Chapter 3

Joe entered his house with his wives, after returning Clarisse Martelli to her own home. The women had been strangely silent, again, throughout the trip, and that worried him. On entering the house, they had immediately disappeared into the bedroom while he secured the entry door.

It had been a long day, and he was tired. Loosening his tie (yes, he still wore one of those archaic affectations!), he made his way toward the bedroom, hoping that the ladies only had sleep in mind.

Entering the room, he saw that neither of his wives had prepared for bed ... in any sense. They were both sitting, fully dressed, on the oversized bed, with their hands folded in their laps. With a sense of foreboding, he asked. "what's up?"

Maria looked at Luisa, and got a nod. Then she took a deep breath and launched into her speech.

"We are disappointed in you, husband. You have been shirking your duty to set a good example for the cosca."

Confused, he asked, "What do you mean?"

"You know very well that you should have already filled your quota of wives. Because you haven't, many men of the cosca do not feel compelled to do so. That is a shameful lack of leadership in a Don.

"Furthermore, the wives you do have are past their peak reproductive years. You should be finding and courting younger women, who can give you babies for many years to come! What do you have to say for yourself?"

He smiled, realizing that Maria was again on a crusade.

"I suppose I must plead guilty, and throw myself on the mercy of the court. There are extenuating circumstances..."

"Such as?"

"Well, my own age for one thing. I can barely keep up with you two. A younger woman would cripple me ... two would likely kill me!"

"Oh tush," Luisa scoffed. "You keep us sore all of the time. Deliciously sore, true, but sore nonetheless!"

"And you still have energy to burn," Maria added. "Energy which would be better spent impregnating some sweet young bride..."

"Okay, okay," he laughed. "I surrender. Do you have a candidate in mind, or am I just to go on the prowl?"

"Hah!" Maria huffed. "We have seen you staring at young Clarisse Martelli. Even pregnant, she draws your gaze whenever she enters the room. You cannot believably deny your attraction to her..."

"I confess," he interrupted, impatiently, "but I am still an old man. Compared to her, I am a very old man!"

"Apparently not that old," she smirked. "Perhaps it is only your eyes that are old, because everyone else can see that she is smitten with you!"

I will get no sleep tonight, unless I yield, he concluded, and there are many worse things than having a beautiful, pregnant, sixteen-year-old wife.

"What do you wish me to do?" he demanded.

"Just be your romantic self," Luisa told him. "She will be back with us again tomorrow night. Pay her some direct attention, and see where it leads."

Looking from one of his wives to the other, he observed, "You two have this all figured out, don't you?"

The two women stood and sauntered sexily over to his sides.

"Of course, dear," they said in unison, as they each kissed a cheek.

...

As the Fanelli women expected, the next few weeks brought Joe and Clarisse ever closer together. It wasn't unusual for her to spend several nights running at the Fanelli home, or to find her sitting on Joe's lap (swollen belly and all) while he teased her into giggling fits.

When she did have to leave for her home, it became commonplace for her to deposit sweet kisses upon the Fanelli adults, and those she gave to Joe became increasingly passionate. One night, as she was saying goodbye to him, the kiss ran long into overtime, and when they broke, they found themselves alone. The other women had abandoned them - really just given them some privacy.

Worried, she looked up at Joe and said, "I hope they aren't mad at me..."

"Not to worry, my little flower. They are just accommodating us."

"What do you mean?" she asked, brow furrowed.

"They seem to feel that you are attracted to me," he told her, causing her to blush. "And they have known for some time that I hold you dear to my heart, and that I lust for you unashamedly, as well."

"Do not tease me so!" she rebuked him tearfully, and pulling away from him. "Who would want a woman who carries another man's child? Surely not so powerful a man as the Don! You could have any woman in the cosca, and as many as you would like ... why would you want me?"

"I am not teasing," he reassured her, taking her once again into his arms. "What you say about those other women may be true, I know not: but I do know that I want you. And why? Because I can taste a sweetness in your soul that slakes a thirst in my own.

"Though you are young, you are already a beautiful and desirable woman. The child in your belly is proof of that, and being a father-figure for that child would be no great burden, if I can have your love, and possess your body."

Clarisse just stared at him, unwilling to believe, until he moved to kiss her. Then she melted in his arms and put her entire being into the kiss. Afterwards, when she had regained her breath, she acquiesced to his desires.

"I am yours, if you want me," she said with a sigh. "Now take me home while this poor young widow still has some virtue."

...

