by Emilia Finn
I mean, sure, we’ve had sex twice now, and I’m currently naked in front of him, but his confidence is enough to make the breath stop in my lungs. For my eyes to widen, and when his meet mine, for my heart to speed up.
“Room in there for me too?”
“Yup.” I clear my throat and take a sip of beer to wash down the cheese and fried bread. “Lots of room.”
“Are you freaking out?” Smirking, he steps over the side of the bath and places one foot down between my legs. He follows it with the second, and when I don’t move, he brings his gaze back to me. “Move your legs for a sec? When I sit, I promise you can stretch out again.”
“Oh, si.”
My brain is too slow, my thoughts too sluggish. I whip my feet back toward my body, and because I move so fast, the water sloshes around us until I drop my gaze.
Smooth, Idalia. Real smooth.
“Why’d you get so nervous?”
Nixon lowers into the water slowly, sits, and leaves his knees high for a moment. Then he grabs my ankle and tugs me close, surprising a squeal out of me. He draws me into his space, sloshing water over the edge of the tub, then he spins me until I’m nestled against his chest, and my elbows rest on his thighs.
“That’s so much better, don’t ya think?” He presses a kiss to my temple. “I’d rather have you in my arms than all the way over there.”
“I don’t know how to do all this,” I rasp out. “I haven’t been with someone who isn’t my husband since…” I shake my head. “I don’t know. Since I was eighteen?”
“You don’t have a role to play.” He nuzzles my neck, my hair, the warm skin behind my ear. “And since there’s no script, you have no lines or moves to remember. Just be you, enjoy the bath, eat something, and cuddle me sometimes.”
“You like to cuddle?”
He chuckles, low and vibrating in his chest. “It might be my favorite thing ever. Scratch my head while we’re watching a movie, and there’ll be no going back for us.”
Pleasure rumbles in my throat, made better when Nixon pushes my sandwich hand closer to my mouth.
He could have nudged the beer closer—it’s probably what most would do—but the act of him pushing food on me, and not alcohol, seems special. It makes him more honorable, I think. More than he already is.
“What’s your middle name?”
My heart jumps for a beat. “Mine?”
“Mm.” He sips his own drink and sinks further into the water. “Speed date time. Mine is Cristiano.”
“Shut up.”
He snickers. “It truly is. Not after the soccer player, of course, but it certainly makes me happy to know we share a name. What’s yours?”
“Rosaria.”
“Idalia Rosaria Mazzi,” he tries it out. “Not a mouthful at all.”
I bring my beer up and sip with a smile. “It gets worse. My last name, before marriage, was Esposito.”
“Shut the fuck up,” he laughs. “Idalia Rosaria Esposito? Why would your parents do that to you?”
“It’s a lovely name!”
“It is,” he teases. “But you sure as shit would have been the only kindergartner who couldn’t write her own name.”
“Not true at all. Fergus Eduardo Ferguson probably struggled too.”
“Jesus.” Nixon nips at my ear and works to stifle his amusement. “Have you ever lived in Italy? Or are you just super attached to your motherland and not ready to give up the accent?”
“I lived there until my early twenties. English is still a second language to me.”
“Does it annoy you that, to communicate on a day-to-day basis, you have to speak a language other than the one that comes most naturally to you?”
“No. I chose to be here, I set up a home here. The onus is on me to adapt.”
“Do you speak Italian to Max?” Nixon’s questions come fast, shot after shot, as though he’s had them lined up for weeks. “Or only English?”
“I speak both. There’s no reason for me to be all-English when it’s just us at home.”
“I know he doesn’t speak back,” Nixon murmurs. “But do you believe he understands both languages?”
“Si. I speak Italian when I’m mad, sad, or frustrated.” I snigger. “He knows what I’m saying.”
“Are you going back to Italy someday?” His tone turns more serious. “Will you leave us all behind?”
“I have no plans to,” I tell him. “I’ve only just opened the Oriane here. It’ll be a long time before I can escape for even a weekend. Do you plan to go to Portugal?”
