Page 55 of Casanova LLC

“Only with guests, never on my own. If that’s what you’re asking.”

“I’m not sure what I’m asking, exactly.”

He stepped closer. We were moving now, having found some kind of rhythm. “If you’re asking if I’d rather be walking through a museum with you, the answer is yes.”

What happens when you know what you want but can’t have it?

I had to look away. My eyes went to two gorgeous women on the periphery, heads bent together, staring at him, whispering. Desire clear on their colluding faces. “Seems you could have your pick of the litter. If you wanted.”

“That’s not what I do.”

“But what if she wanted you to? Your client?”

He studied me, seeming to gauge if that’s what I wanted. “Guest.”

“Guest. Sorry.”

He pulled me a bit closer. “Consent goes both ways. I consent only to be with my guest.”

The more cryptic he was, the more curious I became. “But do you like all this?”

“I understand it,” he non-answered.

I nodded toward two people who’d left the dance floor and were screwing against the wall, her breasts bouncing to the tempo of his thrusts. He obliged me and looked at them. Impassively. “Do you find that sexy, or arousing, or…what, exactly?”

“It’s sex. Just sex.”

“So, you’re too jaded to find anything stimulating?”

He smirked down at me. “I’d like to think not.”

“No, seriously. Do you even get turned on anymore?” His smile grew tight, but he didn’t seem angry, just impatient. “What do you, Alessandro, like? What do you fantasize about?”

“Not that.” He jerked his head to the wall couple.

My frustration built, though I knew I didn’t have the right to be frustrated. “What do you want, Alessandro?”

He stopped dancing. He took a long moment looking at me before saying, “I want whatever you want, Claire.”

He was ending the conversation. He was begging me to end it.

Then, as if to contradict what I saw in his eyes, he laced his fingers into mine.

We stood there, facing each other, and the room disappeared. All the sex, the naked bodies, the wild abandonment…gone.

I’d pushed us here. I’d pushed for the real him. I’d gotten it.

And there was nowhere to go with it.

I pulled him back into a dance position, to stop looking at his face. His arms came around my lower back and I wrapped mine around his neck and I stared at the now-finished couple over his shoulder. She was reapplying her lipstick and he was looking at his phone. They weren’t touching.

“Intimacy,” I realized aloud. “That’s what’s missing. It’s the most intimate act, but the intimacy… Everyone here just left it at the door, like a checked coat.”

He brought our bodies closer. The dance changed. We weren’t just feeling each other move, we were inside a shared movement. I felt the pads of his fingers land on my bare back, between my shoulder blades. Softly, they began to skate upward. They found the spot on my neck. The one he already knew so well.

Intimacy.

“I want to go home now.”

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