And when a knock came, I opened it to find Donato again.
“Let them in!” Rosaria sang from the bed. “The more the merrier!”
Donato looked at me for permission. I nodded.
A man and a woman came to the door. The man seemed as if he was hyped up on something. The woman’s eyes were wide, but she was letting the man lead her into the room. I grabbed him by his throat, about to throw him over the side of the yacht from our private balcony, but my wife set a hand on my arm.
“He only wants to watch,” she almost purred at me. “He will only touch his wife, my ruthless king.” Her eyes almost glowed at the way I held the man. One squeeze, and he would die on the floor at my feet.
Rosaria’s hand guided mine down, and she started to sing to me, then started to kiss me. But I could not escape the look on the wife’s face. She was almost in tears.
“Oooh,” my wife’s friend said, walking over to the man. “Do you mind if I touch your husband?” She must have had pity for the woman too.
The woman looked at the husband.
“I do not mind,” he said.
The “friend” of my wife’s kept her eyes on the woman.
The woman shrugged. “If I get to touch him.” She looked directly at me.
I nodded.
Rosaria rolled her eyes, leaving me with the faint touch of a ghost as she passed me, running her finger along my shoulder. “Do not soften on me, my ruthless king, as I help my friend with…” She smiled at the friend, who waited by the bathroom, holding the man’s hand. The friend reached out for my wife, and laughing, they closed the bathroom doors behind them.
The woman’s eyes were hard on the door, and when she looked at me, she hid her face in her hands and started to cry. I slipped on a pair of sweatpants and took a knee before her. A second later, she sniffed and took her hands down.
“I did not want this,” she whispered. “But I could not tell him no.”
I wiped her tears, and after picking her up, carried her to another room on the yacht. I set her down on the bed. She looked up at me and I looked down at her.
“I will not touch you,” I said.
“I…want you to,” she whispered. “If you do not, I will never know what it feels like to be enough. Can you do that for me? Touch me like I am enough?”
I leaned down, kissed her head, and nodded. “I will touch you as if you are everything,bel cuore.” This woman had a beautiful heart, and instead of treasuring it, as I would, the boy was throwing it to the dark world to eat alive.
She started to truly cry, and after we made love, she rested her head on my chest, as if she were attempting to memorize the sound of the beats.
“Isn’t she your wife?” she asked. “The one who invited us?”
“Sì.”
“You do not care that Denis is in there with them?”
“Tell me, do you care.”
“No,” she said in a rush. “I do not. I will hate him for eternity after this.”
“Neither do I,” I said, gazing deep into her shimmering green eyes. Her face was pale in the darkness, her auburn hair flames on the pillow, and her lips red from my kisses. “I would rather be here with you.”
I kissed her heart, and she wrapped me in a warm and loving embrace, kissing my face.
She cleared her throat and started to hum, then added lyrics to the most heartbreaking song I had ever heard. The song was in English—it was about a love that was over. She told me a Swedish group had sang it.
It must have been love…
Her voice drifted as I kissed between her breasts, communicating with her heart. Whenever this woman felt lacking, she would remember she was enough for a man such as myself, and not feel this way.
