by Tom Barry
As he entered his sparse and depressing overnight billet he freed his mind from the snares of her body and congratulated himself on having insisted on booking separate rooms; there would be no confrontation, no eruption of whatever it was that was boiling inside her when she returned. He turned the deadlock with relief and picked up one of his mobile phones to call Rusty, who insisted on him checking in every night regardless of where he was. When no answer came, he flung the phone onto the bed. He flipped his laptop open but the stress of the day was taking its toll, and his tired mind was unable to pick up where he had left off. He found his eye straying to his second mobile phone and before long he could resist its allure no longer. He picked it up, entertaining himself with the concise erotica that Lucy texted him on a daily basis, as he waited for his wife to call back.
As he read the texts, one after the next, each becoming more graphic and more absorbing than its predecessor, he yearned for her body and half got up. He would go to her room and make her his again. But no sooner had he risen, than a knock on the door preempted his resolve. Lucy was posing in the corridor, standing legs apart, one hand on hip, and the other dangling two miniature bottles of in-flight champagne. Her blouse was loose outside her skirt, and fully unbuttoned, the cups of her lacy bra exposed above her bare midriff.
“Room service, sir?” she enquired. Jay stepped forward just enough to glance right and left, and hauled her through the door.
“Get in here, you slut,” he commanded, kicking the door shut and pressing her against it. He could not fight the intense urgency that consumed him; even the glint of victorious elation in Lucy’s eyes was not enough to quell his passion.
She managed to slip her wrists from the cuffs of her blouse as he was in the process of slipping the bra down her long tanned arms and both fell to the floor to be trampled by ardent, impassioned feet. The sight of her naked torso, bare of all but a nipple ring, aroused him yet further and he pushed her up the door, lifting her body from the floor until her breast was at head height. He proceeded to bite into and around the nipple ring as she pulled the back of his head into her breasts.
“No teeth marks now, there’s Rob to think about.”
Regardless, he sunk his teeth hard around her nipple.
“Ooh, what has gotten into you tonight, tiger?”
But he was hardly hearing what she was saying, and it was something other than pleasant conversation that he had on his mind at that exact moment. Without responding, he spiralled around, still holding her, and carried her to the bed. If she had not been attached to him in so unladylike a position, her legs wrapped around his waist, the manoeuvre might have counted as one of the more romantic gestures of their relationship. Just as bliss began to envelop, the shrill sound of his phone pierced the magic, cutting through his lust like a knife. It could only be Rusty at such a late hour.
“Answer that and you are dead meat,” warned Lucy, pouncing on him like a kitten and holding him to the bed with fire in her eyes.
Jay’s hand inched towards the phone, before he withdrew it; it was not yet so late that he would not be expected to be taking calls, and it was only a few minutes since he had left a message. He could only reasonably be in one place, his hotel room. But Lucy was proceeding at a whirlwind pace; yanking off his belt and tossing it behind her with all the regard she had for his marriage.
Yet she seemed to read his mind and to sense his dilemma. “She will just think you are in the bathroom,” she said. “If it’s important she’ll ring back, and if I’m done with you by then, you can answer it. Right now, the only thing you need to be worrying about is how you hold out long enough till I’m good and satisfied. Because, in case you haven’t noticed, you’ve already leaked half a pint of juice into your Calvin Klein’s.”
The phone fell silent and Jay looked down to verify her observation. But the top of Lucy’s head blocked his view; he felt her tongue running over him, stimulating and teasing him with its path. He felt ready to explode and with no concern for Lucy’s pleasure, lay back to allow her to finish him.
But with a yelp of pain, all the sensations in him shattered; she had taken her thumb and forefinger and pinched hard on his most sensitive part.
“What the hell was that for?” he demanded.
“For your own good, lover boy,” she said, breathing hard and wiping her lips, “you just need chilling a bit that’s all, you’re so pumped up.”
