by Kate Walker
“Not necessarily,” he said, “but if you’re determined to immortalize a particular night, why not let this be the one?”
“You’re right.” Drifting back to the table, she sat down and toyed with the cook’s very excellent linguine allo scoglia, mounds of clams, prawns, shrimp and mussels bathed in a rich tomato sauce. “Tell me more about our trip tomorrow. Exactly where are we going in Tunisia?”
“The capital itself, Tunis. It’s an interesting city that I think you’ll enjoy.”
She nibbled a fat prawn thoughtfully. “What should I pack in the way of clothes?”
“For the evening, one of your pretty dinner dresses. During the day, something in cool cotton, a couple of wide-brimmed hats, comfortable flat-heeled sandals and sunscreen,” he said, tackling his own meal. “Walking’s the only way to appreciate everything the city has to offer, and it’s going to be hot. Oh, and fairly modest clothes—I won’t stand for strange men burping at you.”
“Burping?” She choked back a laugh. “No wonder you call them strange!”
“That’s not why. Burping’s the Tunisian way of showing appreciation for a pretty woman, and since most local women cover themselves from head to toe in public, tourists are fair game for any man with a roving eye.”
“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were jealous.”
“Perhaps I have reason to be,” he said, an unexpectedly bitter note coating his reply.
“What?” She stared at him, shocked.
Cursing himself—the festering accusation was out before he could contain it, and hardly an auspicious way to effect the kind of reconciliation he was hoping for—he added swiftly, “It’s the price every husband pays for having a beautiful wife, Maeve.”
“Well, let me put this particular husband’s mind at rest,” she said flatly. “I don’t care how many men burp at me, I only have eyes for you.”
There it was again, the erection that never slept! “How hungry are you?” he inquired huskily.
“For this?” She poked her fork around in the unquestionably delicious food remaining on her plate. “Not very.”
No more was he. “Then what do you say to our continuing this conversation someplace more private?”
“I think it’s the best idea you’ve had in ages.”
Earlier, Antonia or one of the maids had added a few more romantic touches to the master suite. A bouquet of lilies filled the sitting area with fragrance. In the bedroom, a single rose in a bud vase stood on the little table next to the Victorian chaise longue. More than a dozen squat candles in glass cups suspended from the treeshaped floor candelabra cast a glimmering light over the bed, but left the corners of the room swathed in moonshot darkness.
All this Maeve took in with what she hoped showed just the right degree of curiosity. But despite her best efforts, her gaze repeatedly wandered to the locked doors, first the one in the foyer, and then the other, there in the bedroom.
That Dario noticed quickly became apparent. “It doesn’t matter that you don’t recognize anything,” he said, rather firmly steering her away from the room at large, and through the open glass doors to the terrace. “Tonight’s about us and the future, tesoro.”
Outside, more candles burned in faceted glass hurricane lamps set around the pool, and waiting on the table was an ice bucket containing another bottle of champagne and two long-stemmed frosted glasses. As the perfect introduction to a night of seduction, she could hardly have asked for better. Yet her delight was tainted by something far less pleasant. “It’s not that, exactly,” she muttered, treading a fine line between truth and lie.
“Nor is it about rushing to make love before you’re ready,” he assured her. “We take this at your pace, Maeve. I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
It wasn’t that, either. The simple fact was, she was riddled with guilt. If only she’d known this was how the evening would end, she’d never have come sneaking through the suite, the night before.
A good marriage should be based on trust and respect, so what did it say about theirs, that she’d behaved so shabbily? Yet to admit to her transgression now was more than she could bring herself to do. After all, it wasn’t as if she’d discovered anything significant, or tried to pick the locks on the doors to that other room.
But that line of reasoning offered cold comfort and prompted her to say, “That’s not what’s bothering me, Dario. It’s my conscience. You’ve been so patient with me ever since I came home, but I’ve been a pretty poor wife, and I’m sorry for that.”
