‘Come inside,’ Matteo said.
‘Why?’ she asked. ‘So that we can eat the free nuts and drink the cheap wine? It doesn’t change the outcome, Matteo. You only delay the inevitable. Don’t you get it that you’re not saving me here? I’m not Talia with my children all gathered up by the back door and ready to get out.’
‘How do you know about that?’ Matteo frowned. ‘Talia would never tell anyone.’
‘Except perhaps her husband,’ Bella said, and then she smiled at Matteo’s frown. ‘My mother knows everyone’s business. Men tell her things that they would not dare speak of when they are in the bar.’ The smile slid from her face then. ‘Tomorrow night I’ll be back working, and guess what? It’s going to hurt a whole lot more than it would have with you.’
‘Don’t talk like that.’
‘Why not?’ she said. ‘It’s the truth.’ He opened his mouth to argue but she spoke over him. ‘Please, don’t suggest again that I leave. If you want to help me then...’
‘Then what?’
Bella stared out at the dark Mediterranean, to the escape route that she had always deep down known was an impossible one but at least it had kept hope alive. Tonight, though, she could have a part of that dream. Tonight, even if it was just a little while, one of her wishes could come true.
‘You could make love to me. I don’t want my first time to be rough...’ she said, and he closed his eyes and shook his head but she persisted. ‘I know what my future is going to be but I would like it to be different for my first time.’
‘You want me to break you in for others?’ Matteo sneered.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But I also want you to show me how good it could be.’
‘Should be.’
‘Not for the likes of me,’ she said, and she was not playing the martyr, she just knew how it was. ‘Are you a considerate lover, then?’ She smiled and so did Matteo, because his own ‘should be’ response had caught him by surprise.
‘No.’
‘It’s really not my lucky night, then, is it?’ Bella shrugged.
Why, he wondered, did she make him smile? There was something about her openness, born perhaps from colourful discussions with her mother, yet the tease to her voice was still somehow sweet.
‘Hey,’ Bella said, ‘maybe I could be like Gina—available just for you.’
Matteo looked at her with his near-black eyes and he was on the edge of telling her the truth—that in the morning he would be gone.
It was too dangerous to do that, though.
He didn’t really know Bella at all.
‘That’s not going to happen,’ he said instead.
‘So we just have tonight?’ she checked, and he nodded. ‘We could rewrite history, then.’
‘How?’
‘Perhaps you did come to the Natalia party after all. We could dance as we might have danced that night...’
‘I don’t dance,’ he said.
‘Neither do I.’ Bella shrugged but then she put down her glass and walked over and wrapped her arms around his neck, and for Matteo it was his last night on the edge of heaven, with Tunisia but a dream away. Maybe tonight he could dance, could make love, could give her the one night they suddenly both wanted.
‘Come inside, then,’ he said, and unwrapped her arms from him, and this time they were holding hands as they walked into the bedroom.
He closed the French windows behind them and he put on some music to drown out the sounds of the bar below, but he opened the drapes so the moon would later bathe them.
She had dreamt of this moment for ever, the moment that Matteo Santini took her nervous but wanting into his arms.
His fingermarks were still there on her cheek and it was a little bit swollen, and he hated how badly he had scared her. His hand was back on her cheek but gentle now. ‘You’re going to bruise...’
‘It was worth it for him to believe us,’ she said.
Malvolio would not believe this, though, she thought as his lips grazed hers.
No one would believe that the brooding, silent man could kiss so gently. The touch of his lips was so feather-light at first that even the scratch of his jaw felt soft to her.
It was, Bella decided, her first kiss because the rough one in the hall and elevator would never count. He was gentle and tender and there was barely any pressure on her mouth, just the soft caress of his lips, and when he pulled away his lips were as red as hers.
‘You’re wearing lipstick,’ Bella said, and he kissed her again, till their faces were smeared red and their tongues were hot.
The hows and whys that had brought them to this point no longer mattered as they danced their first dance, as they kissed first kisses, as they turned each other on slowly and made believe it was two years ago.
And so it was Christmas, and she pretended that she was sixteen and he had come to the street party and wasn’t out on the dark streets, looking to escape.
