Sempre

by Justine Elyot

  A Total-E-Bound Publication

  www.total-e-bound.com

  Sempre

  ISBN #978-0-85715-460-6

  ©Copyright by Justine Elyot 2011

  Cover Art by April Martinez ©Copyright February 2011

  Edited by S.F. Swift

  Total-E-Bound Publishing

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, places and events are from the author’s imagination and should not be confused with fact. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, events or places is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form, whether by printing, photocopying, scanning or otherwise without the written permission of the publisher, Total-E-Bound Publishing.

  Applications should be addressed in the first instance, in writing, to Total-E-Bound Publishing. Unauthorised or restricted acts in relation to this publication may result in civil proceedings and/or criminal prosecution.

  The author and illustrator have asserted their respective rights under the Copyright Designs and Patents Acts 1988 (as amended) to be identified as the author of this book and illustrator of the artwork.

  Published in 2011 by Total-E-Bound Publishing, Think Tank, Ruston Way

  , Lincoln, LN6 7FL, United Kingdom

  .

  Warning: This book contains sexually explicit content which is only suitable for mature readers. This story has been rated Total-e-sizzling.

  Mi Amore

  SEMPRE

  Justine Elyot

  Dedication

  To Giacomo Puccini - thank you for the music

  Chapter One

  From the wings of the Teatro dell’Opera, Julia indulged the secret thrill that hearing the dramatic opening chords of Tosca always elicited. Even now, six months after the audition, she had to remind herself that hard work and dedication had got her here, not the fairies. And no, it was not a dream either. Starring opposite two of Italy’s most celebrated male singers was no longer an ambition. It was reality. Or, at least, it had been, until yesterday.

  “Have you seen him yet?” Liddy, a chorus member and Julia’s closest friend here in Rome bustled through the safety curtain, eyes bright.

  “Seen who?”

  “Tempi’s replacement. The new Cavaradossi.”

  “Oh, is he here? I didn’t think he’d get here so soon. Thought Rolando was going to understudy for the rest of the week. Who have they got?”

  “Nobody knows him. Apparently he’s on loan from some company out in the boondocks, if they have boondocks in Italy.”

  “What’s his na—”

  A man barged through them and out onto the stage. He turned to face the auditorium, which was empty but for the orchestra and director, before opening his mouth and setting free the most perfect sound Julia had ever heard.

  “Who…is that?” The words fell quietly from her stunned, slack jaw.

  “See! I told you!” Liddy grasped Julia’s elbow, urgent fingers dimpling the skin.

  “You didn’t tell me anything. Seriously, this is Tempi’s replacement? Who is he?”

  “His name is Luca.”

  “Does he live on the second floor?” Julia referred to the Suzanne Vega song.

  “What?”

  “Don’t worry. I’m raving. He’s…well, for one thing, he has a stupendous voice.”

  “And for another,” Liddy said, “he could stunt-double for Adonis.”

  “Yeah. He’s…nice.”

  “You don’t go for handsome men, do you, though?” Liddy sighed. She had spent the last few months of rehearsal trying to fix Julia up with a selection of Rome’s most eligible bachelors.

  “I…oh, I think I’m on in a minute.”

  Liddy was flapped out of the way by a stage manager who looked close to the verge of dramatic nervous breakdown.

  “Julia, so sorry.” He elongated the vowels in that Italianate way. “We not expect Luca this week. He arrive very early. You are okay?”

  “I’m okay,” said Julia tensely. Hearing her cue, she took those first steps towards playing a love scene with a total stranger.

  Feigning suspicion of her lover, she crept up behind him where he sat at his easel. Tempi had always looked towards her as she approached, smiling generously, but she was almost at Luca’s shoulder before he suddenly whirled around, as if surprised and overjoyed by her presence.

  He held out his hands to her, drawing her into his tall, athletic body until she was held in his arms, having to look up and sing into a face that was just too handsome to regard without sunglasses. Julia, overwhelmed, found that her voice failed her.

