Nights in Black Satin

by Noelle Mack

  Sarah went closer to the painting, examining the fine technique of the artist. “She just looks like she could have any man she wanted.”

  He nodded. “Here she has revealed herself as few did. That is what masks were for. If the face was concealed, one might do as one wished.”

  The thought was intriguing. Very intriguing.

  “They are all so elegant. I wish I could live in their time. Wouldn’t it be wonderful?”

  “Perhaps.” His changeable eyes revealed a hidden fire. Was he imagining her as a courtesan? Sarah looked at a portrait of a bejeweled redhead, more richly dressed than a queen, her breasts bared so that her nipples showed pink—a hot pink—against her extraordinarily white skin. Proud of her extraordinary beauty, she gazed directly out of the canvas.

  “No mask for her,” Sarah said.

  “Perhaps she did not feel the need for one. A face that lovely should not be hidden, eh?”

  “If you say so.” Sarah felt a little jealous of the woman in the painting. She didn’t measure up to that standard and never would.

  “It is said that a man is only truly himself when he is wearing a mask,” Marco’s voice was soft. “The wearer can see out but no one can see in. The deepest desires can be explored.”

  She wouldn’t have to see a thing to enjoy exploring those with him. The thought of being blindfolded while he caressed her bare body came into her mind with startling clarity. Enfolded in darkness and feeling everything with doubled intensity. Nothing but his voice and his hands and his body. It would be exquisitely pleasurable.

  Sarah gave a sigh and he smiled down at her, bringing her to stand in front of a different painting and letting go of her elbow.

  It looked like quite a party. Revelers were dressed to the nines, happily indulging in conversation and flirting—favorite Venetian pastimes. She would have to add shameless seduction to the list. A cloaked figure wearing a tricorne hat and the white half-mask of a nobleman was boldly lifting the skirt of a lady in a gorgeous pearl-pink ball gown, and it didn’t look like he was about to get smacked. There was a come-hither look in her sparkling eyes and a pleased smile on her lips.

  The Venetians truly believed in the pursuit of pleasure, and the artists of La Serenissima had captured it over and over. Sarah wanted more than ever to go back to that time and be as wanton as she wished.

  A fellow gallery-goer, a woman in practical, baggy, chino pants, came up and peered at the painting, oblivious to them with her headphones on. A thick guidebook was stuffed into one cargo pocket and a panini sandwich peeked out of a foil cocoon stuffed in the other. Sarah wondered how that got past the guards.

  Following instructions that they could hear, the woman checked the painting off the list in her hand and headed off to a different gallery, pulling down her sweater, which was bunched around her waist. The chunky ribbing and chin-cuddling turtleneck were probably keeping her warm. The second floor of Ca’ Rezzonico was a little chilly.

  Sarah thought about how nice it would be if Marco would put his arms around her. Great art. Handsome man. Being held. Was there anything better?

  The next painting she saw stopped her in her tracks. The plaque next to it on the wall translated its Italian title as The Nuns’ Parlor and gave the date as 1768. Huh. The women didn’t look like nuns.

  They were almost as lavishly gowned as the woman painted in pearl pink, even though they sat behind a screen to receive visitors. The scene looked far more social than religious, with a dog frisking about and a woman with deep décolletage standing in front of the separating screen.

  Sarah took her own guidebook out of her purse and flipped to the index, then to the entry on the painting, reading aloud—and between—the carefully worded lines.

  “To preserve the virtue of young noblewomen who had not married—to save money on dowries—they were sent by their loving families—they were dragged kicking and screaming—to certain convents where they were permitted liberties—where everybody looked the other way—enjoying visits from male friends—oh, right, like Casanova—with whom they might converse—pant, pant—and otherwise pass the time.”

  “Ah, yes,” Marco laughed. “That is how it was done.”

  She put away the guidebook.

  “Shall we head for the first floor?”

