It was the Feast of San Lorenzo, and all of Florence—all of Italy—was celebrating. Italy had a long history of celebrating its martyrs, and Lorenzo was considered one of the patron saints of Florence. But I still thought the whole thing was a little too on the nose.
The patron saint of cooks, butchers, winemakers, restaurateurs, and basically anyone involved with food or beverage had been essentially barbecued for refusing to hand over goods to Roman officials and instead giving them to the poor. Now Florentines and Italians everywhere celebrated him by hosting barbecues themselves.
It was slightly morbid, but then, much of Italian culture seemed to embrace sin and darkness instead of shunning it the way we often did in the States. I’d grown to love that aspect of Italy most of all. It was hard to feel shame or insecurity when human flaws were so readily accepted.
The festival also had the distinction of being on August 10, the day the cocomerata, or Perseid meteor shower, was supposed to peak, which I was thrilled about. Back home, we spent that weekend at Gun Lake every year, lying in the sloping grass yard toward the dock, head to head, holding hands and counting out the shooting stars. It had been a tradition since before I could remember, and this would be the first summer I wasn’t at the cabin to do it with Mom and Dad.
The first summer they weren’t speaking to either of their daughters, one by choice and the other not.
I had texted my mom and tried to call, but Elizabeth Stone could be just as obstinate as her husband, and the only reply I’d received was make peace with your father.
But with every day I spent in Florence, I seemed to move further away from peace with my father and toward being at peace with myself. The last three weeks had flown by in a watercolor blur of sights and experiences. Running through the streets of the city with Raffa and Ludo, timing our sprints up the hill to Piazzale Michelangelo and seeing if I could beat them both with my quickness despite their longer legs. Admiring the frescos at the Cappelle Medicee while Raffa regaled me with dramatic tales about Florence’s most famous family, the Medicis. Getting gelato on the hottest day of the summer, Raffa pretending to trip and spilling his treat on my chest. Pulling me into a dark alley to lick the melting cream off the upper swells of my breasts and fuck me with one hand slipped up underneath my skirt.
We shopped at the famous Mercato Centrale, and Raffa convinced the men at a butcher shop with a sign that said “eat meat—it’s good for your sex life” to teach me how to cut the perfect bistecca alla Fiorentina for our dinner. He knew what foods I avoided for my kidney health without asking when we picked out produce, and he admitted he had done some research on my condition so I didn’t have to lay everything out for him. I kissed him so hard he had to brace himself against a display of tomatoes, and he crushed the fruit beneath his hand.
Later, cooking with him as if we’d always occupied the same kitchen, singing to an eclectic mix of Taylor Swift (because Raffa needed to be inducted into the fandom), Sufjan Stevens (my favorite artist), and Pavarotti (Raffa’s favorite singer).
When Raffa had to work, I explored alone or spent time in the library beside his offices, studying Italian and writing to Gemma about my adventures. One day, I realized I had never recovered my postcards to her from Signora Verga’s apartment, but when I asked Raffa about it, he said Ludo had packed everything the police had not taken that had been left behind.
It was strange, but I quickly forgot about it, throwing myself into every moment so I could pull out my memories like their own postcards, vivid and nostalgic, when I was back in Michigan.
Our sex life was passionate and voracious. I woke up wanting him, already reaching for him, and went to bed tangled in his limbs, sticking to him with sweat and happy about it because I wanted to be that close. But as the days wore on, it took on an intense, almost feral edge.
One morning, I bit the junction of his neck and shoulder so savagely as I came that I broke the skin and drew blood. Raffa was far from angry—in fact, he looked smugly proud—but I wondered at how far I’d come from the shy virgin and considered, almost apprehensively, how far I had to go in falling into the dark heat of eroticism with Raffa.
There was nothing we did, no way he touched me that I did not love. The same silk scarf I’d worn driving the Ferrari now tied around my eyes as Raffa used his mouth on every inch of my skin, front to back, head to toes, for hours. The slick press of a thumb into the tight vise of my ass as he fucked me from behind or the finger that traced the bulge of his cock in my mouth, slipping onto my tongue along with it just so Raffa could see me struggle to take more.
