You Don't Own Me(116)

‘You ordered one princess?’ I whisper.

‘I did. And you ordered one love-sick husband?’

‘Husband,’ I repeat. The word lands onto my tongue as light as a butterfly. I find it to be a familiar word that brings peace to my entire body. As if I was always meant to be Mrs. Billy Joe Pilkington.





TWENTY-NINE




Layla

After my ultimate wish-upon-a-star, fairytale wedding, BJ whisks me off to Tuscany for our honeymoon. We stay in a magnificent palazzo near Maremma’s woodlands. For four passion-drenched, slothful days we do nothing but explore each other. Once we wake up at dawn we ride into the outstandingly beautiful and wild countryside.

BJ is a strong rider, but so am I and it is exhilarating. When we stop we are both flushed and aroused. In the clear fresh morning air, we tear each other’s clothes off and indulge in the delight of outdoor sex. At the end of it, I’m startled by an audience. A pair of beautiful roe deer wearing their reddish summer coats are looking at us curiously. We freeze, BJ still deep inside me, and stay still until they amble away.

‘Wasn’t that beautiful?’ I whisper.

‘Everything with you is,’ he says.

Everyday we discover new things about each other. I now know that BJ doesn’t have breakfast. He has eight raw eggs blended with a banana and some milk. And he knows that I like a selection of warm pastries from the village woman. And that I’ll quite happily drink chilled, raw goat’s milk with them.

In the afternoon, when it is too hot to do anything, we swim lazily consuming countless ice lollies by the pool. At night, we eat thin-crust pizza cooked in a traditional wood oven, or even barbeque fish we bought from the outdoor market on the terrace. Once BJ makes us a pasta pomodoro with steak. I discover he’s not a bad cook.

‘Did your mother teach you?’ I ask.

‘No, it’s Bertie’s recipe.’

Tonight, he’s taking me to a famous restaurant a few miles away. The man who cleans the pool tells us that one has not lived until you’ve tried Il Cinghiale Nero’s signature dish of wild boar and porcini mushrooms.

I soak in the bath inside the high-ceilinged, pink marble bathroom until he scoops me out and carries me, still dripping with soapsuds, to our enormous bedroom. He throws me on the bed and dives in after me. He has his own way of drying me. It doesn’t involve a towel, but it does feature a great deal of effort on his part, and wet sheets. Afterwards, as I lay on my back satiated, he grasps my ankle in his hand and brings it to his mouth.

‘It’s amazing how brown you have become in four days.’

I look into his love-drunk eyes. ‘Wait until you see me at the end of the week.’

He leans back on the pillows, eyes half-mast, and watches me slip into a sultry, red knee-length dress with a daring décolleté. I slip on exotic, toe-ring sandals with straps embellished with turquoise stones. I brush my hair, apply mascara and lip-gloss, and dab perfume on to my pulse points.

‘Come here,’ he says.

I cross my arms across my chest. ‘Nope, I’m not having you ruin my primping. You can have me after you feed me.’

He bounds up suddenly, sending me screaming out of the bedroom and through the tall corridor with its gilded panels and oil paintings, then down the grand marble staircase. I stand at the foot of the stairs looking up, laughing and gasping for breath, and ready to bolt outside if he decides to come down after me, but he stands leaning on the banister.

‘There’ll be hell to pay if you keep it for later,’ he calls out.

‘Is that a threat?’

He grins. ‘Consider it an invitation.’

I grin back. ‘In that case, I accept.’

He nods and disappears back down the corridor.



The pool cleaner is right. It has to be the one of the best meals I’ve eaten in my life. It’s when we’re ordering dessert that our trouble starts.

I turn to BJ after ordering my sweet from the waiter, and he is scowling at me.

‘What?’ I ask.

‘Stop fucking flirting with that waiter, or he’ll find his pepper mill sticking out of his fucking ass.’

‘Are you kidding me?’

‘Does it look like I am?’

‘I wasn’t flirting.’

‘No?’

‘No,’ I say very empathically.

‘So what the hell was all that hair flicking and the “si, si, sei troppo gentile” all about, then?’ he asks changing his voice to a mocking falsetto to imitate mine.

‘That was me being polite,’ I say, getting a bit irritated myself.

‘How would you like it if I did that with the waitress?’

‘I wouldn’t mind at all. Go ahead. Be my guest,’ I tell him.