His grins.
His laughter.
His strength.
Was all so…intimate.
And would be inside of me for the rest of my life and beyond. What we shared went so much deeper than the physical. The more we explored, the deeper we fused into one.
We swam together for a while until we started to explore a little further out. Rocco told me the boat was used for fishing. We’d take it in a little while to catch a few fish and some spiny lobsters for dinner. We swam around for about another hour or so before Rocco slipped on a pair of swim trunks, and I wore his shirt, mostly buttoning it up and rolling up the sleeves. We took the boat out, and Rocco attempted to catch us dinner. The entire time his eyes were on me. My hair was wild from the sea water and the wind blow-drying it, and the sight of me in his shirt…did things to him. He was hard the entire time and not ashamed of it.
We made love on the boat, out in the middle of the Mediterranean, and then had to take the boat in another direction because we scared all the fish away. We caught enough for dinner, and he dove for the spiny lobster, which reminded me of oversized crawfish. We took them back to the dock, and after Rocco cleaned the fish, he grilled everything for us. He showed me where to find ingredients in the solar-run fridge, which had been recently stocked by Guido. I made a pasta dish with veggies I asked Rocco to grill for me. I set the table with what I found in the wooden cabinets built into the outdoor kitchen, and before the sun set, we sat down to dinner, which I inhaled. The fish melted in my mouth, and so did the lobster. It was so good I licked my fingers clean.
My eyes rose to meet Rocco’s as he took a swig ofhis beer.
“What?” I whispered, going to wipe my face, making sure I had no olive oil glistening on my chin.
He reached across the table and stroked my lips, rubbing the olive oil in before he rubbed it on his own lips, licking them after.
I was transfixed.
I didn’t want to go down the rabbit hole of what that tongue could do to me. At theveryleast—make me cry out in pleasure and orgasm like he’d pressed an automatic button inside of me.
“You are too thin, Amora,” he said.
“Me?” I pointed to myself like he might have been talking to someone else. Sometimes, I felt like he was the cool man (boy or guy could never fit Rocco Fausti) in school, and I was the not so cool girl who’d lose all her wits when he talked to me.
Talked to me, Aria Amora Bella…Fausti.
He nodded seriously. “I need to feed you more.” His eyes glanced at the empty bowl where the pasta had been.
We’d scarfed it down. But he mostly fed me dinner. Except for the pasta. He wouldn’t touch it and bring it to my mouth. I fed it to him, though, and he had no issue with that. Ientirelywanted to know, but Iabsolutelydidn’t want to know what his deal with feeding me pasta was.
Sighing, I stood, a hard breeze pushing against me, billowing his white shirt out like a sail. I’d seen an electronic pad earlier, and I was willing to bet it went with the speakers hanging on each corner of the covered part of the deck. When I lifted it, a playlist came up. I showed it to him.
“Romeo?” I questioned.
He nodded, finishing his beer, and went to light the fire pit.
I scanned through Romeo’s playlist. I laughed at some of the songs, because they were so Romeo, yet not. He had a thing for that old movieUrban Cowboy, and not that all these songs went with the playlist, but they were in the same vein. Jimmy Buffet I could understand, he had a tropical vibe, but he had Gordon Lightfoot on there. I grinned, thinking of Romeo andthehair, and then settled on an old country song.
The ballad reached Rocco, and I could tell it caught his attention. He was listening to the lyrics. Of course he would. Some people just listened to a song for the entire music experience, not picking it apart, content to listen to it as a whole, but some people had to listen to the lyrics before the song could speak to them. That was my husband. Rocco was a lawyer, always the listener, the problem solver, so…it fit his personality.
“Tell me,” he said, facing me, “do you enjoy this type of music, Amora?”
I nodded, twisting my hair up in a messy bun, my curtain bangs waving around my face. I blew a strand out of my eyes, but the wind was unruly, and my hair was being the same way. “I love ALL types of music. Both of my parents are…well, my dad was…eccentric music people, and even though I didn’t spend a lot of time with them growing up, I seem to have inherited it.” I shrugged. “I guess like my wild taste in food, from my dad, and my hazel eyes, from my mom.”
His eyes gazed into mine, and they were so warm and compassionate, I looked away. He probably felt sorry for me, but I’d come to terms with my parents not being a part of my life a long time ago. I had my grandparents, and that was enough, even if I struggled when I was younger with having two parents who hadn’t wanted anything to do with me because I was a product of a wild European affair that ended on a bitter note.
I was pretty sure my mom would have loved me if my dad would have truly loved her. She was just that type of woman. Her personality became whoever’s she was in a relationship with. If Joe Schmo enjoyed baseball, my mom bought stock in ball caps and justlovedstadium food, even though she was a hot dog snob and thought they were gross.
“Ah,” I breathed out when he wrapped me in his arms, like he could steal from me whatever my parents had made me feel, before he started to dance with me on the dock like a romantic lead in a movie would.
He’d changed into a pair of thin khaki pants and a thin whitebeach shirt that he’d left open for dinner. I was still in his shirt, but mostly buttoned up. We were both sans shoes. Still. It felt right to respect the table by not coming to it naked. I wasn’t sure what kind of dance he was doing, but…damn, he was good. He was a big man, but deathly quiet, and entirely comfortable with his body. And the entire time, he gazed into my eyes like he had made himself at home in my soul. When the song came to an end, he played it again, this time leading me to a chair built for two before the fire pit and pulling me close to him, kissing my forehead.
I reached for my beer and took a long pull, but before I could drink it down, he kissed me, and we shared the cool hops between our mouths. The sun started to set, and with the music playing softly in the background, my stomach full, and this man,oh, this man, next to me, holding me in his arms, caressing my arms so lightly that my skin puckered, my eyes started to droop.He placed his curled pointer finger underneath my chin and gently coaxed my mouth into a kiss that went as deep as the sea, it seemed, as he released every button of his shirt.
His shirt and pants were lost, and so was I.
