New Title 1

by Jane Harvey-Berrick

  “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, looking 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 towards 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 towards 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 backwards 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, 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, isnnt st 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.

  I pulled the sheet around me tightly, wondering what the hell had just happened. It was hard to believe that the man who’d made such sweet love to me could talk to me like that. Or rather, yell at me like that.

  So much anger – at me.

  It seemed clear now that the gentle side he’d shown had simply been a mask to lure me in, a mask that hid his true feelings.

  But he’d gone and I had no idea if he was coming back. Well, fuck him! He wasn’t the only one who’d suffered; he wasn’t the only one who’d had to struggle. Oh sure, my life had been so easy: I’d cleaned other people’s toilets for nearly three years before my writing earned me enough to give it up. How dare he speak to me like that!

  I jumped out of bed and whirled around the room shoving everything into his small overnight bag. I knew his phone and passport were in his jacket, so he hadn’t left anything that he needed. Not even me, said the sad, little voice in my head.

  I thought through my options: I could book a cab to take me into Genoa, and from there, take a flight to Geneva. Then it was back to Plan A: wait for my permits to come through for Leatherneck – assuming Sebastian didn’t try to screw that up again, although the odds didn’t look good, given his current rage – do my job and get on with my life. And then I’d write off this episode to experience. Or something.

  But it hurt: it really hurt. Just as I’d begun to trust him and let him back into my life…

  And then I wondered if he’d be back after he cooled off. I really didn’t want to face very-angry-and-scary Sebastian again tonight. But if I wedged the chair under the door, I wouldn’t be the least surprised if he’d just decide to kick it in. Not that we’d be welcome staying at Casa Giovina after tonight’s stunt anyway, but I didn’t want to add a broken door to our troubles.

  In the end, I pulled on my T-shirt and panties and tried to get some sleep. After thrashing around for several hours and replaying the whole horrible scene over and over, I finally lapsed into unconsciousness about an hour before dawn.

  My alarm pulled me awake at 7 am and I immediately looked over to the other side of the bed: it was cold and empty – like me.

  Fierce disappointment mixed with relief washed over me. At least I didn’t have to face his recriminations again. Wake-up arguments definitely didn’t do it for me.

  I headed for the shower, but the tepid water did little to relieve my heavy mind. I didn’t feel much like breakfast, but the least I could do was apologi
ze to the hosts for our behavior. His behavior.

  I wandered out to the patio and saw that the little table had been laid for two. I felt hot tears prick my eyes and I angrily scrubbed them away.

  When I heard footsteps behind me, I turned hopefully. But it wasn’t Sebastian and it wasn’t the owner; instead the little grandmother was walking stiffly towards me, carrying a pot of coffee.

  “Sit, young woman,” she said. “And don’t worry: it will all seem better once you have eaten. He’ll be back.”