CHAPTER 6
Hand in hand, we climbed up the steep lane to the ristorante. I couldn’t imagine how a place that was so out of the way could attract much business, but when we poked our heads through the door, I saw that my assumption was very wrong.
It was thronged with families, and children of all ages were sitting at the long, trestle tables like little adults.
The happy noise tailed off when they saw us, and an unsubtle whispering began. I heard the word ‘Americani’ several times before a man in a white shirt and black pants, whom I assumed was the owner, came hurrying over.
We agreed that yes, we were the Americans and yes, it was an astonishing thing that we both spoke Italian and yes, we’d have whatever was on offer. No, we weren’t fussy, and yes, we were happy to have the locally made Dolcetto red wine.
We were seated at the corner end of one of the trestles, wedged in next to a family of seven. At first, our neighbors seemed a little shy, but then Sebastian shrugged out of his jacket and pushed up the sleeves of his t-shirt. A little girl in the party, a dark haired ragamuffin of about five, noticed his tattoo and asked her mother about the ‘picture’.
Her mother tried to hush her, but Sebastian smiled and explained to her that it was because he was a sailor and a soldier, and the ‘picture’ reminded him of his work.
“Is that because you forgot?” asked the child, clearly puzzled.
The whole room burst into laughter. I joined in, but seeing how at ease he was with the little girl made me sad for things that might have been.
It was clear the child was completely smitten with him, because she asked her mother if he was an angel, then reached up to stroke his short-cropped hair.
The meal finished with a small bowl each of gelato di miele honey ice cream, a local specialty. Sebastian ate most of mine, as I’d already eaten enough. He really was a bottomless pit when it came to food.
By the end of the evening we were practically family, and all on first-name terms. It had been a wonderful evening, full of laughter and quiet enjoyment, as I saw Sebastian chatting to his new, little friend. But I also couldn’t help noticing that Sebastian had drunk almost a whole bottle of wine by himself, although it didn’t seem to have had much effect. On the other hand, I was feeling a little lightheaded after two glasses.
“Having fun, baby?”
“Do you realize this is our first dinner-date?”
He frowned. “What about back in San Diego—that Sicilian place?”
“That doesn’t count: you wouldn’t let me finish our meal because you wanted to drag me back to the hotel.”
“Oh yeah, I definitely remember that!”
“Besides, your friend, Brenda, was spying on us. I’m half expecting to see her now, tossing her hair over her shoulder and thrusting her boobs in your face like she used to.”
His expression was amused. “She thrust her boobs in my face?”
“Don’t pretend like you didn’t notice. Anyway, if any boobs are to be thrust in your face, they’ll be mine. Right, Hunter?”
He laughed. “Anything you say, boss. Looking forward to it.”
“But then I was thinking,” I went on, “if this is our first date, I probably shouldn’t sleep with you. I don’t want you thinking I’m easy.”
Sebastian gazed at me appraisingly, then pulled out his phone and started scrolling through the numbers.
“Who are you calling?”
“Well, my date just told me she wouldn’t sleep with me, so I thought I’d see if I had Brenda’s number on speed dial.”
Ouch. He was much better at this game than I was.
“Fine, fine. I’ll sleep with you. But if my reputation is in ruins, it’s all your fault.”
Sebastian grinned at me, then stood up to pay the bill.
I realized we hadn’t discussed how we were going to split up the costs for this vacation. Maybe if he paid for one night and I paid for the next—that would be fair.
We left the ristorante with the good wishes and prayers of our new friends, the little girl blowing kisses to her ‘Angelo’.
But the angel proved he had a devilish streak because the moment we left the ristorante, he pushed me up against the wall and kissed me hard, holding my waist with one hand, and running his other hand up between my thighs.
He pressed his body up into me and I could feel his arousal by my hip. I was seriously considering taking him there and then, when the ristorante started emptying, and we were very nearly caught in flagrante delicto.
