THEIRS TO USE PART 7

Her wrists went behind the chair back, bound to the wooden spindles with the cotton rope they now kept in the kitchen drawer between the takeout menus and the spare batteries. Her ankles were tied to the front legs, spread wide enough that the inside of her thighs felt the cool air. The overhead kitchen light was on — the bright functional one, not the soft lamp kind — and there was nothing romantic or dim about it. It was just light. Ordinary light falling on extraordinary things.Ryan knelt on the hard kitchen floor in front of her without hesitating about his knees and buried his face between her thighs like he had all the time in the world. His hands pressed flat against her inner thighs, holding them open, holding her still against the chair. She grabbed the rope at her wrists and held on.At the other end of the table Lucas stood close to her face, his hand resting light on her cheek, tilting her head back to the angle he wanted. She took him in and breathed through her nose and

THE MAN IN ITALY PART 1

I almost didn't take the detour.The train had been delayed by forty minutes outside of Naples and by the time I finally got moving again I had already missed my connection to Amalfi, which meant the whole careful plan I'd spent three weeks building on a spreadsheet — color coded by day, with backup options in a separate column — was already falling apart before I'd even properly started. I sat on a plastic seat in the Naples station with my backpack between my feet and my phone showing me a map that kept losing signal and I thought about crying. Not dramatically. Just the quiet tired kind, the kind that sneaks up on you when you've been traveling alone for four days and haven't had a real conversation with anyone since the airport.I didn't cry. I bought a coffee from a vending machine that tasted like hot brown water and I looked at the board and I picked a different train.That's how I ended up in Vettica Minore.It isn't on most tourist maps. I found out later it sits just above P

THE MAN IN ITALY PART 2

"There is a bus," he said carefully, "but it stops running at nine. It is now — " another look at the clock — "eight forty-seven."I kept staring.He had the grace not to smile."There is a hotel in Praiano," he said, "ten minutes down the road. I can call them.""Yes," I said. "Please. That would be — yes."He called. He spoke. He listened. He hung up."Full," he said. He said it with genuine apology in his face, like it was his fault. "There is a festival this week in Praiano. Every room."I picked up my spritz and took a long slow sip."Okay," I said."There is another — further, in Positano — ""It's fine," I said. And then, because I was tired and my bag was gone and I was sitting in a bar in a town I'd never heard of with a dying phone and no charger and the sky outside had gone fully dark, I laughed. A real one, a slightly helpless one. "It's completely fine. This is fine."Marco looked at me for a moment with those dark steady eyes.Then he smiled. A real one this time, slow a

THE MAN IN ITALY PART 3

I lay in the white bed and looked at the ceiling and listened to the sea.I could hear it through the open window — not crashing, just moving, a constant low breath of water shifting against rock. The air coming through was warm and carried that salt smell that I was already starting to associate with this whole improbable evening. Somewhere below me I could hear Marco moving around, the faint sounds of the bar being cleaned up for the night, chairs being set up on tables, a tap running, a door closing.I should have been asleep. I was exhausted — four days of travel and trains and bad vending machine coffee and today's particular disaster had piled up behind my eyes in a heavy pleasant weight. The bed was soft. The room was quiet. Every reasonable condition for sleep was present.I was completely awake.I kept thinking about the way he'd looked at me across the bar counter. That steady unhurried looking, like he had decided I was worth taking his time over. The way his hands had move

THE MAN IN ITALY PART 4

The room looked different with both of us in it.He closed the door behind him and the sound of the sea through the open window seemed louder now, filling the room, unhurried and constant. The lamp on the nightstand threw its small warm circle of gold across the white bed and the white walls. He stood in the middle of the room and looked at me and I looked back at him and neither of us was in a hurry.He came to me slowly and put his hands on my face again — both of them this time, cradling my jaw, his thumbs moving along my cheekbones in slow strokes like he was memorizing the shape of me. He kissed my forehead. My temple. The corner of my eye. My cheek. All before my mouth — taking his time getting there, pressing his lips to each place softly, thoroughly. I stood with my eyes closed and my hands loose at my sides and just let him."You are very beautiful," he said quietly, against the side of my face. Not like a line. Just like a fact he was noting.I reached up and started on the

THE MAN IN ITALY PART 5

"Okay?" he said quietly."Very okay," I said.He kissed my jaw. My cheek. The corner of my mouth. Then my mouth itself, slow and deep, and I tasted myself on him and felt another wave of want move through me."Marco," I said against his lips."Mm.""I need — " I shifted my hips against him, making clear what I meant.He made that low sound again, from the back of his throat."Wait," he murmured. "I want to take my time with you."He did.He moved down my body and back up again, his mouth and hands covering every part of me with that same patient thorough attention. The back of my knee. The soft inside of my elbow. The curve of my waist. My breasts — his mouth warm and slow on each one, his tongue tracing soft circles that made my back arch repeatedly off the mattress. He learned my body the way you learn a language you intend to speak for a long time — carefully, completely, without cutting corners.I worked his trousers off at some point and ran my hands down his thighs and back up a