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working our way through a bottle of whiskey. He was getting quite maudlin, and I remember asking him how it worked. What that mysterious thing was that made someone want to stick around for the long haul.
    “Liam,” he had said, his eyes shining with whiskey induced tears. “The first time I made love to your Aunt, I knew. When she called my name, it spoke to my soul. And every single time since. When it is the woman you love, it isn’t just sex that matters. It’s intimacy.”
    I’d looked at him, not discounting the truth of what he said, but wondering if I’d ever feel that way about anyone.
    At this moment, with Tia in my arms, I remembered his words, and I felt the weight of truth of them. Because this woman spoke to something in my soul and I never wanted to let her go.

Chapter 7
     
    Tatiana:
    I woke up at three in the morning in a strange bed. For a moment, I was startled and scared, until the memory of the previous evening came rushing back. I bit my lip.  
    For many months now, I had wanted Liam. But Liam gave me something I couldn’t easily get from anyone else. He gave me friendship and easy, untroubled companionship. Sure, I had Antonio and Enzo, who were like brothers to me, but they were both in relationships. Liam was the person I called when I landed in Venice, or when I wanted to go see a movie. He was the person who made sure I didn’t eat alone.
    I didn’t want to fuck that up, but I was afraid I might already have crossed that line.
    Here was the thing I knew about myself. I couldn’t share Liam. Watching him with Simona had nearly ripped a hole in my heart. I couldn’t be the good little submissive who sat by and watched her Dom sleep with countless other women. And Liam was the manager at Casanova, and other women were plentiful. On some level, I’d always known that if I had a little taste of Liam, I’ll want all of him, and all of him wasn’t on offer.
    I lay awake with him sleeping peacefully next to me, and everything ached because the gap between what I wanted and what I could have was painfully large and completely insurmountable. Finally, I inched away and tiptoed my way downstairs, leaving in the middle of the night.
    I needed to gather myself and strive for some composure before I faced him again.
    ***
    At seven in the morning, my phone rang. I groaned in pain and raised my head, groping around for it. After I came back from Liam’s place, I’d poured myself a glass of wine and stared into nothing for hours, and I hadn’t fallen asleep until five. Two hours of sleep was not nearly enough.
    I glanced at the screen. It was my agent, Giorgio. Not a call I was allowed to ignore, so I picked up the phone. “Tatiana,” he said. “I have good news.”
    I could hear the smile in his voice, and could picture him, beaming, with a cigarette in his hands, leaning back in his tall leather chair. Giorgio was a great agent, patient with me, fierce on my behalf with everyone else. “Umm,” I mumbled, sitting up in bed and trying to clear the sleep from my brain. “Tell me.”
    “You know the TV show you did in Ireland last year? The Killers of County Kerry ?”
    “Yeah,” I muttered. I was so exhausted that I couldn’t really even form coherent sentences. The TV show that Giorgio was talking about was a taut, fast-paced detective show set in rural Ireland. I’d done a two-episode turn as a visiting femme fatale from Russia, whose true intentions were suspect, and no one knew whether she was good or evil.
    “Well, they want you back. One full season, as a series regular.”
    “That’s great,” I choked out. Giorgio had every right to sound delighted; that was fantastic news. The show had been getting great critical buzz world over, and the first season had just gone live on Netflix.
    “Right. Slight wrinkle, of course. They need you today in Ireland. Well, they needed you yesterday, but that’s how these things roll, isn’t it? They said something about how every tourist