Chapter 5: Decision Time
The week passed in a blur of heat and sensation. Izzy’s skin became accustomed to the touch of hands other than her own, her ears to the sound of whispered Italian endearments, her body to the rhythm of being worshipped and taken in turns. She felt loose, pliant, gliding through the luxurious days with a smile that felt borrowed from someone else. It was a holiday. A beautiful, intoxicating, profoundly selfish holiday.
When a servant delivered the note requesting her presence in Marco’s private dining room for lunch—the terrace being deemed too oppressive—she felt a flicker of something other than languid anticipation. It was a reminder of structure, of the mind behind the pleasure.
The room was cool, shaded, the walls lined with leather-bound books. Marco sat at the head of a modest table, dressed in a crisp white shirt, sleeves rolled. He gestured for her to sit. A simple salad of figs, prosciutto, and burrata was placed before them.
“You are settling in,” he observed, not unkindly.
“I am,” she said, spearing a fig. “It’s… transformative.”
He watched her chew, his gaze analytical. “I’m surprised you haven’t asked to see Alessandro and Leo together rather than one at a time.”
Izzy froze, the fig halfway to her mouth. She slowly lowered her fork. “Together? You mean… have sex with both of them at the same time?”
“Perhaps start with one watching,” Marco suggested, his tone clinical, as if discussing a new therapy technique. “So you have one and then immediately afterwards the other. Then, when you are comfortable, surrender yourself to both at the same time.”
A hot flush crawled up her neck. “That isn’t normal,” she blurted out. The words sounded childish even to her. She tried again. “It’s not just that I’ve been loaded with an inhibiting principle by society. In my gut, I just feel that such indulgence is… too hedonistic for my nature.”
Marco nodded, sipping his mineral water. “That’s fair enough, Izzy. So can we think of some other boundary that is limiting you and which you would like to throw off?”
She pushed her plate away, her appetite gone. The room felt closer. “No,” she said, the word tight. “I can’t.”
Marco’s expression shifted, the warmth evaporating. He leaned forward, his elbows on the table, steepling his fingers. “You are starting to treat your therapy as a holiday. So I would suggest that you either look to yourself and take the smallest of steps outside of your comfort zone, or save yourself some money. Either give up and go home to Chelsea, or book into a modest hotel on the Italian Riviera and start testing yourself in the real world.”
Panic, sharp and cold, cut through the sensual haze. Go home? Back to the empty Chelsea house, the polite, fading relationships, the woman who booked this trip out of sheer desperation? The thought was a void.
“I just can’t do it, I’m afraid,” she whispered, her voice small. “Two men at once is wrong.”
“That’s the executive part of your brain talking,” Marco said, his voice dropping, becoming almost hypnotic. “And what we are trying to do is connect you with the more primitive, primeval aspects of your nature. Those that evolved to keep the species going.Think. In our ancient past, what woman in her right mind, living in a cave, with no medical expertise whatsoever available, would risk dying in childbirth?”
Izzy stared at him, bewildered by the evolutionary tangent.
“Don’t you remember what I said when you arrived?” he pressed. “That women have a sexual response more powerful, and more complex, than that of we men. On top of that you have both an appetite and a stamina for virtually unlimited pleasure that dwarfs the male capacity.” He let the words hang in the cool air. “That’s evolution’s answer to your brain’s executive control. The decision you now have to make is whether or not you want to tap into that, or continue living a sterile life.”
He stood up, looming over the table. “It’s your choice, Isabella. But ethically, I can’t allow you to carry on seeing any of my therapists unless you want to take that leap. Because otherwise it reduces to prostitution. A simple transaction. And that is not what I offer.”
The word ‘prostitution’ landed like a slap. She felt cheapened, the past week’s intimacy suddenly cast in a garish, tawdry light.
“I will give you twenty-four hours to think about it.In isolation. So, no Alessandro, no Leo. Just peaceful solitude. And we will talk again tomorrow.” He walked to the door, then paused, looking back at her hunched form. He softened his tone, just a fraction. “Isabella, I would not say this to a woman without your advantages. A woman who had to work for a living, or marry a man, to survive in a hostile world. But you have the luxury of being able to choose how you live your life. You can safely surrender yourself to your fundamental, ancient nature, and fulfil your feminine potential by tapping into the wonders of your female body. So my offer to you is this: turn yourself over to me totally, or go your own way.”
“Turn myself over to you?” Izzy echoed, the concept both terrifying and darkly alluring.
