I am sure someone will find me, my cold body still clinging to the headstone, a peaceful smile on my face. They will say, “We should have watched over her better. We should have known something was wrong.” Or, “The poor dear, she died of a broken heart/exposure/grief. Blah, blah.” Or a million other equally clichéd things. They will blame themselves, blame others, and blame me. Then they will go home, maybe hug their loved ones and maybe even fuck, proving their life and virility in the face of death. But none of that matters now. You see, my love, my Jez, was gone. And now I am gone too.
VIRGO INTACTA
Anna Bishop
The little nun is seventeen.
Her name is Maddalena, and she’s beautiful in a way that owes all its appeal to the freshness of its bloom. She reminds Andrea of those tiny red plums that grow wild on the scrubby trees circling the villa they’ve rented for the month, the ones that show the prints of her fingers in purple against their ruby skins. When broken open, their flesh is dark gold with a hint of rose-blush rising in veins to the surface. The little nun’s skin is like that, too, plump and golden with youth between her collar and the white band of her novice’s headdress. And like the plums, she’s native to these sleepy hills, born out of their dusty soil and raised among their goats and grapevines. Andrea looks at her and feels like she’s been taken back in time.
Ro says she’ll bruise just as easily as the fruit, and spins elaborate fantasies about Maddalena when she and Andrea are alone together. Andrea’s own skin testifies to the violence of their mutual ardor; she’s long grown used to the garden of violets that blooms and fades and blooms again on her body when Ro is sublimating a ferocious new passion.
Maddalena is a player in Andrea’s personal fantasies, too, but they’re gentler encounters than Ro’s gleefully imagined bacchanals. Hot afternoons, white cotton sheets, mosquito netting checkerboarding sunlight into tiny square dapples on their skins. Her face between Maddalena’s olive thighs. Her own fingers reaching up to link with those small, capable, calloused hands, fluttering against her grip like frightened sparrows. Andrea can’t remember her own first orgasm, and would rather not relive the loss of her virginity, so easing the little nun over that fragile bridge between innocence and carnality seems like the perfect way to redeem her misspent youth.
Not that this is likely to happen. The girl is the niece of old Elisabeta, the live-in housekeeper, and she’s only here working in the villa because of Elisabeta’s recent hip surgery. She arrives an hour after the convent’s clock tower rings for morning prayers, half a mile down the road, and departs for evening Mass as soon as dinner is on the table. Elisabeta, the reluctant invalid, hobbles after her in the interim, leaning hard on her cane and scolding her in thickly accented Italian.
That the rich Americans vacationing here until the end of the month are both women seems to have played a role in securing the convent’s approval of this arrangement. What the Mother Superior would say if she knew the details of their relationship (to say nothing of Ro’s suspiciously deep voice and five o’clock shadow) Andrea can only speculate. If Elisabeta knows anything, she appears to have kept the news to herself.
Certainly Maddalena has noticed. She cleans their bedroom, after all, and is as openly curious as she can be under her aunt’s careful scrutiny. Andrea has looked up more than once from Ro’s casual embrace to catch a flash of fascinated dark eyes, quickly averted. Later, passing Maddalena in the upstairs hall, Andrea is intrigued when the little nun blushes but doesn’t look away.
She reports this to Ro, who promptly incorporates Maddalena’s innocent show of interest into the ongoing fantasy that’s encompassed their lovemaking for the last week and a half. An hour or so into it, Andrea is bowed back against the pillows, cunt skewered on three of Ro’s fingers, clit being savaged by an expert thumbnail. She’s juicing all over Ro’s hand and biting her own fist to keep from screaming out loud.
“She’s kissing your feet,” Ro says. “Crying. She’s got nipples like cherries. You know that noise a newborn kitten makes? That’s what she sounds like when I twist them.”
Andrea imagines that small round golden body arched in agony and pulsing with need, ruby-nippled, plum-cunted; imagines Maddalena in her place, impaled and squirming on Ro’s fingers and crying with the need to come again, to stop coming, to be touched, to be left alone; imagines covering her mouth in a kiss and drinking those baby-howls like some sweet sticky elixir of youth. She comes, and comes, and comes again, Ro folding in her fourth finger and her thumb and shoving hard while she gasps obscenities into the sweating hollow between Andrea’s breasts. When Ro finally fucks her, it’s even better. Everything’s so pretty when it’s new, Ro whispers into her ear, don’t you just want to open her up and see how she works? Put your fingers in; it’s like kitten fur, like pink satin, like velvet that’s never been touched. She’s all blank in there, waiting for you to tell her what sex is. She’s all new. She’s all yours.