  The conductor frowned, halted the orchestra, waited for the director’s words.

  “So sorry, Julia,” he said.

  Less of the apologising, thought Julia crossly, more of the explaining how I’m supposed to work with a man who could have come straight off the cover of GQ.

  “I think you have not been introduced," the director continued. "This is Luca di Cecco, our new Cavaradossi. Luca, this is Julia Markland, our English rose all the way from London. Okay, Luca doesn’t know the stage directions yet, so Julia, just sing it through and we’ll work on those later. I just want to see the two of you together. I want to see the chemistry.”

  “Hello, Luca,” said Julia awkwardly, conscious of his arm still wrapped tightly around her.

  “Salve,” he said, taking one of her hands and moving the fingertips to his lips.

  “You…” Julia began, agitated beyond measure at the godlike tenor’s intimate behaviour.

  The orchestra started playing again, and she had to put back her shoulders and sing.

  He’s good, she told herself as the scene progressed. I’m lucky they replaced Tempi with somebody so good. But… She could barely concentrate on her lines, and breathing from the diaphragm had never been harder. The way he looked at her was so unlike Tempi’s stagy over-the-top passion, and yet his eyes communicated so much more longing and desire than the famous tenor’s ever had. Anyone would think he really wanted me or something.

  He reached out for her to create close contact for their romantic duet. In his arms she found her voice soaring, blending with his, just as their bodies seemed to meld and fit perfectly with each other. The ground beneath Julia’s feet fell away and she was in the moment, she was Floria Tosca, dreaming with her lover of a night of passion in their secret hideaway.

  She could feel his powerful chest vibrate against her arm as the secret interior mechanisms of his body worked to refine and set free his astonishing voice. She wanted to lean into him, to find shelter and sustenance, to let him lead her to the secret little house in the hills and, once there, to…

  “Beautiful!” shouted the director, leaping to his feet. “You two will be the talk of the town! I knew this would work!”

  Back in the dressing room, she collapsed in the chair next to Liddy’s and struggled to regain her breath. The face in the bulb-lit mirror didn't look like hers. Her hazel eyes were restless, her usually tanned skin pale and the smooth chestnut hair ruffled.

  “You’re shaking.” Liddy put a hand over Julia’s. “What’s up?”

  Julia turned bewildered eyes to her friend. “I don’t know. I really don’t know what happened out there.”

  “You two were amazing. Wow. You looked so gorgeous together too, like a real young couple in love. Fantastic work, Jules.”

  “That’s the thing,” said Julia. “It wasn’t work. It felt nothing like work. It felt like…it felt real.”

  “What, like love at first sight?” Liddy’s encouraging smile nerved Julia to unburden some more.

  “I don’t believe in that, though. Love at first sight. It’s a silly myth. But for a while there I actually convinced myself that I was Floria Tosc
a, in love with him. Do you think that’s weird? Am I taking method acting too far?”

  “I think you sang a duet in the arms of a very hot, very talented man. That’d turn my head.”

  Julia nodded. “Moment of madness, then? Shall I put it down to that? Something in the Roman water?”

  “You can talk yourself out of it all you like, girl,” said Liddy. “But I think you and Luca are going to have a very interesting professional relationship.”

  * * * *

  Heading down the stairs to the exit, Julia felt affronted. She had expected Luca to come to her dressing room, perhaps to confess a towering passion or at the very least ask her out. Perhaps he’s married, she thought. Perhaps he’s gay.

  She really needed to get a grip. He had been acting, after all. He just happened to be very, very convincing. Or should she have gone to his dressing room? After all, he was the newbie. Oh God, she should have done, shouldn’t she? Now he was going to think her weird and unfriendly. She had stuffed up the whole thing and, and…

  She stepped out of the stage door, blinking into the Roman sunshine, and took her usual right turn. But it was blocked. By Luca.