It wasn’t right to say I had a submissive streak; I was assertive about my desire. I pushed into the office one day while Raffa was on the phone speaking in German, and I dropped to my knees beneath the desk to suck him off because I’d read about it in a book once and wanted to try. I hopped up onto the kitchen counter while we were cooking, raising my skirt up to my hips to show him I wasn’t wearing anything beneath. Asking him to eat the whipped cream we’d made for a strawberry dessert off my skin.
But there was no denying Raffa had been right. I loved being his doll, bending and surrendering to his commands so I could receive the sweet taste of his praise and the even sweeter reward of the orgasm he made me earn.
We fit in this the way we seemed to fit in all things.
By the time August 10 rolled in and I was set to leave in two days, I almost couldn’t breathe for missing him, and I hadn’t even gone yet.
If I’d grown more morose as the days grew shorter, Raffa had grown more removed. He spent long days in the office, only emerging for dinner and the odd night out to explore nearby restaurants and bars with live music because we both liked to dance.
It was such a strange sensation, to be so in love and so heartbroken simultaneously. To experience the fiercest joy alongside the deepest pit of despair.
“Enough,” Martina snapped as we were chopping tomatoes for the caprese salad side by side in the kitchen.
We were listening to Italian pop music Martina had put on the speaker system, and we had been dancing a little around the kitchen until “Si, ah” came on and reminded me of the night Raffa and I had spent at a local club. It was strange to see a man who preferred to live in luxury and speak about Italy’s historic culture indulge in something so . . . young and current. He danced to contemporary music like an idiot, and I loved discovering something he wasn’t stunning at.
“You honestly reek of sadness,” she declared, thrusting her knife at me a little because she was scary and vaguely threatening like that. But we had become close over the last six weeks, and the thought of leaving her behind brought tears to my eyes like a struck spring in soft earth.
It was too much an echo of losing Gemma.
I did not have many friends, and Martina, along with Renzo, Carmine, and Ludo, even Servio and Annella, had become my Italian family. Maybe if my parents were currently talking to me, the idea of leaving wouldn’t have felt so much like abandonment.
But it did.
“Oh, tesoro,” she murmured, seeing the tears in my eyes.
The knife hit the cutting board with a clatter, and suddenly her arms were around me.
Martina wasn’t a hugger, and she didn’t seem to enjoy being touched unless it was Renzo or Raffa doing it. Raffa had explained that she had trauma that made her distrustful and uncomfortable with most people and left it at that.
So the hug felt like a moment.
And I took it for all it was worth, throwing my arms around her and then tipping my head into the crook of her neck.
“I’m going to miss you so much,” I admitted wetly, clutching at her back. “I can’t stop thinking about it.”
“I know.” Her hand patted between my shoulders a little awkwardly, but she let me cling to her and sighed, relaxing into it. “We will miss you too. I hope you know.”
“I think I do.”
But Raffa still hadn’t said the words I was waiting for.
Not “I love you.”
As strange as it was, I didn’t think we needed that. The phrase was overused in English anyway, and there were so many more beautiful ways to express it in Italian. Many ways Raffa had expressed the sentiment to me already over the last six weeks.
Cerbiatta mia. La mia donna. La mia stella cadente.
My little fawn. My woman. My shooting star.
“And what brings a man like you pleasure?” I’d asked him.
“You,” he’d said simply. “In all your iterations.”
You must remember my definition of perfect, Vera. Enticing, so vibrant you cannot help but find it beautiful, flaws and all.
Il mio posto felice.
My happy place.
Yes, there were so many other ways to say it and infinite ways to feel it. In the touch of his reverent hands on my body as if he was Michelangelo awakening David from marble. The way he looked at me, a keen-edged passion as sharp as the tone of Dante writing about his Francesca. How the world seemed to narrow to the two of us, and it was so easy to forget that so much lay between us.
