Chapter 9: The World

I just stood there looking up at him, only half awake enough to respond.

"Did you cook?"

"I did," he answered back proudly, taking my hand in his. "Come have a taste."

I followed behind him, watching as a few scattered candles came into sight through the French doors leading to a veranda I hadn't seen earlier. Mort walked me out and I saw the canopy of grape vines across the thatched tent above us, with small candle lanterns hanging down and the moon poking in through the tiny spaces in the leaves. There was a small table set to perfection, like something straight out of one of those Home and Garden magazines I collected back at home. I wondered briefly as I smiled, if he had been reading them behind my back.

There was wine, more votives, lace tablecloths, the scent and sights of pasta everywhere, fresh bread and in the center, standing tall in a beautiful vase was a handful of the most incredible sunflowers I'd ever seen before. They didn't grow like that in North Carolina.

"Sunflowers…" I whispered with a teary grin.

He walked toward one of the chairs and sat down, pulling on my hips to gently seat me in his lap.

"So what do you th--?"

Before he could finish I responded by turning my face to his, wrapping my arm around his neck and forcing my lips down on his. He tasted like fresh tomatoes and wine and all good things Italian. I ravished the hell out of him, deepening the kiss and taking his mouth in surrender to my tongue and lips for what felt like eternity. And when eternity ended, I heard him chuckle against my mouth, holding me closer to him.

"Well that answers that I guess."

I didn't say anything, I just hugged his neck and kissed his entire face wildly, from chin to brow, brow to ears, and ears back to his mouth. I wasn't sure what had come over me, and I could only really attribute it to jet lag mixed with fear blended finally with the intense protection I felt over him, since he was all I had left on this insane run.

"I missed you," I murmured against his cheek.

"I was right here the whole time, Rox."

"I know." I slipped my hand into the opening in his white collared shirt, moved my lips down to kiss along his neck, while my fingers played on the skin of his stomach beneath the cotton. "I mean, I missed you while I was sleeping. I wanted you. I needed you…"

I felt the bulge in his pants growing under where I sat and smiled against his neck. I knew how much hearing, 'I need you', killed him and got right under every bit of his skin.

"I'm glad to hear it, but you really need to eat something."

I moved back and looked in his eyes with a gentle nod.

"Good, here."

He reached out with his arms still around me and began shuffling with one of the plates of pasta, rolling the noodles and chicken against a spoon with a fork, in the traditional way of these lands. I loved that he was into this place; that it had gotten to him. He'd always told me how he wanted to go Italy, and how if I hadn't been so pregnant when we got married that he would have taken me. So I was making it up to him now, only a little less pregnant this time.

The fork came up with the food on it and he pressed it toward my lips as I ate it off, savoring in the sweetness of the white wine I could taste in the sauce. He had gotten better, I gave him that.

"How is it?"

I munched a few times and then swallowed with a grin.

"It's your best yet."

"Oh yeah? Well then, eat up."

He pushed the fork to me and I dove right in, too taken with the tastes to not consume it all. I was starving, for the food, for him, and I knew I would only get one with the other accomplished first. He held me in his lap as we chewed and laughed and talked about his adventures in the market. Mort told me about the conversation he had with his mother and the kids, and how they were doing just fine and were expecting a call from me in the morning their time. That, I have to admit, felt the best of all.

"Maddie asked me where we went."

"And what did you say?"

He smiled and wiped some sauce off of the corner of my mouth, sucking it off his thumb before replying, "I told her we flew all the way across the world to Italy. Then I asked her if she knew where that was, and she said it was where the spaghetti was."

With a laugh I ran my hands through his messy curls.

"I told her to find it on a map with Gram, so if she needed us, she'd know where we were."

After finishing a final mouthful of pasta, I leaned down and kissed his cheek softly, letting it linger on purpose.

"No one deserves to be a father more than you. You are their whole world, you know that?"

He shook his head a little and handed me a glass of white wine, per his mother's request of it, and then sipped at his own, as if ignoring the statement.

"I'm serious, Mort."

"I know. And I only have you to thank for it all." His face turned to mine as I brushed the hair from his fierce chestnut eyes. "I had nothing before you."

"That's not true. You had your writing, and your health, and Riley."

"Like I said. Nothing. At least in comparison to what I've got now." I sighed and held his neck tighter, caressing his shoulder under his shirt. "I'm not going to let anything happen to you or the kids. You hear me?"

"Yes."

"If I lost any one of you, I'd be done. That would be it for me."

"Ditto," I whispered into his ear as he hugged me close to him.