“You’re here now, and that’s all I ask for,” Dario almost purred, drawing her down to sit on his lap. “Do you have any idea, innamorata, how empty these rooms have been without you, or how long the nights that you have not shared our bed?”
If he never did anything more than speak to her like that, with his voice resonating over her nerve endings until her entire being hummed with awareness, she could die a happy woman.
He mesmerized her. Rescued her from the mundane and, with a fleeting kiss here, a featherlight touch there, transported her to a world far removed from the ordinary.
He shaped her mouth with his thumb, a tactile benediction so exquisite that she quivered uncontrollably. Stroked his fingertip the length of her arm, from her wrist to her shoulder, imbuing the caress with a tenderness that made her want to weep. He traced the line of her collarbone, the contour of her throat, and left her gasping for more. Did all with such consummate finesse that she was hardly aware of when they returned to the intimacy of the bedroom, or how it was that they were standing naked before each other.
As though seeing her for the first time, he held her at arm’s length and let his eyes roam from her breasts to the indentation of her waist, then past the curve of her hips to the shadowed juncture of her thighs. And every place his gaze touched caught fire until she was burning all over.
“I thought I remembered how lovely you are,” he finally murmured in hushed tones, “but would you believe I did not do you justice?”
“Yes,” she said on a breathless sigh, raging desire giving her the courage to scrutinize him with the same minute attention to every detail of his physique that he had afforded to hers. “Memory so often plays us false.”
The candle flames bathed his olive skin in tongues of shimmering light. They played over his torso, illuminating the muscled slope of his shoulders, the breadth of his chest, the hard, flat plane of his midriff, and the long, strong length of his legs. They showcased the urgent thrust of his erection that told her more plainly than anything words could convey how much he desired her.
The day over a week ago that she’d stepped out of his private jet and seen him for what, as far as she was concerned, was the first time, she’d thought him the most handsome man she’d ever met. But only now did she appreciate the extent of his masculine beauty. He stood before her like a god hammered from bronze and dusted with gold. Proud, powerful, invincible.
He left her weak with longing; dazed with wonder. “Dario?” she whispered.
“I’m here, and I’m yours,” he said, the timbre of his voice chasing new thrills over her skin. “Show me what you want, amore mio, and I will give it to you.”
Hypnotized by his unwavering stare, she put her hand to his chest. Felt the strong, steady beat of his heart. Circled his flat nipple with her forefinger. “I want you all of you,” she told him and, with new daring, slid her hand past his waist and flexed her fingers possessively around his erection. How smooth and heavy it was. Soft as silk, strong as steel.
“I want to feel you hard against me and hear your breath catch in your throat,” she whispered, her words vibrating with suppressed passion. “I want you to take me to bed and fill me so that there are no empty corners left where I can hide.”
With a muffled groan, he swung her into his arms. The mattress sighed as he lowered her to it and lay down beside her.
Stirred by the night wind, the filmy drapes at the open glass doors whispered applause. Th
e candlelight winked.
As though he’d been waiting permission from all three, he finally kissed her. Deeply, hungrily. And when that wasn’t enough to satisfy either of them, he put his mouth in other places, scorching a path from her breasts to her navel, and lower still to her thighs. Boldly, he flicked his tongue between them, searing their tender skin and inching them apart.
Momentarily shocked, she stiffened. But he’d done more than inch her legs apart. He’d forced open a chink in her memory of other such times. Times her body recalled with aching intensity, even if clouds continued to swirl in her mind.
He had done this before. They had done this before, with her clawing at his shoulders as she writhed before the onrushing waves of ecstasy threatening to drown her. And with him holding her hips captive so that she could not escape the pleasure he was so determined to give to her.
Tension caught her in an unforgiving spiral. Wound tighter and tighter. So tight that perspiration dimmed her vision. A silent scream rose in her throat, but before it could find voice, she soared, exploding into a hundred thousand prisms of light, each more blinding than its predecessor.