“For a vacation,” he says. “Sure. But not to live.”
“Have you ever been?”
“Nope, not yet. My entire existence has been busy. I’m the youngest boy in my family, the last one born before Abby, and once she arrived, shit got serious fast. Only now that we’re all grown, and Abby is well, have my parents even thought to travel themselves.” He presses a kiss to my temple. “I’ll travel someday, but I guess I’ve been saving it.”
“Saving it?” I twist my neck and meet his eyes. “What have you been waiting for?”
He shrugs. “Someone to travel with. Someone I want to show the world.” Taking my jaw in his hand, Nixon brings us closer until our lips meet. “Some people enjoy traveling alone. And that’s totally cool… for them. But the way I see it, traveling is a wonderful opportunity, something that should be shared. So, I’ve been waiting until I found the person I wanna share that with.”
“That was really romantic.” I twist back and study the wall opposite us. “You make it really hard for me to stay detached.”
He snorts. “I don’t make it a secret that I want you attached. Fall deep into like with me, Idalia. Let down your guard, then I’ll storm the castle and take the rest of you.”
“And we’re back to the ribbed condoms,” I snicker. “Nice one.”
He makes a noise in the back of his throat. “It was inevitable. Tell me your most embarrassing story.” He reaches up and drags my hair over my shoulder.
I put so much work into washing, drying, and styling my hair for tonight, all to be undone in a hot, bubbling, scented bath with Nixon.
Worth it.
Squeezing my eyes shut for a moment, I begin, “At the school I attended in Italy, we had to wear a uniform. Skirts, blazers, stockings.”
“Which explains why you always look so uptight when working. You’ve got the skirtsuit on lock.”
“Jerk.” I jab my elbow into his thigh, and grin when he hisses. “Well, I tucked my skirt into my stockings one time, and everyone saw my underwear.”
He snorts but still tries to choke out, “That’s not so bad.”
“Right. But I was talking to Fabrizio Berlusconi at the time, and he was, like… the Cristiano Renaldo of my school. It was humiliating.”
“Sounds like intervention from the universe to me.” Nixon presses a sniggering kiss to my temple. “‘Idalia Rosaria Berlusconi’ is just cruel. You would run out of spaces to write your name every time you had to fill out official forms.”
“Taci,” I grumble. “Stop talking merda about my name.”
“You did alright, choosing Mazzi. Not a terrible name. It certainly didn’t make the situation worse.”
“And, what, Rosa would be better?” I spin to scold him, to pretend to be mad about him teasing my name, but when our eyes meet, my words catch up with my brain.
“I mean… I didn’t mean…” I swallow the ball of humiliation lodged in my throat. “Forget I—”
“Rosa is a very cool last name.” Grinning, Nixon leans forward and presses a kiss to my lips. “Ask everyone who has it—except Abigail,” he complains. “For some crazy reason, she kicked Rosa to the curb and jumped to the Serrano camp.”
“Probably because she loves her husband,” I laugh, thankful for Nixon’s smooth ability to defuse an awkward situation. “Spencer is a very kind man. I’ve met him.”
“Yeah, he’s alright.” Nixon plops one last kiss on m
y lips, then he turns me so I’m once more cradled against his chest. “Can I ask you something? If it’s too much or too sensitive, you can say so, and I’ll drop it.”
The seriousness in his tone makes my heart speed. “Um… si. You can ask me.”
“It’s been a couple of years since you lost your husband, right? Why do you still have his name?”
I shrug. “Why not? We didn’t divorce. It’s my son’s last name. It’s my legal name, and if I wanted to change it, it takes a lot of paperwork to do so.”
“Would you?”
My heart stops. “Would I what?”
“Change it,” he hums. “If you ever marry again, would you change your name?”
“Uh… I don’t know,” I admit. “Max is my baby, and it doesn’t sit right with me for us to have different names. I know it’s not uncommon. Often, moms have different names to their children, since not all parents are married. But still… That’s a big decision, and one to save for later. It’s not relevant to me right now, considering this is my first date in years.”