The dinner, although beautiful and well beyond delicious, came to a gentle close and I was glad for it. There was something else I needed, and I was sure he needed, than food alone could provide. Mort wrapped his arms around my waist and lifted me up as he stood, and never let my feet hit the ground until we were back inside again. And even then he only let me walk on my own until he had turned off all the lights and blown out the candles.

I stood on the third step of the staircase, watching as he came through the darkness toward me. He reached out to take a quick hold of me as I laughed and wrapped my arms and legs around him.

"Bedtime, young lady."

"Bedtime my ass."

He carried me up the stairs carefully, as I clung to him like a child, and then he reached around and squeezed the ass of my jeans and I shrieked out.

"Yeah sure, that can come too."

Another flight of tiled steps, impossibly risky kissing in the process of walking, and Mort kicked open the door to the room I had spent most of the afternoon asleep in. He moved through and gently eased me down onto the bed, falling between my widened legs in the process.

"Now…those needs you mentioned…"

He worked on the buttons of my shirt, revealing my black bra to the moonlight flowing in through the doors. I moved my hand to his, assisting with the last button and tore the shirt away to the floor. His eyes were lost beneath his mess of hair as I felt his lips and the tickling bristles of his chin and upper lip following the wetness his mouth left on my neck, and breasts and stomach.

A small moan slipped from between my lips and I gripped the sheets over my head, as he landed at the button of my jeans, tugging it open.

"God, do you know how ridiculously beautiful you are?"

I looked down at him from a side angle and rolled my eyes.

"Should be a damn crime…"

He laughed and went back to kissing whatever skin he could find, while facilitating the process of stripping my jeans down and off my feet to the floor below. I laid there under his hands and mouth, black lingerie, three weeks pregnant and absurdly in love with all of it. I was thinking about all the danger or the children somewhere miles and miles away from us, and I think it was probably what he was hoping to have happen. Mort was good at making everything bad disappear for a while.

I reached out and rustled his hair as he slid back up my body and knelt between my legs. Leaning up, I helped by unbuttoning and zipping his jeans, while he slipped out of his white shirt. He finished and I moved my hands to gently glide up his glowing, warm chest.

"This is what I have to fight to keep from other woman every day." I caught his eyes peering down at me humbly, "It's not an easy task, you know."

This time it was him rolling his eyes as he eased me back to the mattress with his lips hard on mine and the heat of his chest making my breasts peak desperately under him. The strain in his jeans made my back arch and hips buck toward him, and I reached around his low back to push away the denim and boxers that kept all of him from me. And once he was free of everything, he began pulling at the hook of my bra and the matching panties all in one extraordinary tug.

With a giggle, I fell to his power, ready to let him do what he always did best.

"Baby, it's no challenge." His mouth hovered over mine as his longing cock sat waiting hesitantly between my legs. Mort stroked back the hair from my forehead and kissed it as he whispered, "You won me fair and square a long time ago."

"Are you sure about that?"

He looked into my eyes as if I was insane for even asking the question, but I felt I had to, something was making me ask it, something in me that was uneasy and self conscious. I'd done the same thing the entire time I was pregnant with the twins. I was cognizant to everything that I could potentially have less appealing to him during that time, than another woman could.

"There is nothing surer. Stop worrying about all the other women out there. They've got nothing on you. I've got everything I need and want right here."

He rubbed my stomach lightly and kissed me with every bit of passion he must have built up in a week's worth of stress. I felt that. And then what I felt was the pressure of being what he desired broken to a million nothings as he gently lifted my leg and drove deep inside of me, like it was no feat at all, like putting the last two pieces of a puzzle together.

The grunt of his fervor met my steadfast moaning and we melted into one another completely, no different than before, except for the stroke of foreign yearning that had somehow snuck in. It left the both of us craving a satisfaction of quickness, of a pace we hadn't been at for years. And I swear on so many levels, that it felt like the first time again.

Mort held my hips as if the world might fall on top of us and I would be his only chance of survival, and I did the same as he thrust deeper and longer into me, pinching at the nerves in his shoulders and arms. Not that he didn't always feel good, because he was the only thing I ever wanted to feel like this for the rest of my life, but this was something else, something unexplainable perhaps.

His face fell to the crook of my clammy, sweating neck and I shuddered at the kiss he planted behind his strangulated and repetitive words, "You're my whole world, you know that?"

I had said that to him, about the kids, about our family, and when he fed it back to me in the strongest throes of all that he was within me, I couldn't resist the urge to let the tears fall back from my eyes.