  “Julia,” he said, and his failure to smile both unnerved and excited her. He looked so serious, and so hot, with his linen jacket slung over his shoulder, his hip bumping the corner of the opera house wall.

  “Oh…hello.” For somebody whose job was to breathe well, Julia was certainly finding the simple act of respiration a little problematic.

  “Julia, I am so sorry,” he said.

  “What for?”

  “I wanted to come and introduce myself. But you know Gianfranco, I suppose? He will not let me escape! He wants to take me under his wing, as you say. You must know how he is?”

  Julia knew how Gianfranco was. He was considered one of the world’s greatest baritones, and he certainly believed his hype. If a six-foot-four heterosexual man with a chest like a beer barrel could be a diva, then Gianfranco was the living definition of a diva.

  She regathered her breath and laughed gaily. “Oh yes, I know our Gianfranco all right. But don’t be sorry. I should have come to you.”

  “You wanted to?”

  That breathing thing again. His eyes, like melted chocolate semifreddo beneath ridiculously long lashes, made the honking Roman traffic and the bustling Roman crowds magically disappear.

  “Yes,” she said simply.

  “I wanted to. Very much. Julia…” He held out a hand, which she felt compelled to take. “On stage, you were magnificent. You are a wonderful singer and together we had a special something. You have a word for this in English?”

  “Chemistry?” hazarded Julia in a whisper.

  “Something that feels right. I do not feel this…chemistry…with another soprano. It is, well, I am a little overwhelmed. I think you felt it too. You did, didn’t you?”

  Julia had no alternative but to nod, despite the tiny panicky voice in the back of her head asking, Is this a line? Please don’t let this be a line.

  “I thought so.” He looked down, smiling, for a moment or two, then suddenly whipped on a pair of expensive sunglasses and looked around, as if the time had come to rejoin the rest of the world. “So, you want me to show you around? Have you seen much of Rome?”

  “Mainly the opera house. And my apartment.”

  “Come on then. Let’s take a trip.”

  Towing Julia by the hand, he ran to the back of the theatre where a motorbike stood waiting.

  “Oh, you’re a biker!”

  Luca opened a pannier and removed a spare helmet, handing it to her. “Of course,” he said, grinning as he fidgeted with his chinstrap. “What’s that phrase, the misspent youth? I had that.”

  “Really?” Julia imagined her picture-perfect Italian slouching on street corners in a leather jacket. “From teen gangster to operatic tenor? What a career curve!”

  Luca winked and helped her on behind him before revving up for the ride.

  It was Julia’s first taste of motorcycle travel, and the freedom of it filled her with wild exhilaration. They swept and swooped along the jam-packed boulevards and down obscure cobbled streets, owning the city’s ancient corners, setting their imprint upon the famous attractions.

  When Luca finally parked the bike and jumped off, Julia was not sure what they were meant to see. The square was pretty, with a small fountain at its centre, overlooked by a typical Italian church of greying stone. Handsome enough, but undistinguished on the local scale.

  “Where are you taking me?” She laughed.

  Luca led her through the streaming traffic to the steps of the basilica. “You don’t know?” he asked, mounting the steps. “Look.”

  They stepped inside, experiencing that strange migration into a different world, city pandemonium exchanged in a second for reverent hush. The domed ceiling was painted with elaborate frescoes and embossed with ornaments of gold. Her heels clicked so loudly on the glassy marble floor that she found she was walking on tiptoe. “It’s beautiful,” said Julia.

  “But you don’t recognise it?” Luca sighed. “Ah, Julia. This is where we have our love scene.”

  “Oh! This is the church!”

  “Sant’Andrea dell Valle.” Luca extended a proud arm. “My easel is not here…but the rest is.”

  She looked up at him. “I suppose we can’t sing. I’m tempted though.”

  “I’m not tempted to sing,” said Luca with a wicked smile, putting an arm around her shoulder. “I am tempted to kiss you.”

