I force myself to concentrate on the feel of Antoni, the pliancy of his tongue, so at odds with the rest of his body. I tangle my fingers in his loose hair and press his head closer to mine until the kiss is no longer sweet.
I don’t want sweet tonight. I want the sort of kiss that obliterates minds and hearts. That lights up storm clouds and heats winter nights. The sort of kiss I’ve read about in Mamma’s books.
Antoni pulls away and pants my name. I try to kiss him again, but he skates his mouth off mine. I stiffen in his arms. He’s still hard, so I assume he still wants me, even though he apparently no longer wants to kiss me.
“They rent rooms here.”
I’m not ready for more, but Catriona’s hands on Dante fill my mind. And then Beryl’s. Although the prince slid neither of them onto his lap, nor followed them upstairs, he allowed their hands to knead his shoulders and neck. Is he letting others caress him tonight? So many desire him, and although I thought he desired me most, I’m sitting on another man’s lap in Rax, so he mustn’t desire me enough.
“But we don’t have to—I shouldn’t have—” Antoni moves a lock of hair off my face. “I’m content just kissing you, Fallon.”
I eye the wooden tavern with windows so tiny I imagine darkness reigns there day and night, then eye the poverty around us. The bed linens mustn’t be changed very often. Perhaps this makes me snobbish, but I don’t want to lay with a man in a cheap and dirty bed.
Especially not for my first time.
“Not here.” My answer makes his hand still, and I realize he’d been expecting me to refuse taking our tryst any farther.
“Let me get the others and—”
I press my fingertips to his flushed mouth. I’m not ready to go home. “Let the others have their fun. The night’s still young, Antoni.”
I replace my fingers with my mouth to reassure him of my interest so he doesn’t rush us out of Rax before I can find Bronwen.
Nine
As I kiss Antoni, my head spins and my bladder aches. The latter is a byproduct of the ale, but is the former, too? Or do my thoughts twirl from the heat Antoni has coaxed inside my veins?
Whatever the reason, I need to relieve myself. I tow my lips from his, my breathing as rushed as it was the day I met Minimus in the Harbor Market. “Tell me humans have bathrooms.”
His eyes carry the same glaze as his swollen lips. “They have boarded up sewage holes.”
I wrinkle my nose.
“You cannot hold?”
I shake my head no, then shake my head again when Antoni insists on escorting me to the outhouse behind the tavern. There are places a girl needs to go alone. His eyes trail me as I walk toward the small wooden structure that exudes an odor far worse than the Racoccin canal.
The urge to keep my legs crossed until we return to our more civilized neck of the kingdom is strong, but the desire to ease my cramping abdomen wins out. I pull open a rickety wooden door, getting another faceful of pungent fumes. My stomach heaves, and I jerk my hand up to pinch my nose, then fumble in the darkness for a latch, which I never find.
Keeping one hand on the door handle, I release my nose to raise my skirt and lower my drawers, then squat over the barrel, holding my breath.
If only Nonna could see me.Oh, Gods, Nonna!She must be worried stiff. I hope she assumes I went to the tavern. What if she does, though? She’ll find it locked and then assume something even worse . . . that I squirreled away on a gondola headed to Isolacuori.
I pray she doesn’t go looking for me. She rarely leaves Mamma alone after night falls. Please let tonight be no different.
My bladder feels better, but my head keeps whooshing as I stumble out of the rank-smelling booth. I lean against the wall of the tavern and close my eyes.
The aroma of broiling grease wafts through the open window beside my head, and although a moment ago my stomach was revolted, now it growls. I’m about to return to the party and ask Antoni if we can purchase food, when an unfamiliar voice calls out my name, stopping me in my tracks and casting goosebumps over my skin.
I look for the speaker, but the darkness from where the voice emanates is so thick, I can barely decipher the wall of cypresses girdling the area. “Bronwen?”
The shadows shift. “You know my name.”
It’s not a question yet I answer, “My mother mentioned you were watching me. And then I saw you . . .”
“Has your mother shared anything else?”
“Nothing. She can barely speak, let alone string sensical words together.” I hunt the darkness for Bronwen but still cannot see her. “How do you know her? How does she know you?”
