‘What happened?’ Bella asked.
‘A fight,’ he said, and then shook his head. ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’
He tossed aside his socks and shoes with far less care than his other clothes and she lay there, a dense feeling forming between her legs as he saved the best till last.
He slid open the buckle of his belt.
Too slowly for Bella for, beneath the fabric, she could see his erection bulging.
His tongue he held between his lips as he slid down the zipper.
Bella wasn’t even breathing.
The bathroom shrank, steam fogged the mirrors, even her shoulders and face, which were out of the water, were damp.
But her mouth was dry.
She licked her lips as he freed himself and, no, the rest of his clothes he did not hang up, he just stepped out of them.
He was always impressive dressed and yet he was perfection naked.
His calves were lean, his thighs were long and muscular and they would be hers to enjoy later, but all she could focus on now was his erection. Impressive, dark and long, and growing even as she looked, beneath the bubbly water her fists clenched. She lifted her knees as he approached, but not just to make room for him. It was a necessary motion because her thighs ached as they never had before.
He was so tall and had run the bath so deep that the water slipped over the edge as he joined her.
‘We don’t want to flood the bathroom,’ she said, loving the strength of his legs as they moved around the sides of her body and captured her like a vice.
‘We might end up crashing through the floor and into the bar,’ he said, and he laughed a deep, low laugh, and it was the first time she had heard it.
No one really heard it, Bella was sure, and that made her sad enough for it to show in her expression but he misread it.
‘Are you scared?’ he asked.
She shook her head. How could she possibly be scared with Matteo gazing into her eyes and his legs holding her body and his hands taking hers in his? Fear had no place here tonight.
He looked at her hands, pale and slender in his, and then he let them go and picked up a cloth when she wanted his kiss. Her lips moved towards him but he moved his head back.
‘Patience, Bella.’
‘I have none with you.’
‘Well, I’m going to teach it to you. Come here, little panda...’
He very carefully started to remove her make-up. The lipstick he had already taken care of with his mouth and she closed her eyes as he removed the streaked eyeliner and mascara and painted her eighteen and innocent again.
He was tender and yet it was so sensually done that her hands could not stay still beneath the water so she explored his thighs, feeling their power and stroking the lean muscle while resisting her true desire to touch him more intimately.
He dipped the cloth in the water again and now, as he removed the last traces of her foundation, her fingers could resist no more—they dusted his thick erection and she watched his jaw clench slightly and her eyes told him it had been no accident.
Her hands then told him the same as she held him more firmly, stroking him between her two hands as he continued on his mission to strip her of her armour.
He soaped her neck with the cloth but he was having trouble concentrating as one of her hands slipped lower and held the weight of his balls as she stroked him closer to the edge.
Her smile was pure decadence and so was his as he pushed her back. Her hands let go of their treasure and he deftly lifted her hips and pulled her towards him so that her hair fell into the water. She floated for a blissful moment as he moved her calves to his shoulders and the view for Matteo was pure temptation.
She came up and rested her arms on the edge of the bath, taking her sex from his immediate view, and he moved her hips further down so she could feel his erection press against her. She nearly died at the lust in his eyes.
Matteo had intended to take things more slowly—to take his time with washing her hair—but now that he’d seen the prettiest of pink it was his patience that had run out.
He hauled himself up and climbed out and then lifted her dripping wet body and carried her through to the bed.
He wanted to take her now but he had to taste her first so he knelt down on the floor and dragged her so that her bottom was at the edge of the bed.
Bella lay dizzy. The fan blew air and cooled her damp body and yet her sex was on fire as he parted her thighs and her legs made themselves at home on his shoulders. He splayed her intimate lips with his thumbs and exposed her just a touch more indecently.
Matteo was neither slow nor tender now. He might have teased her with kisses to her thigh, he might have lingered a little longer with his eyes, but a sudden moan of want and frustration from Bella—a sob that gave immediate consent—had Matteo burying his face.
