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She took a sponge from the basket, wet it, then took the soap from him, and rubbed it over the sponge until she’d made a lather. She draped her long legs over his thighs, and slid closer, until she was entwined with him in the middle of the tub. She drew the soapy sponge over his neck and shoulders, down over his chest, and down, where his cock strained to meet her hand—to meet any female part it could.
But it would have to wait.
He put out his hand. “My turn.”
He did as she had done, moving the soapy sponge over her neck and shoulders and down over her arms and hands and between her fingers and over her palms and up again and down again, slowly, lovingly, over her perfectly rounded breasts. And while he did this the words came out, so easily, as though they’d been waiting for this moment. He told her, softly, in Dante’s language, that she set him on fire, that he’d wanted her from the first moment he’d met her…
She reached up and tangled her fingers in his hair and she smiled the smile of a girl, a playful, naughty girl.
He was mesmerized. The sponge slid from his hands and they moved over her, skin to skin this time, over her neck and the sweet slope of her shoulders and her arms and down to her long, slim fingers, then up again and down again, over the smooth arcs of her breasts. And all the while he watched her unearthly face as she played with his hair. And all the while he was murmuring love words in his mother’s language, like the romantic he wasn’t.
Her green gaze slid down and met his.
They remained so for a long moment, their gazes locked.
Then she brought her mouth to his, but only lightly touching.
“Per quanto ancora mi farai aspettare?” he said against her lips. How long will you make me wait? “Baciami.” Kiss me.
She smiled.
He drew his lips along that long curve. “Baciami,” he said.
The smile his lips had traced was her harlot’s smile, and he expected the harlot’s kiss, though that wasn’t what he wanted and he couldn’t say what it was he wanted.
“Baciami,” he said.
And she kissed him.
Shyly. Sweetly. Tenderly, so tenderly that he trembled, and told himself it was the bath water cooling.
Not shy. Not sweet. Not tender. Not she.
Yet she was. She made his cold, hard heart ache. His arms went round her and he dragged her up against him. Her legs wrapped about his waist. He held her so, as the kiss went on, deepening and deepening, a drowning of a kiss. He held her tightly, as though she’d be pulled away, dragged out to sea, and be lost forever otherwise.
Perhaps it was then he understood what had happened to him when she fell from the balcony. Or perhaps he only felt something he did not understand until later.
Her hands slid down, from his hair and along his jaw and down over his chest. He broke the kiss to take her hand and kiss her knuckles, her fingertips, and then to press his mouth to the soft palm.
She kissed the back of the hand holding hers, and slipped her hand free, and down it went, reaching through the water until it closed around his cock. He groaned. She covered his mouth with hers, and stole his soul with another wrenching kiss. He reached down, and pushed her hand away, and quickly, more quickly than he’d ever meant, he was inside her. He still held her tightly, as though the world would end if he loosened his grasp.
Slow, he told himself. Make this last forever.
He tried to make it slow, but she was kissing his face, his neck, and her hands were so soft, and nothing was real. The water pulsed around them as they pulsed against each other.
He gave up trying to control any of it, and let the tide take him. They rose and fell together, higher and higher each time until there was nowhere left to go. Then she shuddered against him, and the world flew apart. Release came, and down he went, a drowning man, happily drowning.
Chapter 12
They blush, and we believe them; at least I
Have always done so; ’tis of no great use,
In any case, attempting a reply,
For then their eloquence grows
quite profuse;
And when at length they’re out of breath,
they sigh,
And cast their languid eyes down,
and let loose
A tear or two, and then we make it up;
And then—and then—and then—sit down
and sup.
Lord Byron
Don Juan, Canto the First
He was kissing her so sweetly: scores of tender kisses on her nose, her cheeks, her forehead, her ears, her neck, her shoulders. Francesca kissed him back in the same way, like a girl in love for the first time. And when he stopped and drew away a bit and looked at her, she knew she was looking back at him with stars in her eyes, but she couldn’t help it.
She’d been numb for so long, dead to feeling without realizing it. Until now. It was as though the long, sensual bathing ritual had washed away—not her sins, for she was deeply attached to those—but a coating or shell of some kind that had stopped her from feeling too deeply, too fully.
She felt now, deeply and fully.
Joy was coursing through her. It was not the simple physical pleasure of coupling but a bright happiness that lightened her heart.
He drew her upright, and she rose out of the water like one mesmerized. She couldn’t make her eyes turn anywhere but up to him, to look up into his handsome face.
Later she’d ask herself why but for now she could only gaze at him in a kind of stupid wonder.
“Don’t look at me like that,” he said.
“Like what?” She said, as though she didn’t know she wore the expression of a girl hopelessly in love.
He turned away to reach for a dry towel. “You’ll put ideas in my head,” he said. He wrapped the towel around her and helped her out of the tub. “I shouldn’t have kept you here for so long. If you take cold, Thérèse will kill me.”
“But it was great fun,” she said.
“Fun,” he said. Frowning, he picked up another towel and as smoothly and efficiently as Thérèse could have done it, wrapped her hair into it and twisted the towel about her head like a turban.
“Oh, you’ve done this before,” she said.
“Never,” he said. “You’re the first.”
She almost wished that were true. She almost wished he’d been the first for her and she could persuade herself he felt as she did.
She knew better.
Still, she told herself, if it had been the first time, she couldn’t have properly appreciated what had happened. She wouldn’t know enough to savor it, to store it in he
r memory.
“Go sit by the fire,” he said.
She walked to the couch and sat.
She watched him take up a towel and vigorously rub his hair. When he was done, the shiny black curls bounced about his head. She ached to tangle her fingers in his hair again. She longed to touch everything. She let her gaze travel wistfully over his long body. Then she made herself turn away. She lay down on the couch and stared into the fire.
She wasn’t aware of falling asleep.
She never heard him leave.
James had wrapped a towel about his waist and gone out to look for a servant to fetch them something to eat and to send for his clothes.
He found one too soon.
Sedgewick was sitting on the stairs nearby, waiting for him.
Arnaldo had already sent across the canal for a change of clothes. Sedgewick had brought the clothes. He’d also brought a message.
“It’s from San Lazzaro,” Sedgewick said. “You’re wanted there. Without further loss of time, I was to tell you, sir.”
“Monsieur left a note, madame,” Thérèse said, handing it to her.
Amor mio,
Those accursed monks! I had appointed to meet with them at San Lazzaro this morning. Something made me forget. A troublesome girl, I believe. Forgive me. Dine with me tonight in my bachelor lodgings and I will make it up to you.
Caramente,
C
Francesca knew she was deeply, unforgivably foolish. Before melancholy and disappointment could settle upon her, one hastily scrawled note drove them away. She tried but she couldn’t stifle the surge of relief and happiness. She laughed softly.
And when Thérèse scolded and said madame needed something to eat and a proper sleep, Francesca smilingly agreed.
She’d need her strength for tonight.
Meanwhile, in less elegant quarters in Venice
A ceramic Madonna flew across the sitting room of Marta Fazi’s lodgings and shattered against a door frame.
The two young men waiting to collect their pay only watched Marta’s hand, to see if she would throw anything else. But she was too puzzled to be truly enraged, and her temper cooled quickly, as it often did. She returned to her chair at the small table.