The women looked envious, and the men called out several coarse suggestions. I was very glad the darkness hid my embarrassment.
“Shall we try and make it back to our room this time?”
“Good idea,” muttered Sebastian. “I don’t think I could take a third interruption in one evening.”
The moon lit our path as we strolled back down the hill. The air was mild, much warmer than in chilly Geneva, but, of course, we were at sea level on this side of the Alps. I marveled again that in just a few days, we would be in the town where my father had been born. I don’t know why that filled me with expectation, but I was looking forward to walking where he’d walked, looking at the views that he’d have seen, maybe even talking to people he’d known. Italy was changing, but there were still places where the old folks lived and died in the villages where they’d been born.
When we got back to Casa Giovina, the villa was in near darkness. One, small lamp glowed in the hallway, and we crept up the stairs as if we were naughty teenagers.
I grabbed my toiletry bag before Sebastian could distract me and dashed into the bathroom, scrubbing the wine stains from my teeth, and then massaged a little moisturizer into my face with hope, rather than expectation, that it would erase any wrinkles.
When I returned to our room, Sebastian was already barefoot and shirtless. I dropped my toiletry bag from nerveless fingers, and he laughed at me.
“Seems like your eyeballs are the ones in danger of falling out, Ms. Venzi.”
“That is true, so hurry up and get your ass back in my bed.”
“Yes, boss!”
I stripped off my clothes, tossing them onto the chair, and threw myself into bed. Instead of it being the fairytale boudoir with the lacy net curtains that I’d imagined, the bed creaked alarmingly with every movement. I was horribly aware that the owner’s mother was in the room next to ours and didn’t sleep well. I stifled a giggle: it was not our night.
Sebastian returned, looking all hot and predatory. I was getting aroused just looking at him. But the thought of our noisy bed was making it hard not to laugh.
“What?” said Sebastian, annoyed that his entrance hadn’t had quite the effect he’d anticipated.
“Nothing,” I said, snorting back a giggle.
“What’s so funny?”
I shook my head, holding a hand over my mouth.
Huffily, he pulled down his pants and kicked them off, then slid his briefs down his slim hips. For practically the first time, there was no hint of an erection. My laughter obviously had a dampening effect.
He threw the sheets back on his side of the bed, looking sulky, then sat down and started to slide over to me.
The bed creaked loudly and his eyebrows shot up. I laughed out loud.
“Sorry! I think we got the you’re-not-married-so-you-damn-well-won’t-be-getting-any bed. It’s got a built-in anti-screwing alarm.”
Sebastian smirked at me. “You think a noisy bed is going to stop me?”
“The old lady is right next door! She ‘doesn’t sleep well’—remember?”
“I can’t help that. Besides, it’ll bring back happy memories for her.”
“Huh, you think you’re that good?”
Uh-oh, wrong question.
He gave me a dark smile, and then his head disappeared under the sheets. I really wasn’t laughing now. I tried to stifle a groan as a powerful sensation, beginning at my toes, raced up through my entire body. I pulled a pillow
over my face and moaned into the soft mound of feathers.
“Oh, God!”
“Yes, baby?” said Sebastian, his amused voice muffled by the sheets.
I heard him crawling back up the bed, the mattress articulating every movement, and he tugged the pillow from my face and grinned down. His long, skillful fingers continued to dip in and out of me, bringing me to the edge of orgasm. When he fastened his teeth over my left nipple, I fell, spiraling down and choking out his name.
“Still embarrassed by the bed?” he said, smiling at me wickedly.
The question was unfair: I wasn’t capable of speaking, let alone forming a rational answer.
The mattress creaked again as he slid off it to dig a condom out of his toiletry bag.
“You want to do this, baby?” he said, holding out the condom toward me.
He waited for all of two seconds before he gave up trying to get an answer. As if from a long way away, I heard the foil being ripped and the distinctive sound of a condom being tugged up an impressive erection.
