There eyes met over brusque ripples of Chianti in her glass. “What?’ she asked in her coltish way as if catching him red handed, wine stained lips frozen at the rim of her glass awaiting an explanation.

He smiled warmly and bantered back, ‘Just poetry’.

Satisfied with her delicate slurp of warm wine she placed the silvery goblet down in the flour of the wood working surface covered with ribbons of fresh pasta. She smiled salaciously with just the corner of her mouth. ‘You mean to tell me you are thinking of Whitman or Wilde or that awfully morose, Poe?’

‘Not a one’ he said as he arose from his voyeuristic position, the leather couch reluctantly letting him up. Picking up his own goblet he started towards the heat of the kitchen.

Her hair was tied up as it had been languid and unruly from the days affairs and now the rolling steam and bubbling bolognese wasn’t helping. Floury handprints on her thighs yet still in heels she turned to meet him. His glass sounded heavy when he set it down, serious.

The candlelight danced in her eyes until the moment lids, like the curtains on a stage extinguished the glow. Her head, light from the wine tilted back exposing her tender neck.

‘You are poetry on a Wednesday night’ he whispered as his hungry mouth devoured her delicacy.