We started up the stairway, his arm around my waist, brushing his lips over my neck, tickling me as we ascended, giggling. When we reached the top landing, I anticipated his turning toward the guest room I was occupying, but instead, he turned right, and we walked quietly past my parents’ room, him putting his finger over his lips so we tiptoed silently deeper into the house. My body tightened as we drew closer to what I was doomed to call the Limoncello Room. I wouldn’t go back in there for some time. Maybe he felt my body stiffen. He never paused, leading me on until we reached his bedroom.

“Now that I got your parents asleep . . .”

He opened the door. His lamps were lit dimly, casting a romantic glow over his bed. I suspected either Lucas or Dora had, at his order, prepared it while we were all at dinner.

“Got to practice,” he said, and then he lifted me gracefully into his arms, kicked the door closed behind us, and carried me to his bed. He held me while we kissed and then lowered me tenderly, carefully, as if I was made of thin china. For a moment, he just stood there looking down at me. “You are so beautiful,” he said.

“Grace Rose, who is a nurse and a friend of my mother’s, told me women blossom when they are pregnant.”

“Are you pregnant?” he joked. “Might be a false alarm.”

“Is that what you wish?”

“Hey, it would have happened sooner or later. Might as well be sooner. I wasn’t going to let you get away,” he said, and lowered himself to his knees beside the bed, where he began to undress me like a little boy unwrapping his Christmas or birthday present slowly, luxuriating in the expectation. I moved only to make it easier for him.

When I was totally naked, he paused and just looked at me without touching me. In my mind, I felt his fingers exploring. I saw him lean in to kiss my breasts and then work his way down over my stomach, his lips on the insides of my thighs. I moaned and heard him laugh.

When I opened my eyes, I saw he hadn’t moved.

“Maybe you don’t need me,” he said, with that irritating arrogant smile.

“Maybe I don’t.” I put my hands over my breasts.

“Like hell you don’t,” he said, and pounced to do everything I had envisioned.

He began ravenously, but suddenly, probably recalling his promise to make this night dramatically different from my “limoncello night,” paused and became far more gentle, moving like a man unsure about how far he should go, anticipating my command to stop. Instead, I closed my eyes and reached for his shoulders, clearly urging him to enter me and begin our climb toward ecstasy.