“Vieni al mio letto, amante?”Come to my bed, lover?I asked with a languid, soft tongue.
His breath came out slowly, wine on his tongue. I inhaled him as though he gave me his last breath. Then his face changed. He seemed to be thinking. “Cigarettes and Coffee,” he said after a minute or two, smiling sensually, only a tilt of his full lips.
My face pinched showing my confusion and he did laugh at that.What the hell?
“Gabriel taught it to me,” he explained after a little time had gone by, though it really explained nothing. “That night we went out and I battled Nick Lomas.” He touched my nose. “It’s funny when your face scrunches up that way.” He tried to copy the look on my face, and then he started to laugh even harder. The strangeness of it made me screw up my face even tighter.
“Come,” he said, putting an arm around my shoulder. “We’ll sing it on the way back to the villa.”
“Oh, it’s a song!”
“What did you think it was?”
“An Irish invitation to tobacco and caffeine?”
He started laughing so hard that he stopped moving, wheezing for breath. He pulled me closer when his breath returned to somewhat normal, kissing my temple hard. I didn’t know whether to laugh or be affronted by his laughter at my expense.
The fact of the matter was, though, we both felt high, despite us only having one glass of Chianti each. It was the air, the mood, the stars, and the music that would linger in our blood for years that made us feel untouchable. Paolo’s art shot through us, branching off, a healthy blue vein beneath the skin.
Brando and I teetered into each other like two drunks, singing the song that Gabriel Roberts had taught him during a raucous night on the town in New Orleans, laughing every so often.
As we passed Mitch on our way inside, we asked him to play the song for us. He was alone, frowning at the stereo, but Brando set me more securely into his side, not letting me veer off course.
Tomorrow, I thought to myself.I’ll talk to him.
He ended up playing another one, but after I said I loved it, we started to sing again.
“Who sings this song?” Mitch yelled out.
I answered him, realizing a beat too late that it was a trap.
“Then let him sing it!” Mitch yelled again. Then he made a disgruntled comment about both of us keeping our day jobs—the both of you can’t effing sing to save your lives.
Brando and I laughed even harder, stumbling up the steps, and then somehow our feet became tangled and we both hit the floor. We were on the flat landing, the area before the second set of steps led to the second level of the villa.
“Brando!” I wheezed for breath.
“Are—” he couldn’t stop laughing “—you—” he took a deep breath “—okay?”
I couldn’t answer, not with his boisterous laughter and my wheezing and the rolling around we were doing trying to catch our breath. He took my laughter as a good sign that nothing on me was injured in the fall, though he kept patting at me.
“Are you trying to make sure I’m all right?” I asked, when I relaxed some. “Or trying to cop a feel?”
“Both,” he said, sighing. “I haven’t forgotten that you asked me to your bed. It’s just getting there that seems to be the problem.”
We laughed again, low and raspy in the quiet of the house. The window that allowed sun to shine in on bright days, or the moon during particularly bright nights, reflected some of the fairy lights from outside, a few specks of fluttering illumination brightening Brando’s eyes. The silhouette of the lights moved over us, fluttering up the stairs.
Brando moved over me, placing his hands beneath my head, his body between my open thighs. He stared down at me for a while, until I had no other choice but to ask him “what?”in a tone that was as soft as his look.
Again, whatever it was that he was feeling, he couldn’t seem to convey in words. “A minute,” he said, bringing his head down, putting his lips to mine. Soft and warm, they struck the match, and the ember was born—a slow burn, inching its way from my toes to my head.
Wrapping my arms around his neck, I pulled him even closer, yearning for more of his heat and his taste.
“Ach!” Charlotte made a disgusted noise in her throat, stumbling around us. Travis followed behind. “Is thatallyou two do?”
“Yes,” I said around kisses. “You should try it. It would even out your temper.”
Brando and Travis both laughed. Charlotte took her big toe and shoved me in the head with it.