“Roll over, baby, I want you from behind.”
When I didn’t move, Sebastian sucked my right nipple until he was guaranteed a reaction.
“Give me a minute,” I grumbled.
But the Chief had waited long enough. He picked me up bodily and tossed me face down on the bed, before hauling me onto my knees so my ass was pointing to the ceiling.
He stroked my cheeks and then I felt his hot tongue between the cleft of my buttocks.
Oh, that was new.
I wiggled, not sure I was liking that. Hmm, okay, maybe.
But then he pulled away and I felt him position himself before sinking into me.
“Fuck, Caro!”
He groaned loudly. Maybe it was the alcohol, or maybe it was because he’d finally gotten around to fucking me from his favorite position, but he seemed to have less control than usual. He started pounding into me and I could feel him unraveling rapidly. The bed creaked in sympathy, the antique springs urging him on.
Oh, hell, no! Not another orgasm! I forced my face into the pillow and moaned into it. We were racing toward the finish, and I was afraid the bed was going to collapse before I did.
But then Sebastian shuddered into me and stilled, and I gasped out some wordless sounds.
“Oh fuck!” he hissed, pulling out of me roughly.
My body gave way, and I lay splayed on the bed, thoroughly fucked.
And then, through the thin wall that separated us from the owner’s mother, I heard the sound of someone clapping, and her reedy voice called out, “Bravo! Bravo!”
“What the fuck?” said Sebastian, still breathless.
I started to laugh. “I think … I think we just got a round of applause!”
“You’re fucking kidding me!”
I shook my head weakly. “That’s what it sounded like. I guess she was impressed by your performance.”
I heard the bed creak again as Sebastian sat up and called out loudly, “Grazie, signora!”
“Prego!” she replied.
He lay back on the bed, his hands behind his head. When I rolled onto my side to look at him, he seemed very pleased with himself.
“Something making you smile, Hunter?”
“Yeah! I never got a round of applause before.”
“Maybe she was applauding me.”
“Nah, she thinks I’m a stud, I can tell.”
He peeled off the used condom as if to emphasize his words.
“Well, it’s a good thing you don’t have performance anxiety; that can put a man off his stride, so they say.”
He smirked at me, then his smile faded and he looked serious.
“Do you ever think about the first time we were together? You know, when…”
“Sebastian,” I said, softly. “You don’t have to remind me—it’s not something I’m likely to forget.”
“Sorry. It’s just … I thought about it a lot at the time and, seeing you again this past week, well, it’s brought it all back.”
“For me, too.”
He smiled and leaned over to run a long finger down my cheek, before lying back again.
“Do you know how amazing you were that night? You took care of me after my dad had beaten the shit out of me.” He closed his eyes. “I thought my heart was going to fucking stop when you undressed me and you took your clothes off. And then you touched me and my cock just exploded. I thought you’d laugh at me or something. It was so fucking humiliating.” He paused, remembering that awful and wonderful and dreadful night. “But you didn’t. You made me feel like a man. I remember every word that you said. You told me it was going to be okay, and I didn’t know how it could be, but somehow you made the world go away, like it was just you and me.”
I was silent, remembering how crushed he’d been that night, how broken, and how the act of making love had somehow healed him. I wondered, now, if it had been the same for me. It was certainly the moment when my life took a completely different road from the one I’d been on.
His admission touched me deeply. I’d forgotten how painfully honest he could be. Even though he’d been so young when I’d known him before, or maybe because he’d been so young, he’d never held back with me. I couldn’t help thinking that in some ways I’d had the best of him then, before life had made him bitter. Although his early life had been far from perfect, he’d been the sweetest, kindest person; the gentlest, most thoughtful and selfless lover—and a good friend.
“That’s how you make me feel, Caro, like the world just goes away and it’s just you and me. I … I didn’t think I’d ever feel like that again. All those other women, I know it bothers you, but it was just sex. It wasn’t … this.”
