Captain Marco shifts the boat into neutral and I lurch forward, but James’s hands keep me from falling to the wooden planks below my feet.
“Siamo qui,” Marco says, as he turns the wheel so that the boat pulls up against the brick side of a house that juts out from a corner where the water slices in two directions on either side. It’s a fork in the canal.
“Grazie, Marco. A domani, sì?” James asks, and I’m immediately transfixed by the way his mouth rolls Marco’s R. I try to mimic the sound with my own tongue dipping and falling, but I fail and James smiles at me over his shoulder while continuing his conversation.
“Sì. Alle sei?”
“Forse dopo. Ti telefonerò.”
I stop trying to translate and look up at the building we are floating beside. Three stories of dilapidated brick tower above me, interrupted by huge arched windows with a small white stone balcony at the very top.
“Where are we?” I ask James as he tosses our bags overboard onto a stone step that leads to a huge wooden door.
“Cannaregio. This is where we are staying. A friend’s second home,” he says, offering his hand for me to step off the boat.
A friend’s second home is a sixteenth-century palazzo? What the hell does his/her first home look like?
The stones beneath my feet are wet from the sloshing wakes of passing boats. My flat slips and James steadies me with a hand on my back. He types in a code on the keypad that looks so out of place beside this door that witnessed the bubonic plague, then heaves it open and steps to the side for me.
The space is like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Huge windows flank the far wall, exposing the water that snakes back toward theGrand Canal. The walls are white, the floor is white, but the ceiling reminds me of the cathedral in Urbino. A hand-painted fresco, so bright and vivid I wonder if the paint is still wet, stretches overhead. The mix of modern and antique surrounding me is vertiginous—makes my thoughts spin as I run my hand along the soft arm of a midnight blue velvet settee.
I turn to find James watching me, our bags left by the door behind him. The way his eyes drink me in reminds me of the night at the museum when my skin sang each time he came close, and I can feel the color rising to my face as I remember how he felt pressing me against that garden wall.
He clears his throat, gestures to the space.
“What do you want to explore first?” he asks, his voice thick.
And without giving it a moment’s thought, the answer flies off my tongue.
“You.”
QUARANTUNO
James
I take a step toward her and force myself to freeze. She watches, shoulders pulled back, chin up, waiting for me to do what I know she wants me to do—to kiss her, to pin her against the arm of that settee, to touch her until she comes apart beneath me. But I know if we start this, there will be no end to it. We’ll never get to San Marco’s for dessert or to the dinner I have planned along the canal. Never browse the shelves of the bookshop around the corner or see the locals sitting on their blankets with lanterns while listening to the violinists in Piazza San Regio. I’m willing to forgo all of it for her, but I’ve seen it. Heard it. Tasted it.
Ava lifts a brow and tilts her head.
“If we start this, Ava, we aren’t leaving here tonight,” I say, my voice a bit strangled and this obviously brings her joy.
A slow smile spreads across her face and she takes the final step between us.
“I’m okay with that,” she whispers, tracing a finger along the collar of my shirt.
“You’re okay with spending your first night in Venice locked in a bedroom with me?”
She nods, swallowing hard as she unfastens the first button of my shirt.
“I’m okay with spending every night in Venice locked in a bedroom with you,” she says, taking her time with each button while staring up at me. She looks wild. Hair windswept from the boat, skin flushed from the spray, or maybe from this pleasantly unbearable warmth pressing in on us. I let her finish what she’s doing, my fingers itching to touch her as she pushes my shirt off my shoulders.
She lifts the soft cotton of my undershirt and puts both hands beneath it, splaying her fingers over my abdomen. Her breathing is shallow now, her chest rising and falling, brushing against me every time she breathes in. I shut my eyes and focus on the way her fingers burn against my skin.
“James?”
“Hmmm?”
When she doesn’t answer right away, I open my eyes to find her staring up at me, her lip pulled between her teeth and two little lines between her brows.
