In the Garden of Sin (11 page)

Before I could ask her to elaborate on that, she said, “Domenico came to the conclusion that he would always be repulsive to women. He knew there might be some who would sleep with him out of pity, but he found that prospect appalling. He was still a man, though, and he had the needs and desires of any man. He was willing to pay to have those needs appeased, but not by poxy street whores. He had always enjoyed the company of witty, beautiful, accomplished women, which in Venice means the
cortigiana onesta.”

“And so he became a Pygmalion to high-level courtesans who would owe him their sexual favors in return for his patronage.”

“Aye, although I understand he frequently sends them gifts after he beds them, even though ’tis they who are in his debt, and not the other way round.”

“Why does he do it, then?” I asked.

Elle smiled as she pondered that question. “To make them happy, I suppose. Domenico adores women, but he never allows himself to forget that his protégées are servicing him out of obligation, not affection. He keeps his feelings reined in tight.”

“Does he kiss you?” I asked, recalling what Sibylla had told me. “When…when you and he are intimate?”

Elle shook her head. “That would be
too
intimate. It would imply a connection of the heart rather than merely of the body.”

“No one should feel that he can never love, or be loved,” I said. “I feel sorry for him.”

“Well, don’t,” Elle said with uncharacteristic sternness. “Domenico detests pity. He is no victim in some Greek tragedy, Hannah. He has a full life, the respect of everyone who knows him, and his lovers are the most beautiful and desirable women in Venice.”

“Aye, but they’re not true lovers, are they? They’re just women who owe him the use of their bodies.”

“Do you think they don’t enjoy it as much as he does?” Elle asked.

He’s that best of all lovers, a gentleman, but also a bit of a savage
. “I think they enjoy it on base level,” I said.

“You really do think of sexual desire as sordid, don’t you?”

“In the absence of love, lust is naught but an animal instinct—and in the final analysis, the most exalted
cortigiana onesta
is naught but an expensive whore.”

“Aye, but there is, after all, much of the animal in man, and it must find release somehow. Even St. Augustine knew that. He said, ‘Suppress prostitution and capricious lusts will overthrow society.’”

“Thank God I’m a woman,” I said, “and not at the mercy of such base drives.”

“You never feel erotic desires?” Elle asked dubiously.

“Well, I suppose I do,” I admitted, “but I’m hardly in their thrall.”

I realized even as the words left my mouth that this claim
was no longer entirely true. In fact, my blood had been so stirred after our “lesson” in the bathhouse and Vitturi’s visit to my room that I hadn’t been able to get to sleep. I stroked my sex as I had at the inn, this time lying on my back with my night rail pulled up, my fingertips playing lightly on the hot, slippery petals while I imagined a man—Domenico Vitturi— pleasuring me with his mouth as I had pleasured Inigo. Resisting the urge to stroke myself faster and more firmly, or to directly touch the sensitive little pearl, as I had come to think of it, I kept my touch soft as a breath of air, slick as a wet tongue. I came with jolting force, then lay there gasping and shaking until my heart stopped thudding and sleep drifted over me like a veil.

“You should accept your desires, as I do,” Elle said. “Stoke them. Revel in them. Embrace the animal beneath your skin. You’re being groomed to be a courtesan, for heaven’s sake. Sooner or later, you’re going to have to get comfortable with all of this. Ideally, you should learn to love it.”

“I know, I just…” I shook my head helplessly. “This is all so new to me. I’ve never even imagined most of the things the other novices have told me about. No man has ever touched me. I’ve never even been kissed.”

A male voice said, “That won’t do.”

I turned in my chair to find Domenico Vitturi stepping out from behind the wall of bookshelves behind me.

“Domenico! Shame on you,” Elle scolded. “How long have you been lurking there?”

Ignoring the question, he told me, “Kissing is as much of an art as making love, and one that even a virgin courtesan should be expected to master.”

Elle said, “Perhaps Elic or Inigo could be prevailed upon to teach her the finer points.”

“You can do it right now,” he told her as he folded his arms and leaned his shoulder against the bookcase. “A female perspective might be useful.”

“You have a point.” Turning toward me on the couch, Elle put her hands on my shoulders, and said, “Face me and close your eyes, Hannah. You want your mouth to be—”

“Nay,” I said, shrinking away from her. “I can’t kiss
you.”

Raising his gaze to the ceiling, Vitturi said, “Mistress Leeds, your aversion to even the tamest aspects of your instruction is becoming—”

“He’s right, Hannah,” Elle said quietly. “Just close your eyes and pretend I’m a man. Pretend I’m Elic.”

I considered this for a moment—no doubt I appeared to be sulking—and then, reminding myself what was at stake, I faced Elle squarely and shut my eyes tight.

“Soften your mouth,” she said.

I felt her hand on my chin, tilting it up, and tensed.

“Relax, Hannah. Give yourself up to it.” Elle’s breath was warm and redolent of mulling spices.

Her lips touched mine.

A giggle erupted from me, and I broke the contact, my hand over my mouth. “I’m sorry, I… I just feel so silly kissing another woman.”