"Yes…I know that."

I moaned his name a half dozen times in a whisper, as my face fell to the bed, turned to look out at the balcony and the moon over the Mediterranean sea gulf. And when I'd become so transfixed on the movement of our bodies together, the way my back arched to meet the desperate beat of his hips, I was startled by the immediate touch of his length pressing down onto the driving force of everything in me.

I reached out to suddenly fly from the bed and wrap my arms around his neck, holding on tight as he slid in and out more steadily, the brink fast approaching in both of us.

"Mort..."

"I've got you," he sighed. And I believed him. I always did. "I love you so much…Roxanne…"

And then, on the cusp of my name, on the fluttering edge of all I was to him and him to me, it all went white and hot and blistering. I felt myself fall back to the bed, only to be covered idly by his body, keeping me warm against the pinnacle chill. Together we let the waves of pleasure wash over us with ease, with determination, until the room grew warm again and dark.

His arm was draped around my waist and I pulled it to me closer, leaving kisses as far as I could reach, and hugging his arm until I could breathe fairly. He held me, his chest burning my back as I looked out at the night view of a thousand stars from the room. It was nothing like the snow capped mountains at home, or the summer harvest moon that came. This place was just as magical but in an entirely opposing way, that it almost unnerved me.

At least until I felt his mustache brush against my cheek as he peered over at me.

"What's going on in that gorgeous head of yours? I gotta know."

His hands moved through my curls, down my back and over my hip under the sheet.

"A lot."

"Well, start with something."

I turned in his arms and nuzzled into his neck, trying to hide the fact that I was tearing up.

"It's nothing."

"A huh…" he tested as I felt his fingers lightly rub over the ink on my lower back.

"Sing me something."

I heard him laugh into my hair as he pulled me closer.

"Please, like you sing Maddie to sleep."

A short sigh came as he moved me down to the pillows, half hovering above me as he held my face in the palm of his hand firmly.

"What should I sing for you?"

I shrugged as he kissed away my tears.

"Hmm…" his eyes melted into the darkness of the room with deep thought as I traced over the tiny freckles on his shoulders, like stars in the sky, like connect the dots. "Okay," he finally responded, holding me close and still under him, "I've got one."

"Okay." I smiled and tangled my toes with his.

He crooned goofily, chirping and making wild noises to test his ability. And somewhere between the 'me me's' and 'mo's', I pinched his ass under the sheets and he released the lyrics at last.

"I could stay awake…just to hear you breathing," he pressed his nose to my cheek as I giggled, knowing the song, knowing everything about what he was doing. "Watch you smile, while you are sleeping, while you're far away and dreaming…"

"Oh, Steven Tyler has nothing on you, honey."

He laughed a little and cupped my face to his, kissing softly up and down my temple as he sang.

"I could spend my life…in this sweet surrender. I could stay lost in this moment…forever…"

And when I least expected it, he managed to turn me over his arms, gently easing my face to the pillow as he kissed the length of my stinging back, lingering with lyrics and wet lip trails. I knew where he was headed and it made me relax with half closed eyes into the pillow as I sighed out the words he was weaving into a melody in the dark.

"I don't wanna close my eyes, I don't wanna fall asleep 'cause I'd miss you baby…"

At the exact moment, I glanced over my shoulder to see his face hidden under a shady veil of his hair at my lower back, where I could feel his lips tracing over the outline of my tattoo, the one that with the passing years and with the burden of motherhood, had faded all the more and yet remained ever as worthy. It was still a favorite place for him I think, at least it's what I suspect from the countless times he's kissed it since he first discovered it.

Together we sang the last of the words as I saw his eyes lift to catch onto mine.

"…And I don't wanna miss a thing."

Mort slid back to the bed beside me, drawing what felt like imaginary hearts on my exposed back in the moonlight from the balcony of our new faraway coast.

"My Aerosmith girl. How'd I ever manage to find something like you in the woods?"

He kissed my shoulder blades as they protruded with the touch of his breath and I laughed.

"Let me see those eyes of yours," he begged as he turned my face over to his and smiled down at me. "Crayola sea green. Never gets old."

I snuggled close and teased him by sniffing the clammy skin of his neck.

"Cinnamon," I looked up into his eyes as he rolled them, "Never gets old."

Then he cradled my head and rested it on his chest as we fell into peace in the cool Italian breeze. Before I was out completely though, I heard him still singing, as if he couldn't stop.

"'Cause even when I dream of you…the sweetest dream will never do, I'd still miss you baby…"