Selena Kitt - Letters to the Baumgarters

“You keep too many secrets.” His hands squeezed my shoulders. “It’s like a weight around your neck.”

“You’re probably right.” I sighed, touching the charm at the end of the necklace Cara Lucia had given me. The eye of Beatrice, watching over me. “But they’re mine to keep.”

He murmured his words into my ear. “Sometimes you hold things so close to your heart that they crumble in your hands.”

“Too late.” I smiled. “The whole thing’s already collapsed.”

“We’re talking in riddles.”

I turned to face him, suddenly clear. “I think we just need to stop talking…for a while.”

“Do you really mean this?”

“Yes.” I nodded, telling myself I did mean it, that this was the right thing to do. I probably should have done it long ago. Beatrice would have been better letting him go, I reminded myself. Better for everyone.

He put his arms around my waist, bending his head to mine, reading my mind. “I won’t let you go.”

“You don’t have a choice.” I tried to disengage myself but he held me tight.

“Give me one.”

I stopped struggling, meeting his gaze. “What do you mean?”

“Say you’ll stay here in Italy.” The urgency in his words made everything in me go silent. He was all seriousness, his eyes searching mine. “Stay with me. Give me a choice to make.”

“Oh Nico…” I closed my eyes against the hope I saw on his face, filled with a pain I couldn’t fight or control. “I’m sorry.”

“Dani…” He said my name, soft, but he let me go.

And I walked home alone against the backdrop of a beautiful, blazing Venetian sunset, crying the whole way, feeling as if my life was fading away with the light, like an inferno in the sky.

Letters to the Baumgarters

Dear Carrie and Doc,

You aren’t going to believe who’s showed up on my doorstep. I can barely believe it myself. Mason! That’s right, I found my ex-husband sitting on my stoop, waiting for me after class, with just a suitcase and an English-Italian translation dictionary in his hands. I think I was too much in shock to do anything else but invite him inside.

And I swear to God, it’s really not my fault he spent the night. He bought a one-way ticket and he didn’t even book a room! What was I supposed to do, send him out onto the streets alone? He doesn’t know a word of Italian-you should hear his accent, or lack thereof. Eek! But nothing happened. Well, mostly nothing.

Okay, okay, I admit, we, uh… we reconciled a little bit. Part of it was the wine. That was my fault. And, you guys, he brought me Ho-Hos! (No jokes, I mean it!) It’s one of those weird, occasional indulgences of mine that I really miss. He knows me so well. It’s hard to say no to a man who does something like that-not to mention the whole International flight to see me thing. But I think it was mostly the wine.

Of course, now this complicates things with Nico a bit. To say the least. I’m not sure what to say to him, if anything. And Mason says he wants to stay for a while, but I don’t know what that means exactly. “Let’s just see where things go,” is what he said. I should have been mad at him, to tell you the truth. I should have slammed the door in his face and told him to go home. I mean, that’s what I should have done, right? Isn’t that what you would want me to do?

But I just couldn’t. So now he’s here, and I’m not quite sure what to do about that…

“Dani?” Mason’s voice beckoned me back from the siren-call of Ho-Ho’s in my little kitchen. I licked the chocolate off my fingers, tucking my letter to the Baumgartners away, and padded back into the bedroom, still nude. “What time is it?”

“Midnight.” I sat on the edge of the bed, the little lamp on the night stand illuminating his sleepy face, eyes still half-closed-but his gaze was on my body, already hungry. Still hungry. “You’re still on American time.”

“Come back to bed.” His hand moved, warm, over my hip, still familiar, even though it had been so long. I couldn’t believe how easily I had fallen into bed with him, how easily I was falling… Maybe that thing about absence making the heart growing fonder really was true. Not that I had ever really stopped loving Mason. I’d divorced him knowing I would probably continue to love him for the rest of my life-but love didn’t always solve everything.

“What are you doing here?” I murmured the question, running my hand through the soft, sandy bristle of his short-cut hair, so different from Nico’s thick, dark curls. Thinking of Nico made my stomach lurch with guilt. I didn’t want to think about what my actions tonight might be doing to him, to our budding relationship. It hurt my head-and my heart-too much.

“This.” He reached for me and I went to him, relieved, without any more thought at all.

I couldn’t believe how quickly we had plunged into this, how easy it felt, being in his arms. Sex had always been something we were good at, from the very beginning. At least until Isabella. Then, things had started falling apart and we just couldn’t put it all back together again. That was probably why we’d ended up here, in bed, on his first night in Italy. We were good here. It was outside of bed that was the problem.

“I want you.” His breath was hot in my ear, his hands large and warm, moving over my back, drawing me near.

“Again?” I teased, reaching down to check, and sure enough, finding him half-hard, beginning to fill my hand.

“Always.” He kissed me, his mouth sliding deliciously across mine. Everything about him was familiar and new at the same time, and I reveled in it-the hard press of his chest, the solid weight of his hips as we rolled on the bed, the well-defined muscles of his arms and shoulders and back under my hands.

“I want to taste you.”

I moaned in anticipation as he kissed his way down my breasts.

We’d been quick the first time, too quick, tearing at each other’s clothes on the way to the bed, our lust too intense for niceties like foreplay. Seeing Mason sitting on the front stoop waiting for me had broken something open in my chest. A part of me that had been stuck and frozen solid was beginning to melt.

“God I love your tits.” He pressed my breasts together in his big hands, getting my nipples as close as he could, and tracing figure-eights there like a skater on a loop, over and over. I whimpered, trying to stay quiet, my pussy throbbing, anticipating the wet lash of his tongue between my legs.

My belly quivered, goosebumps rising on my flesh as he breathed his way down my belly, pausing to lick the jut of my hipbone, following the curve down toward my thigh. I spread my legs for him, offering myself to him completely. I was his, I had always been his. How could I have ever believed any different? Time and distance, pain and separation, that all disappeared the moment his skin met mine.

“Oh god, it’s so smooth.” His fingers brushed my lips, soft and swollen, parting them at the top of my cleft so he could look at me. “So fucking beautiful.”

I went up on my elbows so I could look down and watch. He smiled, knowing how much I loved to see his tongue lap at me, and began kissing my clit, soft, gentle kisses that sent electric shocks through my pelvis.

“Tease.” I slid my palm over his head. His sandy hair was bristly and short-there was nothing to hold onto-so I slipped my hand behind his neck and pressed his mouth to my pussy. He didn’t resist, letting me guide him, rocking my hips against the soft worry of his tongue, back and forth, round and round. “Oh god, yes, like that…”

But he knew. There was no need to tell him what I liked, what I didn’t. His mouth knew just the right places, the exact timing I wanted, needed, moving faster, matching my breath. The excitement rose in my belly like a glorious phoenix from the ashes of a Persian mystery, something waiting to be reborn.