Illusions Complete Series (36 page)

“Stop teasing me!” I said.

“Ok, then,” he said, as he plunged into me again. I exploded at this point. “Mmmmm, what do you say we do this the entire way to Italy?”

“It’s an 11 hour flight,” I said.

“My point exactly. I think that we can make love the entire time. What do you say, Mrs. Gallagher?”

The thought of it made me titillated. “Oh, god, yes,” I said.

So, for the duration of the flight, we explored each other’s bodies, teased each other, and made love. This was the best flight I ever had, and, yet, I knew that the best was yet to come.

We finally touched down at the Malpensa airport in Milan at around 10 o’clock their time. By then, I was driven crazy with lust. Somehow, I wasn’t sated, even though we had just completed the sex marathon to end all sex marathons. We had always been known to make love for hours, but doing it for 11 hours non-stop was a feat, even for us.

“Whew,” I said, feeling slightly dazed. “That was amazing.”

“Oh, yes,” Ryan said. “I can’t wait to get you to the Nick’s villa, so that I can ravish you all over again.”

I was so excited to see the place. But first, we had to go and get our rental car.

We arrived at the rental car place, which was open all night. Ryan spoke in fluent Italian to the clerk, who nodded his head, and spoke Italian back. I had no idea what Ryan and this man were saying. I only knew that Ryan was smiling at me devilishly.

The man came back with the keys in his hand, and Ryan called to him in Italian, waving his hand. I only recognized the word “Ciao.”

Oh, how I wished that I prepared more for this trip, language-wise.

“By the way,” I said, “how do you still know your Italian so well?”

“Beautiful, I lived in Europe for several years, and I spent summers here in Italy. It’s not that big of a deal.”

I smiled. I didn’t know any other languages at all, and I was impressed with Ryan’s fluency here.

I followed him out to the parking lot, then blinked my eyes in astonishment when I saw to which car Ryan was headed. It was a black Lamborghini.

Ryan raised his eyebrows, motioning to the car. “Get in, my lady,” he said, as the doors opened up in their trademark upward trajectory.

I cocked my head. “Really? This the car we’re going to be seeing Italy in?”

“We’re in Italy, beautiful, we have to do as the Italians do.” At that, he turned the ignition and I had never heard such a roar in my life.

Man, this was a car.

“We’re doing as the wealthy Italians do,” I said, with a hint of condescension. “I don’t know about Italians, in general. I’m pretty sure that most Italians can’t afford to cruise around in a car like this.”

I was somewhat put off that Ryan was being so pretentious with the car.

But then I realized that he was just trying to impress me, which made me love him all the more.

Ryan just smiled, and tousled my hair a little. “I have to take you on the Audubon sometime in this car. Then you can see what it can really do.”

We got to Nick’s house on Lake Como just after midnight. I have to say that I was exhausted by this time. The trip was catching up to me.

The house was gorgeous. It was behind a gate, and we had to travel up a long drive to get to it. It was situated on the shore of the lake, and it was an enormous Mediterranean-style home. The façade was a salmon-colored stucco, and the house was all porticos, turrets, arches and huge windows. The living room was impeccable – 20-foot ceilings, walls of windows, and a marble fireplace on one end of the room. The floor was marble as well. There was a large tree in a pot that looked like some kind of palm tree. The furniture was Italian leather, and the coffee table in front of the sofa was glass-topped with a marble pedestal.

I walked around the home, marveling at everything I saw. Above the fireplace was a Warhol original, and in the dining room were several Ansel Adams originals.

The entire house was like this. Cool, modern, impeccably appointed. There was an Olympic-sized swimming pool out back, framed by palm trees and African violets. A hot tub was attached to the pool, and the pool had a bar in the middle of it that one could swim to. There were waterfalls out back, as well.

I felt like I was in an episode of
Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous
with Robin Leach. This was especially true as I knew that Lake Como was the haven for wealthy celebrities. I went out on the balcony and looked at the stars in the sky, and smelled the night air. It was a beautiful early fall evening, and I was with the most mesmerizing and magnetic man on the planet.

Life was at its pinnacle.