Nothing could have prepared her for the sensations that his mouth delivered. She was wet, not just from the bath, or his tongue, but from her own need.
Her fingers were in his hair, both pressing him in and pushing him away, and her head thrashed on the damp sheet.
He petted her, he whetted her, he had full sex with her with his mouth.
She would have sat up if she were not falling into the abyss.
Or shout out if her jaws would only open.
When she came, it almost finished him too.
To feel her pulse to his mouth had Matteo reach down to stroke himself, he was so close, but he halted because there was a better pleasure to be had.
Still tasting her, his hand patted the bed, feeling his way to the bedside table where condoms had been so thoughtfully placed.
‘We don’t need them...’ Bella gasped, for she had gone on the Pill as a back-up, knowing that this night might arrive.
‘You always—’
‘We’re dating tonight,’ she breathed, and it was enough for now, for they were back in the moment, just a couple craving each other.
She moved up the bed and he came over where she lay, still trying to gather her breath.
He kissed her again, his mouth wet from her, his body so hard for her as he butted at her tight entrance. His hand moved down and he held himself, to allow for more precision.
It hurt, even with Matteo trying to be gentle, but as he seared in Bella let out a sob and he gave her a moment and felt her shallow breaths on his cheeks as she attempted to acclimatise.
He held himself there and she thought how the receding pain would lead to bliss.
Then his hand moved away and he drove in fully. Had his weight not come down on her she might have twisted away or pushed him because the hurt was so intense.
He knew she was hurting and so he loved her more slowly. He waited, with patience he had not known that he possessed, until she relaxed a touch around him.
Her thighs loosened, her head cleared and she opened her eyes to his.
She gave a small nod, she sought his lips and thanked him with a kiss, and now when he started to move her fingers, which had dug into his shoulders, loosened their grip and she let him take over and take her to places she had not known existed.
He was incredibly diligent. When she tensed he slowed, when she moaned he persisted, and persisted at the very point where her pleasure seemed to gather towards the most exquisite peak.
Bella tasted his neck and the salt of his shoulder and when still he carried on she could taste no more because her mouth was gasping in air. As she started to come, as her body turned rigid, her breath shallow on his cheek, she was shocked at the intensity of the peak and was just falling into pleasure when he forced her higher. To feel the very controlled Matteo so unleashed and relentless made Bella shout out.
She loved this side to him, the slight roughness, the pursuit of his pleasure, and then the shudder as he shot into her and she came again. She simply slipped into the next falling, holding onto him, tumbling with him so they hit back to earth together, kissing on a soft mattress, lost with each other, having escaped from the world.
Through the night they made love and then both lay there silently dreading the morning, talking to each other, getting to know each other as the moments counted down.
He told her how he wished he’d seen her in the ginger dress she’d made.
‘I’ve still got it,’ she said, and she wished, how she wished that he would suggest that soon he see it.
That maybe later, when she wasn’t working, he might suggest they go out, that she might wear the same dress for him...
But Matteo said nothing and Bella was starting to understand her mother’s words when finally he spoke.
‘I bet you would have looked beautiful,’ he said.
She belonged in the bedroom now, Bella thought.
She shrugged away the hurt with casual words. ‘Cut the cloth right and any figure can be beautiful,’ she said. ‘I tried to get into some design courses but...’ She shook her head. ‘Maybe I’m not as good as I think I am.’
‘You’re probably better,’ he said.
‘What would you do if you could do anything?’
He was about to find out, Matteo knew. In a few short hours he’d be away from here for ever.
The light was starting to filter in. Morning, whether they were ready or not, was arriving and Matteo climbed out of the bed and opened the French windows.
The party below was over. Bordo Del Cielo lay silent and the only sound was the ocean.
‘I love this place,’ Bella said. ‘I know there are so many bad things that go on here but there is so much beauty too.’
She told him about the ancient baths, which was her favourite place in the world. ‘Sometimes I pretend that I was born then, that I lived then, that the baths are still alive.’