Aqua - Christmas in New York City (Aqua Romance Travel Series) by Amanda S. Jones Read Free Book Online

held it against her wrist. The cool penetrated her skin and after a moment, he had swiped his finger on her wrist and brushed it along her stomach. He then reached for another chocolate-covered fig, rolled it along her skin in broad strokes for the marble floor, the balcony above the arches. Her body had quivered from the coolness on her ribs, the way every part of her stomach was being touched.  
    For a while Harry was lost in his art, the painting, the curves of her body, two passions blending into one. He placed another fig onto her bellybutton, the depression becoming his paint well, the palette for his canvas. He drew the stage, a waiter carrying a tray, then scooped into her bellybutton for more cocoa paint. He brushed in tables, his fingers swirling on her stomach so that when he reached the tip of her pubic bone and stopped, her body wanted more.
    He ended up retracing chocolate circles toward her nipples until his lips and their joined bodies smudged the painting. But now it was here, a blending of her body onto the canvas in a unique juxtaposition.  
    He remembered everything. Harry always did. Everything she ever told him, and he was sensitive to every detail of her life. She should have known that her father would pit him into a corner where he would get defensive, especially when her own parent started lashing out at her. Whether they had children or not wasn’t a problem, whether he put up with her grumbly father a few times a year wasn’t a dilemma. They could deal with all of this. What mattered was that they were side by side, each and every day for the rest of their lives. In that togetherness, the magic of their first week would thrive.
    She put on her coat and called a cab. When she opened the door, Harry was standing there, with her book tucked under his arm.  
Pandoro
    Harry pulled her book and a small white canvas from under his arm. “It’s the fourteenth day of Christmas a day early.” He turned it over to reveal a small scale version of the painting that hung above the bed. It was the scene from Venice, Caffè Florian, the marble arches, the band, and at one of the tables was Harry looking at Casey. The scene was painted in soft pastels, a dreamy scene, and Harry had placed a vapor trail, a band of soft golden light that rippled between their two tables and settled upon the two of them like fairy dust.  
    “It’s our painting,” Harry swept his finger along the vapor trail in the painting. Whatever happens along the pathway of our life, that’s what I embrace. Children or no children. Sickness or health. I just want you in my life. Everything else is a bonus and we will write it together, if, you still want that.”
    Casey nodded, her eyes filling with tears.
    He handed her the book.  
    "You should publish this,” Harry said.  
    “It’s our personal story.”
    “Fictionalize it a bit. The writing is so good, it should be read by more people.”
    “I don’t have the time.”
    “You will next year, post-surgery.”
    Casey pulled off her coat and the bobble hat, then flattened the static in her hair. She reached inside her purse and pulled out a leather-bound book, identical to the one Harry held in his arm. “It’s the fourteenth day of Christmas a day early.”
    It was the same leather-bound book as Volume I, with the hand-written title: Volume II: Our First Year Together.
    “When did you-”
    “I wrote it last night. I couldn’t sleep.”
    “When I did my painting.”
    They fell into each other’s arms.  

    BY THE light from the city, Harry watched Cassandra writing on her laptop. Over coffee, he had encouraged her to fictionalize the book she wrote for him and she had started soon after he cut into the Pandoro he had brought over.
    “I thought panettone was the Italian Christmas bread,” Cassandra dipped her finger into powdered sugar that dusted the top of the bread.
    “It is, but in Venice and Verona, this is our tradition.”
    “I’ll have to write that into our