Photographs from the Front

An excerpt from Photographs from the Front

The mandolin music floated over the hedges from the piazza. Francissa danced for Antonio, flipping her hair, swirling her dress. He laughed, even when she took his hat and put it on, cocked at a coy angle, peeking out from under the brim with her large, dark eyes.

"Francissa, pose for me," he said. He took out his little camera. The pretty girl struck another pose, demure, alluring, and he snapped a picture. "Give me something to remember you by."

She gave him back his hat and lay back against the brick wall. He sat on stone steps that led up to the ruined church, the whole front of it overgrown and rotting. "Our great-grandpapa was the priest here," she told him. "He was a lover of the ladies." Antonio never knew him. "Your side of the family went to America then," she said, pushing back her luxurious hair.

He snapped another picture of her, tentative, gazing straight on. "You are the most beautiful woman in Italy," he said.

"There are so many beautiful girls in Italy," she said teasingly. "Do you know them all?"

"I only need to know you," he told her. He looked into her eyes, deep and wanting. "Open your dress," he said.

"No!" she squealed. "Someone might see us!" But he said nothing more. The smile drained from her face. She looked all around. There was no one.

Francissa unfastened her dress at the back and pulled it forward. Antonio took a picture of her, daring and worried all at once, her shoulders bare and smooth. She wore nothing underneath.

"The top comes off?" he asked. "It's not one piece?" It wasn't. The lovely girl pulled it off completely and laid it aside. The warm Italian sun washed over her half-nude body and showed the perfection of her smooth olive skin. Antonio took another photo. "I want to make love with you," he said earnestly.

She looked away. "It isn't right," she murmured. "You will go away soon with the other soldiers."

He rose and stood over her, towering, manly. He leaned against the wall behind her, looming over her bare body. "I will come back for you," he said. He pressed a hot kiss to her throat. The blood pulsed in it.

"Do you promise?" she asked. "You must come back for me; take me to America." Her breasts pointed up, nipples hard and puckered with arousal, ripe for sucking.

Antonio smelled her hair, breathed her perfume. "I promise," he said. He kissed her again.

Francissa wrapped her arms around him. "Make love to me, Antonio," she urged. "Quickly, before you must go." She groped his hardening manhood thru his trousers. "Ah, me," she breathed, feeling its thick length. "Yes!"