22. Senna #2
“The cottage we booked,” he says against my mouth. “It’s just up the road. Our second overnight stop - private property, no one around.”
He pulls back onto the road, and I keep my hand on his thigh the whole way, and when we finally park behind the small stone building - enclosed by hedges, invisible from the lane - we don’t even make it inside.
The cottage is maybe twenty steps from the car. We don’t take them.
Rocco kills the engine. The sudden quiet is thick with cicadas and the smell of warm earth and whatever wild thing is blooming in the hedges.
Late afternoon light turns the stone walls gold.
My hand is still on his thigh, higher now than it started, and he’s looking at me like I’ve just rewritten every song he’s ever known.
“Senna-”
“Back seat,” I say. “Now.”
He laughs - really laughs, bright and startled - and then he’s scrambling out of the driver’s side and I’m climbing over the console with all the grace of a woman who has decided dignity is overrated, and we tumble into the back seat in a tangle of limbs and laughter and the particular frantic joy of people who have spent three days remembering how to be in love.
“This is insane,” he says against my mouth, already kissing me, already shoving my skirt up my thighs. “We have a whole cottage. With a bed. With a door.”
“I don’t want a bed.” I yank his shirt out of his jeans, palms sliding up the warm skin of his stomach. “I want you. Here. Windows down. Hedges for walls. Like we used to before we got careful.”
“We were never careful.” His mouth finds my throat. “We just got scared.”
“I’m not scared right now.”
“Good.” He bites gently at the place under my ear. “Because I’m about to be absolutely indecent, and I need you keeping pace.”
“Bring it.”
He grins against my skin - that open, easy grin from the ferry and the terrible pop song and the humming I told him about - and then his hands are everywhere.
My blouse buttons come undone under his fingers.
My bra follows. The warm Italian air hits my bare breasts and I shiver, and then his mouth is on me, sucking, playful and hungry at once, and I arch up into him and knock my elbow on the window and we both dissolve into laughter again.
“Smooth,” I tease.
“You’re the one who wanted the back seat.”
“And I’d choose it again.” I shove at his jeans. “Off. I want to feel you. I want to feel how hard you are for me after three days of singing and lemon trees and not being able to keep our hands off each other.”
“I’ve been hard since the overlook.” He works his jeans down just far enough, frees his cock, and the sight of him - thick, flushed, already wet at the tip - makes my mouth go dry even as I’m grinning.
“I’ve been hard since you said you never stopped loving me.
Do you have any idea what that did to me? ”
“Prove it.”
“With pleasure.”
He peels my underwear down and off one ankle, leaves them dangling from the other like a flag of surrender, and then he’s settling between my thighs in the cramped space of the back seat, the leather hot against my spine, the hedges rustling outside the open windows.
He looks down at me - flushed, half-naked, skirt hiked to my waist, smiling like a woman who has finally stopped running - and something soft and filthy moves through his face at once.
“Fuck.” A breath of wonder. “Look at you. My wife. Spread out in a rental car behind a cottage in Lazio like we don’t have a scandal waiting for us in Florence.”
“Don’t talk about Florence.”
“I’m going to talk about whatever I want while I feast on you.” His mouth curves. “And you’re going to take it. And then you’re going to ride me like the gala is a rumor.”
“The gala exists.”
“Not for the next twenty minutes it doesn’t.”
Then his mouth is on me.
No preamble. He digs in laughing - tongue broad and greedy, joy tipping all the way over into heat - and I gasp loud enough that a bird startles out of the hedge.
He laughs against me - the vibration of it shooting through my clit - and then he’s licking into me properly, playful and devastating, two fingers sliding in when I’m wet enough, curling, finding that place that makes my hips lift off the leather.
“Rocco - oh my god-”
“That’s it.” His voice is muffled, delighted. “Louder. There’s no one for miles. Let the hedges hear you.”
I let the hedges hear me. He sucks on my clit with a focus that belies the laughter, and the orgasm builds fast - too fast, days of singing and touching and almost-kissing and the confession at the overlook all crashing through me at once.
When it hits I cry out, thighs shaking around his head, one hand braced on the ceiling of the car, and he works me through it with a groan that sounds like triumph.
“Okay - okay-” I tug his hair, laughing, gasping. “You win, you smug bastard-”
“Smug?” He lifts his head, mouth shining, eyes bright. “I just made my wife come in a back seat with the windows down. I’m not smug. I’m fucking ecstatic.”
“Then get up here and be ecstatic inside me.”
He climbs up my body - awkward in the small space, knee slipping, both of us laughing again - and I guide his cock with my hand to where I’m soaked and open. He sinks in with one steady drive that fills me completely and knocks the laughter out of both of us, replacing it with something hungrier.
“Fuck-” His forehead drops to mine. “Senna. You feel-”
“I know.” I wrap my legs around him as best I can in the cramped seat. “Move. Please. I’ve been waiting three days and a lifetime.”
He moves.
Not gentle. Not careful. The rhythm of joy and urgency and windows-down freedom, the wet sound of it mixing with cicadas and distant traffic, his hips snapping into mine while the car rocks softly on its tires.
I meet every thrust. My bare shoulders stick to the leather.
Cicadas keep time in the hedges. His mouth finds mine and we kiss like we’re starving and celebrating at once.
“Harder,” I gasp. “I want to feel you tomorrow when we’re driving into Florence. I want the ache of this when we walk into that gala.”
“Filthy,” he groans, delighted, and hooks one of my knees higher so he can get deeper. “My filthy brilliant wife who sings off-key on purpose and then fucks me in rental cars.”
“You married me anyway.”
“I’d marry you again. Every fucking day.” He shifts, somehow gets a hand between us, thumb finding my clit. “Again. Spill on me with the hedges watching. Let me feel you.”