by Susan Stoker
“We can’t,” he said softly.
“I want it so badly too,” she murmured, as though she could feel his eyes on her.
“But I would be your first,” he said, leaning up on his side to face her.
“Yes.”
“And then we would say good-bye.”
She clenched her jaw and swallowed. “Yes.”
“I can’t do that to you, cara.”
She moved her arm, looking up at him with sparkling eyes. She wasn’t crying, which made him feel relieved, but there was such sadness in her expression that it wasn’t much comfort.
“My madrina…how she must have suffered wanting what she couldn’t have. Watching her best friend fall in love and get engaged. Knowing that the boy she loved—the man she loved—would never love her the way she wanted him to.”
“It hardened her,” said Nico, sitting up and grabbing his wineglass. “I don’t want the same for you.”
Bella folded her hands on her stomach, just under her breasts, still staring up at the sky.
“We don’t have to…make love,” she said finally, looking over at him with a hopeful expression. A slight, shy smile curled her lips, and her dark eyes twinkled. “But that still leaves a lot, doesn’t it?”
He smiled at her because he couldn’t help it. “It does.”
“So lie down beside me, handsome prince,” she sighed, “and kiss me some more.”
***
They had stayed on the roof together until almost midnight, making out, finishing the bottle of wine, and sampling the Italian treats. Nico had kissed and caressed her breasts again, and Bella had delighted in the wicked feeling of her sensitive skin bared to the cool night air. She had felt that part of him—that manly part of him that she’d never seen or touched before—grinding against her, and it had made her feel weak and wanton, desperate for things that would break her heart later.
She had agreed to see him again tonight—she had an accounting class at City College from six until eight, but Nico said he’d pick her up after class and take her out to dinner.
As she leaned her cheek against her palm, sitting at the reception desk, she tried to muster some gratitude for the way he’d stopped them from going any further, but it was hard, so very hard, to feel grateful when she wanted so much more than she could have.
Looking up, she saw Greg step off the elevator and through the glass doors at the same time Madame Gothel swept into the reception area.
“For meeeeee, Gregory?” she asked, gesturing to the bouquet of red roses he held in his arms.
“Uh, no, ma’am. For Bella, actually.”
Madame’s eyes shot to Bella, who wiped the bursting smile off her face and tried to look shocked instead. “What?”
“For, uh…for Bella. They were dropped off at the reception desk by the Princess Valentina.”
“Oh,” said Bella, flicking a glance at her godmother, whose eyebrows were bunched together in confusion and anger.
“The princess sent flowers for Bella?”
“She dropped them off with me. Yes, ma’am.” Greg nodded at each of them, depositing the enormous bouquet on the reception desk and then turning and heading back toward the elevator.
Madame Gothel’s eyes lingered on the roses for a long moment before she raised her glare to Bella. “Why is the princess sending you roses, Bella?”
“I have no idea. Perhaps there’s a card that explains?”
Madam took the bouquet of flowers before Bella could collect them and inspected them for a card. “No. None.”
Bella gulped nervously. “Maybe they’re to thank me for having lunch with her?”
With narrowed eyes, Madame slowly placed the flowers back on the counter. “I am not a fool, Bella Capelli. Play me for one, and you will lose.”
“I’m not playing games,” she said.
“I heard you come in at midnight last night. Were you with the princess?” Madame leaned closer to Bella. “The rumor around the hotel is that the princess’s wedding to the Trainor billionaire is a sham. Perhaps she’s not interested in him. Or men at all, for that matter. Perhaps she’s interested…in you.”
Bella couldn’t help it: she chortled at the thought of Valentina hitting on her. “I highly doubt it.”
“Just remember, Bella, dating any hotel guest, of any sex, would break our agreement. Yes?”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Bella.
“A hotel employee who dates the guests is little better than a prostitute,” she reminded Bella in hushed tones. “And sluts who fuck guests certainly don’t live under my roof.”
Bella’s cheeks flared with heat as she stared back at Madame.
“Understood,” she whispered.
“Wonderful,” said Madame Gothel, backing away from the reception desk and turning back into the salon.
I have to get out of here.
I have to get out of here.
As soon as Nico is gone, I will figure out a plan.
***
“So tell me,” said Nico, offering her his arm as he picked her up after class, “how was Excel for the Masses?”
“Dull,” said Bella with a sigh. “Madame insisted that I take the class, and honestly? I like being here at college once a week. But the class itself? Ugh.”
“She wanted you to learn Excel for work?”
Bella nodded. “I split my time between styling hair, answering phones, and helping her with the books.”
“And cooking and cleaning.”
“And cooking and cleaning,” she agreed with a heavy sigh.
“Tell me this…what would you study if you could choose any subject?” he asked.
“Hmm.” She paused. “I’d be a sommelier, maybe. Or a chef.”
“So you’d go to culinary school.”
“Yes! Definitely!” she exclaimed, holding his arm tighter as he led them over to Fifth Avenue, then turned left to head downtown. “You went to college.”
“Of course,” he said. “And law school.”
“You’re far better educated than I am. I only have a secondary-school diploma.”
