She's The One

by J. J. Murray

  I love wearing him. “That’s beside the point. Who are you?”

  Pietro put his face close to hers. “You don’t recognize me? I’m not surprised. We met for only about an hour fifteen years ago. My Honey Love. The cab scene.”

  Katharina stared. The guy who kept staring at me in the rearview mirror? “You were much skinnier then.”

  He rolled onto his back. “Yeah, I was. But you didn’t know or care who I was back then.”

  “Who are you?”

  “I am Pietro Lucentio, son of Antonio Lucentio, brother to Vincenzo Lucentio. And you are on my estate.”

  Katharina’s mind went completely blank.

  Pietro ran his knuckles down her arm. “I like this quiet side of you, Katharina.”

  “That huge house I saw over there,” Katharina whispered.

  “Yeah, that’s mine. I built it myself. Built all these cabins, too.”

  She rolled toward him and bounced her fist off his chest. “Why’d you build cabins without electricity, hot water, or central heat?”

  He covered her fist with his hand. “Cabins are supposed to be rustic. No frills. Raw. Just enough of the necessities of life.” He kissed her palm. “I wish I could kiss these cuts and calluses away.”

  Katharina settled her head on Pietro’s shoulder. “I … I don’t know what to say. I can’t think of …” She sat up. “What’s … what’s going on? I mean, what’s really going on here, Alessandro? I mean, Pietro, I mean, whatever your name is.”

  “Is Pietro.” Pietro pulled her back to him, massaging the back of her neck. “My brother Vincenzo got it in his head to put us together since we’re both allergic to marriage and relationships. I’ve been engaged six times.”

  Is this just a five-million-dollar hookup? Oh God! It can’t be! “Why have you been engaged so often?”

  “What woman would want to live up here?”

  Though the house is nice … “I see your point.”

  Pietro sighed and hugged her to him. “Yet here we are.”

  Katharina’s mind spun, flip-flopped, and ran into a brick wall. “So I’m not making a movie at all?”

  “Oh no. You’re making a movie all right. In fact, you’re probably making two.”

  “What?”

  Pietro sighed. “Now don’t get mad. We’ve been filming you one way or another since you got here.”

  Katharina’s mind did a somersault, bounced off a mountain, and tumbled down a hill. “What?”

  “I don’t think there are any hidden cameras in here, but in your cabin …” He winced. “They’re just about everywhere.”

  Katharina tried to jump up, but Pietro held her down.

  “No,” Katharina said slowly. “No, they aren’t! Sly is the only one filming unless I’m wearing that headset.”

  He pulled her on top of him, holding her face in his hands. “Sly is my brother Vincenzo in a very bad wig.”

  Oh … shit. I am being out-acted here. They said they were cousins! They argued so convincingly! Pietro let his brother smack the shit out of him!

  “Vincenzo is helping to film the main movie, yes. The other film is being monitored by John Fisher over at my house. I have no idea what they’re going to do with it, but right now, I don’t care. I’m sure you have a few questions.”

  That’s all I have! “Who sent those shitty script pages?”

  “Walter Yearling. He’s at the house, too.”

  Oh, Walter! How could you do this to me? “So Walter sent those simple ideas … This is all beginning to fit.” No, it isn’t. I just sometimes say things that make me feel saner when I’m losing my freaking mind!

  Pietro pushed her back just enough. “We fit together, yes?”

  He’s inside me again … I can’t think. “Yes, we do, and nicely, but … just … don’t move, okay? I’m a little sore.”

  “You’re just a little small down there.”

  Katharina smiled. “It’s been a long time. No thrusts.” It’s so hard to think with all this wood inside me. “So this has all been a … a joke? Was Bianca in on it?”

  “You don’t pay someone five million dollars for a joke. Bianca was in on it, and most of what she told you, especially about Costa Rica, was the truth. She’s been shacked up with Vincenzo since she quit.”

  Katharina tightened her booty. “Don’t thrust. Hold it right there.” That’s … filling. “Bianca, that child has a future in the movies. She blew me away. And so did you!”

  “What did you really think of me?”