Ryan soon joined me out on the balcony, two glasses of wine in his hands. He gave me a glass, and we clinked it. “To a long and healthy life together,” he said, then kissed me. “Mmmm, you taste like wine,” he said playfully.

“I wonder why?”

He kissed me again, longer and more passionate this time. “You ready to go again?”

“Always,” I said.

“Get naked with me, and let’s get in the pool.”

At that, we both stripped off our clothes and ran into the heated pool. I was glad that the pool was heated, because the night air was just a bit chilly. I certainly didn’t want to be a baby about it, though.

Ryan picked me up and carried me around the pool, humming sweetly to me. “La, la, la, la, you’re my beautiful wife,” he sang. “God, that sounds amazing. Wife. You’re my wife. You’re no longer my girlfriend, but my wife.”

I giggled, then he kissed me. “God, I want you,” he said. “But I can’t take you here in the pool. No lubrication.” At that, he pulled me up and carried me over to the lounge chair that was by the pool, and entered me right there. Waves of orgasms floated through me. I felt like I was in heaven, like nothing could ever touch us. Nothing bad had ever happened to us, and nothing bad could ever happen to us. We were invincible, laying here on the chaise, under the stars, entertwined.

We were like this for the rest of the night, going into the house and making love in the enormous four poster bed. Nick’s bedroom was just as gorgeous as the rest of the house, and it had a balcony attached. The arched windows opened up into the balcony, and the curtains billowed in the breeze. The zephyr felt amazing on my skin, because I was getting so warm with every single touch.

We couldn’t get enough of each other for the rest of the night, so we slept in the next day, exhausted and happy.

We woke up the next day around noon, rented some bikes, and headed to Ryan’s winery. The bikes wouldn’t fit on the Lamborghini, of course, so we drove Nick’s Jeep.

Ryan’s winery was in the Lombardy region, which was close to Nick’s home. We traveled some twenty miles to get there, through dusty streets. The building that housed the actual winery was built upon arches and porticos, and it had a more stylish look to it than many of the other wineries I encountered in the region. I walked in and saw enormous barrels lining the walls, and people milling about tasting the wine.

Ryan was greeted by the workers there, bantering back and forth with them in Italian. They were slapping his back, obviously thrilled to see him.

He brought me over to meet the manager of the place, Giuseppe. “Giuseppe, this is my new wife, Iris. Iris, Giuseppe.”

“Ciao, bella,” he said. Then, in broken English, he said “Congratulations to you both. Welcome to Italy.” Then he laughed as he gave me an enormous bear hug.

Then Ryan turned to me and said “Let me take you on a tour, then you can get a glass of whatever wine you choose. I hope you don’t mind sipping some wine while I talk to the people here. It’s been a long time since I’ve been here, so we need to catch up.”

“No, no, of course not,” I said. “Here, just pour me a glass, and I’ll sit right over there,” I said, motioning to a small table and chairs that was just over to the side of the bar. “We’ll take our tour later.”

I sipped my wine and watched them interestedly. Ryan fit right in, speaking rapid-fire Italian, and gesturing with his hands. The conversation seemed to be light and non-serious – there was plenty of laughter and back-slapping. A few times, I saw Ryan look at me with an enormous smile on his face, gesturing while he spoke Italian, and I wished I had some kind of clue as to what they were saying.

It seemed that Ryan’s Italian was perfect, accent and all. It was if he was a native speaker.

He came over to me with a wide grin on his face. “Everything’s great, beautiful. It seems that the people running my place have it all under control. Let’s take our tour.”

He held my hand as we walked through the production room, then to the warehouse, and outside in the actual vineyard. It was beautiful and peaceful here, and remarkably busy. There were people everywhere, touring the vineyards, drinking the wine, chatting in a multitude of different languages. I hadn’t heard so many different tongues spoken since I vacationed in San Francisco several years ago.

“You’ve done well here,” I said. “Your place certainly seems to be a hot spot.”

“Yeah. All the credit for that has to go to Giuseppe and his team. I own the place, but I really am not active in the day-to-day operations anymore. So, the success of the place is directly attributable to them.”

