A Scandal Made At Midnight

Had he ever felt this way before? Already Alessandro knew he had not. The physical transactions that had counted for his arrangements in the past, merely to satiate a physical need, had been nothing like this. They’d been nothing, full stop, forgotten in an instant, while Liane—her perfect body, her open, trusting gaze—would be seared on his memory for ever.

She lay supine beneath him, her expression dazed as she gazed up at him in both wonder and need. A gasp escaped her as his mouth moved lower, testing, tasting. A shaky laugh as her fingers drove into his hair.

‘Alessandro...’

He loved the way she said his name, with both wonder and need. He kissed his way lower, along her belly to her thighs, longing for her to say it again.

‘Alessandro...’

The ache in her voice, the throb of her body...had he known anything sweeter? Deeper? She arched against him as he tasted her sweetness, his mouth hot and sure on her most intimate place, exploring the very depths of her, making her moan out as his own body throbbed with longing.

‘Please...’ she gasped as she thrust her hips up in instinctive demand. ‘Please...’

He braced himself on his forearms as he gazed down at her flushed face. ‘I’m trying to go slowly...’ he told her, his teeth gritted from the effort of holding back, when all he wanted to do was plunge deep inside her and lose himself completely.

‘Don’t.’ She let out an unsteady laugh as he reached for a condom. ‘Don’t. I’ll go mad...please... I want you inside me...completely.’

And then he was, a gasp escaping him as he felt her warmth enfold him, accept him. Accepting him completely. She folded her body around his, drew him even more deeply into herself, giving him all that she had.

‘Oh...’ she whispered, and then thrust up against him, her arms clasping him to her as her body instinctively began to move in that ancient rhythm, that beautiful dance. ‘Oh... I never knew...’

Neither had he. The sense of completion was far more than physical in that moment, as if they’d joined everything, and not just their bodies. Alessandro matched her pace, watched with a deep, primal satisfaction as her eyes widened and her lips parted and pleasure sang through their veins, united them in its joyous melody, taking them higher and higher, each note more beautiful than the last...

And then they arced on a crescendo of pleasure, their bodies trembling in the aftershocks as he clasped her against him, rolling onto his back and bringing her with him, never wanting to let her go. Ever.

He felt both broken open and made whole, as if it was in the breaking, the revealing, that he’d found something even more. It was as if his world had shifted on its axis and then righted, and he now saw it all so much more clearly than ever before.

Was this, then, what he’d been afraid of for so long? This startling clarity, as if the entire world had been brought into dazzling focus, and a deep, settled happiness thrummed through his veins. Was this what he’d been running away from?

Sex, for him, had always been about using—a pleasurable mutual using, but a using just the same. A transaction, a trade-off. This felt completely different, utterly more...instead of a deal, it had been a surrender. Instead of using, he had given.

It both humbled and amazed him, and horrified him too, because this was so new, so strange, and even with Liane clasped in his arms he wasn’t entirely sure he welcomed it.

Liane’s body was boneless against his as she pressed her damp forehead against his shoulder.

‘We are definitely doing that again before I go,’ she told him, and Alessandro let out a huff of startled laughter before her words trickled through him.

Before I go? Her words sounded like a warning, and perhaps one he needed. She’d said such things before, but he’d thought they’d been for her own sake. Now he wondered if they were actually for his. Why should he assume that what he felt in this moment was real, or more than infatuation? Liane had no trouble making clear what she thought. She knew the rules—and so should he, because he’d made them. How could he let his judgement be so clouded?

He was acting like a lovesick fool, he realised with a burning twist of shame. Doing the exact thing he’d warned Liane against—reading so much more into a physical transaction that had been mind-blowingly pleasurable...and no more.

And yet it had felt like more...for him. And the thought was as terrifying as it was wonderful. He didn’t want this—the risk, the pain, the rejection, the fear. The joy. He didn’t want to love Liane—and yet he was afraid he did.

The fairy tale might have come for him after all, but had it for her?

The question was still thudding through him as she slipped out of his arms, off the bed, and disappeared into the bathroom. Alessandro felt the yawning absence in his empty arms, the expanse of rumpled sheets. Quickly he disposed of the condom and moved to a seated position, raking a hand through his dampened hair. He’d felt as if he could have lain there for ever, sated and sleepy, but perhaps it was better this way. Get things back on the terms he was used to, the ones Liane had agreed to, and stop wondering if his world had changed when it hadn’t.

It was another five minutes before she returned, looking cool and composed. She walked over to the crumpled heap of her dressing gown and shrugged it on.

‘What now?’ she asked with a small, rueful smile, or at least an attempt at one. ‘I’m afraid I don’t know the rules. Do we sit and chat? Do you go back to your room?’

He almost smiled at her practical tone, even as it stung. He didn’t know the rules either, not any more, and though he knew he should remind himself of them, he didn’t. He knew what he wanted—Liane in his bed, for the rest of the night.

‘Now you take off that ridiculous dressing gown and come back to bed,’ Alessandro told her. ‘And we stay here till morning.’

Her playful smile turned cautious, surprised. ‘Till morning?’

‘Yes. Till morning. At the very least.’ He held his arms out and with a little laugh she shrugged off the robe once again and scrambled across the bed towards him.

Laughing too, Alessandro snatched her up in his arms, rolled her under him as she squirmed breathlessly, looking up at him with both joy and wonder.

‘I thought...’ she began, and he silenced her with a kiss.

‘No thinking,’ he told her as his mouth moved lower. ‘No thinking at all.’

He wasn’t going to think about what this was, not now. There would be time later to worry, to wonder, because all he wanted now was the sweetness of Liane in his arms, looking up at him, giving herself to him. Again and again.