  Katharina bore down all the way and held herself against him. I will pay dearly for this tomorrow. “I hated you! You had an answer and solution for everything, and you were always around, and you were always touching me.”

  Pietro gripped her booty. “Like now.”

  “Lower,” Katharina said. “Get under my cheeks.”

  His hands slid lower and squeezed. “There?”

  “Oh yes!” Katharina cried. “But they went to all this trouble for what?”

  Pietro sat up, and Katharina wrapped her legs tightly around his back. Katharina’s entire body went rigid. “What’s wrong?” Pietro asked.

  “It’s just that … you are very deep inside my pancreas right now.”

  Pietro dropped his hips. “I’m sorry.”

  Katharina shook her head, sweat flying in the air. “No. It’s okay. I have to get used to this. I have to get used to making love to you. Y’all went to a lot of trouble over little ol’ me. Why?”

  “They wanted ‘my honey love’ back. I think she’s back. I like your back. It bends in so many interesting ways.”

  Katharina plunged down, then up quickly. “They wanted … I’m still confused.”

  “They’ve been calling it an intervention. My brother thinks you are the greatest actress of all time, and up until recently, I disagreed. I thought you were an absolute bitch.”

  Say what you mean, Pietro.

  “I mean,” Pietro continued, “you put the prima in donna, the stuck in up, the ego in maniac.”

  Katharina eased down and came up slower this time. “I understand what a bitch is, Pietro. I’ve been looking at her in the mirror for fifteen years now. Go on. And if you want to thrust up—poco, poco—you can.”

  Pietro thrust up gently. “The bitch is gone, Katharina. You are really an amazing actress, Kate. Can I call you Kate?”

  “No.”

  “Too plain?”

  Katharina slid down as Pietro thrust up. “My last boyfriend—” Who was my last real and not media-inflicted boyfriend? It had to be when I was in the tenth grade. Geez. Twenty years ago?

  “Wasn’t Ward Booker your last boyfriend?”

  Katharina rose to the top of his shaft and rested. “Ward Booker and David Stanley were boyfriends.”

  Pietro blinked.

  “Both of them called me Kate, and that has led to fifteen years of dropping the soap …” Going down …

  Pietro smiled. “Is that what you were doing in there?”

  All stop. Wiggle. “The soap didn’t seem to mind.” I’m close again? I am such a ho! “Pietro, I’m going to hold my breath and probably make the ugliest face you’ve ever seen. I don’t want you to be scared. I want you to thrust up with all your might, okay?”

  Pietro nodded, thrust as powerfully as he could, and watched Katharina have the most intense orgasm.

  That is a scary face! he thought. I’ll just have to remember to close my eyes.

  She fell, panting, and sucked on his neck until her spasms subsided. “Thank you, thank you.”

  He pulled the bearskin over her and felt her heartbeat banging into his chest. “Watching you work out there is just … breathtaking,” he said softly. “You’ve been giving me goose bumps on top of my goose bumps. After that rough start, I believe that you are, indeed, an escaped slave trying to make it on her own in nineteenth-century Canada. You’ve taken me back in time, Katharina. It’s magic. You’re magical. Vincenzo thought, and as it turns out, rightly, th
at you needed to be put through the wringer for a while until you turned on that old magic.”

  “I can’t build that shelter for shit, though,” Katharina said. “It keeps falling down. I’ve tried digging down, but …”

  “She would have had trouble, too. It’s believable. Building any structure in this weather and in this place with just a knife and some sticks would have been next to impossible. And yet you’re so close to actually doing it.”

  “If I just had some better tools,” Katharina said.

  “Let me be your tool,” Pietro whispered.

  Katharina smiled. “I do like your tool.” She kissed him on the cheek. “And in, oh, a year, I’ll be recovered enough to play with it again.”

  “I have an idea,” Pietro said, and he whispered it in Katha-rina’s ear.

  “But then I won’t be alone, Pietro. We’ll have to change the title.”

  Pietro whispered his idea in more detail for several minutes.

  “Yeah, I guess so, and it makes a lot of sense. When do we start?”

  Pietro let his hands roam Katharina’s soft back. “Tomorrow. But you can’t let on that you know about all the cameras. Just stay your moody, bitchy self.”

