“Um,” I say. “How?”
“I’m ready for you but you’re not ready for me,” he says, lips curling into a smirk. “Come here.”
Okay, so I guess that is what he’s asking.
Continuing to straddle him, I edge myself forward until I’m pretty much sitting on his face. His hands grip my thighs.
“Perfect,” he says and then proceeds to lick me inside and out.
I don’t think I’ve ever felt so sexual and so free before in my life. The sun is bearing down on us, the air is thick with the smell of sex and sage and heat. Being out here, naked, in the wild grass and below the wavering oak, the limitless blue sea at my back, feels otherworldly, and every single sense I have is heightened. His eager mouth devours me and I lean my head back, as if I’m offering myself to him, to the sky, to the world. Never in a million years would I have felt so liberal, so decadent, so open but here and now, I feel the rest of my fears slip away. I feel everything.
Just when I’m about to come, he stops and pulls back. I look down at him, his mouth glistening.
“Now you are ready,” he says, voice throaty.
I think I’ve always been ready.
I scoot back and then slowly lower myself onto his still-hard cock, desperate to finish. I ride him, first at a leisurely pace, then faster as I feel the urgency of the moment. My breasts bounce wildly, and with strong hips he pumps upward into me as I push down, fever taking hold of us. Soon we’re on the edge, and as I look down at his face I see his head falling backward, his eyes scrunched shut, hissing my name through his teeth. Just the sight of him in such open pleasure triggers me and I come fast and hard, trying to ride out the waves of sharp and soothing orgasm while maintaining my balance.
After he comes, his nails digging into my hips, pumping himself into me, I relax and nearly collapse on him. We’re both slicked with sweat, both drowsy and sated. I want to tell him that was amazing, unforgettable, that it was so much more than just sex.
Much more.
But no words come. Instead, I press my lips into his neck and trail my fingers along his warm, damp skin. We lie like that for a few moments, just soaking each other in, until we hear voices from the church. We get up and slip our clothes back on in seconds flat and then hightail it out of there before anyone can discover us, discover what we’ve done.
We walk back down the rest of Mount Solaro, hand in hand, and I don’t know the last time I’ve felt so damn free and so damn happy.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
When July slides into August, like a hot greasy egg sliding off a frying pan, Capri becomes its most unbearable. No matter where you go, you run into people. People on the Via Tragara, people in the Piazzetta, people on the funicular, on the streets, down the private lanes, on the beaches, on the cliffs, on every square inch of the sea. There are German tourists, Swedish tourists, American tourists, Australian tourists, and yes, a lot of Italian tourists. Everyone comes to the island, if not for a day then for a few until the crowds begin to get to them, too. The color of the water loses its appeal, the dry climate and lavender-scented air become cloying, the food loses flavor and remains overpriced.
And then there’s the heat. Some days, it’s like the sea isn’t working at all, like the air is all jammed up in an invisible dam somewhere out there on the hazy horizon, and you’re breathing through a furnace. It’s dry, people will tell you, as if that makes a difference, but it’s still hot as hell and even the most powerful fans can’t break it up. Even a villa like the Limoni Tristi, in its lavishness, doesn’t have air-conditioning.
For the weeks that Capri becomes a living hell for those who live here, I create a routine. Alfonso and Annabella are out of school now as Italy prepares for August, the month where the whole country seems to go on holiday, so they inevitably become a part of it. Thankfully, the heat makes them agreeable to hanging around the house and not going anywhere, even if they are a bit cranky.
In the mornings, after breakfast and before it gets too hot, I start doing my home improvement projects around the house. Most of the time I can enlist the kids to help if I promise they can go swimming later on. The pool is now filled with chlorinated water, something I begged Derio to do. Then came the fountain at the side of the house, freshly painted bright white, the power-washing of the bricks and tiles, the cleaning of all the outdoor furniture, and the pruning of the trees and plants. I also gathered enough lemons, limes, and pomelos to bake fruit cakes for every day of the year.
Derio helped for a lot of it—I’m not the most graceful with a power-washer hose—but now that I know what he was doing in that library, how it was almost a grieving ritual for him, I encouraged him to go back to editing or whatever else he needed to do.
Today, I’m replanting a few rosemary bushes so they’re in soil with better drainage. Their browning leaves tell me they’re one step away from root rot, thanks to my zealous overwatering when I first arrived here. I’ve picked out the dead weeds and flowers that were in a row bordering the side of the bricks stairs leading from the pool toward the house, and stuck the rosemary bushes in there. It would be a shame to lose them—I’ve been throwing fresh sprigs of rosemary into everything I cook these days.
Which is turning out to be a lot. Derio surprised me one evening by bringing over a chef from one of the finer local hotel’s restaurants to give us private cooking lessons. I guess I should have been insulted but Derio wanted to learn a few things, too, other than the basics that most Italian boys know. The chef, Signora Bagglia, was a plump but pleasant woman with a big smile and sparkling eyes. She coaxed us through roast chicken with olives, puttanesca sauce, fresh linguini, and, yes, the infamous tiramisu. The twins watched the whole thing with big eyes, cracking the eggs whenever the moment called for it.