Elle said, “Hannah, you do realize you may be called upon at some point to do more with another woman than just kiss her. There are many men who find it exciting to watch two females pleasuring each other. If one of your benefactors is of that ilk, he may bring another woman to your bed and ask you to use your mouth, or a dildo, to—”

“Nay!” I said. “You cannot be serious.”

Vitturi pushed off the bookcase, growling something in Italian under his breath. “This is pointless. Come, let us rejoin the others. Give that to me.” He took his book of poetry from
my hand as I rose to my feet, but instead of returning it to its shelf, he tucked it into a pocket in his breeches.

The library was in the south section of the castle, the great hall’s withdrawing room in the north. As we came to the tower door at the junction of the west and north ranges, Elle, pleading fatigue, excused herself to retire to her suite of rooms in the tower’s top two floors.

Worried now that I’d just given Domenico Vitturi one more reason to send me packing, I started babbling, as we walked down the corridor toward the withdrawing room, about how I didn’t really need instruction in kissing, how people kissed all the time without having received lessons in it, that it was natural and not something one could really do
wrong
.

Looking straight ahead, he said, “One certainly can do it wrong, especially if one is as inexperienced and apprehensive as yourself. You are very much mistaken, Mistress Leeds, if you suppose that I’m going to introduce you to Venetian society as one of my courtesans without some assurance that you know how to properly kiss a man. Given your reaction to Elle’s attempt to demonstrate for you—”

“Had she been a man, I would not have reacted that way,” I said.

“Is that so.” He stopped walking and turned to face me in the darkened corridor. Through the closed door to the withdrawing room, I heard Sibylla exclaim “Checkmate!” followed by laughter and applause.

He said, “A kiss between a man and a woman is not something an unblemished maiden’s instincts will have prepared her for. Such a kiss, if it be done well, should be filled with heat and mystery and the promise of erotic intimacies to come. ’Tis nothing like the dry, chaste kiss one bestows upon the cheek of a dear old uncle.”

“I think I know that, signore. And I am confident that when the time comes, my instincts will guide me well enough.”

“Let us see, shall we?”

I stopped breathing when he tilted my chin up, as Elle had done. His fingers felt rougher than hers, and stronger.

“Did you learn nothing from Elle?” he asked.

“Signore?”

“Close your eyes,” he said as he cupped my upturned head in his hands. “Part your lips.”

FTER WHAT SEEMED an interminable interval, but was probably only three or four seconds, I felt the soft hot shock of Domenico Vitturi’s mouth upon mine.

I drew in a breath.

“Easy,” he murmured against my lips. “Don’t fight me. Yield to me.”

His lips moved over mine with terrifying tenderness, making my heart hammer wildly even as I returned the kiss.

“Put your arms around me,” he whispered.

I did, tentatively at first, then more firmly as the kiss continued. My lips felt as sensitive as my sex. When he glided the tip of his tongue between them, I actually moaned.

With one arm encircling me, he stroked my face, my throat, and my breast, which he gently squeezed through my stays. I held him tighter, pressing my body to his as he kissed
and caressed me. His breath came faster when I touched my tongue to his. He deepened the kiss, one hand gripping the back of my head, the other banded possessively around my waist. His whiskers tickled my lower face, only accentuating the voluptuous warmth of his mouth.

At long last, he broke the kiss, meeting my eyes with a look of dazed wonderment. I think I may have looked very much the same to him.

He dipped his head again, his gaze on my mouth. I closed my eyes.

A door creaked open, accompanied by footsteps on the corridor’s stone-paved floor.

He drew back, thrusting me from him. Reeling, I braced an arm on the wall. I turned and saw Inigo standing just outside the open door to the withdrawing room, his hand on the doorknob. He was smiling, his too-insightful gaze shifting between Vitturi and me.

“I was sent to fetch you,” Inigo told Vitturi. “We, er, could use one more player. But if you are occupied with something more important…” He glanced in my direction.

“’Tisn’t important,” Vitturi said, “merely a… an instructional demonstration. Mistress Leeds.” Bowing briefly in my direction, but without meeting my eyes, he ducked into the withdrawing room.

I let out a pent-up breath.

“Hannah?” Inigo stepped toward me with a frown of concern. “Are you all right?”

I took my hand off the wall and smoothed down my hair. “I’m fine.”

“Are you sure? Your hands are shaking. Come, rejoin us,” he said, reaching for my hand as he gestured toward the withdrawing room. “I’ll pour you something to settle your nerves.”

“I would really rather not,” I said, backing away. The notion
of being in the same room as Domenico Vitturi right then, pretending nothing had transpired between us— nothing
important
—was too excruciating to contemplate.

Nodding thoughtfully, Inigo said, “I understand.”

I was quite certain he did. For all his devil-may-care demeanor, he struck me as highly perceptive, even empathetic.

With a conspiratorial smile, he said, “Shall I tell them your head is still paining you, then?”

“Please do,” I said, although it was my heart, not my head, that had begun to ache.