What Were They Thinking?
28 Running Away
“LILIANA CORTI CORTALES, I love you,” I said. We’d managed to drive as far south as Indianapolis after the wedding reception. Little Joe and I had agreed to spend our honeymoons in different parts of the country. He and Isabella headed east toward New York. Lily and I headed south toward Florida. I didn’t want to be anywhere close enough to hear my sister screaming out her passion and I was pretty sure that was what she was doing. We checked in at a Holiday Inn and I carried my bride across the threshold of our hotel room.
“If you didn’t, Sylvester Cortales, we would not be standing in this room together.” She turned and embraced me. I kissed the top of her head. “Sly, I’m a little scared. I was raised in Italy. Virginity was something sacred we were taught to preserve until our wedding night. Now it’s my wedding night and I don’t know what to do.”
“We’ll take it slow, love. We’ve waited through six months of courtship for tonight. We don’t have to rush now.”
“I’m afraid you won’t like me… my body… or sex with me. You’re used to professionals.”
“Lil, listen to me.” I sat her on the edge of the bed and put my arm around her. “There is no such thing as getting used to professionals. Yes, there were women available and when Joe and I came in out of the field, we used them. That’s all it was. We used them to release the pressure that had built up after we’d been on an assignment. I knew nothing of love until I met you.”
“Kiss me. Kiss me like you did on the el when you were released after the mugging.”
“That was… I didn’t mean to lose control. I’d just killed two men, Lil.”
“Is that what sparks your passion, Sly? Killing people?”
“No. It’s… surviving. Living past the moment when I could have died. That’s why we went to prostitutes near the base. We’d survived.”
“Hmm.” She kissed me and it deepened as we became more passionate. She pulled my hand up to her breast and I could feel her breaths coming in deep gasps as we continued to kiss. I forgot all about survival mode. I was lost in the passion of my Italian love. “I just hope you survive tonight,” she whispered as she struggled to unzip her dress. Being a gentleman, I helped her, and the little party dress she had worn to the reception and in the car fell to the floor. She kicked it in a very unladylike fashion and began struggling out of her pantyhose.
I knelt at her feet and unfastened her shoes. Once they were off, I helped work the pantyhose off her feet. They were so tiny—at least, compared to my size elevens. She looked dainty and I massaged her feet as I kissed her toes.
“Sly! You still have your jacket on. Don’t you want to undress with me?” she asked. “You don’t plan to make love fully clothed, do you?”
We stood and I pulled at my jacket as I took in the sight of my virgin bride. My God! She was beautiful! She began unbuttoning my shirt as I kicked off my shoes and reached for my belt. I kept one hand on her bare back as we kissed again. I had touched her skin. Her hands. Her face. Once she had permitted my hand to stray to her thigh, but it was covered by pantyhose, of course.
But now it was Lily’s bare skin that my fingers caressed. Parts that had always remained covered. I was lost in the sensations of touching her as my trousers fell to the floor and I kicked them away to join her dress. I had to release her in order to get my shirt off, struggling with the cuff buttons that had been turned inside out in her hurry to pull it off. She bounced over to the bed and pulled the covers down, sliding beneath the sheet. I caught my breath at seeing the shape of her bottom beneath the silk panties she wore. I wanted to see that sight often.
“Take off your socks,” she giggled. “You look silly.”
I did as she said and slid under the sheet with her. She still wore her bra and panties. I still wore my boxers and T-shirt. Once we were both in bed, we just lay there. My erection was already raging and I knew she’d seen the evidence in my boxers before I got in bed. I didn’t want to frighten her again. Her hand moved over to mine and I held it as we lay on our backs.
“Do we have to get naked?” she asked in a tiny voice.
“Um… We don’t have to if you don’t want to, but um… we sort of have to… um…” I was supposed to be an experienced man guiding his wife. I was a stuttering idiot.
“Maybe we could… kiss some more before…?”
We rolled toward each other and our lips met, the hands that we held, trapped between us. I wrapped my left hand around her and held her gently as our lips and tongues meshed.
“I will never get tired of kissing you,” I said. “I will never get enough of it.” We kissed again.
“Take your T-shirt off so I can feel your skin,” she whispered. That took a split second and for the first time the skin of our bare stomachs touched. I changed position enough to put my right arm under her head as my left continued to stroke her shoulder. Her hands explored my chest and my back as we kissed some more.
It was a near perfect world except for the scratching of her bra against my chest. It was time to act like a man. I reached for the clasp on the back of her bra. One of the three hooks was still fastened when she jerked her lips away from mine.
“Sly?”
