The dress fit like a glove, but it was with some trepidation that she stepped out, feeling like a peasant masquerading as a princess. Slowly he turned around, and then did a double-take, as if to check it was really her. She hadn’t anticipated that it would be the way he looked at her rather than the dress itself that would make her feel as if her whole body was glowing. But she knew she wanted to bottle the feeling and keep it for ever.

‘Faye…bella,’ he said guardedly, his voice a purr. ‘You look …’ He shook his head like a man torn and turned to the shop assistant. ‘We’ll take it.’ The woman smiled from ear to ear and waltzed off to the till.

‘Dante, what are you doing?’ Faye protested under her breath, trying not to move for fear she might damage the priceless gown. ‘I can’t afford this!’

‘Think of it as a thank you for all your hard work,’ he said abruptly, avoiding looking directly at her. ‘Now, go and get changed.’

And, despite her protestations, Dante paid for the dress before she even emerged from the changing room.

Feeble though it was in comparison, she insisted she buy him a gelato in return. Puzzled by her insistence, he reluctantly agreed—on the condition that he take her to the best place to sample delicious ice cream. But just as they were approaching the winding street he had in mind, the heavens opened.

By the time they had run back to Il Maia, her hand reaching for his to stop them losing one another in the crowds of shoppers, her light summer dress was soaked through and stuck to her body, and his pale shirt was clinging to his broad chest, his jeans moulded to his lean hips. Finally they reached her room, and, breathless and laughing, she unlocked the door and flew in.

Dante hesitated in the doorway.

‘My apartment’s only a few blocks away. Let me head back and get changed. I’ll meet you downstairs.’

‘Dante, it’s raining even more heavily now—here, have a towel.’ Faye slipped off her shoes and flitted through to the bathroom. He stood there, poised like a man who had been asked to do a bungee jump without a rope.

‘No, Faye, I shouldn’t—’

‘Come on, you’ll get cold.’ Faye pulled him into the room, laughing, and put the towel around his shoulders, shutting the door behind him.

And the moment the catch clicked shut, something snapped. The air in the room changed, and her naturally quick movements seemed to slow as she became conscious of every move her body made. The smell of rain mixed with her faint floral perfume and his musky cologne. Their damp clothes seemed to long to be removed. She was thrilled at being caught out by nature, as if it was urging them to come together.

She stood before him, the intensity of the look he gave her making her nipples peak beneath the wet cotton of her dress. His silence was unbearable.

‘Let’s get out of these clothes,’ she said, reaching her arm behind her back, turning around. ‘Help me with this zip.’

He did not answer, but she felt him move behind her and his hands begin to release her dress, agonisingly avoiding contact with her skin. Faye heard her breathing fall in time with his. It was as if those lingering glances had reached fever pitch and there could be no more looking away. Faye…bella. The words echoed around her mind, refusing to be forgotten, and her body was crying out for him as the rivulets of water ran over her body, mingling with its own heat.

‘Touch me, Dante.’

She did not know where the words came from. She whispered them in a voice she did not recognise as her own—knew only that she needed him in a way she had never understood needing anything before. His warm breath stirred the hairs on the back of her neck, but still he did not move.

‘Please.’ She turned round to face him and looked up at him, her eyes wide, imploring. ‘Please, touch me,’ she urged.

Dante drew in a ragged breath, his eyes boring into her with unfathomable intensity. She saw his hands move up as if to encircle her waist, and then drop to his sides again.

‘I want…’ Her voice was bolder now, seeing his temptation. ‘I want you to make love to me.’

‘Damn you, you little temptress,’ he bit out, his voice thick as he shook his head slowly. ‘Don’t you know what you do to me?’

She nodded slowly, her lips parted. And then he raised his head and looked deep into her eyes for one final moment, before he brought his mouth crushing upon her own.

And it was then that Faye truly learned what it was to be touched. To feel the exquisite pleasure of being claimed by the man you loved in the most intimate way there was. And the sudden searing of pain was replaced by a mounting pleasure which exploded with all the unexpected welcome of a late-afternoon storm. A sensation which, to Faye, was only surpassed by the feeling of lying beneath a cool white sheet, with Dante just inches away afterwards, and the sound of the easing rain outside the window. The sound of his breathing was steady and deep.

‘Couldn’t you just stay here for ever?’ she whispered.

It was the eye of the storm she had never seen coming.

‘I thought you had got everything you wanted.’

Faye’s face crumpled. She didn’t know what he was supposed to say afterwards, but she knew that wasn’t it. Seconds before he had been crying her name in ecstasy—and now? Now the harshness of his tone made it sound as if he almost despised her.

Faye rolled away from him, whipping the sheet around her. ‘What are you talking about?’ She suddenly felt as if she was playing a complicated game and no one had told her the rules.

‘I’m talking about little girls who cast all dignity aside the minute they get a taste of the high life.’ He glanced towards the designer bag containing the dress and curled his lip in distaste. ‘Those who are so hot for a man they do not see the value of their virtue amidst their haste to lose it.’

He swung his legs over the bed, shameless in his nakedness, and reached for his damp jeans.

‘You came here to learn, bella? Then today you learn this is not the kind of behaviour which makes a man stay anywhere. Why would he, when he has taken all that is worth taking?’

And with that he scooped up the rest of his clothes and headed towards the door. Suddenly it didn’t feel like a game at all.

‘What are you talking about?’ she repeated helplessly, searching his face, willing him to take the words back.

‘Your true colours, sì?’ he said with finality before closing the door calmly behind him.

As Faye stared helplessly at the door, nausea rising in her belly, she felt her heart break in two. Felt all the humiliation of loving so blindly, of discovering just why it all felt so unreal. Because it was. Every moment, from the instant they had met until now, turned sour in her mind, as if someone had poured acid into her brain. And something changed irrecoverably within her. Not because she had just made love to a man for the first time in her life. But because all her foolish childhood dreams had just crashed out through the door with him. She had wanted to give herself to him, and he detested her for it. How could she have got it so wrong?

Faye choked back the sobs as realisation seeped in, and suddenly she was caught by a need to get dressed—as if angry at her own body, determined to cover its nakedness. The open wardrobe caught her eye, with its skirts and blouses neatly ordered for her weeks of work ahead. Yes, she thought, there was something worse than this: staying around to face the humiliation day after day, having him look at her thinking he had taken all that was worth taking, having him look at her at all.

And so she packed her bags. Understanding that her leaving would have about as much impact on his world as a pebble skimming the surface of the ocean, but knowing it was preferable to being swallowed up by the ocean completely.