Authors: Lynne Connolly
She enjoyed the sight of his tight buns as he walked to the bathroom. Drowsily she listened to the faucets as they poured hot water. She was dozing when he returned and lifted her into his arms. Despite her laughing protests, he carried her to the bath. He’d found bubbles and, glory be, champagne. She raised a brow and pressed a kiss against his chest. “Cliché?”
“Sorry I can’t be more original. But hey, why mess with a good thing?”
He had a point. By some miracle he even had her favorite champagne, the orange label forming a pleasing contrast to the dark green bottle and the pristine ivory-colored porcelain.
He lowered her into the foamy water and quickly joined her, sitting with his back to the porcelain, cradling her body between his legs. She leaned against his chest, not caring that the ends of her hair dangled in the water. He sifted his fingers through the waves and natural ringlets, pushing her hair back from her forehead in slow, easy strokes that relaxed her to the point of idiocy. “I’ve been meaning to ask. Is this your real color?”
“No. I dyed it before I came here. It’s brighter naturally, but I can’t blend in easily with platinum blond hair.”
“I always assumed you colored it that way.”
She loved the way his voice rumbled through his chest, vibrating against her skin.
“Most people did. It was one thing that wasn’t fake about me. I had my lips injected every couple of months, and I was considering cosmetic surgery when—just before I left. A real member of the plastic generation.”
He cupped her breasts, stroked his thumbs over the tips. “Why would you want to mess with perfection?”
“Just for a change. I was unhappy with the way I looked. I don’t care these days, as long as I’m neat and clean.” She huffed a laugh. “It’s like I was someone else. In a way I was, I guess. Poor little rich girl.” Like anybody would ever believe that.
“Now you’re a rich little poor girl?” He frowned. “No, that’s not right.”
He reached over and poured the champagne one-handed, returning the bottle to the ice bucket afterward without spilling a drop. He gave her a glass, then took one himself, touching the rim of his glass to hers. “To the future.”
She glanced away. “The future.” They drank, kissed and drank again, then lay together in contented silence. When she’d emptied her glass, he took it and returned it to the tray to join his.
Then he rinsed her body, turning it into another sensual exploration. Ending at her pussy. He opened her labia with his fingers and stroked along the crease. He knew her body now, knew what she liked. He could make her purr like a kitten.
Gentle strokes turned to something with more purpose, and she let her legs fall open. She leaned her head against his chest. Murmuring soothing words, encouraging her to relax and let him do this to her, he insinuated a finger inside her. He stroked and found her clit with the pad of his thumb, teasing the knot of flesh into prickling awareness.
She sighed happily and concentrated on the sensations. Waves of heat rose inside her, heading to the inevitable conclusion. She gasped and clutched his arm, the one not working her, half turning so she could kiss him as she came. Heat rose, swelled, ebbed in a delicious waning, each tremor giving her a new thrill. He worked her body so well.
She’d more or less abandoned her sex life years ago, first addiction and then the process of just living taking away all her energy and desire, but Jon was bringing it all back to her. Gifting her with her own sensuality.
She nestled against him, happy to drift until he wanted her again. From the state of his cock, aroused and pressing hotly against her back, it wouldn’t take long. Perhaps she’d turn around and straddle his body, rediscover the way it felt to take control. She’d hardly ever done that before, but she wanted to now, to give him something back for the pleasure he’d given her.
He curved his arms around her waist, drew her hard against him. “I bought two tickets.”
“What?” Still drifting in a post-orgasmic haze, she followed him sluggishly.
“I have two plane tickets for tomorrow. Come with me, Lina. Come home.”
She froze. Her first, shocked response was a clear denial. “It’s not my home. It never was, not really.”
“I’ll
make
it home. I’ll make it work. It’s where you belong.” He paused and cleared his throat. “When your mother discovered I planned to fly here to find Byron, she came to see me.”
Bile rose in her throat. All this time, he’d planned this? “Why didn’t you tell me?” She pulled away, turned to face him. Water sloshed over the edge of the tub. She glared at him, refusing to believe it.
“Honey, your mom’s been crazy with worry. She married again, did you know?”