“It will be better this way,” I whispered. “I promise.” She whined a bit as the last hook came away. I tugged at the straps until she pulled her arms out one at a time, immediately snapping her arms over her breasts to protect them… from me? I leaned in to kiss her again and ran my hand up and down her back from neck to panty line. I massaged her skin and the marks that the straps had made. Gradually, she opened up and moved her arms around me again. I gasped as I felt her bare breasts pressed into my chest. Her kisses became more passionate and our breath barely escaped our lungs as I finally slipped a hand around to the front and caressed her breast for the first time.
“Sly? I think… if it’s always like this… I think I’m going to want to do this a lot.”
“Cariña, I hope it only gets better with time.”
“Sì, Tesoro. I am ready. I am ready for you, my love.”
Lily’s panties were flared at the leg and edged with lace, almost like a little skirt. When I ran my hand up her silky leg it slid right under the leg and onto her butt. She moaned loudly and I thought she would devour my mouth with hers. I reached up to the waistband and pulled them down, spending as long as possible caressing her round bottom as I dragged them off her hips. She shifted so I could pull them all the way off and then tugged at the waistband of my boxers. I stretched it out over my cock and shoved them down off my legs with my feet to the foot of the bed. I yearned to see… to look at my naked wife… but we were covered with the bedding. She clutched me to her and I felt her sob.
“What is it, Cariño? Sweetheart, tell me how to help you?” The first touch of a tear on my chest and my erection began to flag.
“It’s going to hurt! You are so big. The old ladies say the first time hurts and is not enjoyable. Why does it have to hurt when I feel so close to you and want you so much?”
“Oh.” I wasn’t going to win any awards for great dialog. I had no idea what to say. I’d heard guys talk about ‘doing virgins’ and how they screamed. I didn’t want to put my beloved Lil through that. “It can’t be that terrible if everyone keeps doing it, can it?” I asked.
“Be gentle with me, Sly. Just love me when I cry and be gentle.”
She lay back and spread her legs in resignation. The powers that be should create education courses on how to make love. They’d spent two years training me to kill. You’d think someone could have taken ten minutes to teach me how to love.
I let my hand drift down between her legs and she instantly clamped them shut.
“Lily, let me touch you.”
“You are going to touch me? There? It’s so…”
“I’m going to touch you. I’m going to give you pleasure. I’m going to make love to you. My lovely Lil, don’t hold yourself away from me any longer.”
Her legs slowly relaxed but more as if she was resigned to the inevitable than that she was excited.
There was a Vietnamese prostitute in Can Tho that I visited more than once. We were warned not to go back to the same whore over and over because it would allow Charlie to track our movements. No one wanted to be predictable in the Mekong Delta. But this one was special. She spoke little English but it was enough to make her wishes known. She wanted US dollars for sex. But she also wanted to enjoy it. As a result, she gave me a touch and feel tour of her body and I found out about the clitoris. She demanded that she be wet and slippery before a cock entered her. Sounds logical today, but back then the pleasure of whores wasn’t a consideration. Whether they were wet or dry didn’t matter. You could grease a condom with Vaseline and shove it into just about any opening. I only visited her twice, but it was enough to make sure I knew the function of female genitalia.
I was relieved to find that Lil was already moist. She wasn’t ready yet, but at least there was a start. I lowered my lips and sucked one of her nipples between them. She gasped and her legs suddenly fell open to my exploration. Her hands came around my head and held me to her breast as I spread the increasing lubrication around. Finally, I found the magic little button and rubbed it with my lubricated finger.
“Oh! Oh! Oddio! Sly! What are you doing? Why am I…? Oh!”
It took a little while, but I was in hog heaven feasting on her bounteous tits as I fingered her clit and pressed against her hole. I found the membrane barrier across the entrance to her vagina and made a practice of sliding down and pressing against it repeatedly as I fingered her. I just figured I’d get her used to having it touched and pressure against it so she wouldn’t tense up when I touched it with my cock. She got slicker and slicker as she mounted toward what I learned later was to be the first orgasm of her life.
When she finally came, I rolled over onto her, positioned my cock and shoved. She screamed into my mouth. I held still for a moment to let her adjust to my presence while we continued to kiss and she sobbed quietly. Then her hips began to move with slight pulses. I slid back a little and pushed in farther. She gasped as she spread to accommodate more of me.
“Are you okay, mi núvia?” I asked.
“Will it always be like that, Sly? I died a little death. I heard angels singing. Then it hurt, but now it feels full. Stretched. Are you inside me, mio marito?”
“I am. We are making love. Lily, I love you. I will always show you how much I love you.”
