Nights in Black Satin

by Noelle Mack

  He came down the magnificent marble staircase, looking just as respectable, right down to the self-satisfied expression on his face. She liked the other Marco more, but she didn’t say anything.

  “Bellissima. There you are. Come.”

  She raised her gloved hand to his, and he led her outside to where the gondolier stood on the back of the slender, black-painted craft. It had a domed shell in the middle under which they could retreat, protected from wind and water—and prying eyes.

  Getting in would be a test of agility. Voluminous skirts, petticoats, a hoopy thing tied around her waist that made the layers of material stand out—historical dress was an incredible pain in the ass. The corset didn’t pinch, though, which surprised her. The maid who’d dressed her had adjusted the laces to Sarah’s body with expert speed, making no comment as she worked.

  The one good thing: Sarah’s breasts were pushed up to sexy new heights. The maid had draped an exquisite veil over them and tucked it into the bodice in concealing folds.

  Nonetheless, Marco cast a lecherous look down, admiring the hint of cleavage he could see. He got into the gondola first to help her, putting his hands around her waist and lifting her in when she hesitated on the final step of the palazzo.

  It was high tide and the pilings that the building rested on were completely covered. Water lapped against the steps, and the striped mooring pole of the gondola was reflected in it, wiggling in the ripples.

  Safely ensconced, she smoothed her skirts and gave Marco a triumphant smile. The gondolier began to sing loudly and lustily, his melodies heard and echoed by other gondoliers in other canals, as was the custom. They were off.

  They went through narrow canals and under stone bridges, moving swiftly past other gondolas that sometimes were no more than an inch away. But the gondoliers never stopped, anticipating precisely how much room there was and shooting forward when the moment was right.

  As far as she could see, Venice had not changed much in a couple of hundred years. The houses along the maze of back canals were newer, that was for sure. Clotheslines were strung between them, bedsheets and men’s shirts and women’s drawers like white flags that testified to cleanliness, then and now.

  Looking up and down, she saw children playing in the campos, the open squares that the streets led into, trying to provoke the innumerable cats that lounged around all over Venice. Ombra, Marco’s cat, was a very privileged creature by comparison. Sarah glimpsed a brat receiving a swift, avenging scratch from one and she smiled to herself.

  Their gondolier swerved into a wider canal that led them under the Rialto bridge, where food sellers in boats hawked fruit and vegetables and fish, crowding the waterside and shouting out to the women going by in gondolas—beautiful, demure wives and bold courtesans, all of whom were accompanied by servants as well as their faithful gondoliers. They had come out to shop, and, more importantly, to see and be seen.

  Some of them noticed Marco and waved.

  “Do they know you?” He was waving back and smiling in a way that thoroughly irked her.

  “Of course not. I am someone they haven’t seen before. A new man, in other words. Worth investigating.”

  Sarah reminded herself that she had known him all of three days, give or take a few intervening centuries, and had no real right to be jealous. But she was, and she had no intention of sharing him. She cast a steely glance at one brazen hussy, who simply shrugged and looked the other way.

  The demure wives were slightly more discreet, glancing in Marco’s direction when they thought her attention was elsewhere. Sarah couldn’t quite catch them at it but she was piqued all the same. Could they see that she wasn’t wearing a wedding ring from this distance? That was one detail her handsome lord and master had forgotten. Maybe on purpose.

  Marco had one leg bent and propped upon the knee of the other, showing off his package to the women who bobbed by in their own gondolas. Men were men, in breeches or jeans. She was half tempted to roll him overboard, but her competition might come to his rescue. Getting dunked might cool off his ardor, though. And his arrogance.

  There was an unmistakable change in his personality. His manners and speech were more elegant than ever, but the look-at-me routine annoyed the hell out of her. Her first trip out of the palazzo and she was finding out that Venetian women were very quick to flirt. She contented herself with giving him a whack with her fan.

  He sat up, astonished. “What was that for?”

