A Hunger for the Forbidden

chapter ELEVEN

MATTEO WAS EXHAUSTED by the time he got around to driving back to his palazzo. Dealing with Alessandro, going to his grandfather’s house, had been draining in a way he had not anticipated. And yet, in some ways, there was a weight lifted. The promise of a future that held peace instead of violence. The first time his future had ever looked that way.

And he had Alessia to go home to. That thought sent a kick of adrenaline through him, made him feel like there was warmth in his chest. Made him feel like he wasn’t so cold.

He left the car parked in front of his house with the keys in the ignition. One of his staff would park it for him later. And if not, he didn’t mind it being there in the morning. But he couldn’t put off seeing Alessia, not for another moment. He needed to see her for some reason, needed affirmation of who he was. To see her face light up. To have someone look at him like they didn’t know who and what he was.

Alessandro and Angelo didn’t know about his past, but they knew enough about the family to have an idea. Alessandro certainly hadn’t escaped a childhood with Carlo without gaining a few scars of his own.

But Alessia looked at him like none of that mattered. Like she didn’t know or believe any of it.

That isn’t fair. She should know.

No, he didn’t want her to know. He wanted to keep being her knight. To have one person look and see the man he might have been if it weren’t for Benito Corretti.

He would change what it meant to be a Corretti for his child. He would never let them see the darkness. Never.

A fierce protectiveness surged through him, for the first time a true understanding of what it meant for Alessia to be pregnant.

A child. His child.

He prowled through the halls of the palazzo and found Alessia in a sitting room, a book in her hands, her knees drawn up to her chest. She was wearing a simple sundress that had slid high up her thighs. He wanted nothing more than to push it up the rest of the way, but he also found he didn’t want to disturb her. He simply wanted to look.

She raised her focus then, and her entire countenance changed, her face catching the sunlight filtering through the window. Her dark eyes glittered, her smile bright. Had anyone else ever looked at him like that?

He didn’t think they had.

“How did the meeting go?”

“We called each other names. Insulted each other’s honor and then shook hands. So about as expected.”

She laughed. “Good, I guess.”

“Yes. We’ve come up with a way to divide Corretti Enterprises up evenly. A way for everyone to get their share. It’s in everyone’s best interests, really. Especially the generation that comes after us. Which I now have a vested interest in.”

She smiled, the dimple on her left cheek deepening. “I suppose you do. And … I’m glad you do.”

He moved to sit on the couch, at her feet, then he leaned in. “Can you feel the baby move yet?”

She shook her head. “No. The doctor said it will feel like a flutter, though.”

“May I?” he asked, stretching his hand out, just over the small, rounded swell of her stomach.

“Of course.”

He swallowed hard and placed his palm flat on her belly. It was the smallest little bump, but it was different than it had been. Evidence of the life that was growing inside her. A life they’d created.

She was going to be the mother of his child. She deserved to know. To really understand him. Not to simply look at him and see an illusion. He’d given her a taste of it earlier, but his need for that look, that one she reserved just for him, that look he only got from her, had prevented him from being honest. Had made him hold back the most essential piece of just why he was not the man to be her husband.

The depth to which he was capable of stooping.

Because no matter how bright the future had become, the past was still filled with shadows. And until they were brought into the sunlight, their power would remain.

“There is something else,” he said, taking his hand from her stomach, curling it into a fist. His skin burned.

“About the meeting?”

“No,” he said. “Not about the meeting.”

“What about?”

“About me. About why … about why it might not be the best idea for you to try to make a marriage with me. About the limit of what I can give.”

“Matteo, I already told you how I feel about what happened with your father.”

“By that you mean when he took me on errands?”

“Well … yes.”

“So, you don’t mean what happened the night of the warehouse fire that killed him and Carlo.”

“No. No one knows what happened that night.”

“That isn’t true,” he said, the words scraping his throat raw. “Someone knows.”

“Who?” she asked, but he could tell she already knew.

“I know.”

“How?”

“Because, cara mia. I was there.”

“You were there?”

He nodded slowly. Visions of fire filled his mind. Fire and brimstone, such an appropriate vision. “Yes. I was there to try to convince my father to turn over the holdings of Corretti to me entirely. I wanted to change things. To end the extortion and scams. All of it. But he wouldn’t hear it. You see, at the time, he was still running criminal schemes, using the hotels, which I was managing, to help launder money. To help get counterfeit bills into circulation, into the right hands. Or wrong hands as the case may have been. I didn’t want any part of it, but as long as my father was involved in the running of the corporation, that was never going to end. I wanted out.”

“Oh,” Alessia said, the word a whisper, as if she knew what was coming next. He didn’t want her to guess at it, because he wanted, perversely, for her to believe it impossible. For her to cling to the white-knight image and turn away from the truth he was about to show her.