The truth was, we did exist in a bubble. My family did not know him, and aside from the obvious problem of him living in Italy, they would be appalled by the age difference, even though it seemed trivial to me. I did not know his family, and he did not take us to visit Villa Romano even though I kept asking for stories of it when it had been his happy place. I did not tell him about Gemma’s complicated life, and he did not tell me why he thought he was so undeserving of goodness in his life.
It was a defense mechanism, I thought. Keeping the last corners of our souls hidden from one another in hopes the pain wouldn’t be so great when it was all over.
But still, I waited for those three words.
Not “I love you,” but “Will you stay?”
Martina pulled away only to shake my shoulders, clucking her tongue at me in disappointment. “Uffa! You are both blind, standing too close to see each other properly.”
“Hey,” I protested. “I’m pretty sure you’re in love with Renzo, and you haven’t done a thing about it. So pot, meet kettle.”
A reluctant smile tugged her mouth. In many ways, she reminded me of Raffa. Both of them used their good looks and sharp wit to draw attention away from their soft spots. They had the typical Italian characteristic of saying what they thought even if it wasn’t very nice or diplomatic, and they both refused to suffer fools.
But Martina was a woman, and therefore she understood me in ways Raffa probably could not.
“You could tell him,” she suggested, moving back to her tomatoes.
Servio came into the kitchen then and hummed under his breath as he checked the beef slow roasting in the oven. When he noticed we were having a heart-to-heart, he covered his ears, then zipped his mouth closed and mimed throwing away the key. I watched him for a moment as he moved to the countertop lined with watermelons we had to cut up after the tomatoes. Apparently, lasagna or pasta with meat sauce, steak, and watermelon were the traditional offerings on San Lorenzo Day. They even had a free dinner and party with live music in the city, but Raffa had insisted we host a party. I thought it might have been his way of giving me a going-away party too. A chance to celebrate with all the people I had met in Florence while I still could. Even Signora Verga was coming. My meager guest list was amplified by Raffa’s, Martina’s, Renzo’s, Carmine’s, and Ludo’s friends as well. Servio had told me earlier he was preparing to feed sixty people.
“I’ve thought about it,” I admitted, turning back to Martina. “But I keep telling myself there is no point. So what if I . . . care about him? My life is in Michigan.”
“For the last six weeks, your life has been here,” she pointed out dryly. “And as a very entertained spectator, I have to say, it seems to be going very well.”
“Six weeks is still a vacation. We haven’t been living in reality.”
She planted a hand on her hip and leveled me with a look that reminded me of my mother. “Why does it feel like you are reading these issues off cue cards?”
I flushed and shrugged. “I may have made a list. I like to be organized. So sue me.”
“Chi non risica non rosica,” she said. “She who does not risk does not get the rose.”
“No risk, no reward?” I snorted. “Really, Marti?”
She glowered at my use of the nickname, but I thought she secretly liked it, because she hadn’t told me to fuck off yet.
“Fine, do what you want. Mess up both your lives and mine by extension because I’ll have to be the one to deal with his mopey ass when you leave.”
“Are you almost done with the salad?” Carmine asked, coming into the kitchen in a vest, button-up, and trousers like he was about to walk the Versace runway and not cook in the kitchen with us. “Raffa gave me permission to duck out of work and focus on what really matters.” He pointed at me. “Tiramisu.”
“The key is making the ladyfingers from scratch.” I echoed the words he had been telling me since last week, when I’d agreed to help him make dessert for the festivities. “I know. I took a peek in the pantry, and they turned out really well.”
We had left them overnight so they could dry out, all the better to absorb the coffee-and-liquor mixture.
Carmine pressed a hand to his heart. “My angel.”
“Stop flirting with cerbiatta mia, Carmine,” Raffa drawled as he came into the kitchen in bare feet. “I gave you permission to cook with her. Not to try to steal her away.”
Next to Carmine’s trussed-up finery and grooming, Raffa looked casual in his black trousers and thin knit sweater with the sleeves pushed to his elbows. His hair was still a bit mussed from the make-out break we’d taken a couple of hours ago, and I hoped he hadn’t had a Zoom meeting because he also had lipstick on his throat.