Across town, Marco Lentini poured wine into two stemmed glasses. Not unusually, he was entertaining an attractive young woman in his quarters. There was one thing unusual about the woman, however ... she was every bit his intellectual match.

He passed one of the wineglasses to her, and Gemma gazed thoughtfully at him, over the rim.

"We shouldn't have done that, you know..." she said.

"I know," he responded. "When Joe finds out, he's going to blow a fuse. I'll be lucky if I don't end up with a new asshole." He stopped for a moment and grinned. "It was worth it though."

"You think so?" she smirked. "Will you still think so if it happens that I carry your child?"

Marco stopped and looked at her, stricken. "I know that we are nominally Catholic, but aren't you using birth control?"

"No, silly," she teased. "Up until just recently, I was a married woman! I didn't plan to be seduced, either..."

"I'm sorry," he murmured, "but I'll do the right thing by you. In fact, I'll marry you right now if you like."

"No Marco," she told him seriously, "I don't want to entrap you. If I'm pregnant, I'll deal with it. I would only marry you if I believed you really wanted me for your wife."

At that, Marco slipped into a reverie. On recovering, he said, "I think I do."

"Why do you say that?" she queried. "I know you've brought many other women here, before. Why should I believe that I am special to you?"

"Because, as I just realized, I've never before been so thoroughly dedicated to eliminating any competition. I wanted you for my own almost from the moment I became your protector. You didn't seem to notice that I cut Frank out of the job almost immediately..."

"I thought he was sort of assigned to Clarisse..."

"No, we were both assigned to both of you, but she obviously didn't need our protection when she spent so much time at Joe's place. Frank would have liked to share the duty of protecting you, but I told him I had it handled."

"I see," she acknowledged, smiling. "Go on..."

"Didn't you notice that very few men ever approached you, when we were out together? They could see in my eyes that I would have looked for reasons kick their asses!"

"So where does that leave us now?" she asked.

"That depends upon you. Gemma, will you marry me?"

She set her glass on the bedside table, and took his hand. "Of course I will, you silly man. You just had to ask correctly."

Pulling him into position, she wrapped in her arms and legs around him, kissed him thoroughly, and said, "Now make love to me again."

There was no need for foreplay. She was ready, and so was he. With his rod already poised at her entrance, it was simply a matter of nudging his hips forward to achieve penetration. This was ground previously broken, so there was little resistance ... nonetheless the feeling of being enveloped by her soft, wet warmth, was overpowering. Coupled with her caresses and kisses, and the sensation of her hard nipples boring into his chest, the effect was devastating.

They moved together in a time-honored rhythm, generating wavelets of pleasure with each cycle of motion. The wavelets piled up upon one another, like water driven by a storm, until, at the end, an impossibly large composite wave swamped them in exquisite bliss. The kisses they shared on the heels of that wave were short and small, because they had yet to recover their breath.

After a while, Gemma said, "You know, there might be a problem with this..."

"How's that," he queried.

"Well, I overheard a conversation that I shouldn't have, recently, although in a way, it was my business. Anyway, the point was made that even though Chris died, I'm still married to the other Martelli wives. So is Clarisse."

"You're kidding, right?

"Uh-uh," she answered. "We all took the same vows, swearing to cleave only to one another 'til death us do part! The Church is going to have to deal with it too. This is a situation that's never happened before."

"Well there's only one thing we can do then."

"What's that?"

"We have to go to confessional. We put it in the Church's lap and they'll have to fix it!"

"Now you're kidding!"

"Not a bit! They'll ignore the problem until someone threatens to make it public. It's just easier that way. But if we confess that we've had an affair, and tell them we want to get married, they'll find a way."

"I always knew you were a smart man. Kiss me!"

...

The memorial service went off without a hitch, exactly two months after the public announcement of Cristiano Martelli's death. The cosca spared no expense in preparing funeral trappings and meeting the protocols required for the interment of a hero. The fact that there was no body to inter was irrelevant.

Father Nicholas delivered the eulogy, personally. Clearly such things would normally be handled by a priest of lesser rank, but just as clearly, as the first pilot to die in the line of duty, Cristiano Martelli was not an ordinary casualty.

Immediately following the service, Joe stood before the assembled Capi, in the large meeting room. Considering how best to open the meeting, his gaze fell upon his new fiancée. Thank God that Nicholas granted those annulments! That idiot Marco would have hung both of our hides out to dry!

