Chapter Text
Your second kiss together comes with no mashing of teeth nor spittle upon your chin – you’re both adults, and you ought to make love like them. You’d had enough of such trysts when you were a student; a few secret rendezvouses behind the bleachers in the gym (between classes of course, because you wouldn’t dare play hooky lest your mother find out), and you’ll never forget the boy who took you to the prom and who, consequently, nearly ruined the gaudy taffeta gown hanging in your closet. You feel considerably more beautiful tonight, anyways – even with your dress gathered about your ankles.
This is the kind of kiss that you will never speak of to anyone else, you decide, as Prosciutto tugs you closer by the waistband of your panties and groans when you pull his hair just so; free from its unusual fixing, his blonde hair falls upon his bare shoulders – neatly cropped to graze his clavicle when he cranes his neck towards your flushed face. This is the kind of kiss that will never leave this room, and you are half tempted to stay here forever as well. When he takes your bottom lip between his teeth and the growing hardness of his manhood ghosts against your abdomen, you let loose a giggle most unbecoming of yourself; yet, you cannot help but to relish in how good it feels to act the part of the infatuated fool. Whether you are in fact utterly besotted is irrelevant.
Two things are clear to you. First, that you are inebriated and cannot be held responsible for the decisions, and quite possibly the mistakes, you may be prepared to make. Second, that you do not actually care about what should happen here tonight. Your toes curl into the carpet underfoot. There isn’t much plush left of the threadbare coverings. It is the swelling intensity of his kiss that makes you cling to his arms and steady your dizzying world. Soon, there is a stirring in your belly that lately you’ve felt only in the evenings reserved for yourself. There comes the furrowing of his brow when you instead reach for his neck because the heat is becoming so unbearable that you tremble.
You cannot seem to get close enough.
There is an inkling of hesitation about him – as if he’s too afraid to ask if you want to do a bit more than kissing. But, hell, you’re wearing nothing more than your undergarments and his slacks are practically hanging off him. You know he’s the sort to engage in such frivolities, and certainly far more often than you do. For a second, you dwell on whether you should ask him if he’s clean. You don’t want to pry into his myriad of sexual encounters. And you realize quickly as detaches from your split mouth to trail his lips down your neck (he finds your magnolia perfume overwhelming tonight) that you trust him in this regard. Surely, he must know this too.
Prosciutto, of all people. Despite his malice and ferocity, you trust him more than anyone else in this very moment and that is why you let him suckle your skin and leave marks that you must remember to cover up before your next shift at the restaurant. Or perhaps, you muse, you might leave them only for Ditalini to see. You succumb to your own weakness – you’ve let Ditalini penetrate your mind again tonight, and you stiffen under the very touch that had you preening only moments ago. Prosciutto pulls back. His eyes, hazy with desire and nearly bloodshot from the alcohol (and exhaustion too, no doubt), find yours.
Hoarsely, he speaks your name.
“What’s wrong?” he asks while lifting your chin with the hook of his finger; his other hand comes to your shoulder.
Help me forget him.
“Nothing,” you insist.
You kiss him quickly.
“There’s something on your mind again,” he mumbles against your lips – are they soft enough for his liking, you wonder?
Help me forget him.
“Maybe I’m just nervous,” you say, and it isn’t an entire lie. “Don’t want to underperform, that’s all.”
“You don’t need to worry. If you want to stop, I’ll stop.”
Jesus Christ, just help me forget.
“Just shut up and kiss me again.”
And he does, because god, he needs this too. He coaxes you backwards and you feel the foot of the bed against your calves before you take the plunge and fall upon your back. You hasten to remove your bra. Prosciutto stands where you only just were – he trails a finger or two over your bent knee, and your legs fall open for him. You watch as his eyes flicker from the comfort of your plush thighs to the heaving of your breasts while you bite the inside of your cheek and wait. He settles on your panties again; he rolls the pair down and you aren’t quite sure where he tosses them. You won’t worry about that right now.
