As if he has read my mind he says, ‘Glorious music goes beyond human frailties.’

It is true I feel excited and light-headed.  The experience has been profound.  I need to go the toilet and see what I look like. It feels as if I have been altered this evening.  I touch his wrist lightly.  ‘Going to the toilet.  Meet me at the bottom of the stairs.’

He nods and stands.  Between my legs I am throbbing.  I don’t know if he can see the desire in my eyes.  I don’t want to go to dinner.  I just want to go home and have him inside me.

In the faded mirror I meet myself.  My eyes are strange.  I am changing right before my eyes.  I touch the slightly protruding cup on my clitoris and think about taking it out, but in my heart that privilege belongs only to Blake.  He put it in there and he is entitled to take it out when it suits him.

Coming down the curving marble stairs from the toilets, I witness him in conversation with one of the ushers.  A raven-haired girl.  His back is to me and he is speaking to her in Italian.  I see her animated face and a strange unfamiliar fear clutches at my stomach.  Immediately, I grasp the wrought iron and brass banister, unsteady suddenly, my heart knocking painfully against my ribs.  Whatever he has said has made her laugh self-consciously, and, as I watch, her large, dark eyes kindle with fiery interest.

I lay my palm flat on my stomach almost in disbelief.  I am jealous.  I am unreasonably, insanely, uncontrollably jealous of a man whom I cannot even publicly lay claim on.  But the thought of him with anyone else makes me feel sick to my stomach.

Will it always be so from now on?

The most innocent encounters ripe for worry and painful inner speculation while I play blind, deaf and dumb outwardly?  Then he turns, his eyes searching, looking for me, and I step forward, a silent sigh escaping my lips, relieved to be back in the warm, wonderful light of his gaze.  And everything is fine again; the fear slinks away, momentarily.

‘I didn’t know you spoke Italian?’

He grins.  ‘Nope, but I studied Latin in school, so it’s not difficult to figure out how to ask for directions.’

With the dark water lapping at the steps of the Palazzo, I whisper, ‘Blake can we go upstairs first…before we eat.’

He shakes his head with a smile.  ‘Not yet, Principessa.’  He puts his hand into his pocket and the little machine buzzes into life.  But now the suction cup is licking me almost like a tongue.

‘Oh, Blake,’ I gasp.  ‘I can’t take much more of this.’

‘Yes, you can,’ he says.

I swallow hard.  How can I think of food while my pussy is throbbing and a silicon tongue is licking my clit?  The only thought on my mind is release.  I am already very close to climax.

‘What if I have an orgasm at the dinner table?’

‘You won’t.  I’m switching it off while you eat.  Nothing comes between you and food.’

I gape at him.

‘Have I ever told you, Miss Bloom, you’re a sight to behold,’ he says cheekily, and pulls me up the steps.

He goes through the double doors of the salon and I go upstairs to check on Sorab.  Mercifully the vibrator stops as I am walking up the stairs.  Sorab is fast asleep.  Gerry’s door is slightly ajar and light is coming through.  I knock softly.

‘Come in,’ she says.

I enter.  She is in bed reading.  Her kind face is wreathed in a welcoming smile.

‘How was he?’

‘As good as gold.’

‘I’ll keep him tomorrow morning and you can take some time off.  Do some sightseeing.’

‘No need for that, Love.  I was here twenty years ago.  Broke my heart on a glass blower.’

And it occurs to me that it is impossible to tell the nuances of anyone’s history by looking at them or knowing them for a few days.  My mother used to say, ‘You can eat salt with someone for five years and never know them.’

I find Blake in the cavernous, gorgeously painted red dining room.  He is standing by the fireplace looking up at a massive portrait of a haughty man in fine clothes.  He turns at my approach.  The resemblance between him and the man in the portrait is striking.  It is immediately apparent that he is an ancestor.  It is there in the aristocratic arch of his cheek, the set of his jaw.  The same way that I found Victoria in her mother.  These families that do not mix their blood easily carry their genetic footprint clearly in their faces, their bearing.

The humming between my legs begins as I walk towards him.

‘Have your family always owned this house?’

He frowns.  Discussions about his family always distance him.  ‘Yes, we are descended from the Black Venetians.  We branched out into Germany before crossing the Atlantic.’

‘It’s very beautiful.  Do you come here often?’

‘I haven’t been to this house for years,’ he replies, and switches on the licking function.

I squirm.

‘Shall we eat?’

Dinner is served by a dour, mostly silent man in a white jacket called Enzo.  I find it almost impossible to eat.  True to his word Blake has switched off the gadget, but by now I am so aroused I can hardly wait for the meal to be over.  I taste nothing.  When Blake pushes away his coffee cup I spring up.

‘What’s the rush?  You’d only be exchanging the silicon tongue for mine.’

I make a strangled sound and turn pleadingly towards him.  ‘Please, can we go up now?’

‘No, I want to see you completely laid to waste tonight,’ he says, lifting the champagne bottle and filling our glasses. ‘I am going to make you come harder than you have ever done before,’ he promises as the licking and vibrating in my knickers increase in tempo.

I sit down and lift the glass to my lips.  It is a beautiful, hand-blown work of art.  The long slender stem rises into a decorative figure of the lion of St. Mark’s before it meets the delicate flute.

 ‘Mmnnn.’  He takes my wrist in his hands and runs his finger lightly along the inside, up to the crook of my elbow.  The sensation is unbearably sensual.  The desire to straddle him in that vast red room is undeniable.

‘I have never met a woman with skin like yours,’ he purrs.  He looks into my eyes.  ‘Do you have any idea how desirable you look right now?’

I clench my thighs and shake my head.

We go up the curving staircase to our bedroom.  Moonlight is flooding in through the tall windows.  There are long rectangles of light on the floor.

He turns to me and gently takes off my dress.  He throws it behind him and it lands on a squat green and gold brocade chair.  He drops to his haunches, bends forward and kisses the tightly bound mound of my sex.  The gesture is so unexpectedly charged with erotic possibilities that my body screams for him.  He slides my knickers off.

‘Spread your legs.’  I obey instantly.  He removes the gadget and I actually feel my body sag with relief.  He lets his fingers graze the sticky opening.  ‘You are so, so wet,’ he says.

I nod helplessly.  My hands are frustrated fists, waiting for him.

‘What do you want, Principessa?’

‘You.’

He shakes his head gently.  The eyes looking up at me are almost black.  ‘I need more details.  The low-down of what you want.’

‘I need you inside me,’ I mutter.

Again his head moves negatively.  ‘Details, Lana.  Details.’

And in this way he persuades me to describe in minute detail exactly what I want, to use words that would have at any other time made me blush furiously.  That thick prick of yours, your dirty big, cock, deep into my cunt, suck it, fuck me hard…

He gags me.  ‘The walls are thin and may even have ears,’ he whispers.  It jars in my head, but only a little; I am too far gone to search for hidden implications.

His large hands grab my hips and impale me on his dick.

The pillar of solid meat is thrust far into my body.  Instead of moving me up and down the hard length, he pulls me to and fro, making me ride him like a bull.  I grind myself on him.  My body is thrust far forward like one of those cyclists in the tour de France race, so that his mouth has easy access to my breasts.