Luca winked and helped her on behind him before revving up for the ride.
It was Julia’s first taste of motorcycle travel, and the freedom of it filled her with wild exhilaration. They swept and swooped along the jam-packed boulevards and down obscure cobbled streets, owning the city’s ancient corners, setting their imprint upon the famous attractions.
When Luca finally parked the bike and jumped off, Julia was not sure what they were meant to see. The square was pretty, with a small fountain at its centre, overlooked by a typical Italian church of greying stone. Handsome enough, but undistinguished on the local scale.
“Where are you taking me?” She laughed.
Luca led her through the streaming traffic to the steps of the basilica. “You don’t know?” he asked, mounting the steps. “Look.”
They stepped inside, experiencing that strange migration into a different world, city pandemonium exchanged in a second for reverent hush. The domed ceiling was painted with elaborate frescoes and embossed with ornaments of gold. Her heels clicked so loudly on the glassy marble floor that she found she was walking on tiptoe. “It’s beautiful,” said Julia.
“But you don’t recognise it?” Luca sighed. “Ah, Julia. This is where we have our love scene.”
“Oh! This is the church!”
“Sant’Andrea dell Valle.” Luca extended a proud arm. “My easel is not here…but the rest is.”
She looked up at him. “I suppose we can’t sing. I’m tempted though.”
“I’m not tempted to sing,” said Luca with a wicked smile, putting an arm around her shoulder. “I am tempted to kiss you.”
“Luca!” she whispered loudly, but there was no force in the reproach. “Not in church.”
“Let’s go then.”
“Luca!”
He turned around and hustled her back out, rewinding their mad dash through the never-ceasing traffic until they were at the fountain.
“This is pretty,” Julia said tremulously. She knew what was coming, and she knew she couldn’t stop it, because it seemed as if their lips had wills of their own, zooming together like magnets while their bodies clicked back into that perfect fit they’d discovered on stage.
She clasped the back of his neck, pressing fingers into the dip of the V where his haircut ended and his skin started, enjoying its firm male feel. He held her properly, one arm sealing her against him at the small of her back, the other on a cheek, the big flat palm keeping her head tilted up for him. They melded so perfectly, so sweetly, that Julia began to imagine that they were conjoined, like the Rodin sculpture, and that their flesh, now merged, could never be divided.
Occasional honks and shouts of male encouragement poured from passing cars, but nothing short of an earthquake could have unglued Julia’s lips from Luca’s until the seal was set, the communion taken, and the soul-mating established.
They gasped and blinked into each other’s faces, shell-shocked and shaken with the suddenness and extremity of their connection.
“I should eat something before I end up eating you,” said Luca raggedly.
“Can’t you kiss me again first?” Julia asked.
The kiss took them along narrow streets lined with tall shuttered buildings to the first likely-looking restaurant they could find, a corner establishment in a pretty square with coloured lanterns hanging cheerfully across the windows. They sat down at a pavement table, still kissing, until a coughing waiter appeared with menus.