Her skin tasted like expensive gin and the kind of rain that only falls when you’re somewhere you don't belong.
8 min read·1,571 words·2 views
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Look, I’m typing this on my phone in the back of a Fiat while the sun comes up over the Umbrian hills and my heart is still doing that erratic double-thump thing like a Jeep Wrangler trying to climb a scree slope in low gear and I don't even care if there are typos because if I don't get this down now while my skin still feels like it’s vibrating it might just vanish into the fog. You know that feeling when you're at a wedding—some high-production-value destination nightmare where everything is linen and limoncello—and you’re just the guy who went to college with the groom and you’re standing there holding a glass of something sparkling that costs more than your first car and you feel like a ghost in a well-tailored suit? That was me until about two hours ago when Mara decided to ruin my life in the best possible way.
We were supposed to be at the 'After-After Party' in the vaulted cellar of this 12th-century monastery-turned-resort but the air in there was thick enough to chew, smelling of fermented grapes and the kind of heavy, desperate perfume people wear when they’re trying to find someone to go home with. I stepped out into the courtyard because the rain had started—not a Colorado rain, not that sharp, dry, electric crackle we get back home, but a soft, heavy Italian soak that turned the air into a sponge. And there she was, leaning against a mossy stone pillar, wearing this slip of a dress that was the exact color of an alpine lake at twilight, just a shimmering, dark teal silk that looked like it would dissolve if you breathed on it too hard.
'You look like you're plotting a jailbreak,' she said, and her voice had this rasp to it, like she’d spent the last decade shouting over wind on a ridge line or maybe she just hadn't slept since the rehearsal dinner. I didn't even have a clever comeback because when she looked at me, I felt that weird, vertical drop in my stomach you get when you step off a ledge into a deep pool of snow. She wasn't just a bridesmaid; she was the girl I’d been watching across the buffet for three days, the one who kept making these tiny, cynical faces every time the groom’s father started another toast.
'I'm just looking for the exit,' I told her, and my voice sounded like it belonged to someone much cooler than me. She laughed and it was a low, dirty sound that made the hair on my arms stand up, and then she reached out and grabbed my tie—this stupid, silk tie I’d spent twenty minutes in front of the mirror trying to get right—and she pulled me toward the dark path that led away from the lights of the reception toward the old olive groves.
'The exit is this way,' she whispered, and we were walking, stumbling a little on the wet grass, and the music from the cellar was getting muffled, turned into a low throb that you felt in your teeth more than you heard in your ears. The rain was coming down harder now, those big, fat drops that hit the olive leaves with a sound like applause, and she didn't stop until we reached the old stone pressing room, a place that smelled like ancient wood and cold earth and the ghost of every harvest for the last five hundred years.
I told her, 'You're going to get mud on that silk,' and she just looked at me and pulled the dress up, bunching the fabric in her hands until I could see the tops of her thighs, pale and glowing in the dim light reflecting off the wet stones outside. She wasn't wearing stockings, just bare skin and the kind of confidence that makes a man forget his own name.
'Then take it off me before it gets ruined,' she said, and I didn't wait, I couldn't have waited if there had been a firing squad behind me. I had my hands on her waist and the silk was so thin it felt like I was touching her skin directly, just a layer of cool friction between us, and her skin was hot, so much hotter than the damp air. I pushed her back against the rough, uneven stone wall and she hissed as the cold rock met her shoulders, but she didn't pull away; she wrapped her arms around my neck and pulled my head down, burying her face in the crook of my neck.
She smelled like rain and gin and something darker, something like woodsmoke. I kissed her and it wasn't a wedding kiss, it wasn't polite or practiced, it was a collision. My tongue was in her mouth and she was tasting me back with this frantic hunger, her teeth grazing my lower lip until I tasted the sharp, copper hint of blood. I couldn't get close enough. I wanted to be under her skin. I reached down and found the hem of that teal silk and hiked it all the way up, my palms sliding over the curve of her hips, and she wasn't wearing anything underneath, just smooth, damp heat that made my vision blur.
I found the wetness of her, my fingers sliding through the slickness that was already waiting for me, and she let out a sound that wasn't a moan—it was a jagged, broken growl of my name. She hooked one leg around my hip, pulling me harder against her, the rough wool of my suit trousers rubbing against her bare inner thigh. I was already so hard it felt like my fly was going to burst, an ache that started in my marrow and radiated out to my fingertips.
'Please,' she said into my ear, her breath a hot, ragged gale. 'Now. Right now.'
I fumbled with my belt, my fingers shaking like I was trying to thread a needle during an earthquake, and when I finally got my pants down to my thighs, I was surging out, heavy and twitching and desperate. I gripped her butt, lifting her slightly off the ground, and she guided me in. The first inch was a shock—she was so tight, so hot, and the contrast to the cool rain misting through the open doorway was almost too much to handle. I pushed deep, burying myself in her, and we both just froze for a second, both of us gasping, our chests heaving against each other.
It felt like the static you get right before a lightning strike on a ridge line, that moment when the air gets heavy and you know you’re about to be shattered. I started to move, slow at first, just the long, grinding slide of my cock into her, feeling every ridge, every fold of her clenching around me. She was sobbing into my shoulder, her fingers digging into my back, probably ruining the expensive wool of my jacket and I didn't care, I wanted her to tear it off, I wanted us both raw.
I picked up the pace, my hips slamming into hers with a wet, rhythmic thud that echoed off the stone walls. The silk of her dress was caught between our bodies, a crushed, expensive mess, but all I could feel was the way her pussy was milking me, the way she was tilting her pelvis to meet every one of my thrusts. I reached down between us, my thumb finding the little bud of her clit that was swollen and hard, and I started to rub it in time with my strokes.
She came apart instantly. Her whole body spasmed, her internal muscles clamping down on me so hard I thought I was going to pass out. She was shaking, her head thrown back, her throat a long, elegant line in the shadows as she let out a high, thin wail that the rain swallowed whole. Seeing her like that, watching the way her eyes rolled back as she shuddered under me, it blew the doors off whatever restraint I had left.
I buried my face in the curve of her neck, my teeth sinking into the skin there, and I just went wild, driving into her with everything I had, my heart slamming against my ribs like a trapped bird. I felt the heat rising in my gut, that inevitable, heavy swell, and then I was pouring into her, a thick, hot rush that seemed to go on forever, my legs turning to water as I finished, my forehead coming to rest against hers.
We stayed like that for a long time, both of us just breathing, the only sound the drip-drip-drip of water from the eaves and the distant, muffled thump of a DJ playing a remix of a song neither of us liked. Her silk dress was a disaster, hiked up around her waist, damp and stained, and my suit was a wreck, but when she looked at me and smiled—this slow, devastatingly private smile—I knew I’d never felt more awake in my entire life.
I have to go. The Fiat is stopping and she's waiting for me at the coffee bar across from the hotel. She still has a smudge of mud on her collar and I'm not going to tell her. I'm just going to kiss it.
