She rolled into him, pressing her lips against his neck, just above the white collar that gleamed like a halo in the darkness. He didn’t react at first, as if she’d taken him by surprise. She opened her lips and tasted the scratchy skin of his throat, and felt him swallow back a curse or a groan. She couldn’t be sure.
She lifted her face and found the edge of his jaw, pressing insistent kisses along the squared-off plane, hungry for his mouth and for the mind-numbing pleasure she knew would follow. She needed him to kiss her and make her forget everything but him for just a little while. She found his lips, and he responded instantly, feverishly, only to tear himself away a second later.
“Eva. No,” he said softly and sat up, releasing her. She tried to follow him, but she was pinned by the blankets he’d wrapped her in, and she squirmed desperately, suddenly frantic to be free of them. She was panting, panicking, suffocating. She bucked, releasing her arms and loosening the blankets around her body. She pushed them down around her waist, then kicked her legs free so that she was stretched out, uncovered and uncowering.
She lay winded and relieved, her eyes on the low stone ceiling, the cold air welcome on her skin. Then she looked down at herself, staring at her body through new eyes, seeing herself as Angelo would see her. Above the plain white panties, her stomach was flat . . . too flat, the deprivations of war taking the softly rounded curve from her belly and her hips, making her more girlish than womanly. But the shadows were alluring, forgiving even, and her breasts were still full and high, the tips a dusky red against her pale skin.
Eva looked from her body to Angelo’s face. He was staring down at her unclothed form, his eyes desperate, his jaw clenched, as if fighting against the very demons that had swarmed the dark street and taken Aldo’s life. Then he lifted his gaze, and his eyes locked on hers. The raw devotion in his face sent a surge of something hot and powerful slicing through her chest. She had been powerless for so long.
She reached for Angelo’s hand and pulled it to her mouth, kissing his palm before dragging his fingers over her lips, her chin, down the length of her neck, and across her chest. She thought she heard him say her name, but there was a roaring in her ears, and she didn’t respond. She couldn’t. She pressed his hand against her left breast, the base of his palm resting against her thundering heart, his fingers brushing sensitive flesh. She shuddered and closed her eyes. It felt so safe and warm. So heavy and delicious. He didn’t pull away, but he didn’t curve his hand against her or make the caress his own.
She didn’t care.
She was filled with reckless desire, and she slid his flattened palm sideways to include her other breast, the peaks pebbling in response. His hand trembled against her skin, and her belly vibrated like a violin string as the bow was slowly pulled across it. Her body hummed with a building crescendo, and Eva dragged Angelo’s hand down over her ribs, across her abdomen, past the hollow between her hip bones. Then she pushed his palm lower, gasping at the contact.
She could feel her pulse there—an aching, insistent thrumming—as if her heart had followed Angelo’s hand. Maybe it was her brush with death, watching a life end so violently right before her eyes. Maybe it was just the incessant threat that lurked at the edge of every single moment. But her body burned with desperate life, with frantic need, and the simple weight of Angelo’s hand pressed at her center was enough to have her clinging to his wrist, tears leaking from the corners of her eyes as her body tightened and then teetered, tumbling over and over, quaking and pulsing against his warm palm.
And still Angelo was silent and unmoving, an unwilling participant, and as Eva’s head cleared and her body cooled, she became instantly hyperaware, her sense and inhibitions returning with her release.
Bliss became intense mortification.
She let go of Angelo’s wrist at once and curled away from him, his fingers trailing heavily across her hip as she rolled and withdrew. She pressed her hand to her mouth to muffle the sobs, but now she cried from shame, humiliated by what she’d done, by what he’d seen, by what she’d made him do. And still her body sang softly, betraying her.
She felt him shift and her blankets were drawn up loosely around her shoulders, covering her nakedness and her shame. His hand rose to her face, and he wiped her tears away, brushing them back into her hair.
“Don’t cry, Eva. Please don’t cry,” he whispered. “I understand.”
She only cried harder, not able to believe him.
Then he was holding her again, turning her so her face was pressed into his neck, her arms folded between them. His breathing was harsh, and his entire body was rigid, like he wanted to bolt.
“I’m sorry, Angelo,” she moaned softly.
“You have nothing to be sorry for.”
He pressed his lips to her temple and continued to smooth her hair, reassuring her, shushing her like her father used to.
“Shh, Eva. Shh. I understand.”
But her tears continued to fall.
Eva drifted off that way, her face in the crook of his neck, his hand in her hair, tears on her cheeks. When Angelo was certain she was deeply sleeping, he moved away from her, his body aching with need and denial. His left arm was numb and his back stiff from holding such an unyielding position. He hadn’t wanted her to feel what she did to him. He didn’t want her to know that his will was crumbling.
He said he understood, and he did. She’d been desperate for the affirmation that only the most intense experiences—sex, danger, pain—can provide. He’d heard enough confessions of battle-weary soldiers who had succumbed to self-pleasure or sex or worse in the oddest of circumstances. It was a very natural reaction. He understood. But it had required every ounce of his faith and his self-control not to partake or participate, not to take advantage of her vulnerable moment. But he hadn’t stopped her or averted his eyes, and just like King David watching Bathsheba bathe, he suspected that it would cost him.
But first, it had cost her. She had apologized, and he had wanted to thank her. The thought shamed him, but it was the truth. It was one of the most beautiful things he had ever seen—she was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen—and he’d been captured by a sense of surreal wonder, until he’d seen her despair, her embarrassment, and then he’d wanted to cry too.
He’d failed her over and over, and he didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know how to heal her or hold her or save her. He didn’t know how to be what she needed. All he knew was that he loved her desperately.
Desperately.
He wearily climbed the stairs and slipped into the silent church. Lighting a candle, he dropped his tired face into hands that smelled like Eva’s hair and groaned out his fears and his failings, asking God not to withdraw because of his weakness, and thanking Aldo Finzi, wherever his spirit had flown, for saving Eva’s life at the expense of his own.
8 March, 1944
Confession: I like Greta von Essen.
I can’t help but like her. She is kind, and she is sad—a very sympathetic combination. We are all products of the places we are raised, the people who love us or have power over us, and the things we hear, over and over again, as we grow.
Our beliefs don’t have to be based on personal experience, but when they are, they can rarely be altered. Greta has been told over and over that she is a beautiful disaster who has failed at the only thing she was created for. Her experiences have not disproved that.
Greta is shallow, but I have a feeling it is only because depth would drown her. So she floats on the surface and does her best to smile vapidly at her life and the man she is tied to. I have let her mother me, not because I want a new mother, but because she needs a child, and if I’m being honest, she provides me a small measure of safety, a buffer against the captain.
I like Greta von Essen, but I hate her husband. When I close my eyes I see his face, calm and cold, the way it looked before he pulled the trigger and killed Aldo.
Eva Rosselli
CHAPTER 17
MARCH