Chapter 18
They didn’t finish their drinks. Abandoned on a table that suddenly took up far too much room between them, Amy’s glass jittered and threatened to topple as they hurried to leave the bar.
She didn’t look back. Fingers threaded through his, held firm, her only conscious thought to be somewhere where there wasn’t anyone else. Somewhere they could be alone.
She’d felt it that very first day, when she’d only just met him, and she’d made that terrible joke about flaky pastry.
The way he’d smiled at her. She’d done her best to ignore it, but now, with the heat of his hand around hers and the impossibly soft way he’d kissed her, Amy knew she couldn’t stop at that.
Wanted far more from him than a quick kiss or a tender moment.
The brakes had failed on the juggernaut, and it was only ever going to pick up speed as it headed in one direction.
He pulled her to a halt between two dim streetlights, not yet fully illuminated and leaving a darker area where they stood as he reached his palms around each side of her face and leant in to kiss her again.
This time softness had been replaced by a sense of urgency, the feeling that had them wordlessly leaving the bar made real in the way he kissed her, the way he slowly backed her against the rough stone of the building and leant into her.
Her fingers found the hem of his T-shirt, hesitating momentarily before she threaded them beneath the fabric, allowing them to feel their way across the warmth of his skin for the first time.
He sucked in a breath, pausing to draw back as he studied her, lids heavy on his dark chocolate eyes, raven hair flopping over an eyebrow.
‘God, Amy – I… Do you want to go…’
‘Back to the hotel?’ Amy wasn’t sure if that was what he would have said, but it was what she wanted to do. Worried she hadn’t made it obvious enough, she added, ‘My room?’
‘Aye. Yes. That sounds…’ He didn’t complete his sentence, too busy kissing her again.
His fingers threaded their way through her hair, loose and hanging down her back as he drew even closer to her.
Her fingers tightened against the muscles of his back, tugging him closer still as she lost all sense of place and time, deep instead in the way his touch, his kiss, his sheer presence was making her feel.
Amy sank back against the wall, melting against the firm lines of his body, too caught up in the moment to want to move, even though she wanted to have him all to herself, to lock the world out and find out what the rest of him felt like.
He went to pull away, and she resisted, groaning when he stifled a laugh, whispering in her ear that they couldn’t stay here all night, the residents would complain.
He was right, and as he peeled himself away from her, and the cool evening air swirled into the gap, it suddenly became imperative to get back to Casa del Cibo as quickly as possible.
With her hand in his, Tad turned, fanning out across the narrow street to head back towards the cookery school.
Amy yanked him to a stop. He hadn’t noticed the old man on an ill-lit bike, their only warning of its presence the creaking noises coming from the suspension – or maybe from the old man’s joints.
Tad drew close to Amy again, and she felt a protective arm around her shoulders even though she wasn’t anywhere near the cyclist. The bike made glacial progress past them and as the old man looked the pair of them up and down, Amy was sure she saw him wink at Tad.
‘Mi scusi,’ the old man said, the creaking continuing as he pedalled past, a grin growing on his face. As he cycled away, Amy was sure she heard him whistling a vaguely familiar tune, a single word wafting back on the breeze. ‘Amore…’
Back at Casa del Cibo, Tad nudged open the main door, sliding quietly inside with Amy following behind.
The sound of chatter emanated from the large reception room, and although Amy couldn’t make out who any of the voices belonged to, the last thing she wanted was to have to talk to anyone right now.
God forbid Billie or Malcolm were in there and spotted them.
Pressing a single finger to her lips, she tiptoed past the doorway.
Tad followed, a grin on his face as he hammed up the action of tiptoeing and looked like a cartoon figure, and they soundlessly headed up the levels of the staircase to the second floor, to Amy’s room.
At her door, she fumbled uselessly with the room key, all fingers and thumbs and thudding heart.
Tad turned the key in the lock, pushing the door open for her.