  “Luca!” she whispered loudly, but there was no force in the reproach. “Not in church.”

  “Let’s go then.”

  “Luca!”

  He turned around and hustled her back out, rewinding their mad dash through the never-ceasing traffic until they were at the fountain.

  “This is pretty,” Julia said tremulously. She knew what was coming, and she knew she couldn’t stop it, because it seemed as if their lips had wills of their own, zooming together like magnets while their bodies clicked back into that perfect fit they’d discovered on stage.

  She clasped the back of his neck, pressing fingers into the dip of the V where his haircut ended and his skin started, enjoying its firm male feel. He held her properly, one arm sealing her against him at the small of her back, the other on a cheek, the big flat palm keeping her head tilted up for him. They melded so perfectly, so sweetly, that Julia began to imagine that they were conjoined, like the Rodin sculpture, and that their flesh, now merged, could never be divided.

  Occasional honks and shouts of male encouragement poured from passing cars, but nothing short of an earthquake could have unglued Julia’s lips from Luca’s until the seal was set, the communion taken, and the soul-mating established.

  They gasped and blinked into each other’s faces, shell-shocked and shaken with the suddenness and extremity of their connection.

  “I should eat something before I end up eating you,” said Luca raggedly.

  “Can’t you kiss me again first?” Julia asked.

  The kiss took them along narrow streets lined with tall shuttered buildings to the first likely-looking restaurant they could find, a corner establishment in a pretty square with coloured lanterns hanging cheerfully across the windows. They sat down at a pavement table, still kissing, until a coughing waiter appeared with menus.

  * * * *

  “So,” said Julia, sticking a fork into a pile of spaghetti arrabiata and twisting it, almost too shy to speak to the man she had so enthusiastically kissed. “Is this part of your preparation for a role? Snogging the soprano?”

  “Julia!” He sounded so crestfallen that she had to stroke his tanned, sharp-shaven cheek.

  “Sorry. I’m teasing. It’s just…I hope you don’t think I do this with all the tenors.”

  “I hope you don’t. When we sang together…something in my soul was, what you say, triggered. I could not fight it. I can’t fight it.”

  “Wow. I see.”


  “You don’t feel the same?”

  “I’m…I think I do. Forgive me. I’m a little cautious when it comes to relationships. But…oh hell…when in Rome…”

  He smiled, picked up a prawn from his seafood tagliatelle and popped it into her mouth. “When in Rome,” he echoed. “Do as the Romans do. And the Romans make love to people they have strong feelings for. Take my word.”

  Julia's appetite for the spicy pasta waned, replaced by a tight knot of fearful desire. Luca meant to take her to bed. Should she be Miss Prim and Proper and wait until the third date? She looked at his strong hand, gripping the fork so tightly as he waited for her reply. Those hands could do wonders. And those eyes…she dared not look into them. They were thieves of resolve, enemies of self-control. But how often did a girl come to Rome to sing her dream role opposite her dream tenor, and have the chance to indulge in a grand passion? She looked into his eyes.

  “I’ll consider myself an honorary Roman,” she said softly.

  Luca dashed the fork into the pasta. “Let’s eat and go. Back to my place,” he said, shovelling food down his throat with indecent haste.

  They paid the bill and ran back down the cobbled street to where the motorcycle was parked.

  “Julia!”

  She turned around to see the young choirboy who was playing the role of the shepherd, out with his parents for la passeggiata.

  “Oh, salve, Enrico. Buona sera,” she said, more formally, to his parents.

  They returned the greeting and moved onwards, while Julia looked back for a moment at the shepherd boy, an unwelcome memory stirring in her head.

  She tried to dismiss it and followed Luca onwards, jumping on his bike and riding through the gathering dusk to his apartment near the Villa Borghese. But it resurfaced once they were inside the attic flat, sparsely furnished but cosy, with Luca’s suitcases still half-packed at the far end of the room by the old-fashioned iron bed.