“I don’t know how the fire started. But the warehouse was filled with counterfeiting plates, and their printing presses. That’s one way to make money, right? Print your own.”

He looked down at his hands, his heart pounding hard, his stomach so tight he could hardly breathe. “The fire spread quickly. I don’t know where Carlo was when it broke out. But I was outside arguing with my father. And he turned and … and he looked at the blaze and he started to walk toward it.”

Matteo closed his eyes, the impression of flames burning bright behind his eyelids. “I told him if he went back into that damned warehouse to rescue those plates, I would leave him to it. I told him to let it burn. To let us start over. I told him that if he went back, I would be happy to let him burn with it all, and then let him continue to burn in hell.”

“Matteo … no.” She shook her head, those dark eyes glistening with tears. She looked horrified. Utterly. Completely. The light was gone. His light.

“Yes,” he said, his voice rough. “Can you guess what he did?”

“What?” The word was scarcely a whisper.

“He laughed. And he said, ‘Just as I thought, you are my son.’ He told me that no matter how I dressed it up, no matter how I pretended I had morals, I was just as bloodthirsty as he was. Just as hungry for vengeance and to have what I thought should be mine, in the fashion I saw fit. And then he walked back into the warehouse.”

“What did you do?”

Matteo remembered the moment vividly. Remembered waiting for a minute, watching, letting his father’s words sink in. Recognizing the truth of them. And embracing them fully. He was his father’s son. And if he, or anyone else, stood a chance of ever breaking free, it had to end.

The front end of the warehouse had collapsed and Matteo had stood back, looking on, his hand curled around his phone. He could have called emergency services. He could have tried to save Benito.

But he hadn’t. Instead, he’d turned his back, the heat blistering behind him, a spark falling onto his neck, singeing his flesh. And then he’d walked away. And he hadn’t looked back, not once. And in that moment he was the full embodiment of everything his father had trained him to be.

He’d found out about Carlo’s and Benito’s deaths over the phone the next day. And there had been no more denial, no more hiding. No more believing that somewhere deep down he was good. That he had a hope of redemption.

He had let it burn in the warehouse.

“I let him die,” he said. “I watched him go in, watched as the front end of the building collapsed. I could have called someone, and I didn’t. I made the choice to be the man he always wanted me to be. The man I always was. I turned and I walked away. I did just as I promised I would do. I let him burn, with all of his damned money. And I can’t regret the choice. He made his, I made mine. And everyone is free of him now. Of both of them.”

Alessia was waxen, her skin pale, her lips tinged blue. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Do you see, Alessia? This is what I was trying to tell you. What you need to understand.” He leaned forward, extending his hand to her, and she jerked back. Her withdrawal felt like a stab to the chest, but it was no less than he deserved. “I’m not the hero of the story. I am nothing less than the villain.”

She understood now, he could see it, along with a dawning horror in her eyes that he wanted to turn away from. She was afraid. Afraid of him. He wasn’t her knight anymore.

“I think maybe I should wait a few days to have my things moved into your room,” she said after a long moment of silence.

He nodded. “That might be wise.” Pain assaulted him and he tried to ignore it, tried to grit his teeth and sit with a neutral expression.

“I’ll talk to you later?”

“Of course.” He sat back on the couch and watched her leave. Then he closed his eyes and tried to picture her smile again. Tried to recapture the way she’d looked at him just a few moments before. But instead of her light, all he could see was a haunted expression, one he had put there.

Alessia was gasping for breath by the time she got to her bedroom. She closed the door behind her and put her hand on her chest, felt her heart hammering beneath her palm.

Matteo had let Benito and Carlo die.

She sucked in a shuddering breath and started pacing back and forth, fighting the tears that were threatening to spill down her cheeks.

She replayed what he had said again in her mind. He hadn’t forced Benito or Carlo back into the burning building. Hadn’t caused them harm with his own hands.

He had walked away. He had washed his hands and walked away, accepting in that moment whatever the consequences might be.

Alessia walked over to her bed and sat on the edge of it. And she tried to reconcile the man downstairs with the man she’d always believed him to be.

The man beneath the armor wasn’t perfect. He was wounded, damaged beyond reason. Hurting. And for the first time she really understood what that meant. Understood how shut down he was. How much it would take to reach him.

And she wasn’t sure if she could do it. Wasn’t sure she had the strength to do it.

It had been so much easier when he was simply the fantasy. When he was the man she’d made him be in her mind. When he was an ideal, a man sent to ride to her rescue.

She’d put him in that position. From the moment she’d first seen him. Then after he had rescued her, she’d assigned him that place even more so.

The night of her bachelorette party …

“Damn you, Alessia,” she said to herself.

Because she’d done it then, too. She’d used Matteo as part of her fantasy, as part of the little world she’d built up in her mind to keep herself from crumbling. She had taken him on her own terms, used him to fill a void, and never once had she truly looked into his. Never once had she truly tried to fill it.

