The Vixen of the Thieves – Chapter 3 – An Alliance
Isabelle found herself on the roof of the thief guild.
She had come up here almost every night after her children were abed. She liked the quiet and peace as she looked over the city, the canals, and toward the lagoon that fed into the ocean.
She heard a soft noise and looked to her left. "Gatto." She hissed.
The dark tom cat looked at her. He paused a few feet from her to lick his paw. She shook her head and looked at him. She sighed and reached for the feline. He yowled a moment before she started to pet him. He started to purr. Ugo had found him near the guild home and had brought him to Giana. The girl had nursed him back to health. He now was not just her cat, but the guild's.
Gatto at night would sleep with Giana, however, much to the distain of her brother who seemed to sneeze every time the feline was about. Antonio fed him when he was awake early in the morning with scraps from the dinner before. He prowled at night until after Giana went to bed, however, would faithfully come into through her window well after dark. If the window was closed he would yowl until someone opened the door for him, which was normally Rosa or Ugo, who always wanted to look in on the children anyway.
She then looked away as the feline wondered away and hopped down onto the balcony to clean himself before he found his warm spot at the end of Giana's small bed. Isabelle sighed. The night was pleasant. She liked her time to just sit and think.
A shadow came to her. She smiled a little. "Volpe." She said acknowledging him before she could see him coming beside her. He dropped down to sit beside her.
She turned her head to look at him. Her violet eyes regarded him as he looked back at her from under his hood. Most of his face was shadowed from the moonlight, but his eyes were quick and clever as always.
"Gilberto." She smiled.
"Isabelle." He commented. "Always a pleasure."
She chuckled and shook her head. "What brings you here?"
"I just returned from Firenze." He said. "The thieves there brought me information I felt I needed to share with Antonio."
"I see." She said.
He smiled. "Gave me an excuse to see you as well."
She blushed in the moonlight at that. He saw it and smiled. It was true. She was more than half the reason he had come and not written a letter to Antonio in the coded encryption. She was beautiful.
La Volpe had found he felt something he had not felt in years. Not since his wife, Melodie had passed. She had been the light of his life and a fellow thief. However, a cough and fever took her one winter. She had been yet young. Volpe had shared this all with Isabelle one day as she had sat looking over the city on a night like this one. He had found her weeping and she told him she missed Federico terribly that day. It was the day they had been married and was still painful after all those years.
Well, La Volpe understood. Though she had watched her husband being murdered before her eyes as he hung with his brother and father because of Templar treachery, he too felt the sting of loss. He had watched his wife die, not instantly, but by inches as her body slowly failed to fight off the fever that ravaged her body.
He was not sure which was more painful, but he had noticed that the feelings were now more tender memories rather than pain. Isabelle admitted most of the time her feelings for Federico were much the same, but at times, she would catch herself weeping over his loss even still.
Her frank openness had caused him to fall completely for her. Now the challenge was to have her see his affections without chasing her off. He liked her children and even admitted to himself he could grow to like them, teach them the ways of the streets and keep them safe.
La Volpe smiled and touched her cheek. She leaned into the caress as he let his fingers rest against the flesh. She sighed and closed her eyes, but they flew open when he shifted and kissed her. She was so startled she allowed him to lay her back as she looked up at him. He had affectively trapped her between the roof, his arms, and his body as he leaned over her.
He pulled back and smiled. "Isabelle." He whispered. "You have utterly bewitched me."
She smiled and chuckled a little. "How can I charm a fox?"
"I am not sure, but you have your ways." He kissed her again, this time chastely and playfully as he too smiled. His face seemed less lined when he was smiling like that. He was older by more than a decade, but he looked in that instant boyish and youthful.
She smiled at him and sat up pressing him back. "Gilberto." She chided.
"What, belle?"
She shook her head and sighed. "I am a widow."
"I know."
"I have two children."
"I know."
"I am no longer young."
"That is a matter of opinion." He said. "Come." He said. He offered his hand.
She took it and followed him. They quickly made their way through the town to an abandoned building. He walked in and then pressed a part of the wall. A door opened revealing stairs. The air was warm below. She looked at him quizzically.
He smiled and closed the door behind her with a lever. She followed him as he walked forward. There was light from the moon filtering down from cracks in the walls and ceiling. The area was stone. She looked and as her eyes adjusted she saw a stone foundation and a pool.
Gasping she smiled as she walked forward. Her foot caught a slippery stone, but La Volpe caught her. "Easy." He said smiling.
He walked away and he lit two torches. She let her eyes adjust again and she saw it was an old Roman bath. The water was nearly clear and steamed. She looked at him. "It still works."