‘The street looked beautiful. The trees were all dressed in lights...’ She told him about all he had missed. Her voice was a little breathless and her breasts felt as if they had grown for they ached in her tight bra, and he seemed to know that because his hand took the strain of one of them.
‘What were you wearing that night?’ Matteo asked, as she rested her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes to the soft caress of his hand.
‘I had made a dress that was the colour ginger,’ Bella said.
‘You made it?’ he checked.
‘I made it with you in mind,’ she said. ‘You have no idea how beautiful that dress was. I tried make-up for the first time that night and when I went to go out my mother made me wash it off.’ She smiled at the memory. ‘I told her that that was rich, coming from her.’
‘What did she say to that?’
‘That if he liked me there would be no need for make-up and perfume.’ She moved from his shoulder to meet his gaze. ‘Then she asked me what his name was.’
‘Did you tell her?’
She nodded.
‘And what did she say?’
‘To be careful,’ Bella admitted. ‘Then she told me that perhaps you were not as bad as your brother...’ Their hips were swaying, his other hand was feeling her bottom through the dress and she was closer, not just physically but closer and safer than she had ever felt with another person. Oh, Bella loved her mother but Maria’s lifestyle meant that Bella had never ever really known how it felt to be truly safe.
Tonight for the first time she did.
She danced and leant on him and then they kissed some more. Her dress was thin and he loathed the padded bra that did not let him stroke her nipples so he slipped the straps of her dress down and she closed her eyes as he removed her bra, sure he would be disappointed.
He wasn’t. His thumb caressed her nipple and his palm was warm on her skin as they danced...but as he buried his mouth beneath her hair to kiss her neck he was honest. ‘I loathe that scent,’ Matteo said.
‘So do I.’
‘Let’s get rid of it, then.’
He ran the bath and then peeled off her dress and they danced in the bathroom for a while longer until the bath was full. Bella, in her underwear and high heels, Matteo still in his suit, and she saw that her make-up had smeared his shirt.
She liked how when he let her go he pulled up his sleeve and put his hand in the water and added more cold water and then he took her hand and she sat on the edge of the bath.
He did not look up as he unclipped her stockings and rolled them down, and she could hear a ragged edge to his breathing as he undid her shoes and undressed her some more.
He kissed the inside of one pale thigh as an apology for his earlier uninvited touch there and Bella’s legs were shaking as he kissed the other thigh the same way. She lifted her bottom just enough so that he could take down her panties and suspender belt and he knelt as she sat naked.
The room was warm and steamy and her legs were apart and her throat closed as she silently wished he would kiss her there. Bella knew, though, that if he did she would topple, for even gripping the sides of the bath she was barely steady as his kiss to her thigh deepened.
He could feel her shaking so he stood and took her hand and Bella was helped into a bath for the first time.
She liked it even more as she lay shoulder deep in bubbles and his eyes did not leave her face as he undressed.
‘You’re getting in?’ she asked as she watched him slip off his jacket and hang it behind the door.
‘I am,’ he said, his eyes never leaving her face. ‘I want to be with you rather than simply watching you.’
Bella lay back and she watched as he responded to the slow smile on her face with one of his own.
She had never seen him smile like that. Usually he was ice—his features held closed and his eyes either behind sunglasses or guarded. If he ever did smile, it was usually an arrogant one or a triumphant smirk, but tonight his smile was slow and sensual and for her alone.
He undressed slowly and it was suddenly important to Bella that he did. She had already put out of her mind what had taken place in the corridor but even aside from that, the Matteo she had heard about was neither tender, slow nor patient.
He was tonight.
She watched as he undid the buttons on the front of his shirt and then the sleeves and then he took it off. Bella wanted to reach out and touch his skin. She wanted her fingers on dark, flat nipples as his had been on hers. Soon they would touch but for now she took in the delicious view of his torso. He was masculine and raw in his beauty. Even his arms turned her on as she knew soon they would be wrapped around her and that they would be skin to skin. She watched the stretch of his muscles as he hung his shirt on a hook and her eyes fell on a long, very neat scar.