"Before we begin, I must tell you of my good fortune. Clarisse Martelli," he said, gesturing for her to rise, " ... widow of the late Cristiano Martelli, will be joining my family in the near future. Only last evening did she consent to become our wife. This is the first public announcement of our engagement. Maria, Luisa, and I invite you to share our joy, and welcome her to this gathering."

There was a smattering of polite applause, as the young, and very pregnant woman curtsied, blushing madly. Maria and Luisa rose simultaneously, and encircled her in their arms. Nicholas nodded his approval from his seat. Joe smiled his satisfaction, and after a moment, resumed speaking.

"Circumstances being what they are, our fiancée will take up residence in our home immediately, so that we may care for her during her pregnancy and delivery. For propriety's sake, however, the wedding will be delayed until after the child is born."

There was some murmuring among the audience, in apparent confusion as to just how such an arrangement might accommodate propriety, but no one raised an objection.

"On to business, now. To refresh your memories, I will review the history of the issue about which we meet tonight. When we began this undertaking - our unilateral declaration of war upon the Sa'arm - we needed pilots for our warships. Many young men volunteered to do the job, but few were qualified.

"Those who were qualified, had rational concerns about how such work would affect life and family. While the purpose was honorable and heroic, the process would be protracted, lonely and boring, and sometimes, dangerous. Many of these men were married, or planned to be, and they had hopes of building families. This kind of work creates obstacles to doing that.

"One of the things we did, to get the kind of pilots we wanted, was to guarantee the continuance of each of these men's bloodlines, at least into the next generation. It seemed little enough to offer at the time.

"Those promises were made for the best of reasons, but without much planning or forethought about how they would be fulfilled. In retrospect, it is clear that, on some level, we rejected the inevitability of losing pilots, and neglected to consider the issues that could complicate fulfilling them.

"Recently, that lack of foresight and planning has come home to roost, and we are faced with the unpleasant task of trying to accommodate our foolish commitment. I freely admit that I had no idea how to approach the problem, until Maria came to me with a proposed solution.

"I have listened and considered her words, and I think that once again, our Maria may have saved our bacon. So, rather than having me give you a poor facsimile of her ideas, I choose to have her to present them to you directly. Maria?"

Maria, whose pregnancy had become nearly as obvious as Clarisse's, approached the podium and took the microphone.

"The Don has succinctly described the dilemma we face. What I propose for your consideration, is a solution that will require voluntary participation from responsible members of the cosca, if it is going to work.

"First, let me give you my operating philosophy. I believe that when babies are born, they should be born into intact families. I know that it is not always going to happen, but whenever possible, there should be both a father and a mother present, for a variety of reasons of which you are already cognizant.

"While I would be the last person to deny a lone widow the right to bear her deceased husband's seed, that creates a difficult situation: one that grows even more difficult as the number of children she has increases.

"How many of you would marry a widow, even a beautiful one, if she were obligated to only have her dead husband's children?" she challenged. The men in the audience grew uncomfortable under her gaze, but none answered.

"I thought so," she observed grimly. "So why would she be willing to obey that restriction, knowing that she could never again expect to feel the love of a living man? Why should she? Because we were too short-sighted to see the problem?

"I think not ... nor do I believe that the women of the cosca at large - including your own wives - will be willing to support enforcement such requirements!" There! The threat is out in the open now!

"Doing so would be no better than rape! It would be the rape of a widow by the entire cosca! Where is the honor in that? There is none!" The discomfort level had grown so, that her audience had begun fidgeting. "There is an alternative, though," Maria smiled, seeing the light of hope gleaming in their eyes - she had them where she wanted them now.

"What if there were other women of the cosca, who were willing to accept the seed of these dead heroes ... would that not meet our obligation to them?" she asked. Many of those in the audience looked confused, others nodded careful agreement.

"I'll get right to the point," she continued. "I propose that the cosca solicit volunteers for this purpose from the ranks of our own married women." Shock began to register on the faces of her audience, so to keep the tactical advantage - and to forestall immediate objections - she pressed on quickly.

"Think about it," she invited them, "If a woman volunteers, then no one has to be forced to serve, and the issue of besmirching the cosca's honor disappears, and the cosca is meeting the obligation. If she is married, then the baby will be born into an intact family - one with two parents." One of the men in the audience raised his hand, as if he were a child in school. Maria nodded.

"What about her husband? What about his rights, and his proper expectations of his wife?" he asked.

"I don't propose that any married woman should do this unilaterally," Maria replied. "That would defeat the purpose. No husband would be willing to nurture his wife's child by another man, if he felt that, in bearing that child, she had disrespected him."