  “Sure.” She wanted to see the Tiepolo frescoes and then she wanted to go somewhere else. Lunch. With wine. Leading to an erotic encounter—whoops. Would that be rushing things? The I’m-about-to-get-what-I-want smile of the lady with the lifted skirt had inspired her. Her memories of Marco’s body pressed against her burned in her mind.

  True to his word, he said very little as Sarah took extra time to admire Nobility and Virtue and Fortitude and Wisdom. It was the thought that counted, evidently. Venetians, then and now, never said no to the pleasures of the flesh.

  She peeked into the recently restored ballroom before they left the museum, dazzled by its rampant glory. Venetians never said no to immense, glittering chandeliers and ornamental gold either. The gray dampness outside was soothing by comparison.

  Marco took her hand. His was warm and strong. They walked onto the little bridge over the Rio San Barnaba, where Sarah looked up the narrow waterway. She couldn’t see much. A heavy fog was drifting in from the lagoon, shrouding the tops of the old buildings and muting the noise of boat traffic.

  “We could take the vaporetto,” Marco said.

  She craned her neck, trying to see if it was coming. It was a good thing that the Ca’ Rezzonico was right on the Grand Canal, because their next stop was the Accademia. She wanted to see all the old masters while she was with Marco, even though she hated hurrying, especially through this magical city and its centuries-old treasures. If only she could stay longer. But it would be expensive to change the date of her flight home, especially around a holiday when other people were likely to prolong their stay too.

  No vaporetto appeared.

  “We might as well hoof it.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Marco said.

  “Hoof it. Walk.”

  “We could. The Accademia is only a short distance away. But let’s wait for a few minutes.”

  Which was fine with her. It was easy to get lost in Venice, although not with him, of course. But getting places via water was a sure thing. She’d been on and off the vaporettos a lot. It suddenly occurred to her that she wanted to take her first gondola ride with Marco. Corny but ohmigod, she had to do it.

  A police cruiser went by, obeying the speed limit for once, but that was because of the weather. A red barge followed it, laden with sacks of concrete, bulging sides low in the opaque water. Not very glamorous, not compared to the sleek black gondolas.

  Having him by her side and a muscular gondolier doing all the work while they leaned back would be heaven. The way they got their boats through the shallow canals was just amazing. But she didn’t see any.

  Never a gondola around when you needed one, Sarah thought, smiling to herself. Not like she could afford to travel in them anyway, not on an art student’s budget. Marco would insist on paying if she said she wanted a ride and she would feel like she’d hustled him into it.

  No, that particular treat would have to wait until a couple of checks cleared her account—she’d looked at her balance on an ATM that morning and they hadn’t. Stickered and graffiti’ed, the beat-up machine had spit out a paper slip showing a depressingly low number.

  Had Vincent deposited them? She totally trusted her eccentric best friend and fellow part-time slave at WetPaint, the art supply store in Brooklyn that Sarah didn’t want to work for anymore. She’d quit and was promised a severance check anyway, on top of her last paycheck. But WetPaint accounting had always been a little iffy. Like an idiot, the store manager had hired a conceptual artist to handle it. Sarah sent up a silent prayer, asking that the two checks not bounce.

  She put her worries about her finances aside and returned her attention to Marco, who was looking at the distant sky through a
windblown rip in the fog. Roiling gray clouds hung low far out over the lagoon, dangerous looking and dramatic. The gloom was surreal but intriguing, giving a dreamlike quality to the empty streets and canals. No one would willingly go out on the water with a storm about to break and Italians never let raindrops touch them if they could help it. Her landlady had implored her to take an umbrella with her this morning, but Sarah hadn’t bothered, thinking that getting wet with Marco would be fun.

  The storm held off but the tourists still stayed in their hotels. Sarah and Marco had the Accademia mostly to themselves. They walked through the galleries one by one. She was too distracted by his presence to see much or ask a lot of questions, beginning to be overwhelmed by the sheer wealth of art and annoyed with herself for feeling so swoony about it. She had to pay attention; she didn’t have the money to come back to Venice anytime soon.

