“G-good night,” I stammered back.
Once we were inside my room, my whole body convulsed in shivers. Sergio put his arms around me. “You are freezing, tesoro.”
He led me into the bathroom and turned on the shower. Welcome steam filled the room, warming me instantly.
I couldn’t get my head around what had happened to us. It didn’t help being in a strange country and running away from the police. Who were the people in the black masks? It all invaded my mind, making the room spin. I held on to the wall to steady myself.
Sergio took my cheeks in his hands and simply stood. The excess adrenalin coursed through my body and I looked into his eyes until I started to feel more normal.
“Better?” he asked.
I nodded.
He gently unbuttoned my shirt, his touch calming me. He stroked my body, encouraging the blood flow to warm me up, finishing with a kiss on my neck.
“What are we going to do?” I asked.
“Not now. We are safe for now. We will decide that in good time.”
He leant forward and kissed me on my lips. He ran his hands along my chest and pushed my shirt off my shoulders, so it fell to the ground. The reassurance from his kiss brought me back to life and I returned his gentleness with a hunger of my own.
I pulled his striped T-shirt over his head and let it join my shirt on the floor. Fear crept in when our lips lost contact, as though his kiss was the only thing keeping me together.
His incredible body soon took my mind off my worries. Thick hair covered his chest and his muscles rippled as he reached for me. His arms encircled my body, making me safe and warm.
We pulled the rest of our clothes off and he gently manoeuvred us into the shower. The warm water cascaded over our bodies, and the ice-cold canal and fear of being chased seemed a lifetime away.
He leaned across for the shower gel and soon our bodies were covered in suds. His soft skin felt incredible to the touch, and his hard muscles brought me comfort. He ran his soapy hands down my body and I returned the favour, rubbing the suds into the hair on his chest and down to his tight stomach. I couldn’t wait to explore his body further.
“How about we take this into the other room?” I said.
He didn’t need asking twice and took my hand as we got out of the shower. It seemed neither of us wanted to be without some part of our bodies touching.
We towelled off, and I led him into the bedroom. We were far from solving our problems but for this moment, I needed him as I’d never needed anyone.
He sat on the bed, his incredible body there for me to take. I got to my knees and slid between his legs. He licked his lips in anticipation, stroked my still wet hair and smiled.
I took his throbbing cock in my hand and leant down, taking him in my mouth in one go. He fell back on the bed with a groan, spreading his legs to give me all the access I needed. I ran my mouth up and down his cock as he thrust his hips in time with me. Working his balls with one hand, I held his hand with the other.
He groaned again but I wasn’t going to let it finish here. Not when I’d been thinking about this all day. I wanted more from him than this. I thought I’d be nervous, having sex for the first time after Matt, but everything about Sergio put me at ease.
I spun him onto his stomach and pushed him up the bed before delving my tongue between his cheeks, making him writhe and push back to meet me. With my tongue, I explored everywhere, running my hands up his back then resting them on his waist. He bucked his hips backwards and forwards. I pushed my tongue deeper, his shuddering spurring me on and my cock hard and ready for action.
“Oh, fuck me,” he pleaded.
I had lost all will to make this last—we both needed the release. I grabbed a condom from the nightstand and resumed my position behind him. He looked so hot on all fours in front of me that the anticipation became overwhelming.
“Come on,” he urged.
He might have been impatient, but I would let him wait for it for a moment or two. I ran the end of my rock-hard cock against his hole slowly, teasing him. He tried to push back but I had control. I increased the pressure ever so slightly. He was getting angry with me now and it turned me on.
“I said fuck me.”
I pushed the head in, and he groaned.
“More.”
I went deeper until I eventually slid all the way in. I pushed him down onto the bed and lay on top of him. He let out a groan at the full length of me. When he reached back for my head and pulled me close, I kissed his neck, rocking slowly back and forth.
“Don’t play gentle with me,” he murmured. “I can take it.”
I picked up the rhythm and fucked him hard, wrapping my arms around his and entwining my legs around him, pumping into him.
“That’s it,” groaned Sergio, moving in time with me.
We switched into a doggy position and he grabbed the headboard as I pounded him. He pulled at his own cock furiously. The old bed creaked in protest, but I couldn’t stop, sliding in and out of him, making him groan with pleasure.
I pulled out and spun him onto his back. Throwing his legs over my shoulders, I dove my cock back into him. He squirmed beneath me and let out a moan, his cock banging against my stomach.
He looked into my eyes and smiled.
Finally, the moment came, and I climaxed fiercely, leaning back and digging my nails into his ankles. He didn’t need much more persuading and came too, burying his face into a pillow to muffle his cries and shooting his load across his tight stomach.
Chapter Five
I lay with my arms around him, him stroking my wrist lazily. I marvelled at how perfectly our bodies fitted together. We were in a bubble all our own making, but the real world hadn’t gone away forever. We were in trouble and had to face facts.
“Sergio, we need to talk about what happened.”
He turned and faced me. He looked like a frightened schoolboy in the dim room. “I know we do.”