  “Thanks a lot.” Katharina giggled. “We’re going to flip the script on them, huh?”

  “Yes,” Pietro said, digging his fingers into her lower back. “And there’s really no script for this, either, right? Despite all your directions.”

  “You take directions well, Mr. Non-Actor,” Katharina said. She slipped off Pietro and lay on her back, tugging his hand. “And I want to take all of you right now.”

  Pietro rolled over. “Are you sure?”

  She guided him inside her. “Yes. But you better hold my hands. If you value your back, do not let go of my hands.”

  He covered her hands with his and begin to thrust, Katha-rina’s hips rising to meet his. “I’m not hurting you, am I?”

  Katharina’s eyes filled with tears, several escaping. “Not at all, Pietro.”

  He kissed a stream of tears. “Why are you crying?”

  “I’m happy, Pietro. I haven’t been happy in a long, long time.”

  He looked into her blue-green eyes. “Neither have I, Katharina. Neither have I.” He thrust deeply and held it. “You know, if you, um, ever feel like it, you can call me Fonzi, or Alessandro …”

  Katharina laughed and broke free from his hands, raking his back with the nubs of her nails. “‘Freak me, Fonzi’ is too funny. ‘Pork me, Pietro’ is just wrong. How about … Andiamo, Alessandro’?”

  “Go. You ride.”

  Katharina deepened her voice. “Your panties are wet.”

  Pietro raised his voice. “They’re just moist.”

  Katharina gripped Pietro’s booty. “My voice isn’t that high.”

  Pietro thrust as deeply as he could. “It’s about to be …”

  Chapter 36

  Vincenzo woke to find Bianca still snuggled up to his chest. He loved the smell of her hair, the sound of her voice, the passion of her whispers, the strength of her legs, the way she howled …

  The walkie-talkie on his nightstand squawked.

  What is it now? Vincenzo thought.

  He reached over Bianca, amazed that she could sleep through the movement and the noise.

  “Yes, Fish?”

  “This is Walt. Fish said to call you at eight.”

  It’s eight o’clock already? “Where’s Fish?”

  “Asleep. He told me to tell you that one of the cameras near the clearing is iced over. He wants you or Pietro to, um, fix it, deice it, thaw it out, make it work, do what you gotta do.”

  Vincenzo scratched some crust from his eyes. “I’ll do it. Where is it?”

  “From the log you usually sit on, it’s on the tree to your immediate right about six feet up.”

  “Got it. Is Katharina up yet?”

  “No movement at all. Probably sleeping like a baby after all her hard work yesterday.”

  “Let me know when she wakes up.” He returned the walkie-talkie to the nightstand.

  He looked at his baby, Bianca, all balled up and reaching for him. Four weeks of bliss, four weeks of utter, total happiness. He had had trouble concentrating on Katharina and the movie, often taking “bathroom” breaks just to get a hug, a kiss, a little more, sometimes a lot more from Bianca. He was probably the most sleep-deprived person on the set, but he had never been as happy.

  Bianca looked up and squinted. “What’s up?”

  “Walt. One of the cameras is out of commission. He needs me to fix it.”

  “Want some oatmeal?” she whispered with a yawn.

  We’re so domestic already! “Sure.”

  “’K.” She kissed his cheek, hugged him, and squeezed his butt. “Morning.” She rolled out of bed naked and padded across the cabin. “Don’t forget your wig.” She turned and went into the bathroom, closing the door behind her.

  I can get used to seeing that every morning for the rest of my life.

  Vincenzo got up, plopped the wig on his head, and pulled a knit cap over the mess. He threw on his coat and boots, took the walkie-talkie, and left the cabin, trudging through several inches of new snow to the tree that directly faced the clearing and Katharina’s fire pit. He located a circle of snow on the tree trunk and brushed it aside, revealing the tiniest of camera lenses. He squawked the walkie-talkie: “Walt?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s it look like?”

  “A little fuzzy. Can you shine it up?”

  He used the meat of his fist to shine it. “Better?”

  “Step away.”

  Vincenzo stepped away.

  “Yep. I can see the whole clearing now. Checking zoom. Zoom okay. Panning … What’s that?”