Lina shook her head. “No.” She’d turned away from anything that reminded her of her mother, kept well clear of the gossip magazines and anywhere else she might catch a glimpse of her. But a curl of curiosity made her wonder. “Who did she marry?”
“Ritchie Farina. You know him?”
She furrowed her brow in thought. “I’m not sure.”
“He owns the newsstands.”
Oh yes, Farina’s, the places that claimed to store or have access to every magazine anywhere in the world. “So she did well?” Farina wouldn’t be short of a dollar or two. Not that Lina cared.
“I guess. He seems to have settled her down.”
“My mother could party harder than anyone else I knew.” And drink a distillery’s worth of alcohol disguised with various fruit juices and pretty cocktail umbrellas.
“Not so many scenes.” His hold tightened when he felt her shudder. “They were that bad?”
“They were.” If Lina never saw her again, it might give her a chance to forget the scenes her mother created. One of her earliest memories involved a room full of shattered china and a lot of screaming. Vague now, but those details remained distinct in her mind, as if engraved there. And the other things she did, making Lina feel dirty, so that a used needle seemed clean by comparison.
His caresses aroused and soothed, something she hadn’t thought possible before she’d slept with him. “I never realized it was that bad. I assumed—everybody assumed—that you were two of a kind. Like mother, like daughter.” A note of concern colored his carefully controlled voice. “I know different now. Don’t I?”
She wanted to reassure him but she had to remember—they must separate. So any doubt might help him forget her once he’d returned home. She shrugged. “Maybe. It just seemed easier.” Easier than facing reality, that was for sure. “How’s my mother these days? She was never very maternal.”
“She seems to be now. When she found out I was coming over, she came to see me. Begged me to try to get in touch with you. She says she tried to trace you, but couldn’t get anywhere.”
Lina kept her voice neutral. “What did she say?”
“That she wants to make amends. She wants to see you again, wants you to come home.” He dropped a kiss on her shoulder, and lapped a few drops of moisture. She let him think her shiver was a response to that, but the thought of meeting her mother again sent chills through her. “I have a letter from her if you want to see it.”
“You can give it to me.” She might read it, she might not, but not here, not now. Try as she might, she couldn’t think of one good reason for going back. No, that was a lie. One big reason and then—nothing. Her life here was richer, more fulfilled.
The thought of returning to her old life in New York terrified her. It stopped her mind dead, made her break out in a sweat to even contemplate going back. It would be so easy, so seductive to slip back. She’d seen it over and over again. People broke away and kicked the habit that was destroying their lives, only to go home and slide back into their old ways, seduced by friends and familiar surroundings. For years that thought had haunted her.
When she realized her mother would have spent the paltry remnants of her father’s fortune, the reasons to go back went away. She certainly wouldn’t do it for her mother. “Why does she want to see me?”
He stroked her waist, swept his hand underwater to cup her hip. “Because she’s worried about you. And she says she wants to say she’s sorry. Maybe you both went through a phase, hmm?”
“Maybe.” But she didn’t want it to happen again. She didn’t need the nuns’ rudimentary analysis to know how badly her mother had screwed up parenthood. “I like it here.” That was true, too. Despite the gangs, the dirt and the dilapidated buildings, she liked Naples.
“It’s an interesting place. But you can’t stay here forever.”
“Why not?” She turned to face him, ignoring the water that sloshed over the rim of the bath again. “I like it here. I’m useful. The years I spent in New York were wasted years. I can’t remember a lot of it. Too high most of the time. Here I work, and I study. I’m late starting my life but it really has started now.”
“You could do that at home.”
He wouldn’t let her go easily, she saw that now. Time to introduce her greatest weapon, the reason she couldn’t go back. “I can’t become a nun there. Not as easily.”
“Yes you can—What?” Shock registered in his wide eyes, his dropped jaw. He closed his mouth, his teeth clicking together with the force of his clamped jaw. “You’re not serious.”
“Why not? I was raised Catholic. If it weren’t for the nuns in Rome, I’d have died. They’re a practical order, they go all over the world helping people who have fallen on distressed times. They concentrate on addicts and street children, learn all they can about them. That’s why I’m studying. I want to help, Jon, to give something back.”