“You can go back and get a degree whenever you’re ready.”
“It’s very expensive here,” she said.
“But not at home,” he reminded her. “There are many public universities in Switzerland.”
“That’s true,” she said, nodding her head as though it hadn’t occurred to her before. “I guess I don’t think of myself as Swiss anymore…Well, I mean, I do! Of course I do. It’s my home…where I grew up. Italian is my first language, but I’m fluent in German and French, of course, too.”
“And English.”
“Everyone in Switzerland speaks English,” she said, rolling her eyes at him. “I guess I just mean that I don’t think of myself as a Swiss-living person anymore.”
“Because your life is here.”
She stopped walking and faced him. “My life? What kind of life is this? Chattel in velvet chains to a woman who can’t stand the sight of me. She hates me, and I…well, I don’t like her very much either.” She giggled suddenly, as though shocked by the confession. “Whatever my mother once loved about her friend Helga is long gone now. I don’t like her one bit!”
Nico chuckled with her, then leaned forward to cup her face and kiss her tenderly.
“Then change your fate,” he whispered against her lips, stopping in front of a little bistro where they had a reservation for dinner, and desperately wishing he could do the same. Before he turned melancholy, he looked down, into her beautiful brown eyes. “Meet me up on the roof after dinner?”
She nodded. “Of course.”
“And tomorrow night too, Bella? It’s…our last night together?”
He saw the hesitation flare in her eyes, the moment of concern for herself and maybe even a little bit for him. Because the feelings between them were real, and saying good-bye or forgetting each other seemed almost as impossible as an Italian prince changing his destiny for a hair stylist fro
m Switzerland.
But she was brave, his Bella.
She lifted her little chin and nodded.
Chapter Seven
After dinner last night, Nico and Bella had held hands, strolling down Fifth Avenue like they had all the time in the world, when really it was winding down like crazy. They entered the hotel lobby separately, but ten minutes later, they met on the roof, falling into each other’s arms and kissing for hours. At one point, Bella had even fallen asleep on Nico’s chest, her ear over his heart and her body snuggled against his.
And that’s when she’d known—in those warm, dark moments of disappearing time before her eyes had fluttered closed—that she was in love with him.
And it didn’t matter that she’d known him for less than a week.
Or that she was a country girl and he was an Italian prince.
Or that he was older and infinitely more sophisticated than she.
It didn’t matter that she had no money and he had to marry for it.
Or that she had no solid and safe plan for her life.
Or that she lived in New York and he’d be leaving for Florence on Sunday.
None of it mattered.
None of it could have shaken the certainty of her feelings.
This was the feeling that had shone in her father’s eyes when he looked at her mother; this was the dream deep and safe in the furthest reaches of every woman’s beating heart. This feeling. The absoluteness of it.
She held on to it, even made a lullaby of it, letting the words Ti amo slip between every beat of his heart as she drifted off to sleep.
He’d shaken her awake an hour later when the hands of every clock they could see on the skyline pointed straight to heaven. It was already midnight, and besides the fact that she needed to be at work by six tomorrow, if she wasn’t careful, she’d find the locks changed on the penthouse door one evening soon.
They’d kissed good-bye, and Bella had known a sudden courage as she assured him that she’d find him on the roof for their final night tomorrow. No more tears. No more grieving for what could never be. Just a quiet certainty that there was nothing left to save herself from; love had come, and there was no sense anticipating the fracturing of her heart now because it was a foregone conclusion. She knew, with a new sense of enlightenment, that she may have found the love of her life in Nico De’Medici, to whom she’d already given her heart. And yes, it might be a long life of yearning if she never saw him again, but her wish for thirty minutes of wonderful over a lifetime of nothing special had come true.
So when she climbed up the stairs on Thursday evening after work, it was with the intention of holding nothing back and having no regrets. If she was to live the rest of her life without her heart, the least she could do was honor her feelings by not being sad or afraid. There would be plenty of time for sadness and fear. Tonight? Tonight was all about love.
“You’re here,” he said the moment she opened the door and walked into the stairwell.
“You scared me!” she said, placing her palm over her chest and giggling, breathless with happiness to see him again.
He reached for her, cupping the back of her head and kissing her in the dark cement hallway before leaning away. “I would have waited in the corridor, but I didn’t want anyone to see me. This was the closest I could get to the elevator. Come on. I’m all set up.”
Taking her hand, he climbed the stairs to the roof, pulling her behind him.
Like last night, he’d organized a little picnic for them, complete with another bottle of Ticino Merlot and his iPhone playing soft music.
“I thought I’d take a risk with the music,” he said. “Do you like Christina Perri?”
She nodded. “I loved the Twilight movies. Her song “A Thousand Years” was sort of their theme.”
As “Sea of Lovers” started playing, he raised his hands to her. “Dance with me?”
He shucked off his flip-flops, and she toed off her ballet flats, stepping into his arms. She placed one hand on his shoulder and pressed her other palm against his. He wrapped one arm around her waist and pulled her closer, looking deeply into her eyes.