She’s all yours and you’re all mine. That means I get… everything.
Fair enough, Andrea thinks, and manages to say as much before she can’t talk or think anymore.
Later, they turn on the ceiling fan and collapse back on the big white bed, letting the cool night air from the open window dry their bodies. Andrea drifts her fingertips over Ro’s nipples lightly enough that they don’t even harden, but just lie pink and quiescent like sleeping lips waiting to be kissed awake, and pretends she’s touching Maddalena. A long inside quiver runs through her, interior walls clamping down on themselves in a delicious twist of pressure that grabs her by surprise.
“Ow,” Ro says without opening her eyes. “Easy, tiger.”
Andrea realizes she’s pinching. “Sorry,” she says. “Got carried away.”
On Friday afternoon, Elisabeta tells them in halting English that she’ll be gone to the big hospital in Grasseto from Sunday evening all the way through to Tuesday afternoon. Signora Abruzzi, their nearest neighbor, has agreed to cook for them in her absence, she says. As for the cleaning…well… Maddalena…?
Here she hesitates, small black eyes darting between them, anxious fingers twisted in the front of her apron. Ro, resplendent and unreadable behind dark glasses and a paperback novel, says nothing.
It’s up to Andrea, then, to resolve the tension. She smiles and sips Elisabeta’s homemade lemonade, tart and thick and syrupy, like melted sorbet, squeezed from the tiny sweetish lemons that grow in aromatic groves all along the nearby coast. It’s difficult to imagine a response that’s going to please both the old woman and Ro, too.
“Ah,” she says finally, shrugging. “But of course there’s no problem. It’s perfect timing, really.” They’ve been contemplating a weekend of shopping in Siena. Signora Abruzzi needn’t worry herself about the cooking. As for Sorella Maddalena, if she’d just be so kind as to turn down the linens on Monday afternoon in anticipation of their return and perhaps lay out a cold supper, they won’t require anything more of her.
Ro shifts slightly behind her novel at this, though her expression doesn’t change. Elisabeta breaks into smiles and relieved chatter. Certo, certo, molto giusto, molto bene. If the Signora and the…ah, Signora…are to be away…ah, then, everything is solved. Elisabeta can go to her appointment without worrying; Signora Abruzzi will not be overtaxed with work; Maddalena can observe Sunday services and be back on Monday morning to ready the villa for their arrival.
Grazie. Grazie. Molto, molto bene.
Ro is less voluble, but equally pleased. “You’re a better liar than you used to be,” she murmurs later, against Andrea’s cheek. “It’s hot.”
They’re in the pool. Ro’s lips are cool and wet, curled up just now in a knowing little half smile. The upper curves of her small high breasts, pushed up and out of her bathing suit by its built-in padded bra, are beginning to show a tinge of pink; she’s always been more likely to burn than to tan. I ought to make her put on more sunblock, Andrea thinks, but Ro moves in closer, one hand pulling
aside the wet spandex that separates them, and it’s far easier to succumb to the decadent zero-gravity delights of underwater fucking than to force herself to move away.
Ro turns her to face the villa. She grabs the pool’s slippery tile edge with both hands to steady herself.
“Look at the windows,” Ro directs from behind her, holding her by the hips and navigating past her swimsuit bottom with one practiced, determined thrust. Andrea was expecting that, but it’s still a thrill; something about the dichotomy of lapping water and sun on her shoulders and Ro inside her makes her helpless and liquid from the neck down, as if her brain turns off the minute her sex engages. “She’s watching us, isn’t she?”
It’s true; the sheer white curtain on the French doors leading off the terrace into the cool interior of the villa has been tugged slightly askew. The sun glinting off the water makes it difficult to tell, but if Andrea squints hard she thinks she can make out a shadowy figure behind the curtain. The possibility that it’s Maddalena sends a throb of longing through her that rides the border between pain and pleasure. She bites her lip.