  The paintings and drawings and etchings and sculpture were getting all mixed up in her mind, a bewildering array of visuals—everything from splendid portraits of Venetian nobility to genre scenes of peasants, and hundreds of Madonnas. There were also quite a few epic canvases commemorating gory battles and gruesome scenes from classical mythology.

  The Venetian taste for cruelty was as pronounced as their love of beauty, something that confused her. Fortunately Marco didn’t add to the confusion by talking and she was grateful. She realized again that meeting him had been a lightning bolt of luck.

  But however much she appreciated his calm demeanor, she was feeling a little piqued—for a stupid, girl-type reason. His courtesy was unfailing but she had been expecting a compliment or two by now. After all, she’d caught him looking at her body more than once. He’d only smiled and shrugged. It was very Italian and not at all intellectual of him. She wouldn’t want someone who thought about deep things all the time.

  But he hadn’t seemed to notice what she had on at the Ca’ Rezzonico and she had dressed up a little for their arty morning. OK, only from the waist up, in a black faille bolero from a New York thrift store and a tiny black tank top. Below that, she wore the same tight jeans again and classic Pumas, with a white puma leaping over the black suede toe.

  The eclectic look worked in Brooklyn and it worked here. So did sneakers. Venice was a city where people walked. On her first day here, when the sun had been shining and people were out, she had counted at least eleven pairs of Pumas, two pairs of Vans, and one pair of Converse hightops on the arty Venetians strolling along the Dorsoduro seaside. Hipsters were hipsters the world over.

  Marco looked like one today, except that he had shaved. Too bad. She loved that trace of stubble she’d seen last night. He looked younger without it but just as sexy. The smooth skin on his face made her want to stand on tiptoe and kiss his cheek the way he had bent down to kiss hers in the café. It would be a start. She hoped he wasn’t going to be a gentleman too much longer.

  Before she’d left the inn this morning, she’d asked her landlady about Marco without saying that they’d met, just that she’d read about him. Sarah was curious to find out if an ordinary Venetian would know who he was.

  Signora Dolcetti did know and even said that he was a very distant relation of some kind. It was possible. Venice was a city of cousins to the nth degree. Sarah didn’t argue the point, because whether it was true or not, it meant that the signora had noticed his name in the gossip columns and, as it turned out, even remembered the photos of his palazzo that had been published in the newspaper’s style section. Interior and exterior.

  Some of her information was new, some of it Sarah had already learned. The new stuff: Marco was thirty-two, was restoring his palazzo, was not a secret homosexual—so many love affairs with women could hardly be a cover, the landlady explained seriously—and had too many books.

  Sarah considered herself sufficiently informed to have wild, crazy sex with him by this point. There were things she didn’t know about him, of course, but she didn’t necessarily want to know everything.

  Marco wasn’t all that easy to figure out. Oh, well. Chalk it up to cultural differences or whatever. She didn’t care and she liked him a lot after spending only a few hours, total, in his presence. He was deliciously attentive.

  Sarah sighed with anticipation, wondering if he would make the first move or if it would be left up to her. At the moment she was looking at a gigantic painting by Veronese that covered one entire wall without even seeing it. When Marco walked in front of the painting, she blinked, perceiving the detail in it for the first time.

  Wake up, dopey, she told herself. This could be your chance to impress him with your intelligence. Whatever it took. She wanted him more and more.

  She walked over to him and asked a few questions, impressed by his thoughtful answers. So much for that maneuver. He got out of her way, standing in back of her so she could study the masterpiece, and then…ohhhhh. He put his arms around her waist and rested his chin on her head. Sarah slipped her arms over his, loving the way he held her, absolutely loving it. This was much better than a compliment. Why should he care about what she had on when he obviously wanted to take her clothes off?

  Last night hadn’t just been about being drunk at a wild party. There was something happening between them—maybe not a forever kind of something, but she had a feeling she was really going to remember this.