“Are you looking to date other men?” Nixon’s heart races faster beneath my back. “Have I just opened the floodgates and made it so you’ll accept all the offers you surely get on a daily basis?”
“Not as long as you don’t turn into an asshole,” I answer with a snicker. “I already told you; men ask me, but you’re the only one who made me want to accept. So I guess that means I’m gonna stick around here for a while. See what happens between us.”
“You gonna fire the somewhat attractive, definitely your age, definitely interested in fucking you against a wall Jake the Builder? Ya know, since you’re committing to the Rosa?”
I laugh. “He’s a phenomenal builder, an eager workhorse, and his attention to detail keeps him in my speed dial. No way am I firing him.”
“So I’ll just hang out over here,” Nixon faux-grumbles. “Pretending not to notice the guy up in your hotel daily?”
“Si. Because I still have a gym to finish, stairs to polish, a loose pantry door in my kitchen, and a million other things on my to-do list. If you run my contractor out of town purely because you’re jealous of something that doesn’t exist, I’ll come here and throw rocks at your truck.”
“Wow.” Exploding with laughter, Nixon hugs me tight and crushes me to his chest. “Straight over to warfare. I see how it is.”
“I’m Italian,” I shrug. “We’re not known for our subtlety. Now, tell me your most embarrassing story.”
“Oh. Hmm…” Nixon brings his beer up and takes a sip while he thinks. “I was still a virgin right up to senior prom. I don’t know why,” he adds when I lift a brow. “I guess I had opportunities before that, but I never jumped in.” He clears his throat. “So to speak. So by the time prom rolled around, I was beginning to think I might’ve missed my chance. Especially because the dance was girls’ choice, and I was at the mercy of the opposite sex.”
“Are you seriously telling me that there was no line of women, waiting their turn to ask?”
“There wasn’t,” he counters. “Like I said, I’d had opportunities over the years to be with a girl, but for one reason or another, I kept chickening out. Plus, don’t forget how busy our lives were with Abby’s sickness and stuff. To me, my inability to go all the way with a girl was me being a pussy. But to those girls, it would have looked like rejection. So after a few years of girls asking and me saying no, I’d offended enough people that no one bothered anymore.”
“That must’ve been horrible for you,” I mock him. “Too much choice, not enough time.”
Nixon runs his fingertips over my ribs in threat. “Come senior year, Rosie, another senior, asked me out. I said yes, and all the way leading up to the big night, I wondered if it was finally my turn to know what was up.”
“And by ‘up,’ you mean your penis?”
He snorts. “Correct.”
“I’m struggling to see how this is all so embarrassing?”
“Wait for it,” he inserts. “My brothers and I are close, so we tell each other pretty much everything. That means they knew I was heading into prom with a handicap.”
“You do know prom is still pretty young, right? Seventeen-year-olds. Maybe eighteen.”
“I know. But in my world, it felt like a giant chasm I’d have to leap. It felt like a neon sign on my forehead. My brothers had gotten nasty with every single girl in that school at one point or another. They were experienced, and not at all able to shut up about it. So on the night of prom, they met me in my room before I left to give me the pep talk.”
“Oh god,” I cover my face. “I’m embarrassed for you.”
“Right?! Troy tucked condoms into my pockets, and Corey talked to me about safe sex and consent. Beckett told us all about how he had been fucking Lorraine from the grade below, and Mitch came in, and they started arguing over who did it better.”
“Why would Mitchell enter that conversation?”
“Well, Lorraine had been his girlfriend first.”
“Oh!” Laughter bubbles along my throat. “That’s unfortunate.”
“All in all, before I’d even left for prom, I was hopped up on sex stories, equipped with condoms, and set with a challenge to do it up good.”
“Did you do it good?” I squeeze my eyes closed, because I know the embarrassing part of his story is coming.
“Nope. She stroked my cock one time on the dancefloor, I came in my boxers—”
“Oh god.”
