Sliding off the bed, he rifled blindly through his pants and pulled out a condom.

“I want to memorize your body all over again,” he said, fingers traveling over my body.

“I’ve missed this. You. So much,” I admitted, pulling him over me.

He slid a pillow beneath my head and tucked both of our arms beneath it. With his hands holding mine and our lips just barely touching, he slid inside.

My gasp and his moan reverberated in the otherwise silent room.

With the moonlight on his face, I felt deep in my chest how much I had missed him. He wasn’t slow or tender. Everything about his pace had become frenzied, powerful, and we were climbing. He was chasing our release with every thrust. Every grasp of his hands over mine made my body sing.

Marcello kissed me, bruising my lips with his intensity. A bite, then a peck, before his tongue swept into my mouth. He was reaching his end when his movements became more frantic. He pushed himself up onto his arms, muscles flexing before reaching one hand between us.

“Yes, yes,” I chanted, my head shaking side to side. “That’s it, Marcello.”

“Tesoro . . .”

My hands reached up, cupping his face as I spiraled. He looked down, smiling, before dropping his lips to mine.

I was feeling the highest of highs when he collapsed next to me, just for a second before he scooted off to dispose of the condom. When he returned he flopped into bed, making sure to pull me into his side. This was familiar, too, the after. He always kept me near, making me feel so treasured. His tesoro.

He rolled me over to face him and brushed his lips against my neck, over my shoulder, and across my chest. Light, tender kisses that stirred a long-ignored need deep within me.

“When can we do that again?” I asked, brushing the drooping hair from his forehead. He was spent, smiling and so cute, I could barely take it.

* * *

IT’S FUNNY HOW YOU CAN become what you see every day. Since I’d arrived in Rome, I’d been observing couples in love, couples in lust, couples that had either just had all the sex or were on their way to having all of the sex. They were the ones draped around each other like sexy little jackets, the ones with their hands in each other’s pockets and their lips on permanent meld. The couples where he seems fascinated with a lock of her hair and studies it as though it was the most incredible piece of art. The couples where she can’t stop touching him, letting her fingers linger on his shoulder, his elbow, the back of his neck, that spot on his chest when she can feel his heart beating and she knows its beating faster because her hands are on his skin and isn’t that the most adorable thing you’ve ever seen?

Well, it was the most adorable thing until Marcello and I hit the streets. We now held the title of Sexiest Couple in Rome.

Famished, we dragged ourselves from the apartment and walked a few blocks down to the neighborhood trattoria. We moved slowly, our steps in sync in a natural way. His arm was wrapped around my shoulder, cuddling me close to him like a blanket he didn’t want to be without. My arm was around his waist, his hip bumping into mine with every step. He pushed me into a doorway to ravage my neck for one or fifteen minutes.

It was sloppy, all dreamy eyes and roving hands and quiet, contented sighs.

I’d been to this trattoria a few times with Daisy. Being here with Marcello felt totally different. The candles that seemed sweet and airy now felt sensual and dark and cozy. The tables pushed close together had seemed communal and quaint; now they were simply a reason to sit closer, skin to skin, tucked in to each other to conserve space. Everything on the menu even seemed sexier. Luscious strands of tagliatelle, looped in sensual curves around lusty tomatoes and spicy garlic.

Hungry? I was. For more Marcello.

Other than a few months in Spain with a certain neck ravager, I’d never felt comfortable sharing affection in public. But being with him again made me remember the sexier side of myself, the woman and not just the girl. I could feel every inch of my skin, my curves, every one of them this man had been intimately reacquainted with only a short while ago. My breasts pushed at my cotton shift; plumped by his kisses, nipped by his teeth, they were sensitive and just so very there. All the tiny scrapes along the inside of my thighs from his scruff, not to mention a tender spot that still throbbed with every heartbeat where he’d bitten down high on the inside of my left thigh while I cried out. Every part of my body felt alive, used in the best way possible, the way that it was meant to be used. For pleasure, mine and his.

He sighed while biting into a piece of crusty bread, mimicking the exact sigh he made when he slid into my body for the first time in years. Hearing it again made me warm all over.

“How do you feel?” he asked, pushing the strap of my dress aside so he could drop a kiss on the exact spot where my neck met my shoulder.

Underneath the table, I placed his hand on my knee and slowly slid it up my thigh. “You tell me.”

His eyes burned. His touch seared. I gasped as his fingertips ghosted higher along my skin, pressing and circling, underneath my dress now.

“You feel soft. And warm. And . . . oh, Avery,” he murmured as I shifted in my chair, allowing him further access. Hidden under the tablecloth, he teased. And if it wasn’t for the waiter bringing over glasses of Campari at that exact moment, I would’ve let him do more than tease.

“Did you ever think this would happen?”

“My hands in your panties in public? Well, almost in your panties.” He grinned. So dangerous.

I leaned in, took his face in my hands, and kissed him, wet and hard, biting his lower lip, holding on to it for a second longer than I probably should. When I was done, I sat back in my chair. I could be dangerous, too. “I meant, this, us, here, together, earlier, all of it. Did you ever think it would happen?”