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The sun hadn’t reached its zenith when Paulo called for a respite. He fanned out a blanket on the ground under a tree, where a section of the vineyard made way for an olive orchard, and began unpacking a basket that Rosella, back at the villa, had made up for us. There were several bottles of wine, uncorked, ready for tasting. With a merry laugh, Paulo took one of these and handed me the other one. He leaned against a tree and saluted me with the bottle before drinking directly from it in a long gulp. He looked entirely too young to be taking deep swigs from a wine bottle, I thought. Even leaning against the tree, his body was in languid motion.

I saluted him back and took a long drink from the bottle he’d given me. The wine was refreshing and smooth, with a slight kick to it at the end—just the thing to top an hour of hard work in the fields.

Paulo was grinning at me, swaying his torso, and I ached for him. But he looked oh so young.

I couldn’t help myself. "Just how old are you, Paulo?" I asked in a scratchy voice, having difficulty broaching the subject.

"Old enough, Signore Dakota," Paul said and flashed me that beautiful smile again.

"Old enough?" I asked.

"Yes, old enough in your country, in America, by several months. And old enough here in Tuscany at any age."

"You know what I was asking?" I asked incredulously. "And why?"

"Of course, Dakota. I saw it in your eyes on the stairs back at the villa. If you had not asked to come to the fields with me, I would have asked you to come myself. I know what you and grandfather were doing last night. I brought you to a section of the fields where no one else will be coming today."

"Come away from that tree, Paulo," I said huskily. "Come over here to me."

"It’s cool here under the tree, Dakota," he answered, asserting himself, showing me some backbone. "I am hot; I need to be cooled down."

"You need to be cooled down?" I responded. And then, impulsively, I walked over to him and upended the wine bottle in front of his face, watching the dark red fluid cascading down his lithe, undulating torso and staining his cotton trousers and plastering them to his pelvis. I could see that it was true about long sensuous fingers and toes. He had a long cock curled up in that basket of his, the front of his trousers now translucent thanks to the flowing red wine.

At first Paulo looked shocked, and then he laughed merrily and upended his own bottle of wine above my much broader, more heavily muscled chest.

I pushed him roughly against the olive tree where its two main branches split and brutally attacked his full-bodied lips with mine. He answered my kiss, showing me that he knew a thing or two about the technique himself. I pulled away in surprise.

"Your grandfather told me you’d already been dedicated to the church," I said.

"This is Italy," the young man answered me with his own special laugh. "We do more in the seminaries here than study the books and practice the calligraphy."

My mouth hungrily went to his chest and found his wine-cooled nipples. A hand went to his crotch and almost lifted his lithe little body off the ground as I cupped his long,