Free The Story of X: An Erotic Tale by A. J. Molloy Page A

from nowhere I am actually screaming into the pillow, muffling my words, biting
     the cotton, choking on my own pleasure.
    “I never, I never . . .”
    And I clutch at the sheets, and I feel my toes curl, and I am yielding. I am taken.
     And even as this orgasm surges, and shudders, and then subsides into pulsing apparitions,
     I can feel him approach his own climax.
    “Come inside me, Marc, please come inside me.”
    I did not have to ask; he does not need to be told. Marc presses my face into the
     pillow; his fingers are fierce on my neck, almost choking. And then his body quivers
     and shudders, melting into mine. Marc is losing himself, he is shaking like a knife
     stabbed into hard wood, and then I get the aftershock of my own orgasm as he shudders
     and gasps, and speaks in dark Italian.
    And now at last I hear him sigh, with anguish and release, and then he falls down
     onto me, and then he slumps to the side of me, the intensity quite gone, his taut
     muscles slacked. And I am left here whimpering into the pillow. I am actually weeping.
     I am actually crying , that I have had to wait all my life for it to be this good.

 
    C HAPTER N INE
    I T IS STILL dark when I wake. Marc is asleep in my bed and his dark, masculine beauty appears
     careless, even more unself-conscious. His sweet and kissable mouth is very slightly
     open, the white teeth shine in the moonlight, the almost-black hair is curled and
     mussed. But it is his hands that capture me; male but soft, lying still in the semidark.
     Somehow perfect and innocent. But how innocent can he be? After last night?
    My mouth is parched.
    I grab a gown and slip to the kitchen and drink a cold glass of mineral water. I have
     no idea what is happening to me; probably, surely, Jessica is right, and I am falling
     in love with him.
    For a few minutes I stand alone in the shadowy kitchen, staring through the window
     at the moon, which stares at its reflection in the Tyrrhenian Sea.
    Then I slip back into bed, next to his breathing and silent warmth.
    W HEN I WAKE again it is bright morning, and the Campanian sun already burns through the slats
     of my rickety shutters, making barcodes of light on the bare walls. He is gone? My
     soul panics. My heart stutters. No. Not like that, not like this, no—not a one-night
     stand—not after that. Please.
    Be still, X, be still.
    He has left a crisp white note on the pillow. An elegant piece of notepaper, carefully
     folded in two, with X written on the front in fountain pen. Where did he get the notepaper? And the pen?
     How does he do this stuff? Hungrily, I grab the note and read. You looked so happy to be asleep. I have gone to get breakfast. We will have sfogliata
     at seven. R. x
    My happiness rebounds. I grab my cell and check the time: six forty. He’ll be back
     in twenty minutes. I shower quickly, then slip into a cool gray cotton dress—and just
     as I am drying my hair, the doorbell buzzes in my apartment.
    “ Buongiorno ,” he says over the frazzly intercom. “ La colazione è servita .”
    A moment later he is standing at the apartment door with a handsome smile and a handful
     of pastries in a bag—and due cappuccini in a cardboard tray.
    He is in a new dark-blue shirt, along with the jeans, and those beautiful bespoke
     shoes. How? He keeps new shirts in the Mercedes? The slightly troubling questions
     are soothed away by the excellent coffee. And then we eat the pastries; they look
     a little like croissants—but they aren’t.
    “Wow, delicious.”
    “ Sfogliata frolla . From Scaturchio in Spaccanapoli. They’ve been making them for a century.”
    “Fantastic! What the hell is inside?”
    “Soft ricotta, with candied fruit and spices. The only problem is not eating ten.”
    He smiles. I smile. The sun smiles down. There is, remarkably, no awkwardness, no
     very-first-breakfast-together shyness. We are sitting on plastic chairs on the balcony.
     Soft white streamers of cloud gently scarf the peak