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With all this, Fiore felt powerless to restrain himself from following Enzo over the brink.
Fiore bit his lip hard enough to break the skin. With a few final rapid thrusts, he lost all semblance of control. He clasped Enzo close to him, his ribs flush against his spine, and poured a torrent of seed deep within him. Sheer relief stung his eyes. He gasped, breathless, his room fading into darkness as he lost himself in Enzo—and beneath his body feeling Enzo take pleasure in forming a vessel for Fiore’s ecstasy in turn, as Enzo breathed a gratified sigh whilst Fiore’s cock pulsed inside him.
They basked together in their entwined bliss for far longer than Fiore oft allowed. He found his fingers combing through Enzo’s locks of their own accord, playing with the silken strands as he soaked in the warmth of his body clasped so tight against his own. He kissed the nape of his neck and tasted the salt of honest sweat on his skin. The sound of his breaths, felt as much as heard, steady as the tides, low and deep and utterly contented, could’ve soothed them both down into sleep. Something about this moment seemed to slake a thirst Fiore hadn’t even realized he possessed.
Yet no good thing could last forever. All too soon, by Fiore’s reckoning, the delightful languid haze dissipated. And though he would’ve gladly remained all evening with Enzo entangled in his arms, Enzo himself stirred with a determination to rise—so, with no small reluctance, Fiore released him.
Enzo slid his drawers back up to their proper place. He sat up with his back to Fiore. His hands reached towards the back of his head, and for one wild moment Fiore thought he meant to untie his mask—but no, he merely gathered his hair back into its queue at the nape of his neck, then glanced ‘round in search of something.
Fiore held up the ribbon with a smile.
An answering smile lit up Enzo’s eyes beneath his mask. He reached to pluck the ribbon from Fiore’s fingertips as delicately as if it were a blossom. Then he tied up his hair and stood.
“Not disappointed, I hope?” Fiore heard himself ask. He’d meant to catch the words before they ever left his tongue, but they’d escaped him, and now he had to suppress a wince at how needful they sounded. He’d kept up his lackadaisical tone, at least. With any luck Enzo would take it as a mere jest.
And to his relief, Enzo laughed, low and soft and deep, rumbling up from the depths of his chest to resound through Fiore’s own ribs. “Not in the least.”
Yet Enzo was leaving him. Fiore fixed his own features into a tranquil mask over his unaccountable nerves. The departure of a gentleman caller was a good thing. It gave him a moment to himself between jobs. Some time to collect himself whilst the music started up on deck and the dancing began to echo down through his ceiling before he tumbled up and sought out his next conquest. Watching Enzo garb himself again oughtn’t have inspired even half so much dread as Fiore felt.
“Forgive my hasty departure,” Enzo said, startling Fiore out of his secret turmoil. “My sister expects me for dinner. And I expect,” he added with another smile glinting in his masked eyes, “you have more pressing business to attend to.”
“Hardly,” Fiore drawled before he could stop himself.
Enzo seemed to take it in stride. Indeed, he seemed rather too preoccupied with his own nerves to notice Fiore’s. “When may I see you again?”
“Whenever you like,” Fiore purred. Despite the theatrics applied to his standard reply, for once he meant it. Easier to hide his sincerity behind smoke and mirrors rather than bare it for the ridicule of all the world.
Though Enzo hardly seemed the sort to ridicule him. And, indeed, sounded quite earnest as he enquired, “Would mèrcore be too soon?”
A mere three days hence. Fiore smiled. “Not at all.”
~
CHAPTER FIVE
The sheer satisfaction of Enzo’s encounter with Fiore left him feeling more invigorated than he had in months. It lingered on long after he’d departed theKingfisher—and what strength of will it’d required for him to leave Fiore behind—throughout the evening, threatening to rob him of his sleep until he at last relented and dropped his hand to his cock still throbbing at the memory of what Fiore had done to him. The following morning he awoke to a delicious ache in his ass and another cock-stand to match it. Fiore’s name tumbled from his lips as he thrust his hips into his own hand and spilled his seed over his knuckles.