After we toured Ryan’s place, we got the bikes off the back of the Jeep, and pedaled through the Lombardy region. We stopped along the way at various wineries, sipping different varietals. Ryan explained to me the differences in the grapes, how they were grown, and how the different varietals were made. It was all very interesting to me, and he was a wealth of knowledge on the subject. I was starting to feel slightly drunk, and was a little nervous about pedaling while impaired, but went along, anyhow.

We got back to the Jeep around dusk, after biking around fifty miles through some of the most beautiful country I had ever seen. “I’m proud of you,” Ryan said. “I don’t think that we have biked this far together before.”

I just smiled, feeling exhausted and a little drunk. “Let’s head home, huh?”

We got home, and made love, but only once. After we made love, we were both zonked. We didn’t even eat dinner.

That entire week was like that one day. Every day was an adventure. One day we took the rented Lamborghini to Milan to see
The Last Supper
in the Santa Maria delle Grazie, which is a church and Dominican convent. Ryan had booked this particular tour a month in advance, knowing that this was a popular site. After we saw this most important painting, we drove to Venice to take a gondola tour through some of the Venetian canals. I laughed, telling Ryan that the closest I had come to such a tour was when I went to the Venetian hotel in Las Vegas. Now, I was doing the real thing.

Another day we traveled in our rental to Genoa, where Ryan’s yacht,
The Maggie,
was moored. It was fifty feet in length, and had luxury appointments inside. The main area, down below, was like a living room – spacious, with white couches, a large dining area, and a full kitchen with granite countertops and new appliances. The bedroom had a luxurious king-size bed and walk-in closet. We both got into our suits and sailed out into the clear blue waters of the Mediterranean. We anchored in the water, and jumped in from the deck. We also took out two jet skis and buzzed around in the water for a couple of hours, chasing each other around playfully.

Another day trip we took in our Lamborghini, slightly longer, was to Rome. I wanted to see Vatican City, so we did. I marveled at the Sistine Chapel. I had only seen the mural on television and in pictures before, and it was so much more magnificent in person. I couldn’t believe the opulence and the wealth of the city, and was amused at the multitudes of cardinals and bishops who were walking around the grounds. We also rented scooters and visited the Trevi Fountain and the ruins of the Roman Coliseum.

And the food and wine! There were no words. I was glad that we did so much walking, because we were eating such rich food all the way through the country. Pastas, pizzas, cannolis, white sauce, red sauce. It was all so delicious. The seafood dish I got in Genoa was divine, as the fish was freshly caught. The pizzas were different than what I was used to in America, for they were smaller and didn’t have red sauce. The cheese was also very light, compared to American pizzas. My favorite pizzas were the Marguerita pizza, with the tomato and basil, and anything with a lot of vegetables.

I was feeling, during that week, that I had never been happier in my life. Each day I thought that nothing could ever top it, then the next day would come along and be even better.

Of course, I could never dream that anything would come along and shatter our perfect bliss.

I should’ve known better.

Chapter Five

It was on the seventh day of our honeymoon when it happened. I casually flicked on the television, looking for something to watch. Stretching and yawning, feeling sated after another night of love-making with my gorgeous husband, I flipped around the television.

“Beautiful! Come back up here!” Ryan was calling me. “I’m not done with you yet!”

Smiling, I tossed the remote aside, and started to head upstairs.

However, hearing my name on the television set stopped me cold. I spun around, turning the set up. A world famous attorney was talking to a generic blonde anchorwoman on one of the 24-hour news channels.

My blood turned to ice when I heard what he was saying.

Blonde anchorwoman was asking him “But wasn't Ms. Anderson caught in the act?”

“By her now-husband. He’s clearly lying. Besides, he’s a drug addict. He just got out of rehab, for the third time.”

I was shaking. “Ryan! Ryan!” I screamed.

Ryan heard my tone, and came running out of the bedroom, completely naked. “What's going on?” he asked.

I said nothing. I could just point at the television. The attorney continued on. “He’s a drug addict, he got her involved in drugs. He couldn't tell her parents that, so he cooked up this absurd story about her being kidnapped by Ms. Anderson.”

Both of us watched, horrified.

“But she had all those marks on her body. Cigarette burns, whiplashes, deep gashes where she was slashed with a knife.”