She digs her fingernails into my shoulder. “Please,” she gasps. “I need your—” She breaks off, shy even in this moment. “I… need you. I’m so close already, and I want you inside me when I come.”
I rise on my knees and she tears open a condom packet, hurrying to sheath me before she launches herself and topples me back with my head at the foot of the bed. She throws a leg over me. The lamplight gilds her hourglass curves, shimmering with patches of faint sweat. She rocks her hips, sliding along my length tauntingly for several passes before aligning with me and sinking slowly to the hilt, head thrown back.
I settle my hands on her hips, fighting the impulse to grip her hard and pound her against me, compelled by primal need. My fingers almost tremble as I coast over the path of her waist and hips, transfixed by the sight of Natalia riding me. Her arms are rigid behind herself, braced on my thighs, and her tits quiver mesmerizingly on each impact as she drives herself against me, eyes squeezed shut, hair churning.
“That’s it, my siren,” I urge. “You’ve placed the tools you wanted right into my hands and demanded the service of my cock. Can you let yourself cry out in victory as you take everything you deserve?”
“I want that,” she replies in a tight groan, moving faster. “I need everything…”
“It’s yours, sorceress. No door is barred to you. No lock can keep you out.”
After I say it, I realize the implications. Talia has infiltrated my soul, and at this point, I’d incur far more damage in resisting. My eyes settle on the green stone, stuck unmoving to her damp chest despite her vigorous thrusting against me.
Something shifts in me as I feel—for the first time in manyyears—trulywiththe woman I’m inside. All points seem connected at once: past, present, future. I surrender to it with a simple elation. Unable to hold back, I’m overtaken by climax, perplexed by my own words as the tipping point is ushered in by my crying out, “I am!”
“Yes!” Natalia gasps, her expression triumphant. I’m not sure if she’s replying to what I’ve rather cryptically shouted, or welcoming her own moment, but her single word rises into a wail of joy as she slows her movement, undulating her hips to rub against me, wringing out every lingering second of her orgasm’s assault.
She collapses into my arms, and our fevered pulses ricochet against each other, sending wordless dispatches.
After a few minutes’ recovery, Natalia sighs out a tired laugh. “You are…what?” she prompts. “Leave it to you to get all existential during sex. ‘I am’?”
I echo her drowsy laughter and roll us sideways, knitted together in a muddle of spent limbs. “I don’t know,” I admit, kissing her. “It came from somewhere, I suppose, but is a puzzle to me as well.”
When my distracted gaze lights on the clothesline across the room—missing one photograph—it occurs to me that this is the first time I’ve made love in this room since Sofia died. I expect the realization to drag pain in on its wake, but to my shock, it doesn’t. Instead, the room feels almost sanctified. I let my eyes drift closed, joining Natalia in tranquil repose, unsure but accepting of whatever comes next.
Though I didn’t fully recognize it at the time, this moment with Talia is what I dreamed of nine months ago, when our hearts opened to each other in Spain.
13
SANTORINI, GREECE
THE NEXT MORNING
NATALIA
Whoever came up with the phrase “My cup runneth over” must’ve had servants to clean the mess. Wouldn’t it make more sense for one’s cup to runneth just shy of the top? Full, but notsofull that the slightest false move threatens disaster?
I can’t help thinking this in the shower this morning after having tumbled into bed with Klaus last night… more than a year after our first time. It’s been fourteen long months of anger, forgiveness, flirting, struggling, longing, and resentment. What a journey.
Is this really the destination, or… just a detour on the way to somewhere else?
The sex was epic and creative. We barely slept. I wonder if he was thinking the same thing I was when we’d roll together—sleepyand eager, if a little sore—again and again:If we stay in this bed, it only counts as once, and we don’t have to think about whether this is a terrible idea.
Everything was perfect. Weirdly so. Klaus and I were easy, tender, and effortlessly communicative, in everything from the (did I mentionamazing?) sex to how we casually arranged our bodies in sleep, curled together as naturally as if we’d been doing it forever. My happiness when I opened my eyes was “runneth over” full.
Followed by panic by the time my feet touched the cool tile floor beside the bed.
I’ve retreated to the guest room rather than showering in his en suite, because I need time to think. As I gingerly glide basil-peach scented soap over my aching girl bits, I outline my morning.
First, I need to reply to what will certainly be a stern email from Nefeli, responding to the angry one I jabbed out on my phone in the airport parking lot last night. Then I have to tell Klaus this either has to be completely discreet or… can’t happen again. No way can we “date” openly. Nefeli would be appalled at my lack of professionalism.
Anxiety drums in the back of my mind like approaching hoofbeats, warning,This will tank your journalistic objectivity, just like last year. How did you not learn your lesson?
I can’t let myself ignore the murmurs about the E-20’s startling design similarities to Allonby’s car—it has to be addressed. Other publications absolutelywilltalk about it. There’s also the matter of having seen with my own eyes that Emerald is courting Sage Sikora. That’s big news.
I’m worried that Elena, the housekeeper, might know what Klaus and I got up to last night. I twist my hair into aprofessional-looking, severe chignon and choose my most sensible skirt-suit before heading into the main part of the house, as if looking faultlessly prim will somehow make up for any lusty caterwauling she might have heard.
Klaus isn’t in the living room or on the patio, so I brave the kitchen—Elena’s domain. She’s cleaning the oven, her bony behind wagging side to side in a slate-gray pinafore dress as she vigorously scrubs.
