Alchemy (Siren Publishing Allure)

by Serena Fairfax

  It seemed to be the right response because she took it no further and wrapped her arms round him, settling in to him with a sigh. He pulled her soft curves into him and held her, kissing her fiercely.

  Try something new today—the supermarket catchphrase—ran through Tamsin’s thoughts as, with her heartbeat tripling, Luca shot her that look that always gave her a warm, damp rush.

  “Signora Leopoldo di Monte Valla.”

  She let her legs fall apart. Just the deep cadence of his voice turned her ready. “Do it, make me come.” She knew what his tongue could do, what his cock could do. “I want you now, my prince, my lord.” She swept her hair over his balls, and took one then another into her mouth.

  “Wider still and wider for me, babe. I want to see every bit of you.”

  ‘I hear and I obey.” She shifted and opened up, spreading her sex to him, and a deep growl emerged from somewhere low down in his chest.

  “Love that womanhood, love your big, tight ass.” Firm hands clamped the cheeks of her butt, trapping their bodies front to front. He paused, his eyes glittering under the long, black lashes, and then he was dipping his head and she felt the ridge of his tongue slamming inside her, sucking her swollen clit, his breath moist and hot.

  She gasped and shut her eyes. “I want to taste you.” Her pussy clenched and throbbed as his hands rested on her thighs, keeping her wide.

  “Keep it going.” She whimpered.

  She watched him rip the foil and roll on the condom, nudging her with the tip of his warm, smooth cock. She reached for it and took the hardness of his length in her mouth, savoring the nectar, wanting his thickness to enter her, wanting his juices in her, over her.

  He wet his fingers in his juices and, circling her labia, she bucked.

  “That’s what I like to know.”

  “I’m going to…come.”

  “Not yet you won’t.” His lips twitched in a smile. “If you do,” he whispered a sweet torture, “that’s it for tonight. Hush now. We’re going there together.”

  He slid his fingers deep into her clit, moving in and out, the slick, accepting sound of her desire like a metronome beating time.

  He stopped and she felt she’d die. “Move,” she moaned.

  His eyes were darker than she’d ever seen before. He bent into her and nibbled a jutting nipple as he eased the head of his silky cock into the peachy damp of her slit. Her cunt flared up around him, waiting, ripe, needy, her heartbeat going wild as he thrust his cock deeper as he marked his territory, staked his claim to her. She was his for the taking.

  “Sweetie.” His gaze tangled with hers. And then he was hammering into her, rocking hard and fast and she was spiraling out of control until the orgasm lurking somewhere over the rainbow rushed down to ignite them and they shuddered and shattered round each other as he spilled himself into her with a shout.

  With a soft sigh, he eased out and rolled to one side. He realized something else. Tamsin had messed with his emotions. He’d got caught out. He’d have to watch it. He didn’t do emotions.

  * * * *

  Later that night, Luca turned to Tamsin and murmured, “How about a chaser?” He nuzzled his tongue down her cheek.

  She felt her pulse beating in her throat as her lips slid down his cock. And then he was flipping her over onto her belly, running his fingers down her spine. She got on her hands and knees and he slid his tongue into her hole, slicking her, coaxing her with a slow sweetness that made her crave for more. Then bending right over her, his fingers eased in and out of her slippery cunt, fucking her till she came in spasm after spasm.

  “The best is yet to be.”

  The thought of his swollen cock riding into her ass made her quiver.

  He must have sensed her anxiety for he said softly. “It’s going to be all right.”

  “No pain, no gain?”

  “Honey, trust me.” He slipped one lubricated finger into her ass and pressed down. A sensation so new, so wicked, coiled heatedly through her, almost tipping her over the edge. And then his thumb was gently driving in and she jerked and bucked and before she knew it the head of his cock was inching into her asshole just as his fingers slid lazily into her cunt to meet her G-spot. Her juices rained down and, replete with him, she gasped and came, sobbing at the pleasurable wonder of it, and he came, too.

  * * * *

  In the words of the song, it was a night to remember, the lovemaking showering jeweled treasure on them, drowning the light and the darkness, the sound and the fury.

