Finally, after what feels like forever while he finds protection, and after handing the condom to me to do the honors, he makes his move. He thrusts hard into me, causing me to wrap my arms even tighter around his neck, clinging on for dear life.
As Nick moves inside me, hitting all of the right spots, I feel like I’m floating to cloud nine. My body trembles, flooding with desire, and I can already feel those intense waves starting to crash over me, sending me straight into the abyss of sexual heaven.
“I’m going to come!”
With that, Nick picks me up and throws me back farther onto the bed where he can thrust more powerfully within me. I grab on to him. His hands run everywhere all over me, and it isn’t long until I’m fully shuddering, bucking, screaming out as I release.
Almost at the same instant, Nick loses himself to the sensations as well. At that moment, as his face contorts with pleasure, I feel a rush of even more intense feelings emerge for this man.
As we lie next to one another on the bed, panting happily, our limbs intertwined, I’m tempted to ask him what this all means. What happens when we leave Tuscany?
Surely this will all have to end someday.
And then what? What does he want? What does he feel?
I know I’m falling for Nick, and falling hard.
I think that much is obvious, and there isn’t a damn thing I can do about it. And I don’t even want to. He’s incredible, truly amazing, and a big part of me is confident he’s the man I didn’t even know I have been looking for my entire life.
Instead of asking or overthinking, I turn over to look at him, to drink in everything about his presence, and he places a light kiss on my lips.
I’ll go down the dark hole of possible despair and pain on another day. Now… I just want to lie in Nick’s arms and stare out at the setting Tuscan sun.
“I love you,” I confess, allowing the pure joy of the words to wash over me.
His body stiffens as my heart skips a beat. “Don’t.”
Don’t what? Don’t love him? Don’t tell him how I feel? What does he mean by don’t?
I feel tears burn my eyes as I struggle to come up with the right words to say, or the right actions to do.
“Don’t love me,” he says, but kisses the top of my head, and squeezes me closer with a reassurance that I don’t have to pull away. At least not yet. “I’m not the kind of man to love. So don’t love me.”
Part of me wants to flee. I want to run away like I did before. But Nick holds me tight, and I’ve learned that love or not, Nick is not going to ever let that happen again. He’ll hunt me down. He’ll punish me. He’ll do it all over with a renewed vengeance.
He’s claimed me as his.
I know I am his.
That knowledge helps soothe the pain of him not saying he loves me in return.
I press my body next to him, grateful for his heat to offset the coldness of his words. I wish I could take my declaration of love back. That I never said the words. But at the same time, they are my truth, and I know that Nick would never judge me for that.
He tilts my chin, so I’m forced to look up at him as he places his lips to mine. The kiss helps erase the burn of his refusal to let me love him.
He added a new rule to our game.
I’m not allowed to love him.