Roman Encounter

by Lily Zante

  She let him choose the ice-cream because he’d been right about everything else so far, and she didn’t flinch when he got her a creamy vanilla one with berries and toasted pine nuts. It wouldn’t have been her choice but biting into it was like nibbling a piece of cold, creamy heaven. He’d been right again. It was good, and it was almost as good as if not better than the one she’d had before.

  “Do you want to see the views from my balcony or go for a walk along the Tiber?” He asked, licking his lemon sorbet ice-cream.

  “Can’t we do both?”

  “It’s getting late, and you didn’t want to be out so late, remember? I’m happy to do both, but I was thinking more of you.”

  She smiled.

  “I’d rather check out the view. You’ve made it sound amazing, and I can’t leave without seeing if I agree with you or not.”

  Following him up five flights of stairs, her excitement, as well as her heart rate, were at elevated levels.

  “Don’t mind the mess,” he said, showing her into his small apartment. He strode across to the balcony doors, and pulled them wide open. “Tell me what you think.”

  She stood against the railing, with the slight breeze kissing her face, and watched the sun dipping lower, saw the glimmering, glistening river spreading out into the distance. Looking down from this height, Trastavere resembled a Christmas grotto full of fairy lights. It was quaint and beautiful.

  “You were right,” she murmured. He always seemed to be.

  They stood side-by-side on the tiny balcony overlooking the river and the scent of his cologne, of the wood and citrus, teased her senses. At one point his hand accidentally brushed her arm and she flinched.

  “You never did tell me why you resigned, Gina.”

  “And you never let me forget that I haven’t told you.”

  “The mystery deepens,” he whispered. “You realize that the suspense is killing me?” She burst out laughing at this cinematic movie trailer voice.

  “Why do you keep on asking?”

  “Because I haven’t had an answer from you yet.”

  “It’s no big deal.”

  “Then why not tell me?”

  “Why not let it be?”

  “Because you’re so evasive, it’s like trying to squeeze water out of a stone.”

  “You can’t squeeze water out of a stone.”

  “My point exactly. I couldn’t get anything out of you if I tried.”

  “Why do you need to know?”

  “You know more about me than I know about you. You know about my interviews, you know my past work history, you know that I’m applying for a job in sales—things that most of my colleagues don’t even know, only Emilio. And all I know about you is that you work for someone called Nico Cazale, and most of that info I got from Emilio.”

  “You asked Emilio about me?”

  “No, he happened to mention it.” He faced the front, looking outward with both his hands gripping the balcony railing.

  “I’m not hiding anything.”

  He turned to face her and raised an eyebrow.

  She let out a loud breath. “I didn’t mean to.”

  “You didn’t mean to what?”

  “To resign.” She was unable to look at him. “I suppose I did, eventually, but just not then. I’d been thinking about it. But things suddenly went crazy all at once and I got fed-up with everything. I’d had enough and I didn’t want to carry on like that anymore. I was always the person everyone came to, and it was fine in the beginning, but I started to feel worn out. “

  “Things got that bad?”

  “Maybe bad isn’t the right word.” It seemed wrong to complain about it, but looking back with hindsight, perhaps she had overreacted. And yet, so much had happened that had sucked the life out of her.

  “I was angry.” She thought of Davide, and the weekend bag she had packed with such eagerness the night before, of how much she had been looking forward to going away with a man she thought she loved and who she thought loved her. “My ex had split up with me and there was so much other stuff going on.” She paused, not wanting to mention the whole drama surrounding her mother. “And there was this other guy at work and he’s a total pain-in-the-ass.”

  “The one you said I remind you of? Ouch.”

  “You’re nothing like him.”

  “That’s good to know.”

  “You’re not. He’s a total asshole.”

  “It sounds as if you had a lot on your plate.”

  “Too much.” She turned her back to the view and rested with her back against the railing. The iron was cold against her hip. “I think I made the right decision but I’m not in a hurry to look for another job, not properly. I need to get on with it because it will be summer before I know it and I’ll be out of work.”

