A Deal with Di Capua

“Remind me.”

“I’ve got my first job, Angelo. It’s not enormous but it’s perfect and I’m really hopeful that it’s going to lead to other jobs. I’m going to make a success of this business and I’m going to give it my best shot living here in the country. I like it. It makes a great change from living in a city. It’s peaceful. I don’t need your help in finding work. If I succeed or fail, I’m going to do it without you, because I think it’s best that we walk away from each other right now. If not for Mandy’s death, we wouldn’t be standing here having this conversation. We don’t need to...to...”

“To what?”

“You know what I mean!” She wondered how he had somehow managed to encroach her personal space without her noticing, so that he was standing directly in front of her.

“I know exactly what you mean.” He gently hooked his finger under the strap of the dungarees still on her shoulder.

“What are you doing? Don’t do that!” She slapped his hand but he was smiling at her, that gorgeous crooked smile that had always been able to do all sorts of weird things to her equilibrium. When he smiled like that, all the unpleasantness was forgotten. None of it had ever existed. It was just the two of them in their beautiful, sensuous world, far, far away from reality and the rest of the human race.

She was breathing quickly. When she took a step back, she bumped against the wall. Her eyes were glued to his face, mesmerised by his eyes and that sexy half-smile. He leant against the wall next to her, crowding her so that it was hard to think straight.

“I’m glad you turned down my offer for help,” Angelo said softly.

“You are?”

“I wouldn’t want to put you in a position of subservience, despite what I may have implied the last time we met.” Both straps were now off her shoulders so that the bib of the dungarees had flapped down. Her small breasts were pushing against the tight vest. He could make out the outline of her stretchy bra. It had always amazed him that, despite her job working as a cocktail waitress, she had had curiously prissy tastes when it came to her underwear. “I want to touch your breasts, Rosie. Will you let me? You know you want me to. We both know that.”

“You don’t get it. It doesn’t matter.” Her voice seemed to be coming from a long way off. She knew she should decisively pull the straps of her dungarees back up, but her arms hanging at her sides were as heavy and as useless as lead weights.

“If it didn’t matter, I wouldn’t be here and you wouldn’t be trying as hard as you could to pretend that you’d be better off with me gone.”

“We’ve already tried the whole relationship thing, Angelo!”

“Like I said, I’m not talking about a relationship. There’s no going back there for us and never will be. No, this will be much simpler, much cleaner.” Talking to her was driving him crazy. He had spent weeks thinking about touching her, making love to her, looking forwards to a point when she was no longer an uninvited part of his life, gate-crashing his peace of mind and sabotaging his concentration. He didn’t intend to spend days, weeks, wooing her into compliance, not when they both knew what they wanted.

He tugged the vest, which was gratifyingly slippery, pulling it up and over her breasts, breathing hoarsely and briefly closing his eyes at the sight of the little flowered stretchy scrap of cloth covering her. God, hadn’t she got rid of that bra? She’d always refused to be coerced into lacy underwear and he had gradually grown accustomed to her boring stuff, grown to love each and every nondescript item. Hell, how could he even think straight when he was fixated, captivated, by what he was looking at?

The overalls had dipped to below her waist, exposing her slender ribcage, the perfect flatness of her belly. She carried not a spare ounce of weight on her. More than anything else, Angelo did not want to waste time remembering how easy it had been for him to lose control with her. He was in control now, even though it didn’t quite feel that way. There was nothing spontaneous about this.

“Angelo.”

“I’ve always liked it when you said my name like that, in that breathless little voice.”

“We can’t. There’s too much history between us.”

“Forget the history.” He circled her waist with his big hands and moved them rhythmically upwards, stroking her ribcage until his thumbs were brushing the underside of her bra. “The only thing I want you to think about is what I’m doing to your body.”

As quick as a flash, he slid his hands underneath the stretchy bra and cupped her small breasts in his hands. The bra rode up over his knuckles and he shuddered when he looked down to the perfect mounds with their big, circular pink discs. “Tell me you don’t want this,” he grunted, edging closer so that she could feel the steel hardness of his powerful erection.