The caress of the cold room air against your slick sex sends a pulse through your core – it has you fisting your palms in anticipation. Prosciutto drags his finger from your hardened bud to your slit, as if to test the waters that quite literally pool beneath his touch. Your eyes meet once more. Using the fluids from your own secretion to ease the friction of his thumb, he returns to your clit. You sigh, helpless, as he toys with you and when he switches to his middle and ring fingers, he succeeds in tearing a particularly breathless moan from you.
“Dolce,” he gushes. “Sembri proprio una vergine.”
His outermost finger swipes against your folds. You buckle against him.
“I’m not – ah, mio dio,” you pant. “I’m not a virgin.”
“I know that, donna. I only said that you sound like one.”
Only once have you imagined that such a thing might transpire between you and Prosciutto, and it was during the evening you’d spent with Ditalini. That night, you allowed your crazed mind to wander and wonder how the blonde man might have taken you instead – would he be gentle and take his time to ensure that you were plenty satiated before seeing to his own licentious needs (and would he, in return, revel in the satisfaction of watching you writhe and quiver at his tactful touch alone)? Might he opt for a more unrestrained approach? What if he wants nothing more than to flip you onto your stomach right now and hold you close with a firm grasp around your neck as he burrows into your heat (and why does the thought of him choking you arouse you so, when you know that the same hand has orchestrated death)?
Tame and doting, callous and frenzied; it matters not, because nothing can be worse than what Ditalini did to you. As for Prosciutto, you realize that there’s no sense in wondering – you’ll have your answer soon. He’s far too complicated a man to read based on his motion against your womanhood, anyways.
Prosciutto abandons your clit to slip his fingers inside you. He curls his fingers just so – just right – and you throw your arms above your head to grasp the duvet. He explores the warmth of your vagina and lets out a rather dignified huff when you let go of the bedding to slap a hand over your mouth if only to bite back the lamentation that builds in the back of your throat. You must be plenty deep for him, for you can feel the hilt of his third knuckles brush against your labia. You’ve nearly swallowed him whole. And it is still not enough.
He tears the hand from your mouth and holds your wrist against the bed once more.
“I want to hear you,” he says, and you can really discern the cigarette-scratch of his voice. “Be good for me and scream.”
“Then,” you wheeze, “you’d better fuck me.”
You lie there, still like a doll, as you wait for him hook his arms under your knees and pull you flush against his pelvis. Does your submission make him twitch? Does the balm between your legs intoxicate him? Does he want to savor you and feel you clench around his cock forever? Whatever his fancies, they are lost on you – he, still standing and your bum on the edge of the bed, holds you by your hips and moves your body with the kind of savagery that makes your breasts convulse each time his tip meets your cervix; first, a polite introduction between two strangers, and then it graduates to the anticipated salutations of acquaintances. You wish he would go faster, so you tell him to.
He smirks amidst the heavy pants and gasps that fall from his lips. The backs of your legs are flush to his torso – your ankles rest just at his shoulders, and his blonde hair tickles the soft pads of your feet. Each thrust leaves you puffing and wanting more.
“You can be rough with me,” you say. “I want you to be.”
You won’t beg him to – no, you’ll tell him exactly what you want, because this incursion is just as much about him as it is you. You won’t make him gander how to please you best. He says nothing, but he does loom closer – bending your legs back as he does – to splay a hand across the bridge of your throat (just as you wanted). His thumb and first finger rest just beneath your jaw and pinch your windpipe. His other fingers dig into the skin of your neck. Already you are at a loss for air, and it makes you clench hard around him. Your knuckles turn white against the duvet. He laughs, dry and short, and shakes you.
“Malvagia,” he groans. “You wicked woman.”
The weight against your neck has you wheezing, and you find it difficult to breathe. There is something so audacious about being choked by a dangerous man who wouldn’t dare hurt you – it excites you. Perhaps you enjoy the power he holds over you, after all.