“Ha! Like I’d ever leave you for the likes of Carmine,” I scoffed, leaning back into Raffa as he pressed up behind me and planted a kiss on my bare shoulder. “If you’re going to be jealous, I’d worry most about Servio.”
The eighty-year-old cook froze in the act of making six batches of lasagna, eyes wide.
“What?” I said into the silence. “Any woman in her right mind would consider being with Servio for his tortellini alone.”
Martina snorted, and Carmine made an insulted noise in the back of his throat.
But Raffa laughed into my hair.
“Are your friends coming?” he asked, kissing my neck.
I squirmed. Even though I’d woken up to his mouth between my thighs while I lay on my stomach in the bed and then come twice when he canted my hips up and fucked me into the mattress, I was still on edge with lust. Knowing I only had two more days to take my fill was definitely a factor.
“Yes,” I breathed before clearing my throat. “Bibi and Ramesh asked if they could bring a Guyanese dish, and I said of course. I hope that’s okay.”
“Of course. They are welcome here, and it will be interesting to have something other than the usual spread.”
Servio grumbled at that, but we both ignored him.
“I made my mom’s recipe for potato salad,” I told him. “She makes it every summer for the Fourth of July, and obviously I missed that because I was here, so I thought it might be nice to add to the celebration.”
I turned my head to catch Raffa looking into the distance, and I wondered if he was imagining spending the Fourth of July with me in some alternate reality where we could have that kind of future.
He blinked, and the moment was gone.
“What did you think of the Corteo Storico della Repubblica Fiorentina?”
Ludo, Martina, and I had gone to the parade in front of the Basilica of San Lorenzo that morning while Raffa worked with the others. I’d hoped he would go with me, but I knew before he made an excuse that he wouldn’t.
It was like he was trying to ease us apart by degrees.
I wanted to shout at him that it wouldn’t hurt any less to rip the bandage off slowly.
“It was amazing,” I breathed. “The historical outfits, the suits of armor, the drummers and the trumpeters. I honestly didn’t know where to look.”
“She was like a kid in a candy store,” Martina teased. “I was almost embarrassed by her enthusiasm.”
“You were the one to first shout ‘Viva San Lorenzo,’” Ludo reminded her.
She threw a slice of tomato at him.
The atmosphere in the kitchen stilled for one vibrating moment.
“No,” Raffa told me, stepping away from me.
Carmine held up his hands to shield his fine suit. “Assolutamente no.”
Martina and I shared a look before both reaching for the huge bowls of sliced tomatoes in front of us.
“Food fight!” I hollered, turning to hurl a handful of tomatoes at Raffa.
They landed with a splat on his back as he twisted away from me. He froze, staring in shock at the hit, before lifting his gaze to mine.
“You will regret that,” he promised.
“You’ll have to catch me first,” I declared, grabbing the bowl and then running away with it.
Behind me, I could hear Ludo and Carmine hurling insults at each other in Italian and Martina’s wild cackle of delight.
A second later, the steady fall of Raffa’s feet as he chased after me.
“Attenta, cerbiatta, il cacciatore viene a prenderti,” Raffa called after me.
Careful, little fawn, the hunter is coming for you.
I hid behind the corner at the entrance to the music room, trying to calm my breathing so he wouldn’t hear me as he approached.
He stalked into the room like the hunter he’d claimed to be, so I should have known I couldn’t catch him by surprise, but I tried anyway.
I jumped out, trying to lift the bowl of tomatoes over his head, but he caught me around the wrist and wrenched it down so the bowl wavered and fell between us, coating our torsos in multicolored heritage tomatoes.
Raffa blinked at the mess I’d made of both of us and the terra-cotta tiles at our feet before sighing dramatically. “I warned you, little fawn.”
I screeched as he ducked, the steel bowl falling with a clang to the floor. He put a shoulder to my belly and lifted me in a fireman’s carry before taking off on firm strides down the corridor to our bedroom.
I banged on his back. “I’m needed in the kitchen, Raffa.”
“You’re needed over my knee, Vera,” he corrected. “Thanks to your little stunt, I now have an insatiable need to see this fine ass as red as a tomato.”