  “Pre-emptive strike. You don’t have to wave back at them, you know.”

  He sat up straight and gave her a kiss. “Very well. I will clasp my hands in prayer and resist every temptation.”

  “You don’t have to go that far.”

  They floated over to where about twenty sailboats were lashed together, heaped with melons. Other boats came up, letting off shoppers who wanted to poke and sniff and ask questions of the growers who’d brought the crop to the city. Sarah thought to herself that the questions probably hadn’t changed either. Farmer Gianni, how do I know if this is ripe?

  “They come from Sant’ Erasmo, another island, not far away, still part of Venice, but far more tranquil,” Marco said. “Very different from here.” He surveyed the crowded water market with amused interest.

  “Another world, huh? There are so many in this city. And so many islands.”

  “Yes. One hundred and eighteen, to be exact.”

  “Wow.” Hardly the exclamation of a Venetian lady but Sarah couldn’t fake the dialect on short notice.

  Venice seemed to her to be a mélange of many places, revealing itself at unexpected moments, everyday people mixing with those of high rank in a flow that was as constant and as changing as the water that surrounded them all. It was amazing how much the city of the eighteenth century looked like the Venice she’d first arrived in. Any of these people could find their way about if they went as far forward in time as she’d gone back. No skyscrapers, for one thing; the marshy underpinnings of Venice would sink even faster with the weight of big, new buildings. Of all the cities in the world, it kept—it would keep, she mentally corrected herself—its appearance for generations to come.

  When they left the market, the proud possessors of several enormous melons, they went deeper into the city, looking for a shop that sold artists’ colors and papers.

  Marco knew exactly where it was, which was good because she never would have found the tiny square that opened onto the canal.

  She looked for paper, settling a folio in the crook of her arm, and picked up an ingenious mechanical pencil that came with thin leads and conte crayons in sepia and black. There were handmade marbled papers that she didn’t need but admired all the same, carefully hung on doweled racks. And then there were the colors.

  Sarah lacked the expertise to mix her own, but the neat rows of boxes filled with brilliant powder in every hue were wonderful to look at. She shook her head when the storekeeper came over to assist her and handed him the things she’d picked. Marco paid, and they got back into the gondola.

  As they came out onto the Grand Canal, she saw galleys, bristling with hundreds of oars moving in rhythm from their swelling sides, and large vessels anchored in front of palazzos and houses much larger than Marco’s, many built of white marble that was dazzling in the sun. Delicate Gothic tracery adorned quite a few of them, with slender pointed arches allowing sea breezes to flow through the loggias of pastel-colored stone.

  Ahead lay the magnificent Basilica di San Marco. She could just see its five onion-shaped domes, each adorned with a cross, and the top of the campanile that rose high above the piazza.

  “Our first stop,” Marco said affably. “Of course you have seen it already—”

  “Believe it or not, I haven’t. I got off the vaporetto there when I arrived in Venice but there were just too many people.”

  The surging throngs of tourists had been tough to get through with a duffel bag and backpack, but Sarah had forged her way out. She’d gotten to the bed-
and-breakfast by a roundabout route that actually took her back across the Grand Canal, standing up in a traghetto, to the Dorsoduro and Signora Dolcetti’s. She’d dumped her bags in her shabby room, grateful to be there at last. It occurred to her now that the building already existed in this time. She ought to go by it, scratch a word or two on part of the facade and see if she could find it in her century.

  But Marco’s tap on her shoulder distracted her.

  “You were saying?

  “Oh. I was going to say that I’d thought I’d do the basilica some morning when it wasn’t so crowded.”

  “Ah.” He seemed pleased. “Well, then. You will see it now like a true Venetian and not a tourist.”

  The thought pleased her as well.

  Their gondolier maneuvered the craft through scores of others, bobbing in the little swells that pushed against the stones of the piazetta that led to the much larger piazza in front of San Marco. Little groups of people strolled there, making flocks of pigeons rise and scatter in the air, then settle again.

