Page 80 of Replay
“Anything.” He kisses me deeply, swirling his tongue with mine as his hand slips down between us. He swipes his fingers along my centre, growling into my lips as he notices how wet I am. “Always wet for me.”
“Yes,” I gasp as he pulls back to grind his shaft along my clit. “Are you ready?”
“Yes.”
He positions his tip at my entrance and pushes in just a couple of inches. It’s tight. Immensely tight. Tighter than I even realised a body that’s had intercourse before could be. But as he presses in deeper, my arousal ratchets up, and the barrier feels less harsh and more needy. I find myself wrapping my legs tightly around him to pull him in quicker just to get the friction where I need it. I need it so, so bad.
When he’s finally seated inside me, the pressure is so intense, my fingers dig into his shoulders. “Oh my God,” I groan, my pelvis aching like it’s developed its own heartbeat.
“Are you okay? Does it hurt?” He stares down at me, his hair flopping over his forehead in that perfect mussed way that drives me wild.
I nod fervently, wondering if one can become a reborn virgin in their thirties. “Just move, Santino. I need you to move.”
He pulls back slowly and thrusts in one, two, three times, each time getting smoother and smoother and the pain dissipating more and more as my muscles stretch to allow the glorious stroking of a nerve inside me that hasn’t been touched in ages.
When I was hesitant to have sex with Santino before, it’s because I was scared. I was scared that the act could somehow trigger the memory of a strange man over top of me who I didn’t want inside me. I was scared I could be like an amnesia victim who gets her entire memory triggered the moment a similar act occurs. It was stupid, but it was where my mind was at the time. I didn’t want to remember that night. I wanted to forget everything about it, including what happened afterwards.
It wasn’t that I never wanted to have sex again. I just knew before I did it, it would have to be with someone I trusted. Someone I cared about. The fact that it’s with someone I love…it’s an honour I didn’t know I was even deserving of anymore.
Just as that thought crosses my mind, Santino rocks harder into me and whispers against my lips, “Ti amo.”
I don’t need a translation for that.
I love him, too. More than I ever thought my heart was capable of loving someone. After everything I experienced, giving myself to a man like this didn’t feel possible. I didn’t feel worthy. I felt ruined inside, like I let someone take a piece of me that I could never get back. But as Santino makes love to me, whispering words of Italian in my ear, against my breast, and across my lips, I finally start to believe that nothing inside me is gone. It’s just been hiding in the dark, waiting for someone to pull it out.
Istand in Tilly’s room, gazing at the wall of photos she’s taken of various street art displays. They’re framed and dated, lined up perfectly from the years she lived in London prior to meeting me. It’s interesting to look back at what drew her eye then because they’re all very dark and gritty, depicting portraits of pain and anger or high contrast designs that feel just…troubled.
Then the frames stop five years ago, and below those is a new one that I recognise from our tour a couple of weeks ago. It was a giant mural on Hanbury Street in Brick Lane of a stork carrying a baby wrapped in a blanket. There was a price tag hanging on a baby’s toe that said FREE TO A GOOD HOME. It’s bright and cheery but with a tiny bit of edge to it that’s very Tilly today. Not Tilly of yesterday.
I point at it and glance over my shoulder. “Why did you pick this one?”
Tilly’s eyes are not on my face as she lays under the covers with her hands propped behind her head. “I can’t hear a word you say when you’re standing here naked in my wee bedroom.”
I roll my eyes. “You’re such a bloke sometimes.”
“You’re such a lass sometimes.” She giggles and it makes me want to kiss her.
I stalk over to the bed and slip under the covers, grabbing her body and pulling it against mine. The skin-on-skin contact is glorious. We’ve been intimate in a thousand different ways since we started seeing each other, but feeling her like this after we just made love…it’s euphoric.
I release her body and point over at the photo again. “Tell me why you chose that one.”
She moans her dissent but then rolls over to lay on my chest. Her finger traces circles around my nipple as she talks. “It made me think about my own situation.”
“With the pregnancy?”
“Aye.” When she pauses, I remain silent, waiting to hear what she wants to say without asking a question to hear what I want her to say. “I sometimes wonder what it would have been like if the baby lived. Would I have been a good mother? Would I have stayed in Dundonald? Would I have wanted to find a husband to give the baby a father?”
My body tenses at that last remark. “You didn’t want me to help you back then, that’s for sure.”
She glances up at me, her head tilting curiously. “I still don’t know why you offered what you did. I mean, to claim another man’s child, no questions asked. And you came up with that decision in seconds. You were a young, successful bloke living your best life in London. What on earth would inspire you to give up your life like that?”
It feels as if an elephant is sitting on my chest with the last question. An elephant that I’ve been living with since I had a very unexpected conversation with my nonno at only twenty years old.
I swallow the knot in my throat and tuck a strand of hair behind Tilly’s ear. “There’s a reason for that…and it’s something I’ve actually never told anybody.”
Her brows furrow and she looks at me expectantly. When I open my mouth to bare my soul, suddenly, there’s a loud slam from downstairs followed by clomping of someone’s heavy footsteps on the stairs.
Tilly’s eyes are full of terror. “Fuck, it’s Mac!”