Something had been preying on my mind and I needed to get it out. “I think we should have waited for the police. It’s all my fault. I’m so sorry. I don’t know what got into me.”
He put his hand on my chest. “There is no fault. I think you were right. The police just turning up like that…I don’t like it. We were right to run.”
I hadn’t even thought about the whys and wherefores. “Do you mean you think they were waiting?”
“I don’t know what I mean.”
The hole we found ourselves in began to look darker and darker. I had almost decided we should go to the nearest police station at that moment but if they were involved, that wouldn’t be the right move at all.
I leaned back and put my hands under my head.
“If we can’t trust the police, then who can we trust?”
Sergio ran his hand across my stomach, seemingly deep in thought.
“Antonio Valeri.”
Of course, the name the policewoman had said before she passed out! I leapt up and rummaged in my still soaking coat. I pulled out my phone, but unsurprisingly it had no intention of responding. Clearly, a dunking in the canal hadn’t agreed with it. Stupidly I still pressed the buttons, just in case.
“Where’s your phone?” I asked.
“At home.”
“What?”
“This isn’t the first time I have fallen in the canal. You know as well as anyone I’m not exactly the best gondolier on this island.”
“Try this,” I said, throwing the policewoman’s phone to him. I’d made sure to keep it dry as we’d clambered out of the canal.
He fiddled with it and threw his arms up. “It’s protected”
Of course it was. I sighed and went into the safe for my iPad. We impatiently waited for it to fire up. I sat at the end of the bed and shivered. Of all the nights for the hotel heating to be out of order. Sergio wrapped a sheet around us and kissed me on my shoulder.
Eventually, the tablet burst into life and I typed the name into the search eng
ine. All sorts of responses came back for scholars and family trees but nothing we needed. I’d expected all the answers to be held in a simple sweep of the internet.
I tried typing Antoni Valeri Police.
Bingo.
A lot of options in Italian greeted us. I passed the tablet to Sergio. He frowned, looking at the man’s presence on the web. I didn’t want to crowd him and restlessness overtook me, so I started to pace. I didn’t know what I expected the internet to miraculously give us, but a phone number or email address would have been nice, although too much to hope for.
How I wished I had the bottle of wine I’d bought earlier. But we’d left it in the gondola, and it would be at the bottom of the canal now. Would it hurt to go and get one from the little shop?
Realisation hit me with a lurch.
I’d stuffed my wallet into the carrier bag when Sergio had helped me onto the gondola. If they found that, could they trace me?
I was just about to tell Sergio when he put the iPad down and sighed. “Antoni Valeri… It says he’s a big figure in fighting police corruption. He brought down a massive syndicate in the south a couple of years back. He’s retired now and living in Sorrento.”
My Italian geography might not have been much use, but I knew Venice sat in northern Italy and Sorrento right down in the south. My mind raced. Sergio had been right when he’d said this could be the only person we could trust. We had one option.
“Then we’ll have to go there,” I decided.
Sergio tapped away on my iPad. “There are direct trains from here,” he said. “Six hours and we’re there.”
I could live with that. I played the option over in my mind. Getting to the station scared me the most. Unbelievably, we had those maniacs in black masks and possibly every police officer in Venice after us. Again, I wondered if we might be better giving ourselves up. Surely they had to believe our story.
Sergio put the tablet down and held out his arms for me. I snuggled back down with him under the sheet. For the first time, his hands were trembling.
“We need to accept we could be caught up in something very corrupt, Andrew.”
“I’m scared.”
“Me too.”
The moon cascaded its light onto us. The clock told me it had just gone two o’clock.
“What time is the first train?”
“Eight.”
“I guess we have to stay put until then.”
“That is the only option.”
“There’s no chance I’ll be able to sleep.”
“Me neither.”
I could feel something sticking into me that couldn’t sleep either, so I reached down and took him in my hand. He sighed in pleasure.
Slowly I massaged him, his hips starting to move in time with me. Light as a feather, he sprang on top of me and kissed me, his mouth moving from mine to my neck and back again. He took hold of my wrists and lifted them above our heads, grinding our cocks together.
With his knee, he pushed my legs apart and moved in between them. I raised my hips so my legs wrapped around his waist. His muscles were so hard—he had hardly an ounce of fat on him.
He pulled back onto his haunches and rubbed his hands down my body. He looked at me, laid bare before him, and smiled. “You are so beautiful right now.”
He lifted my legs so they were on his shoulders then took the lube from the nightstand to rub on my hole and cock. Lying there totally powerless, I loved it. I trusted him with what would come next.
He slipped on a condom and resumed his place. I leaned back and relaxed into it as he pushed inside me. I couldn’t help but let out a sigh.
“Okay?”
I nodded, smiling up at him. “Oh God yes.”
He didn’t waste any more time, and I wrapped my legs around him as he ground into me. The intensity made me moan, that feeling of invasion mixed with absolute pleasure. He picked up speed as I groaned. Then I pulled him over onto his back and rode him, throwing the blanket off us. The heat came from elsewhere.
He evidently liked this position and held my hips as I took over the movement. I ran my hands across my body, giving him a show which he responded to in kind.