Being there for Matteo, knowing him, meant knowing this. Meant knowing that he had faced down a terrible decision, and that he had made a terrible choice.

The wrong choice, at least in traditional terms of right and wrong.

Very few people would hold it against him that he hadn’t raced into the burning building after his father, but to know that he had also not called for help. That he had meant what he’d said to his father. That he would let him, and all of it, burn. In flame. In greed. And he had.

Her lover, her Matteo, had a core of ice and steel. Getting through it, finding his heart, might be impossible. She faced that, truly faced it, for the first time.

Matteo might never love. The ending might not really be happy. The truth was, she lived her life in denial. The pursuit of contentment at least, at all costs, and if that required denial, then she employed it, and she’d always done it quite effectively.

Walking down the aisle toward Alessandro had been the first time she’d truly realized that if she didn’t do something, if she didn’t stop it, it wouldn’t stop itself.

She wrapped her arms around herself, cold driving through her. She had another choice to make. A choice about Matteo. And she wouldn’t make it lightly.

There was no sugarcoating this. No putting on blinders. It was what the wives of these Corretti men, of the Battaglia men, had always done. Looked the other way while their husbands sank into destruction and depravity, but she wouldn’t do that.

If she was going to be Matteo’s wife, in every sense, then she would face it all head-on.

It was empty to make a commitment to someone if you were pretending they were someone they weren’t. It was empty to say you loved someone if you only loved a mirage.

Love. She had been afraid of that word in connection to Matteo for so long, and yet, she knew that was what it was. What it had always been. At least, she’d loved what she’d known about him.

Now she knew more. Now she was going to have to figure out whether she loved the idea, or the man.

Matteo lay in bed. It was past midnight. Hours since he’d last seen Alessia. Hours since they’d spoken.

His body ached, a bleeding wound in his chest where his heart should be. The absence of the heart was nothing new, but the pain was. He had lived in numbness for so long, and Alessia had come back into his life.

Then things had started to change. He’d started to want again. Started to feel again. And now he felt like he was torn open, like the healed, scarred-over, nerveless pieces of himself had been scrubbed raw again. Like he was starting over, starting back at the boy he’d been. The one who had been taken into his father’s hands and molded, hard and cruel, into the image the older man had wanted to see.

He felt weak. Vulnerable in a way he could never recall feeling at any point in his life.

Alessia had walked away from him, and he couldn’t blame her. In a way, it comforted him. Because at least she hadn’t simply blithely walked on in her illusion of who she wanted him to be. She had heard his words. And she’d believed them.

He should be completely grateful for that. Should be happy that she knew. That she wasn’t committed to a man who didn’t truly exist.

But he couldn’t be happy. Selfishly, he wanted her back. Wanted the light and heat and smiles. Wanted one person to look at him and see hope.

“Matteo?”

He looked up and saw Alessia standing in the doorway, her dark hair loose around her shoulders.

“Yes?” He pushed into a sitting position.

“I felt like I owed it to you to really think about what you said.”

“And you owed it to you.”

She nodded. “I suppose I did.”

“And what conclusion have you come to?”

“You aren’t the man I thought you were.”

The words hit him with the force of a moving truck. “No. I’m sure in all of your fantasies about me you never once dreamed that I was a killer.”

She shook her head. “I didn’t. I still don’t think you’re that. I don’t think you’re perfect, either, but I don’t think it was ever terribly fair of me to try to make you perfect. You had your own life apart from me. Your own experiences. My mistake was believing that everything began and ended during the times our eyes met over the garden wall. In my mind, when you held me after the attack, you went somewhere hazy, somewhere I couldn’t picture. I didn’t think about what you did after, not really. I didn’t think of the reality of you returning home, covered in blood. I didn’t think about what your father might have said to you. I knew Benito Corretti was a bad man, but for some reason I never imagined how it might have touched you. I only ever pictured you in the context of my world, my dreams and where you fit into them. It was my mistake, not yours.”

“But I wouldn’t have blamed you if you never imagined that. No one did. Not even my family, I’m certain of that.”

“Still, I wasn’t looking at you like you were a real person. And you were right to make me see.”

“Alessia, if you want—”

“Let me finish. I see now. I see you, Matteo, not just the fantasy I created. And I don’t want to walk away. I want to stay with you. I want to make a family with you.”

“You trust me to help raise your child after you found out what I’m capable of?”

“That night of your life can’t live in isolation. It’s connected to the rest of your life, to all of it. To who your father was, the history of what he’d done to other people, to what he’d done to you.”

“He never did anything to me, he just—”

“He forced you to do things you would never have done. He made you violate your conscience, over and over again until it was scarred. He would have turned you into a monster.”

“He did, Alessia. That’s the point. He did.”