“Well, next time can you do it with ice cubes? And only after you’ve popped them in your mouth,” he added for good measure.
“Ice cubes in the mouth? Won’t be any room for your enormous python if I do that, Julian, will there?”
The treatment she’d administered, paired with her use of the name his parents had burdened him with, seemed to have the desired effect, and she leisurely searched one-handed in her bag for her condoms, while gently running her other hand up and down his upper body. Jay for his part was content to lie still, taking in the sight of the delicious curves above him, her perfectly enhanced pear-shaped breasts standing out, with her mouth-watering nipples hard and erect. Now naked, she moved around Jay’s muscular body, pulling off his remaining clothes and exciting his skin with her fingertips. She sat back to survey her conquest with satisfaction, then rose, spread her legs across his body, rolled on the condom, and eased him inside her with an expert hand.
“That feel like how you like it, tiger, am I wet enough for you tonight?” she whispered in his ear. He could say nothing, Lucy was more than wet; she was hot and she was soaking.
“Now you be a good boy and make it last,” she said, contracting her pelvic muscles and squeezing him as she tested his self-control. “We don’t want any wham bam, thank you ma’am, do we now, just because your luscious Lucy has kept you waiting a teeny little bit?”
She gyrated on top of him as he played with her nipple in his mouth, curling his tongue around the ring. He could barely contain himself. But as he approached the point of no return she was giving every indication of being in full control of her senses.
“You are not going to shoot yet, are you, babes?” she enquired, nibbling and probing into his ear as she did so. “Sorry about tonight, darling,” she continued, “it’s just that I got some news today.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Jay said, confused by her sudden desire for conversation.
“It’s just that I have this wedding coming up.” She gave another squeeze and held it. “And now Rob can’t make it.”
Jay merely grunted in reply, his capacity for speech rendered useless by her lovemaking.
“So you are ok to take me to the wedding, aren’t you, Jay?” she continued, holding herself still to wait for his confirmation. He was at a point where he would agree to almost anything to achieve climax and replied with a simple “Sure, whatever.”
“No, not whatever. You will take me to the wedding, won’t you?” she persisted, suspending herself above him, her curves defined against the light.
“Yes, don’t worry, I’ve said I will, haven’t I?” he replied.
She smiled and sank down on him as far as she could go and he closed his eyes with a groan as she finally took him.
They lay next to each other, her head on his shoulder, and Jay felt the need to sleep washing over him. “What was that about a wedding?” he asked as he entered the twilight zone of semi-consciousness.
“We can talk about it later, try and get some sleep now,” she whispered, stroking his chest. “You’ll be needing your strength again a bit later.”Fifteen
After their trials in the hills of northern Tuscany, Isobel awoke back in their Florence hotel to glorious sunshine, and to the sound of Peter humming as his electric shaver whirred away. Perplexed, she made her way to the bathroom. She stood behind him, her arms around his waist, their faces reflected back at them in the mirror, his beaming, hers full of uncertainty.
“Well,” she said, “are you going to tell me the good news?”
“I got a message overnight
. The job in Texas looks like it could be on.” Peter had not sat idle as his troubles over the Tokyo fallout mounted. He had called in a favour from an old client, Bill Rogers, the CEO of Reynolds Computer based in Dallas. It was a Board appointment as Strategy Director; if the worst came to pass, it was a position he could take with his head held high. “They want me to go across.”
A sudden feeling of elation ran through Isobel, and she hated herself for it.
“When will you be going?”
“Sometime in the next week. I’ve already emailed Rachel to liaise with Bill’s office.”
Isobel bridled at the sound of Rachel’s name, and she found herself tightening her hold on her husband’s waist. But the strange feeling of insecurity passed as quickly as it came as she reflected on her good fortune that Peter’s mood had been transformed for the day ahead.