As Christina Perri sang of lovers losing time and hope, wishing they could follow one another to the very ends of the earth, Nico’s heart clutched, because he couldn’t follow his Bella anywhere. In just a few more precious hours, she would be lost to him forever.
“Oh, Bella,” he breathed, his voice gravelly with aching longing, breaking with emotion.
He pulled her flush against him as the thrumming drumbeat kicked in, his arms locking around her waist and his fingers curling into her lower back. His breath was shallow, short bursts of misery against the skin of her neck as they moved slowly together.
“Don’t be sad,” she whispered, looping her arms around his neck to press her heart closer to his, and resting her cheek against his shoulder as they rocked to the music.
The music faded away and Bella breathed deeply.
“I’m going home,” she said softly.
“Right now?” he asked, his voice clipped with panic.
“No,” she said, leaning back to look up at him. “I mean…I’m going back to Ticino, Nico.”
His eyes scanned hers. “When?”
“As soon as I can manage it.” She sighed, smiling up at him. “This isn’t my home. Not really. And after today…” She tilted her head to the side. “I will always remember our days in New York, but I think I’d rather think of it as a fairytale. A perfect, imaginary time. A big, beautiful city where handsome princes fall in love with—” She gasped. “Oh, Dio! I didn’t mean you’d fallen…”
“It’s true,” he said, nodding slowly, holding her eyes with a searing intensity. “It’s the truth. Say it. Say what you were going to say. I want to hear you say it.”
“Okay.” She nodded at him. “…a big, beautiful city where handsome princes fall in love with country girls from little towns far, far away.”
He clenched his jaw, still nodding at her. “I did. I fell in love with you.”
“So did I,” she admitted, chuckling bitterly. “Stupid us.”
“Stupid us.”
“I’m not sorry,” she said. “I’m not sorry that I found you. I’m not sorry I fell in love with you.”
“Me neither,” he said, his eyes darkening as they flicked to her lips, then trailed slowly back up her face. “I’ll never forget you, Bella.”
“Nico…” she said, determined to tell him what she wanted before she lost her nerve. “Remember on Tuesday night? When you said that you wouldn’t be my first? That you wouldn’t do that to me?”
“I remember.”
“I want you to be my first.”
“Bella—”
“I’m not a child. I’m a grown woman and I’m making this decision for myself. I want you to be my first. I want…you. All of you.”
***
The part of him that wanted to protect her, to keep her from making a mistake that she might regret for the rest of her life, was overruled by the simple and miraculous fact that they loved each other. He didn’t care that he was all but promised to someone else; tonight he was still free, and tonight his heart, and his body, would belong to no one but Bella.
She took his hand and led him over to the blanket, reaching down for the hem of her dress and pulling it over her head.
Without touching her or dropping his eyes to look at her body, he reached behind his neck and pulled his T-shirt and dress shirt over his head, standing bare-chested before her. Reaching for his belt buckle, he unfastened it, then unbuttoned and unzipped his jeans, wiggling a little so they fell to his ankles. Kicking them away, he took a step toward her.
Standing almost naked in the moonlight, she reached behind her neck and pulled several pins from her hair, letting it tumble over her shoulders. Then she unclasped her bra and let it slip down her arms and to the rooftop with a whisper.
Suddenly her face exploded into a smile, and she let her eyes fall,
sliding tenderly down his throat, over the ridges of muscle on his chest, and lingering at the bulge in his underwear before dropping them to his feet.
Following her example and thirsty to drink in her beauty, he savored the curve of her neck and the delicate arc of her small shoulders. Her breasts—small, rounded orbs of sensitive flesh—made his heart race. He dropped his eyes to her smooth, flat belly, then to the black panties that covered the part of her he craved so desperately. Her legs, surprisingly long and pale, were slightly knock-kneed, which made his chest swell with so much love he wondered how he could possibly bear it all.
Staring at her tiny feet, he realized, yet again, how much bigger he was than she, and not willing to frighten her, he held out his hand, keeping his eyes down until he felt her fingers lace between his. When he looked up, she was staring at his erection.
“Will it hurt?” she asked, sliding her eyes up to meet his.
“We’ll go slow.”
She nodded, her chest rising and falling as she took a deep breath. “I trust you.”
“Just for tonight,” he said, sweeping her into his arms before dropping to his knees on the blanket and laying her gently against the softness, “you’re mine, cara. And just for tonight, I’m yours.”
Leaning over her, he reached for the black lace of her panties, pulling them over her slim hips and down her legs, baring her to the night and to him—to his eyes, to his lips, to his mouth, which watered for a taste of her.
Kneeling between her legs, he leaned down, letting his bare chest press gently against hers as he kissed her deeply, his tongue slipping between her lips to find hers. He flattened his forearms on either side of her head and loved her mouth with his, rubbing her breasts with his chest, thrusting lightly against her naked body as he kissed her.
Sliding his lips down the graceful column of her throat, he inhaled her smell, nuzzling her warm, soft skin, wishing that he had a thousand nights like this one instead of just one. How he would have worshipped the night, gratitude bursting in his heart for the honor of loving her under the moon, under the stars, in their bed, under the covers, forever.