll figure out the rest when we wake up.”
“The rest?”
“The wedding. The future. The life we’re going to build.”
She smiles, that real smile, the one that still takes my breath away.
“I love you,” she says.
“I love you too.”
She falls asleep in my arms, and I stay awake just long enough to watch the sunrise paint the walls golden. Then I close my eyes and follow her into dreams.
Dreams of lighthouses and lanterns and a future I never thought I’d have.
Dreams of her.