Page 77 of The Beloved Escapade

He looked at her the way she had watched him look at the chapel in Devon, in the first hour. As though three hundred years had opened. As though he could not decide whether to fall to his knees or weep or begin cataloging miracles. In the end, he did a version of all three, coming down with her onto the deep old rug in the firelight.

His mouth went everywhere his eyes had been. Her throat. Her shoulders. The freckles he called constellations in Italian against her skin, the words spilling hot and unbroken between kisses. His lips closed over one breast, then the other, sucking, tongue circling, and Lucy burned under him. Hips lifting hard, seeking. A moan broke from her when his teeth grazed her nipple. She shoved at his shoulder, not to stop him, to urge him lower, faster. Her body had no patience left for slow.

His hand slid down between them. Found her already slick and open, shockingly wet, the crease of her swollen and aching, her aching body having been preparing for this for weeks. Two fingers stroked through the hot wetness of her. She cried out, head tipping back against the rug, and pushed down onto those fingers like she was claiming them.

He worked her with those fingers until she was shaking. Until her thighs clamped around his wrist and she was panting his name and rocking against his hand with not an ounce of shame. Then he withdrew them, slick and shining in the lantern-light, and settled between her legs. The blunt head of his cock nudged against her entrance. She felt how hard he was. How thick. The heat of him pressing into the soft wet entrance of her body. The first real pressure after weeks of almost.

Lucy’s hands were already on his hips, pulling.

“Lucia,” he said, voice wrecked. “Amore. Tell me if⁠—”

“If you stop now, I will never forgive you as long as I live.”

The laugh broke out of him against her throat, helpless, ragged. Then he pushed.

The stretch was sharp and bright and new. A burn that made her eyes water and her toes curl. He sank into her inch by careful inch, the hard length of him opening her, forcing her body to make room, filling the slick tight heat of her until she was gasping, nails digging into his shoulders hard enough to mark.

She felt every ridge, every thick inch claiming space that had never been claimed. The pressure built and built until she thought she might split, and still she pulled him deeper with her legs, heels digging into the backs of his thighs. She had wanted this. She would take all of it, all of him.

He stopped when he was fully seated, buried to the hilt, trembling above her. She could feel every pulse of him inside her. The thick ridge of him pressing deep against something that made her vision spark. Her inner muscles already fluttering and clenching around the intrusion like they were trying to pull him even deeper.

“Dio,” he groaned. “You are so tight. So hot. Lucia⁠—”

She wrapped her legs higher around his hips and yanked him deeper still, until the head of him kissed the very end of her and the burn turned into something even hotter. “Move. Please. Lorenzo, move.”

He did.

He drew back almost all the way. The drag of his manhood along her inner walls was slow and perfect, every ridge scraping sensation out of her. She moaned, loud, and when he sank in again, it was slow and deep and thorough, and she met him, hips lifting to take him harder. Again. Again. The wet sound of him sliding into her filled the quiet library, soft and carnal under the rain at the shutters.

Her body stretched to take him and then clenched, greedy, trying to keep him inside on every withdrawal. His mouth found hers, open and desperate, swallowing the sounds she made as he began to thrust in earnest. Hips rolling. The hard length of him driving into the slick heat of her over and over.

Lucy was not passive. She never had been. She met every thrust, used the strength in her legs to pull him deeper, raked her nails down his back when he hit the spot that made white fire race up her spine.

“Yes,” she gasped against his mouth. “Yes, like that, do not stop⁠—”

He did not. He claimed her with the full heat of a man who had been denying himself for weeks. Deep and relentless. The slap of skin on skin joined the wet sounds of her body taking him. His manhood dragged inside her and she cried out, back arching hard, nails raking down his back hard enough to draw blood. He groaned at the sting and thrust harder, grinding deep, the head of him kissing her furthest point with every stroke until she was shaking under him and still demanding more.

The pleasure built. Her inner walls began to flutter and tighten around the thick shaft of him in waves she could not control. His hand slipped between them, found the sensitive nub at the top of her sex, and stroked it in time with his thrusts. She felt herself clenching, milking him, pulling at him, and the more she clenched, the harder he thrust. He cursed in Italian against her throat, hips stuttering, the words broken and full of wonder.

“Lucia—I can feel you—you are⁠—”

She came apart with a broken moan that tore out of her chest. Body locking. The hot slick muscles of her womanhood clamping hard around him, pulsing, dragging at him in long rhythmic squeezes she could feel all the way to her toes. The sensation ripped a raw sound out of his chest. He drove into her through it, deep and grinding, refusing to ease off, and then he broke with her. Refused to outlast her by so much as a heartbeat. His manhood jerked inside her as he came, flooding her with heat, pulse after pulse of it. Her name tore out of him against her hair, half Italian, half prayer, and he kept moving through it, shallow thrusts that prolonged their joining.

They collapsed together, still one, both of them shaking. His weight settled over her, careful even now, and she could feel the last fluttering around the softening length of him still buried inside her. Every tiny pulse of him. Every residual throb.

The fire’s low light moved on his shoulders. The rain went on softly at the shutters. Lucy clung to him and let the miracle remake her. Every place in her that had braced for the hand around her wrist, for the gentle goodnight kiss on the knuckles, for the withdrawal dressed as gallantry, braced now out of pure habit and found, instead, his fingers still laced through hers. Both hands. Palm to palm. The whole of him spent and present and hers. No stopping. No pulling away. Just the thick residual heat of him still inside her and the knowledge that this time he had given her everything.

They lay afterward in an ecstatic heap. Exactly that. A heap. Tangled past sorting in the lantern-light. Her cheek on his chest and his heart slamming gradually slower under her ear. One of his legs pinning hers. The rug’s wool prickling against her bare back and the backs of her thighs. The fire ticking. Both of them spent and glowing and entirely disinclined to move for the remainder of recorded time.

“I am going to marry you on Sunday,” panted Lorenzo, to the ceiling, “and then I am going to take you home.”

“Mm,” said Lucy, boneless.

“Florence, Lucia …”

And it began to spill out of him the way it used to, the way she had fallen in love with. His free hand escaped to describe things in the air above them. The fire found his rings of gesture. The whole expressive Italian of him poured out without apology.

“In the autumn, when the heat breaks and the light goes gold, Dio, the light, you have not seen such light, England does not have it, England has weather with occasional apologies of sunshine. The Arno in the evening with the bridges strung along it. I will take you up the tower steps until your legs hate me and then you will forgive me at the top; everyone forgives at the top. The Duomo. My city, amore, my streets. I will feed you until you are ashamed, figs and new oil and my aunt Lucrezia’s ribollita. She will weep on you, I warn you now, she weeps on everyone; it is how we know she is pleased. And the galleries. I will stand you in front of the masters, all of them, and hold your hand and watch your face. I have been starving to show it to the right someone the whole of my entire life, and I did not know who until I met you.”