“Don’t just lay there,” he abruptly commands.
His other hand, which has been resting on your waist, moves to your breast. He takes your nipple between his fingers and twists it. You cry out – you’re so sensitive that it hurts. He squeezes your neck harder. There are purple masses in your vision.
“Touch yourself.”
Fueled by his demand, you circle your clit as he continues to fill you. You wish only to burrow your heels into the bed, but Prosciutto holds you in place. For the first time since he’s slipped inside you, he leans closer to kiss you. His hair cascades over your cheeks and he stops canting his hips. Greedy, he swallows your protestation and takes your bottom lip between his teeth. You think he’s going to bite it off. Of course, he never does. Instead, he sucks it plump and gags you with his tongue as you continue to pleasure yourself. You ought to feel humiliated as he taunts you with his cock left inside you, stationary and snug. Instead, you feel the farthest from it.
When he pulls back from the kiss, so too does he remove himself from your vagina.
“What are you doing?” you gasp.
You cease your rubbing. Prosciutto grabs the hand hovering above your sex and moves your fingers back over your clit.
“I didn’t tell you to stop,” he huffs. “Keep going.”
He releases his hold and reaches for your breasts instead (he is getting close, and he’ll gladly hold out just a bit longer for you). He is red and engorged and gleaming with your balm. The tips of your fingers aren’t sufficient in getting you there. Your hole weeps and begs for him – just the thought of him filling you again makes you spasm and groan. You could play the role of a brat and refuse to continue unless he takes you back onto his cock. You could, in your glorified disobedience, egg him on just enough to make him do it. But you fear that you will never orgasm tonight unless you play his game. After all, you did tell him to be rough.
When next you tremor, Prosciutto guides himself back into your warmth.
You’re hanging now, by the flesh of your fingertips along the steeple of a castle above the sea; there’s no other way you know how best to describe it, that moment when you’re afraid that you won’t orgasm. Just as quickly as your belly tightens and your thighs begin to shake, you lose it. And then you feel the tension again, building and building and then it’s gone. You’re going to cum. You’ve forgotten how, and nothing is working. You can’t think about how good it feels to rub yourself as he plunges in and out of you, because all that is so suddenly apparent to you is how pruned and sticky your fingers are. You’ve always hated this part. It’s almost like a punishment for daring to indulge in carnality.
But something gives – something always gives. He snaps his hips and oh, you feel him there and this time you know it won’t go away. You reach that point of desperation to which you can no longer control the sounds that come from your mouth. The hand against your clit goes numb and you want to stop and yet you tell yourself that you couldn’t possibly give up now. You’re almost there. Just a bit more. A few more seconds and you know you’ll be there. Don’t forget to scream for him while you’re at it –
And you’re finally there. The absolute violence of the orgasm is unlike any that the scattering nuisances of men before Prosciutto have ever given you. It is certainly unlike any that you’ve managed to give yourself on the loneliest of nights when your sister is away, and you’ve locked the bedroom door; how you prayed between convulsions that she wouldn’t return until long after your triumph (until you’ve had a hot bath to wash away your transgression). Though your eyes are shut, you see a great burst of light as you wail and bend and thrash against the bed. You are blistering hot and radiating with spent sex.
He pulls from your heat and not a moment too late. The hand around your neck is taken back, and you, gasping for air, lazily stroke your swollen folds to put on a bit of a show for him so that he can chase his own release. You feel spurts of it against your belly. Wordless, he carries himself to the bathroom and returns shortly thereafter with a towel. You take it from his outstretched grasp to wipe away his charge and that which coats your inner thighs. You pity the laundress. Perhaps she’s used to this by now.
Prosciutto takes the space beside you on the bed that you’ve become far too familiar with tonight. You sit up and wince at the pinching in your core; your back feels hot and irritated, and your neck throbs. You haven’t a clue what to say or what to do, so you enjoy the silence for a bit longer. The air conditioner clicks every few seconds. Voices bleed through the floor from the room beneath you – guffawing men speaking what you assume are English accents. Maybe they appreciated the sounds coming from above.