“People will arrive soon,” I argued, even though something in my belly heated at the idea of being spanked. It wasn’t something we had done yet, but it was a fantasy I’d had for years, touching myself at night and imagining what some faceless, handsome older guy might do to me if I acted out.
Probably a classic fantasy for a repressed good girl like me to have, but that didn’t make it any less sexy.
Raffa tossed the door shut behind us and dropped me gently to my feet, immediately stepping out of my reach.
“Hands on the door, feet shoulder width apart. Tilt those hips to present that beautiful ass for me,” he ordered in that fire-and-ice voice that made shivers pour down my spine.
I hesitated for only a moment, because I was covered in tomato gunk, before I did as he asked. Being in that position alone was so erotic, arranging my body to his liking, obeying his orders even if it meant pain because I knew, always, in the end he would make it worth it.
There was a sudden slap a split second before I felt the impact sink sharp roots into my backside. He had spanked me through my skirt, but the blow still left a mild heat in its wake.
“How is that?” he asked, running his nose down the shell of my ear.
“Good,” I said, but my mouth was suddenly too dry, so it didn’t come out right, and I had to try again. “Good.”
“Va bene. Because that was only a little taste,” he muttered darkly before he grabbed the bottom of my ruined shirt and pulled. “Arms.”
I raised them so he could rid me of the material, my damp nipples beading in the air-conditioned room. With another quick tug, my apron and skirt fell to the floor at my feet.
“Step out.”
When I did, he reached for the garments and tossed them somewhere behind us. I waited for him to touch me again, but he didn’t. For a long moment that felt like minutes, I stood still, almost trembling with anticipation. A faint sound like a choked-off moan made me wonder if he was . . . touching himself to the sight of me presented like that.
Heat sluiced over my skin and pooled low in my belly.
Just when I was going to cave and look over my shoulder, his naked body pressed into my back and his hand was at my sex, cupping it in one palm.
“Already wet just from the anticipation of a good spanking and standing so pretty for me. I could have come just from looking at you, painted my load on this pretty ass and left you wanting. That would have been a better punishment for my greedy girl. But alas, I am too addicted to the way you moan when you come to leave you without an orgasm.”
I panted as his fingers moved over my clit, dragging my wetness from my center up to the bundle of nerves.
“Do you want to say something to me?” he asked pleasantly.
“Thank you, Raffa,” I said instantly, because it felt natural to thank him for indulging me. “Spoiling me.”
He hummed with pleasure. “Such a good, sweet girl. I wonder if you will say that when I’m done with you.”
His words were followed swiftly by the hit of his other hand against the underside of my ass cheek. The skin was tender, and I jumped in surprise at the sting.
“Count for me,” he commanded, nipping at my neck as I arched it back on a moan because his other hand was still playing in the increasing wet heat of my pussy.
“One.”
“Parla in Italiano.”
“Uno.”
His hand disappeared from between my legs.
Smack.
The same place on the other cheek. My toes curled into the floor, and I pressed my hot cheek to the cool wooden door.
“Due.”
His hand was back, playing at my swelling clit, pinching it and then soothing it with circles of his thumb. I panted and canted my hips back even more.
Another smack.
“Do not move.”
“Tre.” I moaned around the number.
The heat of the slaps built on itself as we continued in this rhythm, the burn digging roots that alchemized into pleasure as they reached my pussy. Raffa continued to play with me randomly, almost bringing me off before spanking me, harder and harder, and then playing with me again.
By the time I choked out “venti,” I was sweating, my skin too tight for my body so I felt I would burst.
I was achy all over, not just my bottom burning like banked coals, a deep fire I knew would last through the night, but also my pussy. It throbbed around an emptiness that obsessed my mind. All I could think about was the need for impact there too. A slap, a cock, a tongue.
Anything to provide the friction I needed to get off.
“I need,” I tried to say, but a frustrated whimper interrupted my speech as Raffa cupped my entire soaking cunt in one hand with just enough pressure to make me crazy. “I need more. Please.”
