“He’s old European aristocracy?”
“Oh yes. And Mallelieu, he likes the idea of his daughter marrying into that. He gets a place in the elite of society and Hackmeyer gets patronage from one of the great music scholars of the world. Everyone’s a winner. One problem—his daughter is just not that much into Hackmeyer.”
“Oh dear.”
“We bumped into each other one day in the Luxembourg Gardens. She was crying, she had tried to tell Hackmeyer she wasn’t interested, but he would not listen. I comforted her.”
“Comforted her? And the rest,” said Lydia with a shake of her head.
“Well, yes, we went back to my room.”
“You’re incorrigible. Did you even like her?”
“Very much.”
“As much as you hated Hackmeyer?”
Milan shrugged. “I didn’t hate him so much then. I didn’t like him either…”
“So you and Sophie started a secret affair?”
“Yes.” Milan lay back, his eyes misting. “Those were great days. The tension, the passion, my God. Secret affairs. But I am too old for all that now. I couldn’t do it again.” His eyes misted over.
“Good. I can always start sending you mysterious notes and waiting for you in alleyways if it turns you on.”
He laughed and kissed her.
“You are kind to me. But I don’t think it will be necessary, do you?”
He gathered her in his arms again and pinned her to the mattress for a long, steamy smooch. Lydia, kissing him back, running her tongue along his lips, wondered what the twenty-year-old Milan would have been like as a lover. Had he been less skilled? It was hard to imagine him being more eager. She pictured a lean, charismatic youth on an unmade bed in a dark attic, surrounded by music stands and manuscripts, like something out of La Bohème. A tiny flicker of regret that she had never known him like that passed through her.
She was jealous—not of his other lovers, no, but of his past. Of all the life he had lived without her. Of never knowing him as an idealist, a romantic, an innocent. Perhaps she would never now be truly able to understand him. He was fully-formed, his identity forged in her absence. And yet he had had such a bearing on her personality. He had had a hand in making her. It seemed so unfair that she couldn’t repay the service.
“All that secret love talk is getting you hot, isn’t it?” She arched her back so that her pelvis rubbed against his burgeoning erection.
“No, talking to you while you’re right here beside me is getting me hot,” he said. “Having your warm little body smelling of me and what I did to you not long ago. Is your pussy still wet? Hmm?” He reached down to investigate.
Lydia let him part her thighs, let him explore the dark, sticky in-between.
“Mmm, I’ve had you. I want you again,” he said.
“Finish the story,” insisted Lydia, but her body conveyed a different imperative, twisting in his hand.
“Finish fucking you? Is that what you said?” He made a little mock-pounce.
Lydia felt his cock butt her thigh.
“No!” she yelped, pretending to push him off. “I want to know what happened next.”
“What happens next? Well, I think I suck your nipples, my dear.”
“Stop it.” She batted his face with one escaping hand.
He caught it and held it down again, then bent to take a nipple in his mouth and give it a long, hard suck.
“Poor Sophie,” Lydia sighed. “Nobody stands a chance against you.”
“That’s right,” he said, looking up, leaving Lydia’s nipple wet and hard. “Accept it. Don’t fight it.”