You know that you are sobering now. Despite the fleeting faintness in your head, you are absolutely grounded in this bed. It isn’t the haze of post-sex clarity that compels you. It is something far more visceral. It is something that will follow you when return to the dingy apartment that you can hardly afford to live in (you only keep it for your mother). It is the realization that you are not in love; you could never love a man like Prosciutto. But, goodness, you’ll miss him terribly when he leaves Tropea.
Prosciutto reaches into the drawer of the nightstand, and out comes his pack of cigarettes and fancy lighter. He tucks his hair behind his ears before producing a drag, sticking it between his lips, and lighting it. You detect a hue upon his cheeks in the glow of the flame, and his hairline is slick with perspiration. His mouth, wrapped around the filter, is red from your lipstick. When the flame reaches his eyes – they dart from the lighter to your face – you at last find his solemn youth. You forget that he isn’t much older than you, not really anyways. Misery has a way of aging the soul. He ought to take a vacation.
He taps the ashes into the crystalline tray next to the alarm clock.
“There was a boy I attended school with,” he begins to say through a puff of smoke that doesn’t follow your direction, “whose mother died after she fell asleep smoking a cigarette in bed. We were only ten years old then.”
“I’m sorry,” you tell him, although you aren’t quite sure why you do.
It wasn’t his mother who set herself ablaze.
“She dropped it right onto the linens. They caught on fire, and she all but combusted into flames. Their apartment was destroyed and even a few of the neighbors suffered for it. Nothing so severe, however; burnt wallpaper, a few ruined photographs, but at least they still had their lives . . . The boy I knew, he lost everything.”
“What happened to him after?”
“He went to live with his grandmother in a village up north. She raised goats and sold soap made from their milk.”
You pull your knees to your chest.
“If you know how dangerous cigarettes can be, then why do you smoke them?”
He taps more ash away.
“I know I had a good reason when I started,” Prosciutto explains. “But I couldn’t tell you why anymore. I don’t even remember myself. What I do know is that I’m an irritable mess when I go a day without them.”
“Then it sounds like you’ve dug yourself into quite the addiction,” you chide. “Can I have one?”
He opens his mouth, and he might have had a rebuttal for you. Curiously, he stops himself and presents to you a single, unspent stick. No matter how expensive, it looks no different than any other cigarette you’ve seen before. The branding may as well be a clever marketing scheme and nothing more. Spending a few extra lire won’t stop the cancer.
“Do you know how to do it?” Prosciutto asks.
“I think so.”
Where Prosciutto opts to hold his between his ring and middle fingers (how busy they’ve been as of late), you pinch the cigarette between your thumb and index – it is the way most comfortable to you, although if you keep the habit, you might try a more delicate hold. You suck in your cheeks a bit more than you should have, and the realization is overdue. The fever is too much too fast; you sputter through the cloud of smoke that comes billowing out of your mouth, and the heat is trapped in your chest. You rock a fist between your breasts and try not to cough too harshly, even as your eyes water and your tongue burns. Prosciutto only watches and takes another drag.
To your mirth, it subsides quickly.
You don’t like the way the tobacco makes your saliva coagulate, and you’re half-tempted to spit over the side of the bed before your next attempt. The taste is appalling (certainly worse than it smells), though you suppose you’ve grown used to it from kissing Prosciutto tonight. You imagine your smoldering drag to be a straw this time and suck in enough to fill the cavity of your mouth where you hold it for a moment before slowly inhaling. It’s smoother this time, and you do not cough upon the exhale. Still, you think of the boy and his dead mother, and here you are smoking a cigarette in a bed that you do not own.
“Do you keep in touch with him?” you ask Prosciutto.
“No,” he answers. “He was only a classmate. I can’t imagine that he left the village. Most men stay close to home until they’re well-off and married.”