  “Maybe that’s telling you something? Maybe the job isn’t the real problem? Maybe you know what the problem is but you’re not telling me, and that’s okay, you don’t need to tell me. We all have our secrets, Gina.” His voice was soft again, probably the softest she’d ever heard it and she tried to hide her surprise. He was doing it again, peeling away the layers she was hiding under, reading her mind and knowing her so well despite their short time together. She found his insight into her most unsettling.

  She let out an exhale. “It’s not a secret.” She wasn’t sure where to start. “My ex- boyfriend dumped me at the train station where we were supposed to meet to go for a romantic weekend to Venice.”

  His face contorted.

  “He told me that he needed to do his own thing, that he needed his own space.”

  “And he told you this at the train station?”

  She nodded, but oddly, recalling that day no longer hurt. She didn’t feel a thing. It was as if she was reciting a story. “I was all packed, waiting for him with my bag.”

  She saw a muscle clench along his jaw.

  “And there were other things. The usual stuff, work, colleagues.” She dismissed them quickly. “I was overwhelmed. I had been thinking of making a big move, but I hadn’t thought it through, not with any real intention. I was still chewing things over in my mind, but I knew I couldn’t carry on as I was, but that day, I wrote the letter, to let off steam at first, but it made me feel good. I had regrets soon after, but I think I did the right thing.” She chewed her lip. “I hope I did the right thing. Being here, being away from all of that, I feel as if I can finally breathe again. I feel as if I’ve escaped.”

  “It sounds to me as if you needed a break.”

  She tugged at her earlobe. Christian stayed silent and didn’t say anything.

  “Aren’t you going to say something?” she asked, especially now that she had confessed. It wasn’t often that he was at a loss for words. “You’ve been at me for days to find out what made me resign, and I just told you.”

  His expression hardened. “That guy was a complete jerk.” He folded his arms, showing off the broad span of his shoulders and the tight outline of his muscles as they strained against the sleeves of his shirt. He was like Nico, and Leo, and all those gorgeous men who she would meet and greet as they stayed at the Casa Adriana, some alone and on business trips, others with stunning, striking women plastered to their sides. Men she admired from a distance, and made up silly fantasies about. In a parallel universe, it might even have been possible for her to be one of those women accompanying such men.

  “If I’d had known you needed to get away for a few days, I’d have made your visit here more spectacular.”

  She smiled. “You already did.”

  “Apart from the robbery.”

  “Apart from that.”

  This week had crystallized something for her. It had lessened the hurt of splitting up with Davide, taken away the shock of her resignation and made her temporarily forget how suffocating it could be to live with her mother sometimes.

  Maybe that was why her feelings were all over the place. She wasn’t sure, but being around a man like Christian ga
ve her no time to analyze her thoughts. He was all man, towering above her. A six-foot something of pure male-ness. Around him she felt a little intimidated, a little unsure, a little excited, too.

  He was doing all this because she’d helped him with his resumé. It was always because of something she had done, that people remembered her, otherwise she didn’t usually garner much attention, much less from men like Christian.

  “It’s getting late. I should go.” But there was nothing urgent in the way she said it. She took off her headband, and ran her fingers through her hair.

  “It looks nice off,” he told her.

  “It keeps my hair back from my face.” She scratched her head, not because she had an itch but because she needed to do something with her hands. When he still didn’t say anything, she slipped it back on again but he took a step closer and reaching out with his hand, stopped her.

  “It suits you, your hair like that,” he said, taking his hand away, probably because she flinched involuntarily. “It’s not like you’re in class or anything.”

  He liked her hair like this? Knowing that made her skin tingle.

  In the silence, she didn’t know where to look and facing him all of a sudden seemed risqué because whatever it was—this magnetic force between them, this invisible bond that made her want to be by his side—it grew stronger by the minute. Her pulse raced as if she’d run a few miles and something small and hot spiraled around inside her belly.