“Isn’t she?” Ro prompts again, low voiced and pleased with herself. She slides her hands up to cover Andrea’s breasts, finds her nipples through the wet fabric of the suit, and pinches hard.
Andrea groans, nods, groans again.
Ro half-lifts her until her upper torso kisses the hot terrazzo tiles at the side of the pool and moves in close. She braces herself against the side of the pool, finds a better angle, fucks harder.
“Well, what are you waiting for?” she pants, pulling Andrea’s head back by a handful of her wet hair so she can’t look away from the window. “If I’m going to do all the work, you can at least show her what she’s missing, can’t you?”
Andrea—humiliated, uncomfortable, unspeakably and astronomically aroused—is happy to comply.
“So we’re not really going into Siena, then?” she ventures that night after dinner. She’s just finished brushing her teeth. Ro’s sitting up in bed with her laptop open on her knees.
“Oh, we’re going,” she says, hitting the enter button with a flourish. “Too much relaxing in the country is bad for the soul. Or the digestion. Or something.” She closes the Power-Book, pushes it off her lap, and gives the comforter beside her an invitatory pat. “How long we’ll stay, now…” She strokes Andrea’s hair, her eyes gleaming and far away. “That’s another question entirely.”
They leave Siena directly after breakfast on Monday morning. The drive back is silent and tense with expectation—so charged, in fact, that Andrea starts to backpedal.
Maddalena won’t be there, she tells herself. She’ll be gone already. Or prudently out of sight. Or she’ll scuttle out the door the moment their car pulls up.
She’ll be afraid. She’ll be indifferent, or righteously indignant, or disgusted.
It’ll never happen.
But when Andrea, laden with shopping bags and the smaller of their suitcases, gets to the top of the stairs and opens the door to the master suite, Maddalena’s bent over making the bed. She looks up and spins around with a gasp. She’s holding a pillow that’s half-in and half-out of a freshly ironed pillowcase.
“Signora,” she says, catching her lower lip with her teeth. It’s too perfect, like a porn movie, or a Penthouse letter. Andrea can’t help but think that it isn’t really happening, even as Ro comes in with the big suitcase and puts it down inside the door, even as she’s caught up in an embrace that’s at once frankly sensual and bone-meltingly tender.
Ro’s at her best when she’s kissing for an audience. By the time she comes up for air and pushes Andrea gently to the side, they’re both breathing hard and trembling with excitement. Maddalena hasn’t moved; she’s watching them wide eyed from the other side of the bed, still clutching her pillow. Ro sinks down sideways on the bed, takes the pillow away, and reaches for the girl’s hand. Maddalena flinches and lets out her breath in a little huff, but doesn’t pull away.
It’s that easy, that surreal. Andrea blinks at the pair of them, at the virgin in sensible navy blue now held swooning in the cradle of Ro’s arms. She watches Ro unpin the white-linen headdress, watches Maddalena’s hair tumble down her back in a pair of heavy dark braids. Ro wraps the braids around one fist and tugs with more tenderness than force, just enough to make Maddalena’s head fall back against her shoulder. Her throat bends into a line as pure and golden as an Italian sunset. Ro kisses it, and the little nun makes her first sound, a moan that’s far more capitulation than protest.
For Andrea, who has expected at the most to be the one holding Maddalena still, the one offering kisses and comfort as a foil to Ro’s ferocity, this tableau on the bed is at least as perplexing as it is arousing. Even before she looks, she knows there’s a challenge in Ro’s eyes: Well, what now? she seems to be asking. Andrea remembers those words from the middle of some other, earlier night, and shudders.
She’s all yours. You’re all mine.
She kicks off her shoes, sits down on the foot of the bed, and puts her hand on Maddalena’s ankle. There’s something building in her that she can’t identify for a moment; it’s her sun-dappled fantasy from a week ago, she realizes, the one she’d thought lost in the aftermath of Ro’s more colorful speculations.
Sunlight. White sheets. Two women in a quiet bedroom.
Well, okay. Make that three.
She looks up and meets Maddalena’s frightened, fascinated eyes. “Shhhh,” she says, one finger on her lips, and smiles. “Sta bene.”