  She felt secure in his strength and warmed through by his muscular body against hers. And that wasn’t all. His erection pressed against the small of her back, because he was so much taller. Sarah rested the back of her head against the middle of his chest and Marco bent down a bit to kiss her hair.

  Bliss.

  Things were happening fast, but she wanted them to. They stood there a few minutes more. She didn’t dare move until his erection subsided a bit, not wanting to draw the attention of the indifferent guard who stood not very far away, not even watching them.

  Marco seemed to be trying to breathe slowly and deeply. He was probably trying to think of something else besides how it felt to hold her just under her breasts and the way her ass in tight jeans pressed against his thighs. She grinned and turned around in his encircling arms.

  “Is that better?” she whispered wickedly. His erection pressed into her belly now.

  “No,” he whispered back, smiling down at her.

  “Start talking then.” Her voice was a little louder but the guard still didn’t look their way. “You have to distract yourself. I’m not going to do it for you.”

  Marco cleared his throat and made a few comments about Veronese’s brilliant sense of color. That did the trick for both of them. She unclasped his arms and moved out of his embrace, but held on to one of his hands.

  “Let’s go,” she said. “Enough art. I want to look at something real. Like you. Naked.”

  He laughed under his breath. “All right. You are not very shy.”

  “No. We don’t have all the time in the world, you know.”

  “I see.”

  “Nice palazzo,” Sarah murmured, looking around. Was that the right thing to say? Growing up in Brooklyn didn’t prepare a person for real estate like this. There was even a gondola mooring by his front door, and ohmigod, he owned one. Black and sleek, the passenger compartment covered with a protective tarp, the gondola bobbed by the steps that led down into the water of the canal. You could walk out of his front door and get right into it. Marco lived on the top two floors of his palazzo and kept the bottom one empty.

  Acqua alta. He’d explained the high tides that swelled the canals and caused flooding. Hardly anyone used their first floors anymore.

  They’d gone up a circular staircase through the others. This one, right under the roof, was handsomely furnished with antique pieces upholstered in modern black and white, and atmospheric photos of Venice by night, also in black and white. One showed only the very black reflection of a gondola, an image that was austere and faintly ominous.

  She looked at his family pictures quickly, not wanting to ask prying questions, and
pictures of him with other people who were either famous or fabulous. The framed photos were displayed on the shelves of mahogany bookshelves that held thousands of volumes, new and old. Signora Dolcetti had a good memory.

  Some of the books looked very old, older than the small book of spells he’d showed her in the café. Like it, though, they had worn leather bindings and unreadable titles in flaking gold.

  She didn’t get a chance to look at them or even to ooh and aah over the décor, because Marco got her naked first, peeling off her clothes so fast she wasn’t sure how he did it. OK, she cooperated, but Marco had to have set a world record, single man division, for baring the most female flesh in the shortest period of time. Fully dressed, he ran his big hands over her body while he kissed her, then reached behind to grab her bare ass and bring her against him, hard.

  Sarah laughed and really got into the kiss, nipping the full part of his lower lip just as she’d planned, until the hands on her ass squeezed and lifted her off her feet. In midair, her hands on his shoulders, he was able to suck her nipples, first one and then the other, leaving them wet and erect as he eased her down the length of his body.

  “Don’t you want to get naked too?”

  “Yes.” He took the bottom of his sweater in his hands and paused. “But not all the way.”

  She stood back, hands on her hips. “Hiding something?”

  “No.”

  He yanked the sweater over his head and tossed it across the room, revealing a chest so strong and smooth that it took her breath away. She stroked his skin, circling his small male nipples with her fingertips and making him tremble. He caught her wrists and made her stop.

  She looked down. The head of his erect cock was visible inside the waistband of his low-slung jeans, and there was already a clear drop in the small cleft.

  Sarah cupped his balls through the soft denim with one hand. Nice and heavy. She couldn’t wait to see them. His erection was bulging under his fly and she stroked it and squeezed it. Marco sighed and let her play for a minute more.