Desperate to anchor herself to earth, to him, she cried his name. He heard her unspoken plea and, bracing himself on his forearms, he lowered himself until his flesh was touching hers, there where she craved him the most.
Smoothly he filled her. Carried her in a rhythm at first slow and easy and so deeply intimate that her eyes flooded with tears. Then, as the momentum built, a different kind of emotion swept over her, one laced with greed because a little wasn’t enough. She wanted everything he had to give her. She wanted his soul in exchange for the one he’d taken from her.
But she should have known that nothing worth having ever came without a price. As she took from him, so he robbed her a second time. Even as he groaned and shuddered in release, her world splintered again with such unrestrained abandon, she thought her heart would burst.
He collapsed on top of her, his chest heaving. The thudding silence that followed roared through her mind like a tornado. If this was how it had been between them before, drenched in glorious passion, how could she not have remembered, and why had he hinted that all was not well in their marriage?
Yesterday she thought finding the answers would dispel the sense of doom haunting her. Now she wasn’t sure she wanted to tamper with perfection. Better to do as he suggested: leave the past behind and carve a new path into the future.
Stirring, he lifted his head and stared down at her, his eyes smoldering in the subdued light. “Did I please you, tesoro?”
“Oh, you pleased me,” she said. “You pleased me very much. I have not felt so complete in a very long time.”
The dark shadow forever looming over her had lifted somewhat, and for the first time in weeks she slept deeply, dreamlessly, safe in her husband’s arms.
They left early the next morning, shortly after sunrise, which put paid to any idea she’d harbored of a more intimate start to the day. Dario was all business as he’d shooed her out of bed and into the bathroom.
“Ordinarily I’d have taken you by boat,” he explained, during the short drive to the airport at the north end of the island, “but Tunis is a fascinating city and with only two days in which to show it to you, I’ve saved us some time by chartering a private aircraft. We’ll be there in time for breakfast.”
A perfectly logical explanation, at least on the surface, but she was convinced there was another reason he was so anxious to vacate the villa.
“Storage,” he’d informed her tersely when, in the course of getting ready to leave, she’d inquired ever so casually what lay behind the locked doors in their suite.
“Storage for what?”
“Just stuff,” he replied, and practically strong-armed her out of the house and into the Porsche.
He was lying. She knew it as surely as she knew her own name. But she could hardly call him on it since she wasn’t entirely without guile herself.
By nine o’clock they were seated at a sidewalk café on the Avenue Habib Bouguiba, breakfasting on peaches, figs, oven-warm brioches spread with quince jam, and rich, flavorful coffee. The slight tension that had marked their departure from Pantelleria melted in the North African sun, and Dario was again the ideal husband from last night, trapping her knee between both of his under the table, hypnotizing her with his smile and devouring her in his sultry gaze.
Afterward, they strolled hand in hand past old bookstores, galleries and flower stands to the Cathedral of St. Vincent-de-Paul, and stood in awe before its impressive neo-Romanesque facade. An excellent tour guide, Dario explained that in addition to containing the tomb of the Unknown Soldier, the cathedral was also the largest surviving building from the French Colonial era.
From there they entered the Medina, the medieval Muslim town situated only a stone’s throw away from the Christian church, yet a world removed from the bustling modern city beyond its gateway. Graceful minarets rose up white and dazzling against the deep-blue sky. Ancient palaces and mosques vied for space with crowded souks selling everything from spices to clothing, perfume to jewelry. Pottery, brass and carpets spilled out of tiny shops into the street.
Men wearing flowers in their hair infused the morning with the fragrance of jasmine that vied with cloves and incense to permeate the air. Merchants bargained in Arabic and a smattering of French, English, Italian and German with tourists looking to take home souvenirs. Barbers plied their trade on every corner.
Maeve was enchanted by it all: the scents, the sounds, the atmosphere, the exotic foreignness. Nothing here hinted at a troubled past. No disapproving mother-in-law lurked nearby. No secrets were hidden behind locked doors. She was happy and in love, and for as long as it lasted, she intended to savor every second.
