Page 70 of Love Lessons
“No,” Ian grouses. “You guys chose that true-crime thing the other night.”
“That didn’t count!” I argue immediately. “That was a compromise pick.”
Heidi Jo smiles at me and then shakes her head. “I don’t mean to kink-shame, but you two are at it again. All that bickering.”
“Works for us,” Ian says mildly, grabbing a beer. “Brewski, anyone?” As he asks the question, he puts a hand on the back of my neck. His thumb slides slowly up and down, raising goosebumps all over my body.
My face heats. Okay,allof me heats. Our nightly trysts are public knowledge, and Ian doesn’t have an embarrassed bone in his body, so his frequent hot looks and handsy affection are pretty hard to miss.
I don’t even care. In a while we’ll go up to bed, where he’ll slowly (or maybe very quickly) turn me into a quaking, shivering, shuddering puddle. I’ve never had so much sex in my life. Yesterday we had to take a water taxi into town to buy more condoms, because we’d run through his supply.
It’s like I’m a completely different person than I was a week ago.ThisVera likes sex. A lot. She doesn’t get stressed out about where to put her hands or anxious about whether or not it will be any fun.
Because it always is. Every time. If I weren’t enjoying myself so much, I might feel a little foolish. I was so hung up about it for so long. I’d created a problem where there wasn’t one. And Ian fixed it so effortlessly.
“Come here, contessa,” Ian says, beckoning to me from a lounge chair. “It’s showtime.”
I take my glass of white wine over and set myself on the edge of the chair. Unsatisfied, Ian grabs me around the waist and pulls me back until I’m seated between his legs, my back against his strong chest. “That’s better,” he says.
Indeed. The sky is turning a bright orange-pink, which is reflected on the lake’s surface. Everything is dazzling and colorful, including the tinted fronts of the waterfront villas dotting the shoreline. In the far distance, the mountain range is Easter-egg purple.
It’s magical. I loll back against Ian, sip my wine, and feel more joy than I’ve ever felt before. “We have sunsets in Brooklyn, too. But somehow, I never look at them. I guess I never go over to the promenade at the right time and look toward South Jersey.”
He takes a swig of beer and then plays with my hair in his free hand. “I see a lot of sunsets out the window of the team jet. But it isn’t the same.”
“Mmm.” The sensation of his fingers trailing through my hair is almost as remarkable as the sky turning from pink to purple. And I realize that watching the sunset with him is more or less the exact thing Ian taught me to do in bed—stop thinking for fifteen minutes and just feel.
This vacation has been a revelation in so many ways. Every morning I wake up and wonder whose life I’ve stumbled into.
This morning, for example, I opened my eyes to see Ian Crikey’s bare body striding toward the bathroom. I’ve never had thoughts about a man’s backside before, but that ass is worthy of poetry. The front of him is even more mind-blowing.
The whole experience has been a little surreal. And I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t realize that all this gratuitous pleasure comes with a new set of concerns. Namely, what am I going to do when it ends? In six short days, we’ll be back on a flight to New York. I’ll be super busy, working a string of twelve-hour days to make up for missed business.
And Ian will be off to training camp. He and the other hockey players are already working out like beasts, running eight or ten miles in the morning, followed by trips to the gym.
Real life is waiting to pounce on all of us the moment we return. My time in Italy—and my all-consuming affair with Ian—will pop like a soap bubble.
We’ll be over just as quickly as we began. And I won’t be ready.
It’s the same story all over again—I hadn’t known how to casually start a vacation fling, and now I don’t know how to end one. Is there a protocol? What are my lines? When I see him on the street, do I just wave and smile?
Is there a secret handshake for people who briefly had earth-shattering sex on vacation?
Only you would worry about this, my inner critic points out.
And she’s right. But I still lack answers.
I take a sip of wine and notice that all around me, couples are kissing. And I do meanallaround me. Anton is nibbling on Sylvie’s ear. Charli and Neil are neck deep in a make-out session. Fiona has her head on Aly’s chest, while Aly drops gentle kisses onto her head. And Castro and Heidi Jo are snuggling and laughing together in the hammock down on the lawn.
And then there’s us, the not-couple who are not kissing. But maybe sunset kisses are too intimate for a vacation fling?
“Do you smell that?” Ian asks suddenly.
“What? I don’t smell anything.”
He sniffs the air. Twice. “I smell smoke. Like an engine burning up. Is someone thinking too hard around here? Oh wait, it’s you.”
“Ian,” I growl.
