I catch the micro-wince as he looks my way, and I beat myself up for not choosing more careful words. “Gio, I’m sorry, of all the phrases I could have picked…”
“Hey, it’s fine.” He squeezes my hand. “You can say her name without it being awkward.”
I nod, swallow hard, squeeze his hand back and still wish I’d said anything but that.
“Iris, can I say something?” He draws to a stop and turns me toward him. “Your loss is more recent than mine. If this is all going too fast, just say the word and we can slow it right down.” He reaches out and adjusts my hat so it covers my ears properly. “I get it if Christmas is too much of an ask, okay?”
Cold tears gather on my eyelashes. I fight the need to spill the ugly truth out into the iced air between us, let the sulfurous wind carry it out over the ocean and sink it fathoms deep where it can’t trouble either of us.
“Adam…my partner…he wasn’t always a very nice person,” I say, because I cannot and will not add to the lie. Gio had a good relationship that ended too soon. I had a terrible relationship that should never have happened at all.
I watch my words land on Gio’s face. His expression falters, his thumb strokes my jaw.
“It’s brave to be so honest,” he says, his eyes searching my face. “Don’t feel guilty for remembering the bad stuff as well as the good, people don’t become saints just because they die.”
There’s a full-on burning ball of pain in my throat, because Gio is just too damn decent for his own good.
“You will.” I choke on my stupid self-indulgent brandy tears. “You’ll get trumpets and medals and your own swat team of cupids and angels.”
“I think you’ve had enough brandy.” He holds my face between his hands. “Just so you know, I’m not thinking saintly thoughts right now.”
I gulp-laugh, overwrought, and he pulls me in close and lowers his head to mine. Our kiss is laced with salt and heavy with longing.
“Can we make out in the back of the car?”
He laughs into my mouth. “You fucking bet we can.”
My stomach dips, and I want to tell him that he’s just hit my perfect Moonstruck sweet spot between taking charge and overbearing, but I don’t, because he kisses the thought straight out of my head.
I feel like a teenager as we head back across the deserted car lot, pausing twice for the fevered kind of kisses that feel as necessary for survival as oxygen, and we need to make it to the car alive to rip each other’s clothes off. Gio’s fumbling in his pocket for the keys, his mouth hot on mine, sexy-cursing in Italian because the big old beast of a Cadillac has to be manually unlocked. I half laugh and half groan when he drops the keys in his haste, and then I make a sound that feels animal in my throat when he picks up the keys and stays bent low to move his mouth up my inner thigh. I look down at his dark head and he raises his eyes to meet mine, and it’s so devastatingly sexy that I genuinely have to lean on the car to hold myself up.
He slides up my body, pressing me against the cold metal, and I gulp and reach for the keys.
“Give them to me,” I say, taking them from him in case he drops them again, and I turn toward the car, reaching for the lock.
He leans his weight against my back, his breath warm on my neck. I’m momentarily pressed between man and machine, and when his hand slides up under my jumper to my breast I lean my head back on his shoulder and groan.
“We need to get inside this damn car,” he mutters.
“Do we?” I say, because he’s just pulled the lace cup of my bra down and I’ve found my happy place.
“Either that or we’re gonna land up in a cell for indecent exposure,” he says, taking the keys and jamming them into the lock beside my hip. We both gasp with relief when we hear the locks pop, and Gio hauls the rear door open and practically shoves me inside. He slams the door as he lands on top of me and I’m suddenly aware of how cold it was outside now that we’re out of the weather.
“For a big car, this suddenly feels like a small space,” I say, my back pressed against the padded red leather bench seat.
“I think I might be too old for this,” he says, raising himself on his elbows in an effort not to squash me.
“Press me down,” I say, pulling him back by the collars of his coat. “I like it.”
He half laughs, his mouth a kiss away from mine as his hand slides under my jumper again. “Me too.”
“Your hands are cold,” I whisper.
“Your body’s hot,” he says, and then pauses, frowns and adds, “temperature wise, I mean, not…”
I raise my eyebrows, enjoying the way he’s tying himself up in knots. “You don’t think my body’s hot?”
“No. I mean, God, yes. Yes I do.” He unhooks my bra and I yank my jumper over my head so I’m naked from the waist up.
“Hot as hell,” he murmurs, trailing his mouth between my collarbones. “Like touching the surface of the goddamn sun.”
“Good save,” I murmur, aching for more. “I’ve never had sex in the backseat of a car before. Nor the front seat, for that matter.”
“Me either,” he says, kissing me hard on the mouth as he flicks the button of my jeans open. He kisses me some more as he eases the zip down, and then some more, slow and deep, as his hand moves inside my jeans and underwear, his fingers no longer cold as they slide into me.
“This might be the best moment of my life,” I gasp, and I feel his smile against my mouth.
“It’s pretty high on my list too,” he says as I unbutton his jeans and push them down. He sucks in a sharp gasp of air and closes his eyes when my hand closes around him, and we’re frustrated because my jeans are too high up my thighs and his are restricting his movement. He’s making it both worse and better by cursing in Italian, and I’m laughing and gasping as I wriggle around to shove my jeans below my knees until at last he can settle between my legs and push himself inside me.
“Thank fucking God,” he mutters, and I swallow hard and nod, delirious with relief and shocking, eye-watering pleasure.
“I take it back,” I say. “This is the best moment.”
And then he slows everything down, his mouth gentle over my face, his hand smoothing my hair away from my forehead, his eyes intense on mine as his breath hitches in his throat. I move under him, pushing my knee out against the leather seat so I can lift my hips and hold him closer, and he sighs my name and bites his bottom lip. I wouldn’t have imagined backseat sex could feel tender, but this does. We’re in our own world right now, a Cadillac of dreams, and we take our sweet time over each other.
“Welcome to Coney Island,” he says afterward, his forehead resting on mine.
“Every bit as thrilling as the guidebooks claim,” I say, my heart banging against his.
“You should see it in summer,” he says.
“I think I prefer it in winter,” I say.
He kisses me, unhurried and satisfied. “Yeah, me too.”
“Shall we stay here like this all night?”
He huffs. “I’d never walk again.”
I laugh. “I think I might have dislocated my hip, but it was worth it.”