Even more potent than the eroticism, however, were the smaller moments which had led up to it. As he quaffed his coffee he thought of the more luxuriant sips he’d shared with Fiore at the Crooked Anchor, where he’d enjoyed a splendid view of every coy smile on those perfect lips and every flirtatious glance of those dark doe eyes. As he took his customary morning run up the three-story spiral staircase on the north-west corner of Ca’ Scaevola, he kept his head held high all the while with the recollection of Fiore hailing him from the ship’s deck, inviting him to climb up and aboard. As he scraped and bathed afterward, the steam arising recalled the fog hanging over the forested valley in the capriccio which had so captivated Fiore, and Enzo found himself captivated again in turn by the memory of the sweet longing that began in those enormous dark eyes and carried through the whole of his dancer’s stance until it seemed as if he would step into the painting and dissolve himself to join its fantasy. Enzo’s mind sparked with what little hints he’d gleaned from their conversation, like shards falling away from a gemstone as it was cut, revealing a glimpse here and there of the beauty gleaming beneath—a man who desired nothing so much as art and yet made his living in love.
Mèrcore couldn’t come soon enough.
Since leaving university, Enzo had little with which to distract himself. The library of Ca’ Scaevola was well-stocked with fantastical tales and fascinating historical and scientific volumes alike, if he could only convince his mind to settle down and fix upon them. But the fantastical tales reminded him of all the adventures he couldn’t have, and the sciences and histories seemed to taunt him with his lost university hopes. The alchemical workshop gave him a sort of wistful relief, though his experimentation accomplished little. His lonesome masked wanderings throughout the city conjured the illusion of society with none of the substance of friendship. It’d taken months for Lucrezia to relent and permit him to return to practicing fencing—in private, rather than in any school or club, under the supervision of a singular tutor, to whom he’d quickly grown attached for exercise and companionship alike, despite the professional distance between them. Maestra Rovigatti had become his sole friend in all his limited world.
Then Giovanna had handed him a puppy.
According to her, the round furry wriggling lump was the runt of the litter. The master of hounds had told her it wouldn’t grow fit enough to join the hunting pack and ought to be drowned. But perhaps Enzo, as a medical mind, had a differing opinion?
Enzo had taken the hint. It felt better to have a task to focus on, however contrived, after so many months bereft of the course charted for him by university. And so he set about making sure the wriggling black lump not only survived, but thrived.
As it so happened, when one devoted one’s self wholly to rearing up a creature, giving it the choicest cuts from one’s own plate (for while, on the rare occasion when he could bring himself to attempt to eat, any bite having turned to ash on Enzo’s tongue, the puppy eagerly had devoured all), making it a soft bed before the fire in one’s own bed-chamber (and sometimes allowing it up onto his own bed), finding some small relief in burying one’s fingertips in the thick ruff around its neck whilst it napped in one’s lap, allowing it to literally dog one’s heels as one wandered like a shade through the halls of one’s ancestral home, and occupying one’s idle mind in teaching it as wide a variety of commands as its wee blinking head could hold—the creature did indeed thrive, growing in the span of a year to a greater height and breadth than any of its supposed superior siblings and becoming wholly devoted to Enzo in turn.
Enzo had named the pup Vittorio. While not quite fully grown, according to the master of hounds, Vittorio did stand with his shoulders almost at the height of Enzo’s waist, a barrel-chest as broad as any man’s, and his paws as large as Enzo’s own fists. Hunting demanded cropped ears and tail, but Enzo found he hadn’t the heart for it and so enjoyed the sight of a wagging whip as the hound wriggled with joy to see him and ears which flopped inside-out when the hound cocked its head in confusion.
Despite or perhaps because of his immense size, Vittorio proved more lazy than ferocious. He eagerly followed Enzo out of bed every morning, but after a few game attempts he couldn’t be persuaded to accompany him on his daily run up the spiral stairs, instead waiting patiently at the foot for his master’s return. He enjoyed a short stroll through the streets immediately surrounding Ca’ Scaevola but wearied of the long and meandering walks Enzo had wandered on since his return to the city. His jaws clanged shut on any stick Enzo tossed his way and crushed the bones given him by the cook but never so much as nipped at Giovanna’s children, who played with his ears and face and tail and paws as if they were clay and indeed feared the hound far less than they feared Enzo.
While Vittorio didn’t oft participate in his own exercise, he did enjoy supervising Enzo’s. Teaching the hound that Maestra Rovigatti was a friend and their duels in the Ca’ Scaevola garden were mere play took some doing. Enzo began when Vittorio was small enough to hold in the crook of his arm. By the time he’d grown up into almost-a-horse, he proved content to sit by the garden-bench and watch the swordplay like a tennis match—assuming he didn’t fall asleep outright.
On this particular day the hound had begun snoring well before their sparring concluded. Enzo, stripped to the waist and streaming sweat, bowed to Maestra Rovigatti and sheathed his blade. He lost most bouts to her and learnt a great deal in the bargain. Today, however, his mind whirled not with parries and counter-parries but with quite another problem altogether.
