Page 50 of Casanova LLC

I placed my hands around her neck. That swan neck. Traced my fingers along her collarbone. “Things?”

She shivered an exhale and I watched her nipples pebble under the sheet. “I imagined what you wanted to do to me.”

I kept one hand on her throat, but brushed the other above the sheet, across her perked tips. I dropped my mouth to her ear. “Like?”

“Like…”

“What did you imagine I imagined?”

“I don’t—I can’t imagine anything other than what you’re doing right now, God, this feels?—”

“We’re in that tucked away gallery room, the light’s just clicked off.” A sound from the back of her throat. “Imagine if we had given ourselves over to that night. What then?”

Her eyes fell closed. “Tell me.”

I made the decision, at that moment, to ruin the ball for her. I wanted her thinking of me, only me.

My lips brushed against her ear. “Maybe I started like this?” With thumb and forefinger, I found one nipple through the sheet. Held it. Tugged ever so slightly upwards. “Through that little white blouse you were wearing?”

She gasped and her breath held for a moment as she raced to catch up to it. By the time she caught it, I was already headed for the other one.

The doorbell was so shrill we both jumped. I strode to the wall-panel, quickly, before it could screech again. I really should fix that, I thought abstractly. Breathing hard, I buzzed the gate open without bothering to answer the intercom. “The costumer.” It had the tone of an expletive. I had forgotten about her. I had forgotten about the ball. About the very thing I’d been trying to make Claire forget about.

I turned around.

She’d come up on her elbows, sheet tucked between her arms and her torso, tight across her primed breasts, looking like a work of art.

“Do you want that robe?”

She nodded and I brought it to her. I took her discarded towel, wiped the oil off my hands, and gave her my gentlemanly back. I heard her sit up, shuffle the sheets to the side, and plant her bare feet on the floor.

“I want to say something.”

I turned around again. “Please.”

“I had forgotten what it felt like.”

“What?”

“That pounding ache. Of arousal.”

An intrusive knock-knock-knock at the door.

We looked at each other.

“Thank you.” So simple. So honest.

“You’re welcome.” I moved for the door. There was nothing else to do.

For now.

“You can have your fitting in here. I’ll go change upstairs.”

After one final lingering moment of eye contact, I went to retrieve the costumer.

Claire

The costumer, Paola, had put a Marie Antoinette wig on me and a black lace-and-diamond mask that covered the upper half of my face. The dress was red, with gauzy off-the-shoulder, slitted sleeves, a corset, and a flouncy high-low skirt. White stockings and ruby-colored shoes. I looked like a cross between a louche courtesan, a pirate wench from some nineteenth-century opera, and a Spirit Halloween Sexy Anne-Boleyn-In-A-Bag, but—I had to admit—it was exquisitely crafted. Paola was an artist.

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