"Yes. It is a hundreds of years old, but it is still in working order. There were springs here." He said. He turned and realized he was looking at her back. The scars were visible in the light even as she pulled her hair from her braid and shook it out. Her hair hung to her hips. She gave him a look over her shoulder that was smoldering as she stepped into the heated water.
The scars gave him pause as he watched her step into the pool. The scars were old and crisscrossed over her skin. He knew from his own investigation that she was the daughter of the De' Medici, but who had beaten her. There had been a rumor she had been kidnapped, perhaps the scars were from that. He could see the whip had not been normal either. It had been designed to score into the flesh and rip it making her suffer all the more. He had seen such whips used against prisoners of war and criminals, but never a woman. He suddenly wanted to hold and mend her as much as he felt his body harden at the sight of her.
Her shapely legs disappeared, then her buttocks, then her lower back. She was standing kneeling shoulder deep in the water. Her head tipped back and her hair spread out like a living thing behind her. As she arched, her breasts and hardened nipples broke the surface and the water swirled around her ample bosom.
La Volpe could not stand it any longer. He stripped himself and looked at her. She had ducked under the water and was swimming. He joined her as he watched in amusement as she enjoyed the heat. He sat on a stone stair and watched her swim about like a mermaid.
She seemed to notice him. She swam closer and looked at him as he sat watching her. She smiled and looked at him, keeping her body submerged.
"Isabelle. I wonder…if you might consider…"
She came to him and pressed a finger to his lips.
He had been there for her children, acting as a surrogate father. He had held Giana when she had fallen on the stairs and gently soothed her. He had showed Giovanni how to wield a knife without cutting himself with the blade. All useful skills and something a father would teach his children whom lived in the underground. Isabelle had watched him and smiled. Her children adored Volpe and she knew they would love him as a father. After all they had not known their own. They scarcely remembered Ezio, uncle Mario, Maria, and Claudia, if at all. The thieves were the only "family" they had really known.
She leaned up and kissed him as she pressed her hands on his thighs, dangerously close to where he craved her hand to be. She smiled at him as he looked at those eyes. Those eyes he would gladly love to see the love he had for her reflected. She smiled coyly and then moved away, her legs leaving a wake as she kicked below the surface and dove to swim on the bottom.
She popped up in the middle of the bath and beckoned him with her finger. He moved to her. She stood, the water to her midriff, breasts bare, but under her water slicked hair. He came to her and regarded her a moment. He was nearly a foot taller and so the water moved about his hips as he smiled at her.
"You are beautiful." He said.
She smiled as he stepped to her, demanding a kiss from those sensuously parted lips. His kiss was demanding and he tangled his hands in her hair, tugging her head backwards sharply. He was rewarded by a gasp of surprise as his lips found her throat. He found a sensitive spot and her knees nearly collapsed and she was against him, feeling his lithe form. She also felt the distinct hardness against her side as he caught her to him as he smiled against her flesh.
He looked down at her as she pulled back regaining her balance. "Though this is comfortable, I would rather be elsewhere if we are to continue, Belle." He looked at her. "I do not wish to hurt you." He said, his voice was soft, but told her what he was planning.
"Oh? Where do you have in mind?" she asked.
His eyes flared lustfully. He bent and lifted her, a hand under her knees and the other around her back. He lifted her clear of the water and the water dripped from her body. Her arms went about his neck as he carried her out of the pool the way they had entered. He carried her to a corner where he had made a small, but comfortable pallet for them with pillows, blankets, and a mattress on the hard old stone. He set her on it and she found it was not the most comfortable bed, but she found she did not care as she sat there, her eyes level with his manhood.
As she looked at it, she subconsciously rubbed her tongue over her lips, making La Volpe harden even more. She reached out and touched him with a feather-light caress. He emitted something close to a groan, though it sounded more like a growl. He dropped, eyes level with her as he pressed her back against the pillows, his face even with hers.
She looked up at him and he pressed his mouth to hers. La Volpe braced himself as he used his legs to part her own farther than they were. She made no objection to his almost abrasive lovemaking. He entered her with a deep thrust. She winced a little. It had been some time since a man had been within her and her body protested for the first moments. However, she was slick from the wanton need she had experienced at his kisses, feeling his body against her, and wanting to be with him.
After a couple of thrusts her body adjusted and she braced her hands on his arms as her legs shifted wider to take him deeper within her. She shifted her hips and he smiled sitting back onto his knees and pulling her up to meet him, still within her. He thrust quickly, but every movement was against her tender nub and she gasped looking up at him.