The sun blazed through the windshield as they set off towards Capadelli along the scenic roads of the Arno valley, a convoluted route that they had decided on in high spirits at breakfast that morning, and a welcome relief from the flat, grey motorways that had loomed the evening before. It was a decision in keeping with their reinvigorated mood and the glorious weather. A greater contrast to the inclement climate of the previous day was hard to imagine and Peter was now conciliatory; he even offered to do the driving, allowing Isobel to relax and enjoy the journey.
They drove at a leisurely pace, stopping first in Vinci to visit the museum, which housed a number of models of the eponymous inventor’s brilliant creations. Isobel hovered in the spacious cool rooms as Peter gazed at the great structures like a child, the enthusiastic engineering undergraduate of his youth resurfacing, as she had known it would. With pleasure, she watched his fascination, imagining him youthful again as the man she married long ago, when she was so much in love that it felt as if she was drowning.
After a full hour in the museum she suggested a coffee and as they left to seek out a café she stopped at the gift shop to buy Peter a book on the works of Leonardo da Vinci, her reminiscing having left her full of guilt and apology. But as he looked into her eyes and took it, she could not help but say, “Something for you in bed, darling, it might stimulate your inventive side.” Her words were soft and affectionate, he saw nothing in them, and so they walked to the café, lightly holding hands.
The café was simple in the extreme, a few circular wooden tables with blue-checked plastic tablecloths. The sparse bar area was absent of any decorative effort and the simple white floor tiles and whitewashed walls would not have been out of place in a south London cab driver’s retreat. Isobel took the simplicity in with a smile, sitting herself down in the knowledge that they had found the real rural Tuscany. Set upon a table in the middle of the café was a large leg of ham, next to a plate of assorted cheeses, covered by a large, clear plastic dome on which lazy flies briefly alighted. On the floor behind the bar was a crate with a dozen or so bottles with corks protruding from their necks. They were coated in a light film of dust, with no labels to declare their origin or vintage.
She chatted in Italian with the aging owner, a man whose eyes seemed to have fallen back into his skin over the years, now glinting out like coal from beneath the pleasant crinkles, and Peter ordered two coffees, his blank expression betraying his pitiful grasp of Italian. As another customer entered, Isobel turned her attentions to Peter, offering some unsolicited views on the contrasts between Tuscany and Provence, the site of their ill-fated holiday home.
“This is so refreshing after Provence, isn’t it, Peter?” she said, sipping her coffee in satisfaction. “It’s a much simpler environment. Less commercialised, and without all those Brits spoiling the ambience.”
“I guess so, but I think you’ll find plenty of them here too.” He was unwilling to concede anything about Provence; even the dazzling sunshine was not enough to coax him into buying a house in Italy.
“Perhaps in the major tourist cities like Florence,” she mused, “but it seems so unspoilt here. I mean, just look around. About as far as you could get from Starbucks without going to North Korea.” She had picked up on one of his favourite gripes and waited expectantly for a positive reply.
“North Korea, darling?” he asked, more than willing to play her game. “I thought you were comparing Tuscany to Provence? I’m sure we’ll find Starbucks in Pisa and Florence, just next to the McDonald’s in all probability. And I’m betting they will be just like the Starbucks and the McDonald’s in Cobham high street.” He smiled as he shot her arguments back at her. “At least the French insist they make some concessions to Gallic language and culture.”
Isobel smiled but rose to the bait nonetheless. “Peter, you haven’t been in a McDonald’s for at least twenty years, and the only time you go in Starbucks is when you are searching for a Wi-Fi connection for your penis.”
He winced; she had titled his phone a penis when his email addiction was in its infancy, convinced that only something that gave sexual pleasure could be so frequently in his hand. He hated the nickname with a passion and twisted his mouth in discomfort.
“I think it would be polite to either pay or order another coffee,” she said, aware of her victory, “and we have so much to do today. I’d like us to spend some time in San Miniato. That might also be an opportunity to draft a few of those power emails that I’m sure have been on your mind since this morning,” she added, knowing the button she was pressing.
