I searched his eyes for a minute before the first thing in my mind spilled from my mouth. “You waited for me,” I whispered. “You knew that I was coming. Even before I made it outside.” Even though I was quick, he was faster, and he would’ve been long gone by the time I’d made it outside.
“Yeah,” he said, lifting me off my feet, carrying me. “I’d never leave you behind.”
“Nor would I,” I said. “Leave you behind.”
“Nor would I,” he repeated, shaking his head. “No, I know you wouldn’t.”
“You—did you do that on purpose?” I went to sit up straighter, but he kept my position firm. “Bait me?”
A wide grin came to his face, which seemed wicked in the glimmer of moonlight. Those eyes were the lure, the mouth the trap. “I’m a good fisherman, baby.”
“You could’ve just asked me to come with you, you know!”
“Noioso.”
“Boring?” My mouth fell open. “What’s so boring about asking?”
He shot me a look. No, rarely did he ask for anything, and he wasn’t going to start then. Perhaps that was why it was a novelty to me, this asking business.
“You get melodramatic sometimes, Ballerina Girl. I like it. Reminds me of your performance inGiselle. Which, given the circumstances, seems right.”
“Melo—me?” Well, if that didn’t just take the effing cake. “In real life?”
“We don’t live in another.”
“Sometimes I wonder if we do…” I muttered, staring at the strong profile of his face. In this light, I almost wondered, if I slid my hand along his jaw, would I bleed from the sharpness of it?
He set me down when we came to the exact spot where he had left me behind, right before he sent me off to Paris and he left for the Coast Guard.
“What are we doing?” I whispered. The area almost seemed like sacred ground, a place of reminders. The earth held those old feelings as though our separation happened only yesterday.
In the distance, the river was a dark void, except for the shimmer of mercury, not dancing, but covering its surface with a luminous blanket. When a tepid wind swept over, it rippled the light, and I shivered. It reminded me of a creature moving in its sleep, disturbed by a passing ghost.
He answered my question by taking one of the blankets from my shoulder, fanning it out over the grass. Then off came his sweater, his shorts, and next his socks and shoes. It seemed like he was bathing naked in the moonlight. He was tall and lean, each muscle brutally beautiful, proving how gorgeous of an animal a man could be.
Licking my lips, I decided that my tongue needed to explore each groove, each river and valley and peak. I half expected wisps of steam to emanate from his skin. The heat from his body radiated like a furnace.
After all of that romantic thinking, I said, “You forgot your hat.”
He lifted it from his head, throwing it to the pile of discarded clothes and shoes. His raven hair stood on end, wild around his head, and I wanted nothing more than to be devoured.
“Nel giardino della redenzione e del peccato,” he whispered. He touched his heart before he held his hand out for me to take. “Vieni da me mia donna.”
“‘In the garden of sin and redemption,’” I translated in a whisper, “‘come to me, my woman.’”
This time when I shivered, it had nothing to do with memories or the weather.
I took his hand and all that came with it.
* * *
We made love illuminated by the moon’s light, out in the open, under the sky, grass our crude bed, finding warmth in each other and in the spare blanket that had draped my shoulders.
Its fabric wasn’t thick, and the grass beneath us crackled with each movement. His sweater became a pillow. The blanket over us was sufficient to keep us warm, but it held no comparison to Brando’s heat. He was too long for both throws, though, and his bare feet stuck out, touching the silver-bladed grass. The moon made his feet, long and bony, seem almost inhuman.
“Are you cold,mio angelo?” I asked.
“No.” He came down and kissed me, lingering and languorous. Our hands somehow became entwined, and we slid our palms against the other’s. “Say that again.”