I enjoyed the fact that the tables had turned, giving me back control. I moved his hand to my cock and thrust harder as he held it.
He leaned back and matched my moves.
It didn’t take long before he was pounding his hips into me with more intensity. I picked up speed, and we came together, him inside me and me across his body and neck.
I threw myself forward and into his arms, my cum sealing us as he rolled me onto my back and kissed me before running off to the bathroom.
He returned with a towel and made a big deal of cleaning me up, all the while staring into my eyes and kissing me.
“Gorgeous man,” he whispered.
After that, we managed to get a couple of hours of sleep after all. I dreamt of being on a gondola and bodies falling out of every window. I turned around and Matt powered the boat, but he seemed to be in on the conspiracy to capture me. He laughed maniacally as I tried to get off the boat and dodge the falling people.
I woke with a start which in turn woke Sergio, who wrapped his arms protectively around me.
“What is the matter?”
“I forgot to tell you. I left my wallet on the boat, in the carrier bag.”
He stroked my back.
“It will be at the bottom of the canal now. That disgustingly cheap bottle of wine you bought will have dragged it down.”
I laughed, despite myself. “You’re right.”
“We can go back and see, if you like. It’s still dark out there.”
I didn’t like the idea of running around the alleyways again and it would surely be a crime scene now. I had only taken some holiday spends and my emergency credit card with me onto the boat. Everything else was in the safe. Jodie’s endless worrying had paid off.
“No, you’re right. It can stay at the bottom of the canal.”
The stress of the situation must have been making me blow the loss of the bag out of proportion. I needed to calm down if we were going to get through this. I couldn’t freak out at every little detail that had the potential to go wrong, I’d be no use whatsoever.
“Come on, we’re safe here. In a couple of hours, we will get the train down south and sort this out. I bet we will even be home for me to take you to dinner.”
I hoped this would be the case. Everything seemed scarier being in a different country and I had no idea how things worked here. Only I could get caught up in something like this on my first-ever trip abroad on my own.
“Trust Sergio.”
For some insane reason, I did trust him. I had no idea where this instinctive feeling came from. Besides, I wouldn’t have a chance of dealing with all this on my own. My knowledge of Italian began and ended at “Si” and “Bella” and guidebooks didn’t tend to advise on how to evade police and mobsters.
I’d cuddled back into him when we heard raised voices, making us leap up as though we’d had an electric shock. Sergio ran to the door and opened it a little. I could hear the night porter shouting but there were other voices, and they didn’t sound friendly.
Sergio turned to me. Even in the half-light, his face gleamed ashen. “They are here.”
The shot of adrenalin those words produced coursed through me unlike anything I’d ever experienced. I went dizzy for a second but soon snapped into action. There would be no repeat of losing myself, like earlier.
I threw some clothes at Sergio. “Get dressed,” I ordered.
He couldn’t put on his gondolier outfit. It might not look out of place here, but as soon as we got anywhere outside of Venice, he would stick out like a sore thumb.
I pulled some clothes on and grabbed all my documents and euros from the safe. I stuffed these along with the iPad and mobile phone that poor woman had given us into the little rucksack I had used on the flight.
“We run,” I said to him f
or the second time, bundling him out of the door.
The voices were on the stairs now making the automatic lights come on, indicating the police weren’t far away. Obviously, they’d given up on that ridiculous lift.
We ran down the corridor in the opposite direction from the lift. Maddeningly, the corridor ended at a window looking out over the rooftops towards St Mark’s Square. The morning was starting to break, highlighting the city. The voices were on our level now and there seemed to be a lot of them.
We had no choice.
I could hear what I presumed to be a policeman knocking on my room door and shouting my name. I put my finger to my lips then slowly opened the window. The screech of metal on metal, sounding louder than a clap of thunder, gave me chills. Did everything in this hotel have to make an insane noise?
Thankfully, the policeman around the corner had been joined by his colleagues and they were pretty irate by now. Their shouting and banging were drowning out any noise we could make.
However, they were waking up my neighbours, people starting to move about in their rooms. I really didn’t want someone to see us climbing out of the window and let the police know.
With a deep breath, I flung the window open and nodded at Sergio. We crawled over the windowsill and dropped down onto a little roof below.
This scene belonged in a Hollywood movie rather than my long weekend away. Trying not to think about it, I managed to make my way across the roof. Heights have never been my thing, but I swallowed down my fear and scuttled like some demented crab across the tiles, praying they’d hold, and we wouldn’t go crashing into some poor person’s bedroom below. Perfect way to get caught looking totally guilty.
A roof terrace a couple of buildings over gleamed. I squinted and judged that with the higgledy-piggledy nature of Venice’s roofs all vying for space, we could make it.
I gestured to Sergio and we managed to creep across. A tiny alleyway lay between us and the next roof. I made the mistake of looking down and instantly jumped back, holding onto the tiles for safety. It had to be less than my body width wide but the idea of stretching my foot out that far panicked me and I froze. Sergio glanced back at the hotel.
Venetian Valentine Page 3
