Page 5 of The Moon & His Tides
So I knew somewhere deep in the marrow of my bones that my story was good because it wastrue. It was so gritty I imagined I could feel the sand between my fingers as I touched the pages, smell the acrid scent of urine in the dank, muddy alleys of New York City before asphalt was poured. I loved it. It was good. In fact, I was banking my futureandmy family’s on it being fucking brilliant.
Yet my heart barely beat in the tight grip of fear that had hold of it at the thought that this woman––my sort of boss and total stranger––might not like it.
When I pulled up to the tall, gold-tipped iron gates of her townhome, I had to clear my throat twice before I could say, “Mrs. Meyers, we’re here.”
She ignored me.
I swallowed past the gargantuan lump in my throat and tried again. “Mrs. Meyers?”
Nothing.
“Savannah,” I finally barked, my nerves breaking under the stress of her silence.
Immediately, her head jerked up, her lips parted and eyes widened as though I had caught her doing something she shouldn’t.
“We’re here,” I repeated.
“Oh,” she said, surprised. “Do you have someone else to drive after me?”
“No…”
She nodded curtly. “Excellent. Then, as I am assuming you won’t want to part with these papers, you can either sit quietly or go for a walk while I continue reading.”
Before I could formulate a response, she pushed the button for the partition to rise between us and simultaneously sat back comfortably in her seat.
I was dismissed.
Not knowing whether to curse at her or do as she said, I chose the latter because it meant keeping my job. But I muttered filthy, derisive Italian words about the rich taking liberties as I shoved out of the Rolls and made my way away from the Thames toward Hyde Park.
I tried to let the clean, classic lines of Chelsea’s mostly Georgian architecture distract me from the strange power the woman in the Rolls held over me. Mostly, it worked. I loved the meticulousness of the neighborhood; how clean the streets were right down to the flowers trimmed perfectly in their window boxes and the acute angles of the hedgerows. It was the antithesis of Naples with its sloping buildings, cracked and painted sun-dried colors that hurt the eyes under the yellow afternoon glare. The people too, wrapped up neatly like presents in expensive scarves and layers of thickly knit weaves. They nodded or smiled demurely at me as I passed, their conversations muted, contained just to the pocket of air betweenthem. In Naples, on any given day, the streets were teeming with families, markets, or traffic, the people sweating, yelling because they were aggravated by the heat and the noise and their small, small lives.
I inhaled a deep, cleansing lungful of damp, cold air and held it tight in my lungs. It helped anchor me to this place, which was so special to me because it wasnothinglike home.
Yet it was also empty to me in a way that home never had been.
Simply, I had no one to love in London.
And I was Italian enough, man enough, and romantic enough to believe that life wasn’t worth living unless you were loving.
I’d had brief flings with a handful of women in the few months I’d been there and countless nights with others just to slake my unquenchable thirst for sex, but none of that was intimate, and intimacy was something entirely different from sex. It was the way a body knew another, lusted after its uniqueness so much that only that single form could satisfy it. The way one human could anticipate another, the way they could strip you down to the bolts and build you back up again with their mouths when used to form kisses or words.
I craved that intimacy and found the promise of that in Savannah Meyers.
So even though I was terrified to have someone of her caliber read my words, I was also oddly touched and fiercely aroused because it was a part of me she held between her hands and scrutinized with her eyes. I felt the phantom touch of her even then as I walked down the streets away from her, trying to purge my mind of her.
I couldn’t.
Something about this woman echoed in me, and I knew I'd explore it if I was given the slightest opportunity.
Explore her until I knew her tight curves and satin edges as intimately as a tailor with his custom creations. I wanted to run my fingers over her seams and into her silk-lined depths, pin down her hands, and sew her mouth to mine with unyielding kisses.
My mind reeled with the imagery, loops of grainy black-and-white film clips on repeat behind the screens of my eyes. I tried to calm down, bit the inside of my cheek until it bled, and thought of Neapolitan grandmothers sweating and sagging in the sun, but still, by the time I reached the pink awning of Peggy Porschen Cakes on my way back from the park, my cock was so hard it was an actual miracle it hadn’t punched a hole through my trousers.
I figured, eyeing the explosion of pink and girly that was the bakery, that going inside to buy an outrageously priced cupcake was a good distraction. But the delicately frosted, pale pink frothed cakes seemed like somethingla duchessawould enjoy, so I bought one for us both.
I ate mine on the way back to the car, unable to stop the impulse to stick my thumb in the sweet icing and suck it off with a curl of my tongue and hard suction with my lips. I knew without knowing that Savannah Meyers’s nipples would taste just as sweet. And when the chocolatey cake melted on my tongue, I knew her pussy would melt between my lips just the same.
When I finally arrived back at the car, I was as agitated as a caged animal. I slammed the door closed behind me after I got in the front seat and immediately twisted to look at Savannah. Sometime while I’d been walking, she had lowered the partition and the papers in her hands, so when I found her, she was utterly demure. Her hands crossed primly in her lap, and her face was held in perfect repose.