  He woke her the next morning with soft kisses in her splayed hair and they did it all over again. Too exhausted to go downstairs for breakfast, they ordered up fresh, warm croissants, blackberry jam, coffee, poached eggs that Tamsin had never mastered how to cook, shots of organic Honduran coffee, and juicy, pink grapefruit juice.

  Well wrapped up in his-and-hers cashmeres, they did all the things that Paris commands lovers do. Under clear skies and bright sunshine, they caught a bateau mouche that danced along the Seine and under its legendary bridges much celebrated in song, and ascended to the top of the Eiffel Tower to gaze across the timeless city.

  “Can you believe it, so many famous people agitated against its construction,” Tamsin laughingly told him. She declaimed the petition solemnly, “‘We, writers, painters, sculptors, architects and passionate devotees of the hitherto untouched beauty of Paris, protest with all our strength, with all our indignation in the name of slighted French taste, against the erection of this useless and monstrous Eiffel Tower. To bring our arguments home, imagine for a moment a giddy, ridiculous tower dominating Paris like a gigantic black smokestack, crushing under its barbaric bulk Notre Dame, the Tour Saint-Jacques, the Louvre, the Dome of les Invalides, the Arc de Triomphe. All of our humiliated monuments will disappear in this ghastly dream. And for years to come, we shall see stretching, like an odious blot of ink, the hateful shadow of the hateful column of bolted sheet metal.’”

  “Yet that still didn’t deter gutsy Gustave.” Luca squeezed her hand.

  They browsed in antique shops and through colorful street markets, lunched in homely bistros in the Latin Quarter, in Michelin starred restaurants, and in jazz clubs in the edgy African quarter, wandered round galleries and museums, had her hair done at an obscene price. And made never-ending love.

  “Did the photographer say when she’d get the proofs to us?” Tamsin asked as, with lethal vodka martinis, they fast-tracked to hangovers in a cocktail bar the evening before the flight home.

  Luca placed a hand on his knee. “About a week. We’ll go over it together and cream off the best.”

  “And I have some wonderful ideas for creating the most spectacular wedding album ever that’ll showcase my talent.”

  Five days later they were on their way back, Luca to meetings lined up in Moscow and Tamsin, stirring uncomfortably in her seat, remembering that a deadline for a new customer loomed alarmingly.

  In her absence, the casa had been emptied and locked. The contents of the workshop had been carefully transferred to an enormous, tiled, stone outhouse on the edge of the Leopoldo estate where, in days long gone by, farm workers would have gathered to eat the mid-day meal.

  * * * *

  Tamsin spent the next few weeks decorating their bedroom, a striking compromise between girly and monochrome. Spectacular sex was occasionally shadowed by Luca shuddering awake in the middle of the night, sweating and moaning. He looked suddenly so helpless, she thought as she cuddled him to her.

  “The PTSD is fading,” he reassured her, as he downed a glass of water, “but it’s tough when, for some unknown reason, the trauma’s re-triggered. But I’ve learned to handle the flashbacks.” He didn’t add that he’d noticed that married life had improved his condition. For reasons he couldn’t fathom, he didn’t want to give her that satisfaction. And she was still ignorant of that ritual he played out every night—checking under the bed.

  Tamsin’s desire for a child mounted. Of the sisterhood, o
ne, married for several years, had two toddlers, the other was pregnant by her live-in partner and the newly married third, teaching English in Beijing, was in the process of adopting a Chinese orphan. How she missed the freemasonry of their company.

  Luca reversed his routine, speeding to Milan every day and getting back in reasonable time to join Tamsin for a drink and supper. They spent occasional weekends in the Milan apartment when theatre, opera or music beckoned and in Verona they’d hole up in the hotel they’d gone to all those years ago. She could honestly say she wanted for nothing…but a replica of herself and Luca.

  As if he reviewing a business plan, Luca assessed his new life. They’d had the odd minor squabble about nothing in particular, and the magical sex made it easier for him for him to pretend that he loved her.

  * * * *

  As they marked off three months into their marriage, a sharp yearning for a little replica of Luca grew and, longing to cuddle their infant, once again she made motherhood a live issue.