His face brightened at the reminder of his message from Dallas, validation of his importance, that he was still a man in demand, and he paid the two-euro bill with a five-euro note and left the change, throwing his face to the sun as they stepped back outside.
The countryside seemed to grow greener and richer as they drove through the valley and the hilltop town of San Miniato soon came into view, rising above the verdure like a citadel, magnificent and gold against the midday sky. Isobel had suggested their fleeting visit as it coincided with the annual crostini festival, a perfect opportunity to immerse themselves in the heart of Tuscan culture. They strolled into the labyrinthine centre with its narrow streets and tall buildings and the delicious aroma of food. The area of the festival was thronged with Italians, eating together in extended family groups, the tiny children darting in and out of the old people’s legs, as the sun glanced off their leathery skin.
The place was buzzing with noise and with life, an abundance of food laid out on stalls for perusal and selection.
“How does this work?” asked Peter, who hated any form of disorganisation. “Do we try to secure some seating, and do I need to protect it while you order the food? Or do we just make a run for the food and take our chances we’ll be able to get seats?”
“I expect the thing to do is to ask,” she said, trying to disguise her impatience, “and as I’m the only one of us who speaks Italian, I guess on this occasion you have a valid reason for being reluctant to seek help.”
She engaged a handsome young man wearing an apron, intent it seemed on some urgent task. He was all too happy to help, but offered his guidance at a pace that Isobel doubted Italians themselves could understand.
“Not as simple as forming an orderly line then?” Peter smirked, as the man melted into the crowd, leaving Isobel perplexed.
“Peter, this is Italy,” she said in exasperation, “and anyway, forming a line is less fun than doing things the Italian way.”
“And what is the Italian way, exactly, in these circumstances?”
“First we need to do a bit of a tour to decide what we might want to eat. Then we buy different coloured vouchers at different prices, then we go and spend those vouchers at the various food stalls, then sometime later someone will bring the food and drinks. But before we do all that, we need to select a table number.” She folded her arms, daring him to contradict her understanding.
“They’re all full, in case you hadn’t noticed,” he said.
“Yes, but you are the one in the solutions business, I believe. I’ve done all the researc
h work, so figuring out how we get space on one of these benches is down to you.” She had injured his weakest spot and he shrugged in assent.
“Well, we could just hover menacingly around someone who seems to be on the coffee course?”
Isobel burst out laughing. “I think maybe it’s better if you leave me to sort out the solution bit too. This way.”
Under her redoubtable leadership all the obstacles were quickly overcome, and the two found themselves seated alongside a family of Italians spanning four generations. A round woman with a nose like a potato turned to Isobel with a kindly smile and offered her some olive bread, entering freely and welcomingly into conversation once Isobel’s fluency became apparent. All was going smoothly until Isobel indicated their destination. The mention of the word ‘Capadelli’ in an English accent drew the attention of everyone at the table, and they swivelled their heads round like owls.
“Capadelli? Inglese? You go to Capadelli to see the Inglese?” asked the woman’s husband in broken and frantic English.
Isobel’s fluent reply drew him back into his native tongue and he launched into what seemed to Peter to be an animated warning of the perils of travelling to see the Inglese in Capadelli. He watched Isobel in concern as she nodded and laughed along, the man waving his arms in wild gestures and yelling “PAZZO” at the top of his voice.
“Uh, what’s a pazzo?” he asked his wife, as their food arrived and they were left to their own company. Isobel picked at her tagliatelle with dainty fingers and shrugged, her mouth full and her eyes unwilling.
“What was all that about?” he persisted. “Seems like he was giving us some kind of warning about the English, or about Capadelli, or about both. Have we stumbled into the Italian equivalent of Transylvania or something?”
“A bit melodramatic,” she laughed, “and I think the tagliatelle is heavy on the garlic, so I’m sure we will be ok. But it does seem like Capadelli has achieved some kind of celebrity status with the locals.”