“Only you’ll do, Rocco Fausti. More than do. Heaven will not be long enough with you.”
We swirled around for another minute or two, gazing at each other, my hands kneading her ass cheeks. She moaned, closing her eyes, so relaxed, she almost let go of me.
“Do I get to ask questions?” she whispered.
“I am yours,” I said.
“This is probably going to be hard on my heart, but…the pasta thing. Is the reason you won’t feed it to me because…that’s something you and…Rosaria did?” For a woman whose face was turning red from being exposed to the thermal springs, she turned a shade of green before it disappeared.
I had not planned on speaking on this, but since she asked, I could not lie to her.
“Sì.It was the only intimacy between us.”
She swallowed hard. “No pasta then. Ever.” She looked away from me. “How did that work? An open marriage?”
“I took lovers, and so did she. She believed a man such as me needed more than one woman to prove his virility.”
“You were never…jealous…that she wanted to share?”
“No. Whatever causes a man to kill over his woman’s flesh did not exist between us, unless it was for reasons other than jealousy. Understanding of my family kept us together.”
“Even if you saw her with someone else? If she saw you with someone else?”
“That was not part of our arrangement. We were discreet. Unless she invited someone into our bedroom.”
Her eyes flew open and she stared at me as if she was processing what I had just said.
“Wait.” She almost gulped. “You were with her and…someone else? At the same time?”
“Women,” I said.
Her body shivered, and she tried to push away from me.
“You asked the truth of me.” I held onto to her tighter.
She shoved against my chest. “Let me go.”
“It is not in me to do so,” I said, my heart beating frantically in my chest at the mere thought.
“I’m not feeling so good. I feel…overheated. Weak. Faint. Like I might puke.”
I swam her to the side, picking her up, sitting her down, my hands on her legs. She shivered, though smoke purled from her body. Her arms came up, crossing over her chest, defensive in a childlike way.
“Tell me,” I said, “or I will not learn.”
She waved a hand at me. “How can a man who is so romantic with me allow her to make him believe that, to prove anything, he had to fuck a bunch of women at once?! Or did you want to? Was that your thing?”
My grip tightened on her knee, and she tried to slip it away from me. I refused to budge. She would never be free of me. She was mine. “If nothing else, my body was built to please a woman. This was the only vow between Rosaria and me. I would please her in this way.”
She made a gagging noise and attempted to turn away from me, as if I was suddenly thrust into garish light bursting through the dim cave, exposing the truth of my sex life with Rosaria Caffi and beyond. It seemed to make me ugly in her eyes, and if what I said next did not make her turn back to me, I could not live.
“Look at me,” I ordered, my voice low and rough. A command to her heart.
“Will I be enough for you?” She turned back to me, but she was trembling. “Or maybe we should invite a bunch of womenandmen into our bedroom? They can all watch as you pleasure me. Oh! You can watch as the men fuc?—”
She gasped when I emerged from the water like a monster, taking her shoulders in my arms, picking her up, setting her on her feet. She was trying to wriggle out of my hold, her voicecommanding me to let her go, but it was nothing but empty anger from her mouth, as if it was the smoke in the air around us. The fire coming from her jealousy. My wife was made in heaven, but she had a temper that came straight from hell when it came to me and other women.
So did I when it came to her and anyone else.
