I was due for an explosion any day and the anticipation of it was worse than anything, the slow-rolling despair settling over me. I squeezed my eyes shut and slid farther into the water, wondering how long I could stay before I transformed into a prune.
Argh. I didn’t want to be this in love. It felt like a sort of abuse, and the signs were there. I’d had a row on top of a mountain with my best friend in Vernazza. There were bags under my eyes that never disappeared. I’d lost the will to eat, to care about anything beyond keeping Gianluca. In recent days, I’d been shedding pounds as if I had a few to spare. My emotions were brittle and frayed. I hated who I’d become.
Something had to give, and I was afraid it would be me.
…
I wasn’t in that bath long before I heard the muffled sound of Gianluca calling out to me in the front common room. I’d ruined his birthday, absolutely shat all over it, and he was there, pushing open the bathroom door with a soft knock.
I sat up and turned to look at him over my shoulder, my skin prickling with goosebumps from the cool bathroom air.
“I’m sorry.”
He shook his head and stepped forward, tearing his shirt off overhead. His shorts and boxer-briefs followed, and then he was stepping into the large bath behind me, nearing overflowing the water. We drained a bit, added more hot water, and then I settled against his chest. The nearness killed me: his skin against mine, his lips pressed against my shoulder, his words in my ear, promising me I hadn’t ruined his birthday, that I could never ruin his birthday.
He wiped a tear from my cheek.
“Please don’t cry. Please.”
His kindness tore at me.
I had to tell him the truth.
“I don’t think I can do it, Gianluca. What I said the other night, about keeping things casual…”
“No. No. You and I, we’re more than that, right? I promise. Please don’t listen to Katerina.”
I wanted to believe him. I really wanted to sink into his words and let them swirl around me like the warm bath water, to let them blanket me from the outside world.
And then it sort of clicked: this was how it continued. I would get upset, he would keep stringing me along with little promises of more. A year from now, I would look back on all the tender moments when I’d cowed to him, and I’d wonder how I’d let myself fall into such a one-sided love affair.
He gripped my biceps and twisted me to him so I was straddling him in the bathtub. We touched everywhere, so intimately fused that the nature of our discussion broke my heart.
“Don’t you remember what I told you? You’re my northern wind, my tramontana.”
His words weren’t enough; when your heart is set on love, anything less seems paltry.
I didn’t want to talk anymore. A part of me realized this would be the last time we touched like this, the last time our two bodies moved like one. I leaned forward and kissed him, slow and sweet at first. He responded right away, tilting my head back and softly gliding his tongue past my lips. My chest pressed against his and my breasts glided across his wet skin. It was all so deeply erotic—our minds were slaves to caution, but our bodies were free. His touch turned me on like never before.
He tilted me back, peeling my chest off his so he could bend down and take my right breast into his mouth. His tongue swirled around my sensitive nipple, working it to a peak before switching to the other. His hand moved to the velvet skin under the curve of my breast, bringing the warm bathwater up across my chest, heating my flushed skin.
I tried to lean forward and touch him, but he had such a gentle, commanding grip on me. With his hand on my waist, I couldn’t move over his hard length. The best I could do was string my fingers in his hair, gently moaning when he continued to seduce me.
I knew his body more than I knew my own, but this time was different. I tried to memorialize every fleeting moment. When he picked me up and positioned himself at my center, I squeezed my eyes and focused on every delicious inch sliding into me. He gripped my neck and his touch sent a ripple of sensation down my spine, numbing my toes.
“Open your eyes,” he told me when I’d pinched them closed.
It was hard to take it all in. With mine open, I was compelled to stare into his dark eyes, to witness our exchange. I didn’t want to see the incredible potential for love there.
Is that adoration in his eyes?
I knew my mind was playing tricks on me. Like a mirage, the promise of Gianluca’s unbridled affection was too good to be true.
I squeezed my eyes closed and gripped his shoulders as he picked me up and slid me back down onto him. It went on like that, painfully slow. I shuddered as the first waves of pleasure started to spread, but then he turned me around so my back was flush with his.
“Be here,” he said, leaning forward and dropping his lips to my neck.
He gripped my thighs and spread them beneath the bath water, sinking back into me as I let my head fall against his shoulder. His hand traveled down the front of my chest and I watched its descent. It was hidden beneath the bubbly bath water, but I felt him slide past my navel and my hips. He circled so close to my center that my toes curled and my fingers dug into the nape of his neck.
His lips found the shell of my ear and then at once, he was everywhere, circling his fingers beneath the water, right across the most sensitive part of me, and whispering in my ear, his breath warm, his words confident. His other hand sought my breast, thumbing my nipple in time with his circles. It was all too much; I couldn’t hang on.