  “Can I get you something to drink?” he offered, breaking the tempo of that crazy moment. “Something fizzy, or juice, or a glass of wine?”

  A cold shower would be good. “No, thank you.” She moved her head back and made a concerted effort to pull away, but the railing was up against her back, and her feet were planted to firmly on the ground and refusing to move, even sideways. They had ended up face-to-face and now his gaze burned into her making her feel all sorts of weird and wonderful things deep down inside.

  A fire kindled inside her, a feeling of the unknown building up from her core. It was as strange as it was thrilling, the way her body reacted one way even though her mind tried to put on the brakes.

  Maybe it was time to take the brakes off and go with the flow? Let herself feel something… after all, she had been through enough misery lately. She deserved some happiness. Maybe happiness was too strong a word for what this could be. Maybe ‘fun’ was more suitable.

  That electric charge was humming around again, drawing her to him. Maybe it was all in her head, or maybe it wasn’t. She could feel it, and the way she felt right now, soft and loose and mushy, made her think it was for real. She could step out of her comfort zone, if he made a move.

  “What?” he asked. She must have been looking at him with a puzzled expression on her face, trying to gauge whether he felt anything. Not being so versed in men, or understanding them so well, plagued her with doubt. She could no more take the lead than she could instigate anything. Short of asking him what he was thinking, short of getting inside his head and knowing for sure, she had no idea, but the way his lips were parted, the way his eyes quickly turned dark, and the way his jaw tightened, told her he wasn’t as poised as usual, that beneath that surface lay something restless and unsure, just like it did for her.

  “It’s almost gone,” he said, his gaze zeroing in on her cheek. He lifted his finger to her face and touched it lightly, and then he laid his palm flat against her cheek, and she tilted her head to the side and rested her cheek further against it—because it seemed the most natural thing to do.

  “No scar.”

  “No.”

  “What are you thinking?”

  “I wasn’t thinking, much.” Her voice was hoarse, like a whisper.

  “There’s more to you than meets the eye,” he said. “I can’t say that of most of the women I’ve met.” His breath was hot, and sweet against her face, and she trembled.

  “Is that a compliment?”

  “It’s the truth.”

  “Am I supposed to bite my lip and blink at few times?”

  “You mean flutter? Because if you blinked I’d think you had something in your eye and I would try to help and end up poking your eye out, probably.”

  She smiled, because gorgeous and funny was a heady combination.

  “But if you fluttered your eyes, I would think you were trying to impress me and you don’t need to do that, Gina.”

  Her breathing sped up and desire, like wildfire, lit up and fanned inside her. She was hoping he might have taken the hint and kissed her by now. Maybe if she’d had bigger boobs, or been taller, or had a prettier face, maybe then he—

  And then he did. His lips were on hers, light and full of surprise, warm, and sweet, and seductive. His hands, large and forceful, pulled her against him. She gave in. She wanted to.

  Their heated bodies joined together, his body hard, like steel against her. There was no give. She didn’t sink, couldn’t, not against that wall of concrete that was his chest and stomach. But elsewhere they were a tangle of hands and arms, lips and tongues, her emotions so wrapped up in the surprise and scent and heat of him that she didn’t have a moment to think about what she was doing.

  For the first time in her life, she filtered out the good sense, and went with how her body felt. For years she’d been careful, played safe, and what had it given her? Only misery, and heartache and a boatload of loneliness.

  So what if this man was showering her with kisses? So what if he only wanted one thing? Her body said yes in a thousand different languages, and she kissed him hard, blocking out her mother’s words.

  He moved his head back, his hands still resting around her waist, still drawing her close to him so that their bodies touched. “Are we doing this, Gina?”

  “Yes,” she breathed, not entirely sure what ‘this’ was but before she came to her senses and changed her mind, she’d take what he offered.