“A legally binding written contract,” Marco stated calmly. “Under which you agree to do whatever I ask you to do, for a set period of three weeks. That being the remainder of your planned stay here.”
Then he was gone, leaving her with the ruins of lunch and the echoing silence of her own frantic thoughts.
The isolation was absolute. Her luxurious bedroom, once a site of discovery, became a gilded cage. No cheerful breakfast tray from Alessandro, no whispered planning for a day trip with Leo. Just the oppressive Tuscan sun baking the tiles outside her window, and the deafening roar of her own mind.
Wrong. It’s wrong. It’s greedy. It’s perverse.
But another voice, newer, raw and hungry, whispered back.Hedonistic? You’ve tasted it. You’ve craved it. Your body knows.
She paced. She tried to read. She stood under a cold shower until her teeth chattered. The memory of Alessandro’s mouth, of Leo’s commanding gaze, of her own desperate, wrung-out ecstasy, tormented her. It was a corporeal ghost, haunting her skin.
As dusk fell, painting the room in shades of violet and gold, the conflict crystallized into a physical ache. A deep, throbbing emptiness between her legs that no amount of pacing could soothe. Marco’s words looped in her head. ‘The more primitive, primeval aspects of your nature.’
With a resolve born of sheer frustration, she walked to the full-length mirror. She looked at herself—the auburn hair tousled, the green eyes wide with confusion and need, the athletic body she had always maintained but never truly known. She let the silk robe slip from her shoulders. She saw the woman who had come here, and the one lurking beneath.
Her own touch was tentative at first. A tracing of her collarbone, the curve of a breast. Her nipple hardened under her own fingers. She let her hand slide down her stomach, through the coppery curls, until her fingers found the slick, swollen flesh beneath.This was different. This wasn’t about being touched by someone else. This was about feeling herself. She closed her eyes, leaning her forehead against the cool glass. One finger slid inside, then two. She was so wet, so ready. Her other hand came up to knead her breast, pinching the nipple sharply. A gasp escaped her, fogging the mirror.
She thought of Marco’s challenge. Two men. Her fingers worked faster, curling inside herself, her thumb finding her clit. She imagined Alessandro there, on his knees, his handsome face between her thighs, his tongue driving her mad. Then, in her mind’s eye, Leo entered, his darker, more severe frame moving behind Alessandro, his hands replacing hers on her breasts, his cock, thick and demanding, pressing against her entrance as Alessandro’s mouth continued its work.
The image was blasphemous. It was electric.
“Fuck,” she moaned aloud to her reflection, her hips beginning to jerk against her own hand. “Oh, fuck, yes.”
Her back arched. She pictured them switching, Alessandro taking her from behind, filling her deep, while Leo stood before her, feeding his cock into her hungry mouth. The fantasy was visceral, detailed. The weight of them, the smell of their skin, the sounds—their grunts, her own choked, greedy cries. The feeling of being utterly possessed, used, consumed by two sets of hands, two mouths, two cocks.
Her orgasm ripped through her, unexpected in its violence. It wasn’t the sweet, rolling wave of before. It was a convulsive, shuddering quake that tore a raw, screaming cry from her throat. Her legs buckled and she slid down the front of the mirror, leaving a smeared trail of condensation, collapsing onto the floor in a trembling heap.
She lay there on the cool marble, breath coming in ragged sobs, the last pulses of pleasure echoing through her spent body. The silence of the room rushed back in.
And in that silence, the answer became perfectly, terrifyingly clear. The executive brain had been shouted down. The primitive, primeval self had voted with its entire being.
Sterile life. That was the alternative. A return to the grey. To the slow, polite fizzling out of everything.
She pulled herself up, wrapped the robe around her shaking body, and walked to the elegant writing desk. She took out a sheet of heavy, cream paper and a fountain pen.
She didn’t write a letter. She simply wrote, in bold, clear strokes:
I CHOOSE.
She stared at the words, her heart hammering against her ribs. They weren’t for Marco. Not yet. They were for her. A signature on a pact with the woman in the mirror, the one whose eyes now glittered with a fierce, unafraid hunger.
Tomorrow, she would face him. Tomorrow, she would sign his contract. But tonight, alone in the quiet dark, Isabella Silva had already surrendered.
Izzy, 33, shoulder-length auburn hair, green eyes, athletic build, ample bust, wearing a short dress and high summer wedges, is standing on the terrace of a magnificent villa with a view of the Tuscan hills behind her, on a very hot summer's day. Show her shoes. Don't show the sun.