“Did you stay close to home?”
Prosciutto snorts.
“No.”
He sets the ashtray next to you, atop the duvet. You flick the cherry.
“Before what happened to his mother, I can’t believe he wanted to be a goat farmer,” you decide, as if you have the authority to conduct such an insinuation on this stranger’s life. “Too many things are out of our control.”
“Perhaps.”
“Well, are you living the life you imagined for yourself when you were a child?”
His cigarette is done.
“Is anybody?”
You pass him your cigarette. You aren’t sure you have the stomach to finish it.
“I’m certainly not,” you sigh. “Then again, I’m lucky that I even made it to twenty.”
He cocks an eyebrow at you.
“I was really sick when I was a kid,” you clarify. “For almost two months, I was coming and going between the hospital and home. The doctors were sure it was influenza, but I’ve never heard of anyone being sick of it for that long. Whatever was really wrong with me doesn’t matter I suppose, and Gianna was sure that I was going to die. She practically held my coffin lid open for me.”
“She is quite the pessimist.”
“That is an egregious understatement. I was all but comatose and she made me pick out the dress I wanted to be buried in.”
You cut yourself off with a dry laugh.
“My mother told me before that Gianna has always assumed the worst,” you say, “because it’s more depressing to be the optimist who’s always wrong.”
And she’s treating your mother just as she treated you.
“Are you happy?” Prosciutto asks at once. “I don’t mean this very moment. Before I met you, were you doing everything within your power to satisfy yourself?”
You frown. The answer is too eager on the tip of your tongue. You’ve known it for a while now. You just dared not to speak it true.
“No,” you confess. “No, I was miserable long before you came along. It’s complicated, though. I love my sister, I truly do . . . She’s going to leave eventually, and I’m fighting a losing battle. It wouldn’t be so horrible if Gianna took her to live in Sardegna. I don’t enjoy the responsibility – I’m hardly old enough to be a mother myself, and here I am raising someone else’s daughter when I should be doing everything I possibly can to make sure I have a good life, too. Maybe I’m just a jealous fool is all . . .”
Prosciutto has finished your cigarette now and he puts it in the ashtray – twin buds, and both ringed with your lipstick.
“If the opportunity to leave everything behind and start over was presented to you, would you take it?”
“I already have it, don’t I? Isn’t that what Gianna’s giving me?”
“Then,” he says, “if you’re as despondent as you say, let it unfold. Let her take your sister, and leave.”
“But my mother –”
“Is your aunt’s responsibility,” he cuts you off to say. “Not yours.”
You groan and bury your face between your palms (one of which smells heavily of sex, and it smothers you). Here you are pouring your sorrow out to the man who was inside you not even half an hour ago – the man who drew the most salacious noises and obscenities from you. That should be all you can bear to think about right now; the pleasure you felt, the absolute shellshock that was your inflicted orgasm, and the sheer confliction in accepting that the most dangerous man you know is the best person for you because he just gets it. Perhaps Gianna is rubbing off on you more than you’d care to admit.
“She’s been paying for all my mother’s medical expenses,” you confess. “She paid for mine, too.”
“Then, there’s nothing keeping you,” Prosciutto concludes. “If your mother pulls through, you can always visit her. If she doesn’t . . .”
“Then I can come back for her funeral.”
Now that he has finished yours, Prosciutto lights what will be his second full smoke. You pinch the bridge of your nose. He has tempted you like a snake in the garden, and you’ve lost the restraint to hold back from the apple of the tree. Your existence – no, your purpose for being – cannot revolve around Trish forever. That vision you hold of her in the summer dress is fleeting. The empty beaches are fleeting – the demitasse, the manicures, the pink grins are gone. And it won’t be long until her love for you should follow the same fate.
Leave, the snake says. Leave this wretched island before you turn grey.
And the apple echoes his sentiment.
Desperate, you hold out your hand.
“Can I have another cigarette?”