“Show me. Show me again.”
I picked up the pace a bit and she matched my strokes. As I got closer to my own climax, I pushed my hand between us through her thick pubic hair and rubbed at her clit some more. This time when she came, I did, too.
We did get to Florida. It took three days to get to Miami and once we got there, we boarded a cruise to the Bahamas for four days. It was warmer than Chicago but not as bad as the jungle.
“I have lovely things in my trousseau that you have not seen because we never got dressed before bed!” Lily said. She stood before me in our stateroom in a beautiful peignoir. The panties visible through the front slit of the gown were similar to the first ones I’d seen her in, with wide lacy leg openings. I was quite certain that I could see the shape of her nipples poking at the top and that she wore no bra with it. My mouth was suddenly too dry to speak as I nodded my head foolishly.
I did what any self-respecting man would do and popped the cork of the bottle of champagne we had on ice.
“I’m a little sore, my love,” she said as I reached for her. I pulled back and she followed into my embrace. “Not too sore to want you again. Mestruazioni will begin soon and I want you as much as possible before.”
I didn’t know that much about women or Italian, but I got the message that my current task was to unwrap my wife and make love to her.
“I will make sure our daughters stay pure until their wedding days,” Lil whispered to me. It was the last day of our cruise and the next day would find us back in the car and driving north.
“Daughters? Are you telling me something?” Of course, I assumed Lil would get pregnant and we would have children. It still came as a bit of a shock just over a week after our wedding.
“Oh! You are not to be a father yet,” she laughed. “But it will happen. I will have daughters. It is the way of my family.”
“Really?”
“My mother, my mother’s mother, her mother… all bore only daughters.”
“Beautiful daughters,” I added.
“Well-behaved daughters. Each was pure on her wedding night.”
“Ah. And all passed down that it was a horrible painful task that had to be completed. What will you tell our daughters?”
“I will tell them it was a horrible painful task that had to be completed,” she laughed. “If they knew otherwise, they would be tempted to try it too soon!”
“We live in America, not Italy or Spain, Cariño. It might be difficult to convince them that something so pleasurable is an unpleasant chore. I love you, Liliana. I will be happy if our daughters grow up to know all the joy we have. We will raise them well, protect them from harm, love them, and let them blossom into the kind of young woman you are. We needn’t lie to them about what is pleasurable and what is painful. They will have friends that will tell them otherwise. Then they would want to see for themselves.”
Lily cuddled back into my arms in the deck chair we shared, looking at the full moon rise over the Atlantic. I heard her sigh.
“It is a new world to me, Sly. You have opened my eyes as well as other parts of my body. I only wish to do what is right and raise children my husband will be proud of.”
We returned to Chicago and checked into a hotel just across the Indiana State Line as a base of operations for searching for a new home. We would be welcome, of course, at either my mother’s house or at Joe’s. But as much as I loved my family, I didn’t want to live with them. Instead, when we had checked in, I called the Cortellis.
“Don Sylvester, is that you?” Mama Cortelli said when she’d come to the phone. “You must stay away! Do not come back to Chicago!”
“Donna Sofia! Is all well?”
“No! Joseph is dead.”
“Little Joe?”
“No! Big Joe. I tried to keep Little Joe away but he and Isabella returned as soon as he heard.”
“Mama! Is that Sly?” I heard Joe yell in the background.
“Si. Tell him, Joe. Tell him not to come here.”
“Sly,” Joe said as soon as he took the phone from his mother.
“Joe, I’m here. What do you need? I can’t believe your father… What happened?”
“It’s been getting worse on the docks. He went down one day to check on the workers and disappeared. They fished him out of the Lake the next morning. I need to get down there and try to calm the workers or there will be a bloodbath.”
“I can be there in two hours,” I said.
“No! Mama was right. You need to stay away from here.”
“I need to be where I can protect you.”
“You can’t protect me. It’s always been this way, Sly. I protect you while you pull the trigger. When I need your finger, I’ll call you.”
“That’s not right, Joe. We’re partners.”
“Sly, I can’t protect your sister and you at the same time. Stay away and be available when I need you. Where are you?”
“In Calumet City. The Holiday Inn.”
“I’ll send a courier to you with some money. Stay out of Illinois. Go someplace where you can get here in two or three hours and lie low. I’ll call you when I need you.”
Little Joe was the boss now. Lily had said he was a manager and he even managed me. The briefcase that was delivered had $25,000 in it. We checked out of the hotel in the morning and turned east. We needed a place to start a life where no one knew us.
That’s how we ended up out in the country near Mishawaka.
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