  “Do you realize”—Tamsin bore down on Luca one Friday night in bed—“all my nearest and dearest have babies?”

  He yawned. “Not that again. You know how I feel about it. You know I’ve said I’m not ready. We’ve only been married a short while and we owe it to the unborn child and to ourselves to adjust to this different tempo, this different life together as a couple before we bring another soul into this troubled world. A baby is forever.”

  Tamsin felt on the verge of tears. “We’d make wonderful parents. We have the means, the baby would be much cherished and I’m not a career girl who wants a trophy child to farm out to be looked after by strangers. From the way you talk, anyone would conclude you didn’t want a son and heir. So tell me, what exactly is your bloody problem?”

  Luca threw the bedclothes aside and put his feet to the floor, his naked body lit by moonlight slanting through the shutters. “I keep telling you I’m not ready for fatherhood, for changing shitty diapers, for babies that do nothing but howl all night, every night long. All I ask is that we wait a few more months. I don’t think that’s unreasonable. It’s not as if I’m saying never.”

  A child’s bound to complicate matters, he reasoned. If things don’t pan out with Tamsin, a baby renders a clean break trickier.

  “When one’s married the purpose of sex is procreation,” Tamsin, past thinking, cut in, her voice shaking. “You know that. Why the heck did you marry me then? You’re just using me as a sex object, just abusing me.” Sensing danger, she ignored it and, unheeding the consequences, ploughed on recklessly. “Why don’t you just get sex from a hooker and pay for it if you don’t want involvement?”

  A flash of something she couldn’t determine crossed Luca’s face. His eyes were stony and she’d never felt so lonely in all her life. He reached for his silk dressing gown and, shrugging it on, moved to the sofa by the window. “Let’s talk. You’ve raised several issues that we ought to examine.”

  “Oh puhleez,” Tamsin snapped. “You’re deeply un-impressing me with that shallow business jargon.”

  She was obviously working herself up to a scene. He let the seconds stretch out, then gave her that intimate smile that never failed to melt her and she found herself shifting out and allowing him to cradle her onto his lap, adjusting the dressing gown round her so that it covered them both.

  “One”—he ticked them off on his fingers—“abuse. That’s harsh and unmerited. I’ve never hit you.” His voice was carefully neutral. “I don’t do mental cruelty or come home pissed or high on acid. Two, you’re not married to a tightwad. I support your career and I don’t demand the sort of sex you don’t want to do. Three, a baby should be welcomed by both parents. Four, and this is very important, I love you and you love me and that’s why we’re married. High five,” his eyes hooded over, “I don’t need your consent or approval to bed a prossie, although needless to say I don’t, won’t and never will. Six…”

  “How many more green bottles?” Tamsin broke in, beginning to wonder why she’d started all this.

  “…Marriage isn’t just creating the next generation but it’s also the giving of mutual comfort, respect and pleasure. If you’re so desperate for motherhood then by all means, go get knocked up by one of those losers you slept with.” He paused and nuzzled her neck. “Tesoro, we will have a baby, but is it really asking too much to wait until our first anniversary? Many newly marrieds do.”

  What he said made good sense and she could hardly argue with any of it, although the blasting of her choice of boyfriends did sting somewhat.

  “Now,” he said without rancor, kissing her and propelling her towards the bed, “let’s get back where we belong.”

  Her rush of anger had ebbed and she slid in beside him. She expected their confrontation to result in a macho performance, confidently asserting himself, a sexual obliteration of her argument, but he was tender yet powerfully erotic, sensitive and so magnificent, knowing how to give what she so craved, that she ached for it not to end. If this was the price of deferring pregnancy, she was resigned to losing this round.

  Chapter 7

  July whooshed in, and then it was the day Patrick and Eve would have been celebrating their thirty third wedding anniversary. The image of their mangled car lodged between trees still haunted Tamsin. What a way to shuffle off this mortal coil. That morning, she picked a big bunch of flowers and trudged to the cemetery. She stood at the grave and wiped her eyes, then stooped to lay the bouquet at the foot of the headstone and wondered what her life would be like thirty years from now. She so hoped she and Luca would still be together—children, her relationship with her siblings, their lives.