She headed inside, turning to find him stationary in the doorway. She frowned, mouth drying with the thought that he might have changed his mind or thought better of it.
‘Do you still want me to come in?’ he said, voice soft and low.
In answer, she looped her finger in the neckline of his T-shirt, as she had done at the bar, and pulled.
‘Yes, Taddeo. I want you to come all the way in.’
He didn’t need telling twice. With the door closed, Tad reclaimed his hold on her, kissing her as they backed across the expanse of carpeting until they were at the bed.
Amy reached for the side of her dress, Tad helping to unzip it, his gaze on her, heavy-lidded and total as she slipped the dress down, allowing it to pool around her feet.
‘Oh, wow,’ he said, fingers brushing against her collarbone, his thumb against the soft rise of her breast. She allowed herself to savour the touch, willing him to go slow, to give her a chance to do the same for him as she pulled off his jacket, feeling the lack of his hands on her keenly as he stripped his T-shirt and stood before her.
Amy ran her fingers across the gentle tangle of hairs on his chest, finally getting to see where the birds on his arm were heading.
His biceps flexed as he lifted her, laying her gently on the bed and claiming the space above her, as though he’d always been there, as though this had happened every night and had done for years, familiar and devastatingly exciting, all at the same time.
He moved her arm, studying the side of her body where the mountain biker had struck her.
Then he kissed the bruising, his kiss turning into something far more erotic as he moved across, sliding the fabric of her bra out of the way as he licked at her, then took her in his mouth and sucked.
Amy closed her eyes, threaded her fingers through the dark curls of his hair as she whispered his name over and over and lost herself to him.
* * *
Much later, when Amy woke, the room was dark and cool, her body barely covered by the corner of thin duvet hastily pulled up into place earlier.
In the gentle revelation offered by a sliver of moonlight edging its way past the curtains, she could see most of the duvet still spilling onto the bedroom floor.
Not that the duvet was her primary interest. She could hear him breathing, soft, settled sounds of air entering and leaving his lungs as he lay beside her.
She turned over to be able to look at him.
On his front, with his face turned away and nestled into the pillow, arms akimbo to each side of his body, Tad looked about as relaxed as it was possible to be.
It was impossible for Amy not to notice a second tattoo, on the opposite shoulder to the arm covered in birds taking flight, this one a tangle of tiny stalks of flowers with some lettering running through them.
It took her a few seconds in the semi-darkness to work out what the letters spelt. Honor.
She wanted to reach out and touch it. A link to his past, a past she never knew but had been so important to him.
There was so much she didn’t know about him, or about what had made her want him enough to invite him into her bed with so little in the way of a precursor.
Desperate to wake him, but not wanting to disturb him, Amy reached out then withdrew her fingers without touching him.
Frowning at her own indecision, she took a moment, then leant over, breathing him in and planting a kiss on his shoulder.
He stirred, shuffling in the semi-darkness, the muscles in his neck cording as he turned in her direction.
‘Hello there,’ he said, tone soft as he rubbed at his eyes and shifted closer to her.
‘Hi,’ she said.
He wrapped an arm around her, pulling their bodies close. ‘Can’t you sleep?’
She slid her arms around his neck. ‘Not now.’
‘I’m suddenly wide awake, too,’ he said, grinning as he leant in to kiss her.
She’d felt it – if she was being honest – the first time she’d met him, that pull in the centre of her being when he smiled at her.
But the feeling had been pulsing stronger and stronger with the realisation that the things stopping her, stopping them from this, were all irrelevant. Or down to misconceptions.
It seemed bizarre they’d met only a few days previously.
It felt to Amy as though they’d known one another for far, far longer.
Maybe that was a cliché, something people said to make them feel better about an inappropriate liaison.
Maybe that’s exactly what this was, too, but she didn’t think so.
It might have been fast, but Amy had spent a glacial eighteen months prior to tonight, trying to work out what the hell was wrong with her.
And maybe all she needed was someone to tell her there wasn’t anything wrong with her.