Total pages in book: 158
Estimated words: 144832 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 724(@200wpm)___ 579(@250wpm)___ 483(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 144832 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 724(@200wpm)___ 579(@250wpm)___ 483(@300wpm)
He caught her chin. “Nicoletta, we tell the truth to each other. That’s how I know how to keep you safe and to guide us through any sexual missteps. There are bound to be many. I don’t want problems we can avoid, so that means communication. You think I didn’t have to learn what oral sex was?”
“Then you probably know that if you could get them to use your mouth, they often couldn’t use other parts of your body, although in my case there were three of them, so sometimes that didn’t work so well anyway,” she said.
He caught the sheen of tears before she blinked them away. “Yeah, piccola, I learned that trick, but there were two of them, so it didn’t always work for me, either. I think we’ll wait until we’re mutually satisfying each other, not using oral sex out of fear.”
“Do you think that’s why I was offering?”
“I think you’re very frightened, Nicoletta, of not pleasing me. Of not being able to have sex the way you think I might want to have it.”
She ducked her head. All around them the birds sang, calling out to one another, but she was no longer hearing the soothing symphony. She was screaming inside. He could hear it in his own mind. That was how close they were, even when she’d tried to separate them.
“You’re very experienced, Taviano. I’ve seen the magazines. You’ve had so many partners. So many women. I’ve had those three monsters and Benito Valdez, who, quite frankly, was as big a monster as all three of the others combined, and I hated every second I was with them. I despised sex. Nothing about it was good. Nothing. Not one single thing.”
He rubbed at her lips with the pad of his thumb. Her skin was so incredibly soft, but it was the woman and everything about her that melted the ice in him, that hard place inside him he had thought impossible to ever get past to find the real man.
“That wasn’t sex, Nicoletta. That was rape. That was brutal animals trying to hurt you, to prove they had power over you. They didn’t. They never could. What it wasn’t, was sex. Sex between two people who love each other should be beautiful. It should be slow, staring into each other’s eyes, so intimate you know you belong together for eternity. It should be fun. It should be slam-against-the-wall, can’t wait to fuck. It should be anything you want it to be because you’re so in love you need to give each other so much pleasure you can’t stand it. But always, always, Nicoletta, whatever two people in love do, it’s consensual.”
He brushed a kiss on her soft, tempting lips because he couldn’t stop himself. “If you get scared at any point and you want to slow down and take a breath, you say so and we slow down. You want to stop, you say so, then we stop. We try something new and it scares you, you say so and we stop and discuss whether you want to keep going or not. You don’t like something, we stop. End of story. Anytime you say no, it’s no. That’s sex with the one you’re in love with. That’s sex with me. That’s why it’s so important to always communicate honestly with me about what you’re feeling, and I promise I’ll do the same.”
She stared up at him for a few more moments and then she nodded, her impossibly long lashes fluttering in that way that always moved him.
“That’s why I love you so much, Taviano. You manage to make me feel so important to you. No matter what. You make everything all right.”
“Everything is all right as long as we’re together. We’re stronger together, Nicoletta. You always have to remember that. Eloisa might try to take us down. Others might. They don’t matter. It’s always going to be you and me.”
She took a deep breath and nodded. “Let’s go back to that beautiful home you managed to find, although I can’t believe you really can see stars. No one can see stars anymore.”
“We can.” He poured confidence into his voice, allowing her to change the subject. They needed to switch to something much lighter. “We’re very far out.”
“The city is too lit up. I think you have to be in the middle of the lake in order to see them. I looked it up once. I asked Lucia and Amo about going to an observatory, and even there, it’s not a really good shot at seeing them.”
“It is here. The artist who built the house chose the location far enough away, across the lake and deliberately with seeing the stars in mind. He was an astronomer at heart, which is why most of the art pieces in the house or built into the ceilings and walls all have to do with the universe and galaxies.”