  Vincenzo whirled around in a circle. “What’s what?”

  “Behind the thick brush, stuck in a tree.”

  Vincenzo looked and saw a hatchet, its blade embedded deep into a tree four feet off the ground. “Pietro must have left it there. His idea of a bad joke on Katharina.” He heard a splash. “Who’s in the stream?”

  “Jesus, it’s Katharina!” Walt shouted. “How’d she get by me?”

  Vincenzo tucked the walkie-talkie into his pocket and sat on the log. I look unprepared. I don’t have my camera or my monitor. I’m quite helpless.

  Katharina entered the clearing in costume, her headset on.

  Vincenzo tried to look natural.

  Katharina began making her fire. Seemingly distracted, she saw the glint of something behind her. Standing, she stared, then ducked down, looking side to side. She crouched and moved into the thick brush, looked around once more, then reached through the brush to take the hatchet. She checked the hatchet’s sharpness and put her thumb in her mouth. She looked out past the stream to the woods, slipping her knife out from under her dress. She then continued to build her fire, looking into the woods and muttering.

  I wish I knew what she was saying! Vincenzo thought.

  Katharina rushed to a stack of short sticks and began sharpening their ends, still muttering, still searching the trees.

  “I take a little nap for a few hours,” Fish said, “and all hell breaks loose. Did Vincenzo change the script?”

  “Nobody did as far as I know,” Walt said. “She found the hatchet and now this.”

  Fish watched Katharina for a few moments. “Looks pretty good. Natural. That new snow is glistening.”

  “But what’s she muttering?” Walt asked. “I figured out the zoom, but I couldn’t increase the volume.”

  Fish hit the correct keys. “Volume up …”

  Katharina’s lips moved at rapid speed, saying, “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep … You don’t want none a me … and if I die before I wake I pray the Lord my soul to take …”

  Vincenzo’s walkie-talkie suddenly squawked, and Katharina yelled, “What the hell, Sly?” She stalked to him, waving her knife and the hatchet.

>   Vincenzo pulled the walkie-talkie from his pocket. “I so sorry, Miss Katharina. Is walkie-talkie. I use it to, um, to get weather reports. The weather changes so rapido up here. We must be careful for your safety.”

  Katharina sighed. “Well, keep it off or on vibrate during the shot, okay? Where’s, um, where’s your camera? Where’s the monitor?”

  Vincenzo tried to smile. “Oh. I, um, it’s back at my cabin. I did not think you would come out so early this morning with so much snow. I just come to plan, um, to map out my, um, angles.” That was extremely weak.

  Katharina widened her eyes, raised her eyebrows, and dropped her jaw. “So you missed all that? That was pretty damn good, if I say so myself. That was a fantastic idea to include a hatchet there. Now I’m not alone. Isn’t that freaky? I mean, she’s not alone anymore. There’s someone else out there.” Katharina patted Vincenzo on the shoulder. “Good idea. It was your idea, wasn’t it?”

  Vincenzo didn’t know what to say. “Um, yes. It was my idea. I had been thinking, um …” No, I hadn’t! I haven’t been thinking of anyone but Bianca!

  “Yes?” Katharina asked.

  “I, um, I had been thinking that it is, um, conceivable that our woman would eventually run into others, perhaps, uh, other runaway slaves.”

  Katharina sliced the air with the hatchet. “Or just the folks who live here, right?”

  Vincenzo nodded.

  “I knew it wasn’t your cousin’s idea. He is a moron. Where’s he been, anyway? I haven’t seen him around today.”

  Yes, where is that hatchet man who is making me lie to Katharina? “Um, I have no idea.”

  Katharina sighed as if in relief. “Well, I’m so glad he’s not around. He ruins my concentration most of the time.” She swished the hatchet through the air. “And with this I should be able to put up the shelter quicker. Excellent thinking, Sly. You must have gotten some more pages of the script, right?”

  Yeah, today is certainly sucking pretty badly. “Um, yes.” He pointed at the tree on the right. “And since I put in a camera there last night, I got all that footage.” Liar! “It is automatic. In case I oversleep and you start early.” Oh, right. She’ll believe that one.