The sexual attraction is incredible. I can feel my body trembling with desire for him. I have never ever in my life wanted someone as much I want him. I want to climb into his lap and suck his tongue and let him take me. Right now. Right here on this table.
“Ready to order?” he asks smoothly.
Unable to speak, I nod.
He lifts a long, elegant finger and a waiter materializes at his side. “Are you ready to order, Ma’am?” he asks politely.
“I’ll have the smoked duck and pomegranate salad to start, and the rib-eye steak as my main,” I mumble, hoping the menu has not changed.
“Very good. Rare, medium, or well done?” the waiter asks.
“Well done.” To make sure he gets it, I add, “almost burnt.”
He flinches slightly. Obviously, he doesn’t approve of overdone meat, but he nods politely, then angles his body towards the Count.
“The usual,” the Count says quietly, never taking his eyes off me.
The waiter thanks him and slinks away, and I am left alone with him again. Something shimmers between us and I feel myself being helplessly drawn to him. Unmet desire throbs inside my body. My brain searches for something to say, something that will break the spell of his eyes, his person.
“Larry tells me the road leading up to your mountain is very narrow and dangerous, how did you get the cranes, trucks full of equipment and building materials up there?” I whisper hoarsely.
“The road was originally built to accommodate them.”
“And you narrowed it afterwards?” I ask incredulously.
“Yes.”
I look at him in amazement. “Why not just build big gates?”
“The higher the gates the more curiosity they evoke. A pot-holed, dangerous road suits me better.”
“You’re strange, you know that?”
He laughs suddenly, and I stare at him with astonishment. In laughter, he is indescribably beautiful. His teeth are an orthodontist’s wet dream, straight and white and his whole face seems to glow with ethereal beauty. The longer I spend in his company the more I feel as if I am a moth and he is a flame. I can’t stop myself from flying towards him, but he is going to incinerate me. All that will be left will be the ashes of my desire for this sensuously beautiful, mysterious, and I am certain, dangerous man.
I reach blindly for my wine glass and take another sip. The wine touches my tongue and another explosion of tastes and smells overwhelms me. Go easy, Autumn. Go easy, I tell myself. It is hard for me to believe I’m not in reality trapped inside a dream because everything feels so fantastical and exaggerated. The desire for him, his beauty, the way all the colors around me seem more vivid, the way I am reacting to the wine in my mouth, the heightened sensations I feel, or the way my fingertips are tingling.
“Tell me about you,” he coaxes, charm oozing out of every pore.
I normally don’t like talking about myself, but to my surprise, I immediately start blabbing out my whole history. Like a quickly running brook, I tell him about my parents, how they were both killed in a car crash while I was in college, my utter devastation when I rushed back and saw those two coffins. He stares at me avidly. There’s no murmur of condolence, but it’s not necessary. No one has paid me such rapt attention before. His focus is laser like. As if I am the most important person in the world. No scratch that, as if I am the only person in the world.
I tell him about my art, about Sam, about how I moved here so I could paint. Once when I’m talking about Larry, his eyes flash. I cannot tell what that fleeting, but intense expression is. It looked like rage or possessiveness, but surely it can’t have been either emotion. His relationship with Larry is one of buyer and seller, and what can he possibly be possessive about? He does not interrupt me and I continue talking.
When the waiter arrives, it is as if I am shaken out of a hypnotic trance. I stop abruptly mid-sentence and look around at him in a daze. He puts our starters in front of us. I stare at it. It is like a mini work of art. The blush of the smoked duck’s flesh against the green on one of the leaves and the pomegranates gleaming like little rubies in between.
“Buon appetito,” I hear the Count say softly.
I look up curiously. “Are you Italian?”
“No, I’m actually descended from an ancient German lineage.”
“Why do you have an Italian name?”
“My ancestors moved to Italy in the fifteenth century, and because they were pale with red hair, they were given the name Rossetti.”
My eyes move to his shining blond hair. It is unusual to see a man who is blond, let alone one who is so blond he looks almost unreal. The strange thing about him is his eyelashes and eyebrows are not fair, but dark brown, which almost makes it look as if he is wearing mascara, but I can see he is not. Even the suggestion he might be is laughable. There is nothing remotely feminine about him. In fact, he bristles with danger. Simmering just under his skin is something dark and unknowable. Something lethal… and something that lures me to him. The attraction is fatal, but I cannot resist it.