His hand drifted up her back, the touch unbearably light at first and then growing firmer, sending endorphins firing through her blood.
God, he feltgood.
‘We say, “the bees and the flowers” in Italian,’ he said, his voice deep and smooth and thick, like honey. ‘I know all about flowers.’
She hadn’t noticed her eyelids falling shut until she needed to open them again, finding him grinning at her indulgently, his chin with that inviting cleft angled up. She waited for the kiss, enjoying her absurd heartbeat. He wanted to kiss her – she was certain – but he let her go instead.
He hadn’t kissed her, but he did take her hand as they walked on, as though he couldn’t help it. He scanned the plant life intently while Toni’s brain was in a pleasant fog. Possibly she shouldn’t have teased him, but she’d enjoyed that raised chin – just as she enjoyed the helpless, wary expression in his gaze as she tugged him to a stop and drew close.
Filling her lungs with air holding the scent of pine and herbs – rosemary, sage and mint – she allowed the soft smile to play on her lips as she pressed a lingering kiss to his bristly cheek.
She was sick of ‘shouldn’t’. This was her week off and she wanted to spend it teasing Gabri Orzati into gruffly touching her some more.
18
He was back at the apartment in Milan, the buzz of countless motorini and the haze of street lights through the curtains. He came awake with a choked breath – and recognised the ceiling fan in the exposed beams, making slow revolutions above him.
Not Milan. The house on Elba. Rosa – no, the person in the bed was Toni.
Toni.
She had her back to him, her shoulders rising and falling in the morning light, half under the cotton sheet that he’d kicked off during the night. He’d loved the T-shirt she’d worn that first morning, scruffy and touchable. But last night, she’d pulled on a strappy top that made him want his hands and lips all over her.
The little skip of his heartbeat echoed in his head again, the same one he noticed whenever she smiled at him – or kissed him, or touched him in any way. It wasn’t entirely pleasant, the skip – a reminder of mortality, in a way. He’d let another person affect his heartbeat once and it hadn’t ended well.
This wasn’t at all the quiet companionship he’d imagined would do him good – as selfish as that sounded now. She teasedhim and questioned him and studied him closely enough that he was worried she’d find all of his flaws; she’d come very close.
But then she’d kissed his cheek and smiled at him over her Aperol Spritz on the square in Poggio, after their foraging hike. She’d drawn him into bed after dinner, putting his hands on her body so he didn’t have any space in his mind for doubt.
She seemed able to keep everything light – although, whether she realised or not, he recognised the flicker of shadows in her eyes when she was thinking about her husband – but he was still wary of this muddied friendship, of what they’d be when she left for the hotel on Monday. Not wary enough to call a halt to anything, though.
She’d be gone from his bed on Monday and he’d survive a few skips of his heart until then.
She stirred and rolled over to face him, tucking one hand beneath her head. Her shirt had ridden up around her ribcage.
The domestic intimacy of seeing her asleep like this ramped up the full cocktail of extreme emotions in him: protectiveness, desire… poignancy. She’d been alone a lot longer than he had – so long, she didn’t question it any more.
For now, she was right here with him, where he could feel her breath on his shoulder and reach out and touch her.
First, her hair – soft and straight and the colour of liquorice root – then her warm shoulder. His fingertips trailed down her arm. As she shifted with a sigh, his gaze snagged on the neat scar peeking out of her shorts and he paused. The waistband was down around her hips, low enough to reveal the faded pink blemish.
He’d noted it before, but only in the fever of foreplay. In the peaceful morning light, he couldn’t look away and his blood rushed loudly. She’d brought her son into the world – fatherless. A doctor had made this cut. There was a boy out there with half of her DNA and all of her heart.
What the hell was he doing, lying here, his lungs seizing up, feeling things he had no idea how to process? He’d been so relieved to tell Rosa he couldn’t do it any more, couldn’t try to make this family that never seemed to work.
He thought about rolling out of bed and putting on the coffee, as he had yesterday morning, but he still had a hand on her, his fingers moving restlessly on her waist, and she flinched, her eyes opening.
‘Are you tickling me?’
Her smile instantly quieted the clamour in his head. ‘No,’ he said gravely, even as his fingers pattered again over the sensitive spot he’d found.
She recoiled and laughed, slapping his hand away. ‘Rude!’ But even as she said it, she grasped a fistful of his hair and dragged him closer and he was giddy as he anticipated kissing her, reeling from the affection she wouldn’t let him escape from. He wasn’t aware of anything except the places where they touched: her ribcage, the hand in his hair, his mouth, all pressure points in this exercise in intimacy.
She kissed him deeply, slowly, open-mouthed, as though she were undressing him, undoing him, and it wasn’t long until they were undressing each other and his mouth was at her throat and his body pressed tightly against hers.
He took the time to explore, memorise her, even brushing a finger over that scar, although he hoped she didn’t notice what he was doing. The string of freckles at her collarbone drew his mouth, the ripples of curves and muscle in her thigh.
By the time they finally reached the part where he fumbled with a condom and joined them with a groan, he was out of his mind, sparking with electricity, lighting up with energy. The urgent grip of her hands suggested she felt every pulse that he did.