She reached for him after a few moments. The air about them was cool, despite being only a few feet from the hot spring fed waters of the Roman bath. Her nipples tightened in the cooler air and he smiled bending a moment to suckle on one. She gasped.
He moved again and this time was again braced over her. He was moving again and this time his thrusts were urgent. She gasped as he braced on one hand and reached between them. His eyes were unfixed, his climax nearly on him as it was building. He caressed her above his thrusting manhood and she bit her lip to keep her cry from escaping, but she arched to him and her body tightened on him. He grunted as his own climax seized him and he felt her fingers dig into the flesh of his arms as he opened his eyes to look at her. His gaze for a moment was wild as he watched her.
Her body milked his climax and she collapsed. That was the most powerful orgasm she had felt in years. She panted as she closed her eyes and let out a soft grunt as he collapsed on her. She felt his arms move under her to hold her, his face was against her flesh, breathing against her collarbone.
Her arms were shaky as she reached to touch his back. She sighed and shifted a little under him. He smiled and kissed her throat before lifting himself up and to the side. His back was against the cool wall as he regarded her. She stretched, seemingly not embarrassed by her nudity.
His hand idly when to her midriff and caressed her affectionately before his hand went to cup the juncture between her legs. Her eyes opened, started by this, and he smiled gently as his hand moved up, caressing her breast, then up to her face.
"Isabelle, you are not going to be good for me."
"Oh?" She asked looking at him.
He grinned, wolfishly. "No. I am going to want to see the comfort of your body whenever I can." He looked her over and she flushed. He laughed then.
"What?"
"Did you know, tesora, that when you blush, you blush from your face to your breasts." He smiled as she blushed deeper. "I will know that when you blush, you blush other places for my eyes alone."
She looked at him. "What a terribly thing to say. Now I will do nothing, but blush."
"Hummm. What a thought."
She hissed and shoved him back playfully and she tried to roll away from him, but he caught her, her back to his body.
She struggled and he leaned close to her ear. "Keep that up and I will have you again, here and now." He told her. He thrust his hips against her backside to make a point. Though not hard, his manhood had come back to life, something it had not done so close to a climax in years. He was no longer a youthful man, but to stop her from trying to get away from him he held on hand around her body, just under her breasts, and then the other moved to her thigh.
His hand crept up. "Gilberto…" she gasped as his hand laid on her lower dark curls.
"Foxes protect their mates, tesora, even if they are not fully willing to be mated for life."
"But…"
He kissed her cheek as his finger pressed into her and the other caressed her still tender nub. She gasped as a jolt of pleasure hit her. "I am staking my claim, Isabelle. I find myself intrigued by you. The pleasure you have allowed me to share with you, has made me want to have you at my side even more."
She looked at him even as she fought the overriding sensations of his fingers. "I cannot marry again, Gilberto." She closed her eyes and let out a grating breath. "I will not watch another husband be executed before me." She bit her lip.
"Good. I do not wish to marry you, just have you as a companion, friend, and someone to gain release with when we both require it."
"The church says that is sinful."
"So is this." He said pressing his mouth to where his fingers had been. She gasped and arched against him. It took only moments before she cried out, this time, she did not restrain herself and she panted squirming against him as he continued until he was sure she had had everything she could.
He pulled back and smiled at her.
"I was not much of a church goer anyway." She said panting.
"Neither am I." He grinned.
He laid behind her, drawing her to him. He kissed her shoulder and relaxed.
After a time she rose to her feet. He lifted a hand and caught hers. She looked back at him as he sat up. "Where are you headed?" He asked.
"To bathe." She said. "Why waste a lovely spot for it."
He smiled as she padded to the pool and jumped off the edge into the water. After a few moments he followed her and swam. They spoke, not of love, but about anything and everything. She splashed him and he chased her. She was like an otter in the water, sleek and swift. When he caught her he laughed in triumph and pressed her down, gently, but let her up. He grinned playfully and this time she chased him.
When they were weary of acting like children, they went to the stairs and sat. She leaned her back against him and he rested and arm on her raised knee as she reclined against his chest. He leaned against the wall nearby and sighed.
"One could get used to this." She said.
He chuckled. "Indeed." He sighed. "But sadly I must return you soon."
She nodded. "Yes, the children will wonder as will Rose and Antonio."
La Volpe sighed. "We would not want that."
"It is comfortable here. Let us stay a while longer."
"As you wish, Il mio diletto."
She smiled and snuggled closer enjoying the peace in their sanctuary. For now she could forget. She was the lover of La Volpe. She knew he would keep her and her children from harm. More so than Antonio and Rose and the rest of the Venetian Thieves.
She felt something she had not in sometime.
She felt safe.