Rosie’s arguments were blurring, getting jumbled up as he began playing with her nipples, teasing the taut buds into stiff arousal.

“You hate me,” she whimpered. Her body wanted to sag and, as if he knew her better than she knew herself, could read her responses and react accordingly, Angelo scooped her up to carry her upstairs, working out the location of her bedroom by instinct and kicking open the door to a freshly painted room dominated by an old brass bed.

He deposited her on the bed, stood back and began to undress.

We need to clear the air, Rosie wanted to shout. There were questions that demanded answers and explanations she needed to have, but the weight of the three-year silence between them pressed on her like a smothering hand. What was the point having long discussions? Where would it lead? Nowhere. Stripped bare, wasn’t Angelo right? There was still this something between them that needed killing off. It was intense, it was physical and it had been lying dormant inside her ever since they had gone their separate ways. She didn’t want that something to be her permanent companion any more than he wanted it to be his.

Stubborn pride and her sense of morality might wage war against the cold-blooded prospect of sleeping with him, but all her arguments crumbled when he was standing naked in front of her, bigger than she remembered. She wriggled out of the dungarees while he watched. His bold erection matched the slick wetness between her thighs and both were testament to how powerful the attraction between them still was.

With a sigh of hopeless resignation, Rosie surrendered to the inevitable.

“Good,” Angelo breathed with satisfaction. “You’ve stopped trying to have a debate on the subject.”

He sank onto the bed. Her bra had been discarded and her breasts pouted up at him, tantalising and provocative. But, before he really began to explore their sweetness, he pulled off her underwear, which was a little flowered G-string that matched the bra.

Her nakedness was headily familiar. The feel of her long, supple body hit him with the force of coming home and he ruthlessly squashed the bittersweet tide of memories surging up. This wasn’t about the past or remembering: this was sex devoid of all emotional content or connection. He pressed his body against hers, nudging apart her legs and inserting his muscular thigh between them so that he could rub the wetness there until she was pushing back in response, building up the rhythm that had always been there the second they had fallen into bed. Their bodies had learnt how to move together, and in a heartbeat it all came back.

When he eased off, Rosie squirmed to renew the contact, but he buried her protests with a fierce, hungry kiss, their tongues melding and meshing in frantic urgency. She hadn’t touched another man for three years and, released from its sexual drought, her body was quickly galvanised into heated, wanton reaction. She curled her fingers into his dark hair, drawing him to her, and then groaning with pleasure and arching back as he trailed hot kisses along her neck before descending to her breasts to take one throbbing nipple into his mouth.

The honeyed sweetness of her nipple was almost enough to make Angelo lose control. He had to fight to restrain himself from entering her. As he licked and teased the hardened bud, nipping and suckling, he squarely planted his hand between her legs. He slid two fingers into her and, as he rubbed, she moaned and whimpered and bucked, wanting more than just that.

Her slippery wetness on his fingers was driving him wild. Anticipation of feeling that wetness embrace his hard shaft was even more of a ferocious turn-on and he was going to take his time; he was going to build up slowly to a moment he seemed to have spent all these lost years waiting for.

He withdrew his fingers to curl them around her slender waist and then he began working his way down her flat, firm belly, tasting, licking and relishing the salty tang of her perspiration. Her stomach rose and fell quickly in time to her jerky breathing. As she parted her legs wider, he groaned softly at the sight of her opening up for him, as beautiful as a flower unfurling to reveal itself.

Very gently, he flicked his tongue over and along her clitoris and felt it expand and throb as he continued to tease it. He didn’t know how long he would be able to sustain an erection that was desperate for release. The musky scent of her filled his nostrils and, as he licked her, he expertly threatened sensory overload by slipping his fingers in so that there was no bit of her that wasn’t responding. Her fingers were curled into his hair and, when he stole a glance up, he could see that she was poised on the tipping point, her eyelids fluttering and her beautiful mouth half-parted on a cry of intense pleasure.