Read Online The Story of X: An Erotic Tale by A. J. Molloy - Free Book Online
Authors: A. J. Molloy
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also sure that Marc is not like these men. He is funny and sharp and dignified and intelligent, and he has that lofty graciousness—or is that just his expensive English education
and his rarefied European breeding? Maybe it is all fake; maybe he is just another dancer at the masked ball of Neapolitan life.
And then there is the way he struck my attacker. I cannot ignore that. The serious
punch, the sudden explosion of expert violence—as though he were producing a deadly
weapon that he knew exactly how to use.
The blood on his knuckles as he drove. The dark skin, the white teeth, the predatory
animal. The way the junkies cowered when they saw him.
“Hello?”
Jessica is waving a hand in front of my face. As if I have gone blind.
“Sorry.”
“Let me guess, you were thinking of lottery numbers? The price of polenta?”
“He doesn’t want to see me, Jess, so it’s all pointless.”
“Yeah?”
“He made it clear, he might . . . have feelings . . . but we can’t be together.”
“Pah.” Jessica waves away my plaintive words. She glances up at the waiter, asks for
the check. “I don’t believe it, babe. He clearly does want to see you, there is just some problem. But sexual desire at this level has
its own logic. When it happens, a real love attack, then nothing can stop it—trust
me.” She smiles in the dusk. “He will be back.”
I so want this to be true. I am scared that it is true. I need it to be true. I want
to fly home at once; retreat from danger and hurt.
Jessica pays the bill and we rise, ignoring the attentive eyes of the burly drinkers,
and walk along the Naples waterfront to Santa Lucia. The moon above Capri is pale
and loitering; she is a white-faced northern widow in dark southern veils. Mantillas.
Suddenly everything seems very sad. The chattering Italians gathered in groups and
strolling in families no longer enliven me. It is stupid. I want to cry. What is happening
to me? These feelings are entirely overblown and unjustified, and yet they are very
real. I am wounded, I am an idiot, I am hurt, I am self-pitying. I am staring at Marc
Roscarrick.
Marcus Roscarrick.
He is standing there, in the moonlight and the lamplight, by the door to my apartment.
He is leaning against his car, his silver-blue Mercedes, quite alone. He is in jeans
and a serene dark shirt. He is gazing down the boulevard at the slice of starlit sea;
he seems oblivious, tall, solitary, shadowy, very pensive. The dark evening light
sculpts his cheekboned face. He looks younger and sadder than ever before. Yet more
masculine.
“See,” says Jessica. “Told you.”
Alerted by Jessica’s voice, Marc turns, and he stares at me. My mouth is open but
unspeaking. I feel like I have been captured in a spotlight on stage, and the whole
darkened audience of the city is watching the drama. Everything else yields to silence.
“I’m just going to a bar . . .” Jessica says, and she smiles at me with a significant
expression. Then she slips away, into the city—leaving me and him. The only two people
in Campania. It’s just me and him and the constellation of Orion, which glistens over
Sorrento and Capri.
I can tell by his dark, sad, broken half-smile that something has changed, something
irrevocable has changed between us; the breach has been made.
He moves toward me. But I am already running toward him.
C HAPTER E IGHT
I T’S AS IF our lips meet before our bodies: it is the first kiss—maybe the first of many, maybe
the only kiss, I cannot know, I do not care—and it is hot and brutal. He gathers a
fistful of my blond hair and pulls back my head with a jolt of subtle pain—and yet
I like it—and his mouth sinks down onto mine, warm and salty and hot and wet. His
tongue is in my mouth; it is all instinctive, reflexive, and immediate. I am not thinking
about anything. I am just a kiss. I am just this brilliant kiss under Orion.
Our
and his rarefied European breeding? Maybe it is all fake; maybe he is just another dancer at the masked ball of Neapolitan life.
And then there is the way he struck my attacker. I cannot ignore that. The serious
punch, the sudden explosion of expert violence—as though he were producing a deadly
weapon that he knew exactly how to use.
The blood on his knuckles as he drove. The dark skin, the white teeth, the predatory
animal. The way the junkies cowered when they saw him.
“Hello?”
Jessica is waving a hand in front of my face. As if I have gone blind.
“Sorry.”
“Let me guess, you were thinking of lottery numbers? The price of polenta?”
“He doesn’t want to see me, Jess, so it’s all pointless.”
“Yeah?”
“He made it clear, he might . . . have feelings . . . but we can’t be together.”
“Pah.” Jessica waves away my plaintive words. She glances up at the waiter, asks for
the check. “I don’t believe it, babe. He clearly does want to see you, there is just some problem. But sexual desire at this level has
its own logic. When it happens, a real love attack, then nothing can stop it—trust
me.” She smiles in the dusk. “He will be back.”
I so want this to be true. I am scared that it is true. I need it to be true. I want
to fly home at once; retreat from danger and hurt.
Jessica pays the bill and we rise, ignoring the attentive eyes of the burly drinkers,
and walk along the Naples waterfront to Santa Lucia. The moon above Capri is pale
and loitering; she is a white-faced northern widow in dark southern veils. Mantillas.
Suddenly everything seems very sad. The chattering Italians gathered in groups and
strolling in families no longer enliven me. It is stupid. I want to cry. What is happening
to me? These feelings are entirely overblown and unjustified, and yet they are very
real. I am wounded, I am an idiot, I am hurt, I am self-pitying. I am staring at Marc
Roscarrick.
Marcus Roscarrick.
He is standing there, in the moonlight and the lamplight, by the door to my apartment.
He is leaning against his car, his silver-blue Mercedes, quite alone. He is in jeans
and a serene dark shirt. He is gazing down the boulevard at the slice of starlit sea;
he seems oblivious, tall, solitary, shadowy, very pensive. The dark evening light
sculpts his cheekboned face. He looks younger and sadder than ever before. Yet more
masculine.
“See,” says Jessica. “Told you.”
Alerted by Jessica’s voice, Marc turns, and he stares at me. My mouth is open but
unspeaking. I feel like I have been captured in a spotlight on stage, and the whole
darkened audience of the city is watching the drama. Everything else yields to silence.
“I’m just going to a bar . . .” Jessica says, and she smiles at me with a significant
expression. Then she slips away, into the city—leaving me and him. The only two people
in Campania. It’s just me and him and the constellation of Orion, which glistens over
Sorrento and Capri.
I can tell by his dark, sad, broken half-smile that something has changed, something
irrevocable has changed between us; the breach has been made.
He moves toward me. But I am already running toward him.
C HAPTER E IGHT
I T’S AS IF our lips meet before our bodies: it is the first kiss—maybe the first of many, maybe
the only kiss, I cannot know, I do not care—and it is hot and brutal. He gathers a
fistful of my blond hair and pulls back my head with a jolt of subtle pain—and yet
I like it—and his mouth sinks down onto mine, warm and salty and hot and wet. His
tongue is in my mouth; it is all instinctive, reflexive, and immediate. I am not thinking
about anything. I am just a kiss. I am just this brilliant kiss under Orion.
Our
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