“I’m so glad to be here with you,” she told Dario, when they stopped midmorning to refresh themselves with tiny cups of sweetened mint tea.
“And I with you.” He touched her hand, tracing his finger over her wedding ring. “I must have been mad to wait so long to claim you as my wife again.”
His words filled her heart to overflowing.
They resumed their explorations, wending their way through the maze of street to Ez Zitouna, the Mosque of the Olive Tree. Here the gold souks and other so-called “clean” professions stood closest to the walls, while the “unclean” professions such as dyeing and crude metal work were farther away.
It was a shopper’s paradise and Maeve was fascinated by the delicate silver jewelry, sequined and embroidered accessories, and finely woven wool which only the very wealthy could afford.
“Some of my former clients would kill to own this,” she remarked, examining a beautiful fringed shawl in vibrant shades of blue and crimson.
“But it was designed with you in mind,” Dario said, and over her objections promptly started bargaining with the merchant to acquire it for her.
When they finally left the Medina around three o’clock, he’d also bought her an exquisite antique perfume bottle and a bird cage intricately carved from white wood, “because,” he insisted, “no wife of mine is leaving here without something to remind her of her second honeymoon.”
“But I don’t own a bird,” she protested, laughing as he juggled the cage through the crowds.
Unfazed, he said, “I’m sure they sell those, as well. We’ll come back tomorrow and look for one.”
The driver he’d hired to pick them up at the airport had dropped off their luggage at the place they were staying. A French Colonial mansion converted to a small boutique hotel, it was exclusive, elegant and charming. Their suite, overlooking the rear gardens and the Mediterranean, was shielded from the city noise and cooled by ceiling fans. The floors were marble; the furniture, antique provincial; the wall hangings, silk.
By then, worn-out from the early start to the day and the heat, Maeve was glad to kick off her sandals, shed her dress for a cotton robe and stretch out on the bed for a late-afternoon nap. But t
hat plan went awry when Dario, who’d gone out to the terrace to make a phone call, came back into the room.
She felt the mattress give under his weight, then his lips were on hers, his kisses sliding from soft and persuasive to hard and commanding.
Love in the afternoon, she discovered, had much to recommend it. Leisurely, splashed with sunshine, it invited a different kind of intimacy from that of the night before; a more acute visual scrutiny than candle flame and moonlight allowed.
She saw his mouth curve with pleasure when her nipples peaked under his grazing caress, and the slow, sultry sweep of his lashes as he buried himself deep inside her. She watched the passion flare in his eyes, the sweat beading his brow and the hard line of his clenched jaw as he fought the tide threatening to overpower him.
Clutching his shoulders and rising to meet him as her own body answered the demands of his, she glimpsed the reflection of their tangled limbs in the gilt-framed mirror hanging above the dresser on the opposite wall, his burnished by the Mediterranean sun to the color of brown sugar against her paler skin tones. Even as her eyes closed in surrender, his taut buttocks, the sensual rhythm of his hips, the flexing and contracting of his back muscles, imprinted themselves forever in her mind.
Drowsy and sated, with the damp heat of utter gratification still binding her to him, she kissed his throat and whispered, “Nothing that happened in the past matters to me any longer, Dario. From now on, this day, this moment are all I care about, and all I need on which to build our future.”
Somehow she’d said the wrong thing. Although he didn’t move a muscle, sudden distance sprang up between them, induced by a tension so potent that it filled the entire room. “I wish it were that simple, my darling wife,” he said. “Unfortunately, it isn’t.”
CHAPTER NINE
“I THOUGHT,” she said in a small, crushed voice, “that’s what you wanted.”
More fool him, he’d thought so, too. But that, Dario realized grimly, was what happened when a man let his carnal appetite get the better of his judgment. He rationalized every decision he arrived at, even when none made sense. The truth was, there was no escaping the past and there never would be.