  Marco and Sarah disembarked, her clutching his hand as if her life depended on it. Hell, her dignity depended on it. She could just see herself falling into the Grand Canal in a great big dress that she would have to wriggle out of or sink. And then she would have to be hauled out in a soaked, seawater-smelly petticoat.

  Sarah took a deep breath and a big step from the gondola to the landing dock on the Molo, not even looking down at the water.

  Like the groups of strollers, they took their time to look at the Doge’s Palace, admiring its pierced arches and handsome basket-weave facade in dark gold and white, and she made Marco stop by the two tall granite columns by the waterfront.

  “Do not walk between them. It is bad luck. That is where they place the gallows and do worse things to the enemies of the state.”

  She hardly heard him, gazing up to see San Teodoro and the crocodile on one column and the winged lion of San Marco on the other.

  “Isn’t he wonderful?” She craned her neck to look up at the lion, which gazed out to sea with agate eyes.

  “Yes, he is.”

  The winged lion’s image was everywhere, blazing on red and gold flags. The symbol of the city. They rounded the corner into the great piazza in front of the five-domed basilica.

  Suddenly seeing San Marco, rising high above them in legendary splendor, took her breath away. It seemed far larger than it had upon her arrival, but now she wasn’t shouldering through thousands of people in souvenir T-shirts and getting bruised by their backpacks and fanny packs.

  Brilliantly colored mosaics filled the front arches, and four bronze steeds, their gilded collars glittering in the sun, stood over the central doorway. The East and West met and merged in its glorious, somewhat bizarre architecture. She had never seen anything remotely like it—it was truly a wonder of the world—and her sigh of delight made Marco smile. Yet the Venetians walking in the piazza hardly glanced at it.

  Lucky you, she thought wryly. You picked the right century to be Venetian, but the tourists are coming.

  Meanwhile, back at the palazzo, a flock of seamstresses had arrived. They sounded something like the pigeons in San Marco’s piazza, Sarah thought when she came in, their soft murmurs reminding her of the cooing birds.

  “I should have warned you that there would be so many. They have two days to make you a ball gown,” Marco said to her, handing his hat to a manservant.

  “They’re not all staying here, are they?”

  He winked at her. “Why not? The gown must be fitted very precisely. That takes many hands if it is to be made by this Friday.”

  “But where will they sleep?”

  Marco gave her a patient look. “In the servants’ quarters. They are accustomed to sharing straw.”

  “Oh. Poor things.”

  He clasped her around the waist and kissed her lightly on the lips. “They are happy to have the work. I almost envy them. All you will be permitted to wear is your corset”—he pushed aside the veil that covered her bosom and pressed a kiss on her bared skin—“or perhaps a petticoat as well to help drape the skirt.”

  “I see.” She hadn’t given a second’s thought to what it took to make a ball gown without sewing machines or patterns.

  Marco instructed the housekeeper, who seemed to be in charge of the seamstresses, to bring tea for Sarah and for them.

  “Do you mind if I watch?” he asked her innocently.

  “Is that how it’s usually done?”

  He gave her a wink. “That’s how I would like it done. A man is master in his own house, you know.”

  “Uh-huh. Well, so long as all you do is watch, then OK, yeah.” He could translate for her. That would help.

  She followed the housekeeper upstairs to a chamber that was seldom used and not as crammed with bric-a-brac and furniture as the rest of the house. The seamstresses would have room to work. The girls followed the two of them, giggling and exclaiming and looking all around, delighted to be inside a grand house.

  Sarah accepted tea from a maid who came in, holding the cup while another one undressed her. She was feeling a little crowded. Marco came into the room, greeted by more giggling and cooing.

  He settled himself in a chair, looking far too handsome for his own good, happy to be among so many pretty young women who only wanted to please him—and perhaps earn a few gold coins on the side for services that didn’t involve needle and thread.

