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CHAPTER SIX
MAREN
Alessio has promised to take me to the infamous Macabre Karnival in Nadur.
“Are you sure you want to go?” he asks me, as we’re sitting on the terrace of a cafe overlooking Xlendi Bay in the late afternoon, snacking on crostini and drinking rustic grenache. “It can be…overwhelming, to say the least. It won’t be family-friendly like the parades in Victoria.”
“How do you mean?”
He tilts his head back and forth. “Well. It is something of a tourist draw, for those who like a wild party. And some of the pantomimes can be risque, profane, and shocking. The costumes as well, and there is a lot of alcohol.”
Wild parties are not really my thing, and Alessio seems to know that about me. “Have you gone?”
He looks slightly embarrassed. “When I was at university, yes. I’ve done the whole bit—dressed up in grotesque costume, gotten drunk, wound up pissing on the street and hungover as hell afterward. Nunna nearly pulled my ear off next day.” He smiles, those dark eyes of his warm on me. “But it is interesting. And the roots of it go back to days when the Maltese struggled for survival; they really needed to let off some steam. It is…rather primal.”
“Take me,” I say.
Alessio’s eyes seem to grow darker, and a shiver goes down from my nape to my tailbone. “I expect I will,” he says softly, not looking away from me. My breath comes faster, at the very thought of him taking me, in every way, in a public place like this.
I’ve never thought of myself as that kind of girl. But with Alessio…apparently, I am that kind of girl.
“We should go, then,” he says, clearing his throat and looking away. “Nadur demands costumes, so I’ll need to go dig one out of the wardrobe at my mother’s house. Do you have something to wear?”
I nod. “It’s pretty basic, though. A flapper dress. My usual Halloween thing.”
“You might get cold,” he warns. “The breeze comes up at night, this time of year.”
But I don’t have anything else. Luckily, the dress does have sleeves and long gloves. And after we eat dinner—traditional rabbit stew with Maltese bread—at my hotel, I go up to my room to change while Alessio goes to his mother’s house for his own costume. I tie up my hair into a faux bob and put on the long string of pearls. Red lipstick. Red sequined mask.
In the mirror, my own eyes look out from the eyeholes with sparkle and anticipation. I don’t want to think about tomorrow. I don’t want to think about leaving.
Alessio comes to pick me up, wearing something that could have been a costume for a male character on Game of Thrones, a dark brown tunic and black trousers and boots. His hair is pulled back and neatly ponytailed, and he’s wearing a black velvet cloak.
And a black velvet mask.
Just looking at his eyes glinting at me through the mask, I get excited. Under my beaded dress, my nipples peak, and I am very aware of my thighs just above my stocking tops. Very aware of my suddenly damp womanly folds under my satin tap pants. Very aware of how close to bare I am.
I’m tempted to pull him into my room for some pre-Karnival loving. But he offers me his arm, and we head off.
The festivities in Nadur are indeed wild. People are very drunk in the street already. It’s crowded. There is a dark, almost threatening feel to this street party, and as the parade floats and the dancers pass by, I keep wondering when the partiers will mingle in the middle of the street and prevent the rest of the floats from passing. It’s not quite a riot, but I feel like we’re dancing on the edge. There is a feverish, thunderstorm mood to this crowd. The male half of a couple standing a few feet away from us actually dips his hand into his companion’s bodice and tugs it down to expose her breast. She takes his hand and puts it on her, and I’m both embarrassed and aroused. When I look back, they’re gone.
Across the street, a young woman, clearly drunk, is kissing both her female friend and her male one, in turns.
I shiver.
“Cold?” Alessio asks. “Here, take this cloak.” He swings it around my shoulders. “I’ll get us wine. Do not move from here.”
He’s back in just moments, with two mugs of something very like the grenache we were drinking earlier. I’m thirsty, so I drink nearly half the mug at a gulp. It goes right to my head.
But not more so than Alessio himself. The warm, spicy smell of his skin. The wine taste of his kisses. The heated strength of him at my back.
I want him.
I want to take him back to my hotel room and do the naughtiest things I can think of.
On the street, a float passes by. There is a man dressed as a butcher on it, and people dressed as oxen and pigs. He mimes cutting one of the animals’ throats, and then reaches down and tosses sausages into the crowd.
“Barbaric,” I mutter.
