Impasse
Zorah was feeling the weight of humiliation as the car came to a stop at a roadside stand. Icaro hadn’t said another word to her after what felt to her as begging but his jaw was clenched, and his hands were wrapped tight around the steering wheel.
“Are you angry with me?” she asked quietly when he sat silently once the car was in park and both the cars ahead and behind also took their respective spots.
“No,” he held up a finger, “but amoré, we need to talk about this while I’m not driving. Your emotions are all over the place. You are hating me one day, wanting me desperately another and the last thing I need to do is cause a situation wherein you are regretful of your actions and then hating me again. What you are feeling right now is sexual frustration and its normal and natural and I know it’s messing with your head, but please, do not make rash decisions.”
“I’m not.”
“You are,” he rubbed his forehead. “One good day together and an exquisite evening and suddenly you want to make our marriage real. What is the rush, Zorah? Why are you rushing today?”
“You were rushing two weeks ago!”
“I was and then I realized how you weren’t ready and how selfish I am as a man for wanting you without consideration of your emotional wellbeing.” He turned his body towards her completely, “I will not deny I want you. I cannot deny how much I want to say fuck it, throw this car into gear, take you back to the villa and bury myself in you until the second coming of Christ.” He swallowed emotionally, “but you are not ready and you’re making decisions with your body and not your heart.”
“I don’t like how you’re patronizing me.”
“The Beast in me, Zorah is raging. I want to lift you up and plunge you onto my cock.” He reached his fingers out and stroked her cheek, “but I’ll remind you again, two days ago you hated me to the point you were considering leaving with a stranger to start your own life. Now, you want more. I’m not following your logic and I’m not understanding your sudden rush. Why are we rushing?”
“Can’t a woman voice her desires and wants?”
“Absolutely you can.”
“Then what is the problem?”
“Once your virginity is taken, I cannot give it back. It is not anything we should be taking lightly. There is no going back to the way it was once I’ve had your body. Zorah, this is a massive decision and you’re making it on the fly, and I don’t understand why.”
She folded her arms, knowing she was pouting and helpless to stop it. Staring out over the cliffside to the sea, she felt an angry tear roll down her cheek.
“My love, why do you cry?”
“I don’t even know.” She wiped her cheeks with shaking fingers.
He sighed and got out of the car, rounding the front, and opening her door. Pulling her from the confines of her seatbelt he tugged her up into his arms and hugged her tight, his lips pressed into her hair. “Zorah, I don’t want to ruin our day. It is only the second day in a row where we are not having some kind of fight. Please.”
“I feel like a child being chastised.”
“And I feel like a man who is being offered his heart’s greatest desire and knowing that at any moment it could be ripped away from me. I’m waiting for you to hate me again Zorah. I’m terrified of you looking me in the face and saying you hate me, and my fear is we will make love, I will take something so beautiful and special from you and then you will resent me even more than you already do.” He rested his cheek on the top of her head, “I love you, Zorah but you do not love me. Hell, you don’t even really like me a whole lot.” He chuckled as she lifted her pouting lips in his direction, her brow furrowed tightly and her nose scrunched up, “I’m not wrong. You like my body, and you like what I can do to yours but as a man, as a person, you’re not keen.”
“I’m just,” she puffed her cheeks out.
“Horny?”
She punched his chest as he laughed and then dropped her head to where she’d thumped, “yes.”
He laughed, “let’s compromise.”
“Compromise?” she looked to him expectantly.
“I will give you orgasms like I did last night, every night from now and for the next nine days, unless you say otherwise. If on day ten, you are still willing to forego the full thirty days, then we will consummate our marriage. We have eighteen days left, let’s split it in half.”
“You’ll do what you did last night?”
“To the best of my abilities.” He gave a laugh at her question. “I will give you massages, kisses, all the affection you can dream up.”
“I feel there is a catch.”
“There is.” He stroked her hair, patting her like she was a cat in the morning sun. “The catch is we do this.” He waved to the car as an example. “I want to go on dates. I want us to do what we did yesterday and pray together because I know it is important for you. I want to laugh the way we did when we spent the time in the city. I want you to be honest with me and tell me how you’re feeling. I want us to build our friendship and our emotional connection.”
She nodded her eyes filling with tears, “that sounds good.”
“And there is one more thing,” he didn’t look away from her. “I want you to do the homework Father Tarantino assigned you and I want you to follow-up with him each week. I want you to build the confidence you should have as the incredible woman you are.”
“I hate the homework.”
“You hate it because it forces introspection but if we’re going to make our marriage work and have a relationship to stand the test of time like Nonna and Nonno,” he caught her smile at the mention of his father’s parents, “then we need to build it from the ground up.”
“Fix the cracks?” she recalled the words he’d said to her when they were in Rome near the Colosseum.
“Fix the cracks and make it so even if a catastrophe the likes of Etna,” he pointed to a mountain in the far distance, “will never be able to destroy the base we’ve created.”
She gave a loud sigh and wrapped her arms around his middle, hugging him back tightly. “You know, Icaro Lucchesi, for a mafia assassin who is known by the name The Beast, you sure are a deeply sentimental man.”
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