“So, there was never anyone special, where it was more than just sex?”
He looked thoughtful.
“There was one girl, Stacey, that I sort of dated for a while. She was … okay, but I wasn’t interested in anything long-term.”
“What happened?”
He shrugged and looked away.
“I heard her telling her girlfriend that she’d got me ‘tamed’.”
I winced inwardly. How dumb had this girl been to even think that she’d ‘tamed’ him, let alone to say it out loud?
“Oh, I can guess how much you enjoyed hearing that. What did you do?”
He twitched his shoulder in an irritated gesture.
“I slept with her best friend.”
I took a sharp intake of breath. “I see.”
He didn’t look guilty or upset, and I felt a brief frisson of sadness for Stacey and the way he’d treated her, especially when I knew he was capable of such gentleness.
“You asked me why Ches’s wife didn’t approve of me, and that’s the reason,” he went on. “Stacey was a friend of hers. And before you ask, no, I didn’t sleep with Amy—it was another girl. I would never do that to Ches.”
I took a deep breath.
“Well, I’m not surprised Amy doesn’t like you after you did that to her friend … and it’s not very reassuring to hear that you’ve shown your dick to half the female population of California—and Paris, or so I’ve heard—but that’s your business. But surely you see that you made things difficult for Ches.”
“How’s that?” he said, rather testily.
“You put him in the middle, making him choose between his best friend and his wife.”
“What?” he said, angrily. “How was I making him ‘choose’?”
“Well, I bet you anything Amy would have said she didn’t want you in the house if you were going to treat her friends like that, and Ches would have had to find some way of defending what was, frankly, indefensible behavior.”
I paused, wondering if Ches would have explained about Sebastian’s history—our history—as a reason for his friend’s actions. I hated the thought that Sebastian had used ‘all those women’ because he’d imagined that I’d left him without a backward glance. It was such an ugly distortion of the
truth.
“You get on your fucking high horse damn quickly, Caro,” he snapped.
I was taken aback at his angry tone. “I’m just saying…”
“What? What the fuck are you ‘just saying’?” he said, his voice growing louder with each syllable. “You were a fucking journalist, Caro! You could have found me any time if you’d wanted to. It would have been so easy for you. So easy! I didn’t even know your fucking last name. I was so desperate to find you that I even tried to see that prick of a husband of yours, but he slammed the door in my face and called my CO. I was on fucking punishment duties for weeks after that. But you didn’t give a shit, did you? It’s just lies. You just tell me what you think I want to hear. How can I ever trust you?”
“Sebastian, I…”
“I really want to hear this, Caro. I really want to hear how hard you tried to find me,” he jeered. “You knew my fucking father was forcing me to enlist because of you, but you didn’t even bother to make a few fucking phone calls. Three years I waited for you, Caro. Three fucking years, while you were off building your career and having a great life traveling all over the world. So yeah, I fucked some women who deserved it, because I’d already been fucked over once and I wasn’t going to let it happen again.”
I felt sick. All that hatred and anger pouring out of him.
“It wasn’t like that, Sebastian. Just listen to me for a moment! Let me explain, because I…”
“Go tell it to the Marines, Caro,” he sneered, “because I’m not listening.”
I needed to get some space from him: the bathroom seemed like it could be a place of refuge until he’d calmed down. His anger was scaring me and I didn’t want to say anything that I’d regret later, although it was clear he wasn’t having the same reservations.
I sat on the edge of the bed and reached for my t-shirt.
“Where are you going?” he shouted. “Running away again? Yeah, well, it’s what you do best, isn’t it? Run away. Fuck that! I’ll save you the trouble.”
He leapt out of bed, pulled on his jeans, thrust his bare feet into his boots and scooped up his t-shirt and jacket.
And then he walked out.
A moment later I heard the throaty roar of his motorcycle.
The Education of Sebastian & the Education of Caroline Page 48