“But because I was already so excited, I was periscoping in my pants. So that one stroke, and Rosie’s gown was ruined.”
“Oh no!”
Nixon chuckles. “Yepppp. She squealed, her little posse of girlfriends ran over to see what had happened, and just like that, my secret was out. I’d made a mess, and I definitely didn’t live up to the reputation my brothers had left at the school before me.”
“That’s horrible! How could you ever recover from that?”
“Head down,” he snickers. “Work hard. Pray people eventually forget. Beckett sure as fuck won’t let it die down.”
“Perhaps the universe was looking out for you.”
I twist and find Nixon’s hand. Taking his beer, I set it on the chair, then twisting back, I settle in and place his callused hand on my breast. In a single beat of my heart, his cock springs to life against my back.
“You exceeded expectations tonight,” I murmur. “And Rosie Rosa sounds dumb anyway.”
“It does, doesn’t it?” Taking charge, Nixon slides his fingertips around my pert nipple. Playing, taunting, and when my breath catches, pinching. “I’d much rather be here with you.” He slides his hand away from my breast, over my stomach, and down to my pelvis. “I’m so glad the universe steered you away from Calinopulous.”
“Berlusconi,” I breathe out.
“And me away from Rosie.” He bites my neck and slides a single digit inside my pussy at the same time. “It’s funny how the universe already has a plan.”
“You think?”
“Hmm?”
“A pre-planned plan,” I clarify on an exhale. “Do you think it’s already written?”
“Yup. I already told you I haven’t traveled. It’s because you hadn’t arrived yet. There was no point seeing these places and leaving you behind.”
“Jesus,” I breathe out a sigh on my first mini release.
Before, it was rough and fast and mean; but now, it’s like waves gently lapping against the rocks. Nixon’s hand is overwhelming, but gentle. Commanding, but slow. He pulls pleasure from my very soul and allows it to wash over me like water on sand.
“Nixon…”
“Relax,” he whispers in my ear. “Let us have this before morning.”
14
Nixon
Telling Secrets
Idalia and I lay in my bed for hours. Naked, sated, warm from our bath, warm from each other, and though conversation ranges from silly to serious, it always inevitably leads to me wanting to
touch. To taste. To claim her for my own.
I run the tips of my fingers over her thigh, lay my head on her belly, and exhale with a smile when she scratches my hair with her manicured nails.
“What was it like having a kid?”
“Hmm?” She’s as relaxed as me, as exhausted, but too keyed up to sleep. “Do you mean the giving birth part, or the raising him on sleep deprivation?”
I turn my head only and press a kiss to her thigh. “We can discuss both. I’m morbidly curious.”
“Well…” Her accent grows thicker when she’s tired. Just like when she’s mad, or horny, her brain cannot pull words from that second language she works so hard to master. “It wasn’t magical and beautiful like all the movies say. It was painful, bloody, and downright terrifying.”
“It was?” My heart jumps, despite knowing she’s fine. “Why?”
“I was in labor for days,” she sighs. “They had to break my waters to get him moving, and when that didn’t work, they added a drug to bring on contractions.”
“Okay.” I stretch my neck and meet her eyes. “So far so good.”
She snarls and plucks a single hair from my scalp.
“Ouch!”
“Don’t be a jackass,” she hisses. “Those contractions hurt a lot. They lasted for half a day, and Maximo’s heart rate kept slowing, then stopping, slowing, then stopping. Eventually, he got stuck, so they had to take me in for surgery.”
“Caesarian?” My displeasure at the sight I see in my mind rumbles in the back of my throat. “That sucks. Did you have to go to sleep?”
She nods. “I didn’t meet him for many hours after he was born. But when I woke, they told me he was healthy and well, so…” she shrugs.
“At least your husband could be with Max while you slept, right? He wasn’t alone.” I glance up just in time to catch a rose blush filling her cheeks.
“My husband was traveling for work. And before you say it,” she adds quickly, “he had to go! He didn’t get a choice.”