  She straightened up, her glance straying up a slope to the grand Leopoldo mausoleum, the white marble reflecting back the morning sunshine like light dancing off a mirror. She glimpsed a surge of movement and, feeling a tingle of curiosity, decided to take a look.

  Three people circled round the memorial. A chunky, conservatively dressed couple in their late seventies. A balding man in a business suit some thirty years younger, who bore a strong resemblance to them, had lowered his brief case to the ground as he took photographs. They broke off their chatter as she approached.

  “Buongiorno—good morning.” Tamsin fanned her face with a sketchbook. She didn’t recognize them as anyone from the village and wondered what they were doing there. Idle curiosity, she surmised. A coach has dropped them off and they’re killing time. Yet, somehow, they didn’t have the look of tourists.

  They returned her greeting. The woman plucked at the older man’s arm and abruptly they drifted away, whispering as Tamsin stared after them. She paused for a moment, then decided to check that everything was as it should be, which it was.

  Oh well. Tamsin shrugged and, thinking no more of it, wended her way home under the scorching sun over newly mown grass to where Luca was tinkering with his car.

  “Are you all right, darling?” He wiped his oil-streaked hands on a cloth and kissed her.

  “I’m good.” She told them about the trio and he shrugged.

  “So long as they haven’t trashed the place, I don’t think we should give them another thought. Cemeteries do tend to attract weirdos. Now I think I deserve something long and cold.”

  They were laughing, drinking iced coffee and nibbling homemade cookies when Mirella came in.

  “There’s some people to see you, signor.”

  Luca raised his eyebrows. “Anyone we know?”

  She shook her head and handed him a business card.

  Luca read it aloud. “Berio.” Out of a jumble of memories, something about the name leapt at him like a bullet. “House builders in Naples, from the looks of it. Wonder what they want.”

  “They’re putting in an offer for this place,” Tamsin joked.

  “Or offering their services to modernize those old barns.”

  “It’s a long way to come seeking work.”

  “Snap. My thoughts precisely.” He placed the card on a side t
able and asked Mirella to show them in.

  Tamsin recognized them as the trio she’d stumbled across earlier that morning. Emitting a suppressed yelp, they were just as astonished to see her.

  “You’ve a charming place,” the woman declared as, unbidden, she plumped herself down, her handbag clutched tightly across her lap.

  “What is the purpose of this visit?” Luca motioned to the men to sit.

  The older man leaned forward eagerly. “We are the Berios, the parents of your dear, late mother and this is your uncle, Bernardo, your mother’s younger brother.” He paused. “My name is Benito—”

  “And I’m Agata,” the woman chipped in. She took a powder compact from her bag and dabbed her nose. “This must be your delightful wife.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Luca saw Tamsin put a hand to her mouth.

  “Really?” Thinking quickly, Luca told himself not to display any emotion. Were they for real, or a bunch of chancers or deluded patients who’d broken out of a psychiatric unit? “And how do you propose to persuade me to believe that?” He was cool.

  Benito snapped open his briefcase and passed Luca a tattered file of papers. “This is the evidence that shows we’re family.”

  “Hang on a moment,” Luca said giving him a crushing stare. “How do I know it’s not forged or stolen?” He pored for a long time over a bunch of typewritten material.

  Benito spoke in a loud, emphatic tone. “It is genuine.” More IDs, more incontrovertible proof that they were whom they claimed to be, pumped out like gas from an oil well.

  Luca, standing stiffly, felt it wasn’t going to be easy to maintain the controlled mask. He felt a dark, violent uprush of anger and pain. Why had the very people he’d adored so absolutely excluded the Berios from his life? Why, if Salvatore and Catarina truly loved him, had they done this? Was it because they were snobs? What possible motive could they have had for concealment and lying?

  “May I ask what has brought you here, and why you didn’t contact me earlier?” There was something not quite right about the way they’d bided their time. Through the windows, he saw feathered leaves on the trees flutter and lilt in the breeze.