“Where do you need it?” he asked coolly, because somehow, he always knew how to read my body. “Another set to this sweet pink ass, or something here, where you really ache?” A finger moved infinitesimally over my clit.
I ground my teeth in order to stay still.
“Such a beautiful, obedient girl,” he said, voice thick with desire. “I think you deserve a treat now that you’ve taken your punishment so well.”
He stepped even closer, bringing our hips together so the hot, thick line of his cock rested in the crease of my ass. The hand that wasn’t cupping my pussy went to my neck, cupping it in the same way, from pulse point to pulse point, his thumb under the hinge of my jaw to push my head back into an arch. My whole body was bowed like that, quivering with tension. All I needed was one sweet piercing arrow of pain or pleasure to trigger the release of all this tension at my core.
“I am going to spank your swollen figa now,” he informed me in that haughty voice that made me want to crawl for him. “Five strikes, and if you come before the fifth, we will start from the beginning again and continue until you get it right. Even if it takes all night. Even if guests start to arrive and they can hear your lovely cries through the night. È chiaro?”
“Capisco,” I returned, the word shapeless in my mouth because I was somehow drunk on the endorphins of being hit in just the right way by just the right man.
He pressed a kiss to my sweaty neck before saying, “Count them off.”
Slap.
My body rocked to my toes as sensation rocketed through me, obliterating any notion of remaining calm.
“Una!” I cried out, teeth almost chattering as I fought to keep from begging.
Slap.
A sharp cry punched from my throat, and my hips rocked hard back into his hand as he cupped my stinging pussy and rubbed in the ache until it turned to sweet, honeyed pleasure.
“Due.” The word fell from my mouth to the floor, my entire focus on the hot spot between my thighs, bracketed by Raffa’s big, calloused hand.
“You are so good for me,” he praised, pushing me even higher into a space that felt like floating through a light box. “So sweet letting me slap this pussy before I fuck it.”
This slap was harder, fingers curling over my clit so that the pain rang through it like a great metal bell.
“Tre!” I grunted through my teeth, my legs and arms shaking now.
“So close,” he crooned to me. “You can do it. I will be so proud of you if you can wait to come all over my palm on five.”
“Yes, Raffa,” I breathed, locking down every muscle in my body in anticipation of the next stinging hit.
It didn’t help.
The hit felt like fire against my wet skin, the sound of it a gunshot in the quiet room.
I quaked, my legs gone to jelly so the only things holding me up were the hand wrapped like a collar around my neck and the one curved around my cunt.
“Quattro,” I panted against the door, rocking my forehead against the wood in an attempt to ground myself.
“Last one,” Raffa whispered, rubbing my pussy in gentle, firm circles with his palm. “You have been so stunning. Absolutely perfect. This time, if you need to, Vera, you can come for me.”
“Thank you,” I breathed a second before his hand left my swollen folds entirely only to swing back against me with more force than before.
Air exploded from my lungs, my chest compressed, every atom in my body contracting for one single, brutal moment and then—I screamed—release.
It shot through me like an arrow, shattering the tension so that it broke into pieces and scattered in my bloodstream, carrying heady sensation to every inch of my body.
I was still coming when Raffa switched his hand for his cock and wiped his hand on my hip before grabbing me tight, slanting my ass higher, and driving into my clutching heat.
My cry was garbled. I was breathless with shock as the first orgasm nose-dived into a second, this one softer, longer, rippling through me like waves in a pond.
“Così perfetta,” Raffa growled as he fucked me, the hand around my throat shifting to my shoulder, one arm banded across my breasts so he could thrust me back into him and keep my climax-wrecked body from hitting the door. “Fatta per me.”
So perfect. Made for me.
“Per sempre,” I found the will to say as he gave definition to the phrase “fucking your brains out.”
Forever.
When he came, he whispered my name into my ear again and again like a supplication, like his cum was an offering to some ancient pagan goddess.
I added that to my list of ways Raffa Romano said “I love you,” and knew in my heart that the other three words would come before the end of my stay.
We were meant to be together, and, climax-drunk, I could see no reasons why we shouldn’t be.