  The hell with that. He was acting like a typical gorgeous Guido who thought that every woman automatically wanted him. Had he forgotten that she was from Brooklyn and didn’t put up with crap like that? Sarah shot him an I-know-what’s-on-your-mind look. Marco gave her a bland smile and stayed where he was, gesturing to the maid for a cup of tea.

  Sarah handed over her empty cup as the girl left. Then she removed the tucked-in veil and tossed it aside like a stripper.

  Might as well blow his mind, little by little. She raised her arms to be undressed, letting the chambermaid undo the snug bodice. Sarah cupped her bare breasts when they popped out of the low corset and looked him right in the eye.

  He drew in a breath and set his teacup aside. Sarah shed pretty much everything below the waist, standing naked in front of him—except for that corset.

  Bolts of material had been brought in and the seamstresses went to work. They cut and pinned in a hurry, but they worked skillfully. He didn’t miss the flashing glimpses of Sarah’s bare ass and breasts as he sat in the chair, riveted by the sight, a pillow in his lap.

  A few hours later, the young women took the basted-together gown carefully off her, leaving her nearly naked with Marco. He threw the pillow on the floor, revealing a huge hard-on. She had to laugh.

  “That’ll teach you.”

  He tried to get up but she pushed him down. “No, stay there.”

  “You are jealous, aren’t you?”

  “Not at all.”

  “I only have eyes for you, Sarah.”

  She bent over, her breasts in his face, and undid his breeches, releasing his cock. “I don’t think so. You liked watching that.”

  “So many women. I know they all want me.”

  She slapped him, but gently.

  “Did you not enjoy their hands on you, Sarah? You were touched everywhere.” He slipped his fingers into her curls. “Everywhere but here. You are wet. You did enjoy it.”

  She didn’t straighten up. Instead she kissed him while he played with her labia. Then she broke off the kiss to whisper in his ear. “I enjoyed teasing you. It was fun to make you think about something you weren’t going to get.”

  “Are you quite sure?” He held both her breasts so she couldn’t straighten up and nuzzled her nipples, sucking one and then the other before he spoke again. “The one with the beautiful ass would have been fun for both of us to fuck. I was imagining her on all fours, her mouth on your pussy while I took her from the back.”

  “Is that all? Wouldn’t you like me to give her a spanking f
irst? Make her so hot she couldn’t stand it?” She wanted to make him so hard it hurt and talking dirty was the fastest way to do it. “I would lick her pussy so you could watch. Tongue her nice and deep. Girl on girl. One giving, one taking.”

  His cock sprang to attention. Sarah touched it with just her fingertips, then tightened her whole hand around it. Marco moaned, looking up at her.

  “Sit on me,” he whispered, his voice raw with lust.

  She straddled him and positioned his cock, handling it a little roughly. She didn’t care; he needed some punishing. She put the head between her labia and balanced there, cupping his face and kissing him wantonly. His hands caressed her bare behind and she sat down, taking him all the way inside her. She rocked on his lap, pushing against his taut groin.

  He brought one hand around to play with her clit and got it all slicked up and hot. She rode him harder. Marco reached around and slid his wet finger into her asshole as far it would go.

  Sarah moaned. It felt good to fuck someone hard, while being fucked herself in both holes, rubbing her breasts against his hard chest. She let go of his head and grabbed her breasts, caressing them and pinching her own nipples.

  “Yes…yes…don’t stop, Sarah! Come for me…ohh…” He strained up in the chair, grabbing her ass and keeping her with him. “Come with me! Now!”

  They hit that high together.

  Marco sat back down, running his hands over her bare ass and gasping for breath.

  “That was worth waiting for,” he said after a minute.

  “I am worth waiting for.”

  “Yes. Forgive me for looking at anyone else.”

  “Never.”

  He bit her shoulder and slapped her ass. “I like you on top, Sarah, but do not get carried away with your sense of power. As an Italian man, it is my duty to make all women happy.”

  She twined her arms around his neck. “Me first.”

  He laughed. “Of course. Teasing you is impossible, do you know that?”