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For this one, I choose to weaponise the truth. “I’d be lying if I told you I felt anything other than abject despair during my entire time there.”
Dame Fletch laughs out loud, tips her champagne to me. “Hah. I spent seven years at Harrington Abbey. We used to call it the mouth of hell.”
“Hell must have two mouths, then.” I tip my champagne to her. “To surviving night terrors and angry nuns.”
Dame Fletch smirks. “Hear, hear.”
Our conversation is eventuallystopped by the serving of the food and the start of the auction. The food is rich,the auction is long, and the gala drags on with all the speed and grandeur of a dead gilded elephant.
My only distraction during the endless hours at that table is bitching about school with Mummy Fletch, mildly flirting with Daddy Fletch, and categorically ignoring Baby Fletch, whose gaze burns into my skin with increasing intensity.
The only time I look at him is when I reach over to pluck his bidding paddle out of his hands and bid on an eighteenth-century copy of Dante’sThe Divine Comedy. When he raises an eyebrow at him, I wink and say, “For your vanity shelf,darling.”
Once I win, I toss Luca his paddle back and excuse myself. I’ve been gagging for a cigarette since we got here, and since I can’t seem to spot any designated smoking areas, I guess I’m going to have to pull a fast one and sneak a toilet cig.
I weave through the room on my way out, scanning the tables for that face I haven’t seen since I was a teenager. That slack, unhappy face, those moist eyes, those alcohol-reddened cheeks. For every face I see that’s not his, I’m hit with a double punch of relief and frustration.
When I finally reach the bathroom, down a corridor lined with paintings of fat men in tights, I pluck a cigarette from the box before I even make it through the bathroom door. I push past, and instead of closing behind me, the door flies back open. Luca follows me in so suddenly I almost drop my cigarette.
He doesn’t say a word.
He locks the door with one hand, and with his other arm, he catches me by my waist. Pulling me to him, he presses the front of his body flush to the back of mine.
His mouth burns like hot iron against my neck, my shoulders. His fingers find the lacing at the back of my dress, and he pulls them without waiting; he tugs on them with the strength and eagerness of a hungry animal trying to get to food.
I roll my eyes and pull away from him. I unlock the bathroom door and reach into my bag for my lighter. Luca’s hands leave the lacing of my dress. He locks the door a second time. Then he takes the cigarette from my fingers and snaps it in half before tossing it into the wastebasket. With his arm still firmly around my waist, he manoeuvres me to the marble counter, pinning me to it.
In the antique mirror above the sink, Luca’s eyes are hooded and his cheeks darkly flushed, like he’s drunk or feverish. His mouth moves hungrily up my neck and the side of my face, fingers roughly pushing aside loose strands of my hair.
You’d think my little photography prank earlier might have done a quick job of ridding him of his erection, but if anything, he’s harder than ever. He grinds his hips into my ass like he’s trying to fuck me through my clothes.
I laugh out loud and turn to push him away from me. His mouth leaves my skin, but he doesn’t move away. His gaze meets mine quickly, distractedly. I shake my head.
“You’re a fucking mess, Luca.”
He tugs on the collar of my dress, which yields now the lacing is loose. He presses his mouth to mine in a sloppy, hungry kiss. I grab his jaw and shove his head away.
“Fucking hell, Let me breathe.” I push him back by his shoulder and take the cigarette pack out of my bag. “Let a girl have a smoke, fuck!”
He takes the pack out of my hand, crushes it in his fist.
“Cancer’s an ugly way to die, Lynch.”
His voice is rough and short, like he’s been running.
“Death doesn’t need to be beautiful,” I tell him.
“But it could be.” He tosses the crushed cigarette box in the wastebasket and turns back to me with a horribly sincere look in his eyes. “If your death was in my hands, Lynch, I’d make it the most beautiful fucking death.”
“You’re so in love with me.” I roll my eyes. “It’s so goddamn sinister. Can’t you go back to hating me?”
He lets out a gentle laugh, lifts me by my hips to prop me on the edge of the counter, the marble cold under me, a stark contrast to the inordinate heat of his body as he settles himself between my thighs. He leans closer to me, bracing himself against the mirror behind me, and I lean back, keeping as much distance as I can between his mouth and mine.
“I’ll never stop hating you,” he murmurs with the sweet fervour of a love confession. “I’ll hate you to your heart’s content, Lynch, if that’s what you like.”
He wraps his hand firmly around the back of my neck and kisses me, hard and wet and urgent. There’s always a weird, horrible sensuality to Luca’s kisses. It’s hard not to enjoy it, probably because I’m equally as fucked up as he is and probably also because I have an ego too, and Luca’s desperate hunger stokes my ego like a glorious pyre.
I free my mouth long enough to tell him he’s pathetic, but he speaks first, murmuring right against my ear.