Her hands slide up under the navy blue cotton of the habit to rest on Maddalena’s knees. Far above her, Ro whispers something meaningless and comforting as she strokes the small round face. Maddalena’s knees part on a little sigh, and Andrea’s hands move higher, leading from the balls of her thumbs, tracing tiny circles. She skims one thumbnail in a light vertical line over the cotton barrier covering Maddalena’s mons, then down over where the fabric stretches tight and damp. Andrea can feel the flesh underneath it straining toward her touch. A shudder, another sigh, more whispers from Ro. Andrea lifts the navy blue skirt in both hands and settles its folds just below Maddalena’s navel.
She looks up. They’re kissing now, a pretty Italian girl in braids and a fiercely beautiful woman who can make Andrea come just by looking at her the right way. Maddalena’s hips have begun a slow instinctive roll that’s only too familiar to Andrea. This is what I must look like, she thinks, blushing. She watches the kiss deepen for just another moment before she hooks her fingers under the waistband of Maddalena’s panties and draws them down and away.
She wants pictures, she wants video, she wants to freeze this moment in amber forever, but that little patch of ebony curls is lifting off the bed in mute entreaty and Andrea plunges recklessly ahead, too fast really, two fingers drawn down the slit and between the lips, fiddling them up and apart until Maddalena’s clit is caught between them and the girl arches toward her with a yelp of such surprised, half-panicked pleasure that she slips off Ro’s lap. Ro laughs and drags her back up again, away from Andrea’s fingers, and to their delight she starts to fight, whimpering protests in time with the fast pulse in her throat.
Maddalena’s head tosses and her trapped hands beat ineffectually against the white chenille bedspread. Andrea holds her cupped palm half an inch away, just close enough to brush the black curls, and watches Maddalena struggle and thrash until she’s tired herself out and has to collapse back against Ro’s chest. She’s gleaming with a fine film of perspiration. Her habit is rucked around her waist now, all modesty forgotten.
“Don’t tease her any more,” Ro says in low tones. “Show her what it’s all about.”
Andrea nods, drags the ball of her thumb through all that syrupy wetness around the girl’s desperately clenching cunt, and rolls it over her clit. It feels grape sized and twice as thin skinned, like it’ll burst if it grows any bigger. Andrea starts a slow circle, and has to throw her free arm over one of Maddalena’s
thighs as the clit hood slips back and her wet thumb grazes the surface underneath it. She does another circuit, and another, and another. Ro has the girl’s hands pinned above her head and one arm clamped around her waist. Maddalena is panting and shaking her head and talking a blue streak in Italian.
It’s like the beginning of a joke, Andrea thinks: How do you make a nun curse?
But it’s not funny, really. Just…amazing.
She pauses to let Maddalena catch her breath, just for a second, and slides her middle and index fingers south, buzzing on those breathy little pleading sounds and the way Maddalena’s cunt flutters against her fingertips and the intense, half-feral satisfaction that flashes across Ro’s face just before she lowers her mouth to Maddalena’s throat.
Maddalena convulses. Andrea slides two fingers inside her.
Like kitten fur, she remembers Ro saying. Like pink satin.
She’s never been touched here, Andrea thinks, and feels her own clit pulse. By anyone. Ever.
Virgin skin.
And it’s easy, it’s wet, it’s tight but it’s yielding and altogether wonderful and then Maddalena gives a little gasp just as it gets not…quite…so easy.
Andrea stops pressing. Their eyes meet.
“Per favore,” Maddalena says, in a broken whisper that makes the hair on Andrea’s arms stand to attention. “Per favore…no.”
Has she ever felt so powerful? Ever?
She hesitates, just for a moment, then washes her thumb once again over Maddalena’s engorged clit. The little nun’s eyes well up and spill over, two big tears that make tracks all the way into her hairline. Andrea half expects to see them drip off the ends of her braids. Maddalena’s body shudders; her head lolls; she quivers and clenches under Andrea’s hands. Andrea pulls out her glistening fingers and fiddles them ruthlessly north again.
Virgo intacta, she thinks, sending Maddalena over another edge. But let’s make no mistake, little nun. No one’s ever going to touch you again, without you wishing they were me.
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