  “Is this what you want?” he whispered.

  “Yes.”

  She would do the unthinkable if it came to it because she was never going to meet a man who looked like Christian again. He licked his lips, lowered his head, and dragged his lips across her neck, all the way to her ear lobe, taking it between his teeth and giving it a gentle tug. Her toes curled, and heat spiraled inside her from the bottom of her feet to the tip of her head. She moaned softly, reveling in the headiness of the sensation, of his wet mouth now against her collarbone, of his tongue and lips sucking and licking and cooling her skin.

  Goosebumps sprung up all over her skin as she felt his hard length against her.

  Her body was on fire in a way that it had never been before and in that moment, she wanted all of him. Pressed against him, her hands traced along his stomach and chest and she wasn’t so shy anymore.

  A one night stand. It was the difference between who she was before and the person she found herself becoming. A person who took chances, and did what felt good. Some called it reckless, but right now, it felt anything but reckless—kissing a man who was as good as a stranger. Switching off her reasoning, she let her body take charge.

  Somehow he picked her up and she wrapped her legs around him, somehow they stumbled inside and fell on to his couch. Somehow she found herself sitting astride him, kissing again, mouths hot and heavy, bodies sizzling heat. They kissed again for the longest time. She was getting used to him, to his taste and the feel of him, so hard and strong, and the way he kissed her, so forceful and commanding, as if he wanted to devour her but was holding back. Davide’s kisses were soft and weak. He used to nibble her lip, and shove his tongue into her mouth. But Christian…he made a kiss on her neck feel erotic.

  She was a soft mess of slickness, ready and desperate for him, and still they were fully clothed. She licked her lower lip as their foreheads rested gently together, while they fought to catch their breath.

  “What are we doing, Gina?” For the first time, he sounded unsure and it surprised her.

  “Kissing.” Her chest heaved,
from being breathless and excited.

  “I could spend the whole night kissing you.”

  Even when he spoke, his voice was sexy. Her body yearned for his touch, yearned for contact and that emotional hit; the melding of minds and bodies, of souls joining.

  “I’m not the kind of guy who’s looking for a relationship.”

  Her heartbeat thundered as his words fell on her ears. With his hands around her, with her skirt hitched up to her thighs, with her breasts full and heavy, it didn’t matter. Right now, in this moment, it didn’t matter that he wasn’t looking for commitment. Right now, commitment wasn’t the thing she needed.

  “I’m leaving tomorrow,” she murmured. “I’m not looking for anything, either. So what does it matter?”

  He raised her chin upwards with a tip of his finger and his eyes, shiny and intense, searched hers. She wanted to melt into him, have him swallow her up and possess her, and if he carried on looking at her like that for a moment longer…

  “I don’t want to hurt you, Gina.”

  “You won’t.” She had already been hurt. Christian couldn’t hurt her because she didn’t expect anything from him.

  “One night,” she whispered. “That’s all this is.” She ground down on him as if to press home a point.

  “You’re not that kind of girl.”

  “For once in my life, I am,” she whispered, as their lips rubbed and brushed together.

  It felt sensational— his lips, his mouth against hers, his fingers sliding against her body, and she wondered what it would feel like, to have him inside her.

  Having Christian pick her up and carry her to his room, having him put her down gently on his bed was a moment of madness, but a beautiful moment of madness. His hands moved to unbutton her blouse but she stopped him. Even now, being completely naked in front of him was something she felt uneasy about. It was surreal to watch him hitching her skirt up around her waist before taking her pantyhose off, and when she leaned forward to do it, he stopped her, as if he needed to undress her himself. He peeled off her panties and she closed her legs, feeling suddenly shy, not ready to have his see that intimate part of her, even though there was only one way this night was going to go. It was all still so new, this first time with him. She wasn’t used to it. She made men wait months before she ever slept with them. As if sensing her modesty, he pushed off the bed, peeled off his shirt then kicked off his pants and boxers.