He curved his arm around her waist and drew her close. His erection had subsided, but not by much. It still pressed into her. “You can study there. And we can be together.”
“You really want that?”
She dragged away and climbed out of the tub, reaching for one of the towels on the rack. If she’d missed anything from her old life, that would be it. Warm towels from a heated rack. But to her surprise she realized she hadn’t missed much.
Wrapping the towel around her, she headed for the door. “Don’t answer. You can’t want that. What if I went back to the way I was? You’d have an addict on your hands. I never pretended, you know, never dabbled. I dived straight in. You can’t want someone who’d do that. I’d be a liability. Here, I’m wanted, I’m useful. And everybody who knows me thinks I’m a good girl who doesn’t drink much and doesn’t take drugs. Part of the habit is the expectation. What people expect you to do, and the crowd you run with. If I came home, how long before they’d expect me to backslide?”
She strode into the main room, hearing the
whoosh
of water as he left the bath. He didn’t bother with a towel, she saw when he entered the bedroom.
She didn’t let him speak. “Your family and my family don’t mix. Your mother always looked down on me. You’re old money, real class and we’re Italian upstarts. You know it’s true. Your people won’t like it if you take up with me, especially after Byron. I bet they blame me for his death.”
She paused to swallow, reminded of her guilty feelings, and he took the chance to get a word in. “What are you, a coward or something? Don’t want to face them?”
“I guess I must be.” She’d use anything to get rid of him. Then she thought of something else, a reason he couldn’t argue with. “In any case I can’t leave, not now. If I do, they’ll kill Franco and his family.”
“Revenge?” His lip curled. “Bastards.”
She picked up her bra from the cream carpet and shrugged into it. “For sure. But it’s business, only business. At least that’s what they say. As long as he pays the protection and keeps his head down, they leave us alone, but you rattled them. Now we have to go about our ordinary business until they forget us.”
“You could do what I did. Disappear and reappear as yourself.”
She gave a derisory laugh. “You think that might not seem suspicious? No. As long as I don’t change what I do, I’ll be fine. I’ve been here two years and managed better than anywhere else.” And yet, she knew she’d have to move on one day. Jon had woken her to that fact.
Jon wouldn’t leave her alone, now that he knew where she was. If she persuaded him to go now, he’d come back. Then her family would find out, and she’d be back to being a penniless princess. Maybe she should try Venice. Or Milan. Her heart sank. She hated trusting anyone, and she couldn’t trust Jon to leave her alone. Not now. Not after what they’d done and what she’d told him.
Oh shit, she was screwed. In more ways than one. Unless she could make him see sense, and leave for good. “Look, Jon, it’s been fun. We’ve enjoyed ourselves, haven’t we?” Grabbing up her clothes, she continued to dress, as hastily as she could manage. Not that she had much to put on. “But you have your life, I have mine. I don’t belong in your world anymore. I don’t have any money, I don’t have friends there, there’s nothing for me. I want to stay here so much and study, make something of myself.” She sighed. “You’re my last fling before I go back to the convent. I really want to do this. Don’t screw it up for me.”
She went to walk past him but he reached out and dragged her close, slamming his mouth down on hers before she could pull away. They were both panting by the time he drew back. “You can walk away from this? From everything we have? From your mother, the only family you have left?”
That finished the conversation as far as she was concerned. “Fuck off, Jon. Let me do this. If you come back to the café, I’ll disappear again. You know I can, and you won’t find me this time.”
She pulled away, grimacing at the way he’d wet the front of her dress. It’d soon dry in the sun.
She grabbed her bag then strode to the door. “Thanks, Jon. I’ll think of you in my cell. But it’s a vocation. You or Jesus. I guess Jesus won.”
She didn’t look back.
Jon stared after her, eyes narrowing in speculation. A nun? Yeah, maybe, but to his mind that was going too far. She obviously felt she had to make reparation of some kind, for Byron’s death. She’d always enjoyed extremes. Perhaps she hadn’t changed as much as he thought.
Or— But one thing remained clear. He’d have to leave her alone. For now. He’d take Byron home and then come back for her. And this time he wouldn’t let her walk away. Already his groin ached, reminding him how much he wanted her.