fought not to wake. In his dream she was standing there, her fragrance, her touch, the perfection his senses knew.
He let out a breath and his hand moved a little lower on his stomach but then it was halted by hers and Bella lowered her head and kissed her sleeping beauty.
It was a soft kiss but sinful with seduction. As his lips parted her tongue slipped in and she hovered over him, holding his wrist, loving his mouth and the fact that he didn’t open his eyes.
It was a kiss that had her move over him and the feel of his hands on her hips, guiding her, was sublime. Still he did not open his eyes.
‘Am I dreaming?’ Matteo said, between slow kisses.
‘Maybe we both are.’
His hand dealt with the bow of her apron and then he undid the poppers on her robe and reacquainted himself with her naked breasts. She terminated their kiss and sat on his thighs, taking his lovely erection. It was, for Bella, healing to hold Matteo in her palm over and over.
‘How do you want me?’ she said.
‘Exactly as you are.’
She didn’t understand his meaning, it just felt like a very nice thing to hear as he pulled her up and lifted the skirt of her dress.
His eyes were now open, watching her lower herself onto him, and Bella let out a sob of remembrance and bliss as finally he was back to being her lover.
Matteo tore at her dress to remove it. He wanted to watch their reunion; he wanted to revisit every inch of naked skin.
‘Careful,’ Bella warned. ‘I have to do the breakfasts at six...’
He shredded her dress despite the warning.
That she would fly through the night to give him this morning without knowing of his plans for them, that she would embrace one last depravity with him had Matteo pull her down to his mouth to kiss fiercely the only love he had known in his life.
He rolled her, yet they rolled in unison and she knotted her ankles as he moved to his elbows.
Their mouths were brutal, their bodies each other’s to own again, and right now Bella did not care for how long.
* * *
‘You left the wedding to come here?’
Bella nodded. ‘I knew as soon as you’d gone that I’d made a mistake. I have never regretted our times together, it’s the times we’re apart that are filled with remorse. I know that we can’t go anywhere.’
‘You don’t know that.’
‘But I do. I remember you saying, once a killer always a killer, once a whore—’
‘Bella,’ Matteo interrupted her, ‘I said that when I lived in Malvolio’s black and white world. Those were words we were raised on but we are away from all that now.’
‘True words, though,’ Bella said, and she told him a little of what had happened with her mother and her father. ‘He looked at her with disgust when he found out what she had done.’
‘Have I ever looked at you in disgust?’ Matteo asked.
‘No, but you don’t know what I did.’
‘Did?’ Matteo checked.
‘When I was trying to get to Rome.’
‘Tell me.’
‘I can’t.’
‘I think you have to, Bella,’ he said, not because he needed salacious detail, but because he didn’t understand. She had taunted him, flirted with him, come to him intending to pop out and serve breakfast afterwards! He was starting to realise that this side of Bella was exclusive to him and he could feel her shame, her pain for whatever it was that had gone on. ‘Bella, you can tell me anything.’
She looked up at him and realised that she could.
It had not been disgust she had seen in his eyes, it had been anger, and that had all gone now.
‘I’ve never told anybody.’
‘Then change that now.’
Bella nodded because her secret felt as if it was choking her.
So she told him about that night, how she had tried to get to the phone but Malvolio had been watching. And she told him how she had run through the forest and stopped by the ancient baths.
‘Then I saw the gas station and I was starting to think I had made it. I called you but I could not get through to you. A man offered me a lift to Messina. He was older and I honestly thought that he was being kind, then we got into the cabin and he...’ She cringed at the memory.
‘Did he force you?’
‘No.’ That was the part Bella was most ashamed about. ‘I went to leave but then I saw Malvolio’s car pull up...’
Matteo knew, better than anyone, the fear that would have induced.
‘I could see Malvolio,’ she said, her eyes filling with tears. ‘If he had seen me I would have been taken back or maybe worse. And so I told the man, not here, I gave him a smile and I said we would stop further along the road. He knew I was in a hurry to get away and so we drove for a short distance and then...’
‘And then?’
He had thought there had been many, but that it had been just one made it worse in some ways, for she hadn’t become deadened and her eyes were not vacant, and he could feel how much it must have distressed her.
‘And then,’ Bella said, and she lifted her hand and made a lewd gesture, and Matteo looked at her and didn’t blink. He just thought about her lonely on the edge of the woods, unsafe and scared, and he told her the very truth.
‘I’d have given him a hand job, Bella.’ She tried to smile at his joke but then realised that he was completely serious. ‘If I had been in that situation, I would have given the bastard whatever he wanted just to get away. I’m sorry you had to do it but I’m very proud of you that you did.’
Never, in all the stinging, agonising scenarios that she’d taunted herself with, had Bella imagined the word ‘proud’ being there in Matteo’s response.
‘I’m so proud of you, Bella, for getting out.’
‘Thank you.’ She gave him a little smile but it was a real one.
‘And after Messina?’
‘I got another ride and this time it was all the way through to Rome,’ Bella said. ‘I was terrified but the man was nice. He gave me some of his soup and he chatted about his family. But that other one...’ She shuddered. ‘It was the worst two minutes of my life.’
‘Two minutes!’
‘My mother had taught