She shook her head. “You put a stop to it.”

“I had to,” he said, his voice rough. “I had to because you don’t just walk away from the Correttis. It’s not possible. My father would not have released his hold.”

“I know. I understand.”

“And you absolve me?”

“You don’t need my absolution.”

“But do I have it?” he asked, desperate for it, craving it more than his next breath. She nodded. “If I have yours.”

“For what?”

“For what I did. For not telling you about Alessandro. For agreeing to marry him in the first place. For trapping you in this marriage.”

“You didn’t trap me.”

“You said—”

“Alessia, I have been manipulated into doing things far worse than marrying you, and I have done it with much greater coercion. A little news piece on what a jerk I am for not making your child legitimate was hardly going to force my hand.”

“Then why did you do it?”

“To cement the deal. To give our child my name. All things I could have walked away from.”

“Then forgive me, at least, for lying to you. For leaving you in the hotel room.”

“I do. I was angry about it, but only because it felt so wrong to watch you walking toward him. To know that he would have you and not me. If I had known that there was a deal on the table that could be secured by marriage to you I would have been the one volunteering for the job.”

A ghost of a smile touched her lips. “When my father first told me about the deal with the Correttis, that it would be sealed by marriage, I said yes immediately. I was so sure it would be you. And when it was Alessandro who showed up at the door to talk terms the next day I thought … I thought I would die.”

“Waiting for your knight to rescue you?”

“Yes. I was. But I’ve stopped doing that now. I need to learn to rescue myself. To make my own decisions.”

“You’ve certainly been doing that over the past couple of months.”

“I have. And some of them have been bad, ill-timed decisions, but they’ve been mine. And I want you to know that I’ve made another decision.”

“What is that?”

“You’re my husband. And I’ll take you as you are. Knowing your past, knowing the kind of man you can be. I want you to understand that I’m not sugarcoating it, or glossing over the truth. I understand what you did. I understand that … that you don’t feel emotion the same way that I do. The same way most people do.”

“Do you really understand that? I keep it on a leash for a reason, Alessia, a very important reason, and I won’t compromise it.”

She nodded. “I know.”

“And still you want to try? You want to be my wife? To let me have a hand in raising our child?”

“Yes. No matter what, you’re the father of my child, Matteo, and there is no revelation that can change that. I don’t want to change that.”

“How can you say that with such confidence?”

“Because no matter what you might have done, you aren’t cruel.”

She leaned in and he took a strand of her hair between his thumb and forefinger. Soft like silk. He wanted to feel it brushing over his skin. Wanted to drown out this moment, drown out his pain, with physical pleasure.

“Am I not?” he asked.

“No.”

“You’re wrong there,” he said. “So very wrong. I am selfish, a man who thinks of his own pleasure, his own comfort, above all else. No matter how I pretend otherwise.”

“That isn’t true.”

“Yes, it is. Even now, all I can think about is what your bare skin will feel like beneath my hands. All I want is to lose myself in you.”

“Then do it.”

His every muscle locked up, so tight it was painful. “Alessia, don’t.”

“What?”

“Don’t sacrifice yourself for me!” he roared. “Don’t do this because you feel sorry for me.”

“I’m not.” She took a step toward him. “I want this because I want to be close to you. To know you. To be your wife in every way.” A smile tugged at the corners of her lips. “I’m also not opposed to the orgasms you’re so good at giving me. This is by no means unselfish on my part, trust me.”

His skin felt like it was burning. Or perhaps that was the blood beneath his skin. Either way, he felt like he would be consumed by his need. His desire. Passion he swore he would never allow himself to feel.

Emotion he swore he would never feel.

But in this moment with Alessia, her eyes so bright and intense, so honest, he could hold back nothing. Deny her nothing. Least of all this.

She knew the truth, and still she wanted him. Not as a perfect figure, a knight in shining armor, but as the man he was. It was a gift he didn’t deserve, a gift he should turn away, because he had no right to it.

But he had spoken the truth. He was selfish. Far too selfish to do anything but take what was on offer.

“Show me you want me.” His words were rough, forced through his tightened throat. “Show me you still want me.” Those words echoed through his soul, tearing through him, leaving him raw and bleeding inside.

Alessia wrapped one arm around his neck, her fingers laced in his hair, and put the other on his cheek. She pressed a kiss to his lips, soft, gentle. Purposeful. “Always.”

There was no hope of him being noble, not now, not tonight. But then, that shouldn’t be a surprise. He didn’t do noble. He didn’t do selfless. And it wouldn’t start now.

He kissed her, deep and hard, his body throbbing, his heart raging. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her in close, reveling in the feel of her. Touching Alessia was a thrill that he didn’t think would ever become commonplace. He had hungered for her touch, for her closeness, for so many years, and he knew his desire for it would never fade.

If anything, it only grew.

He slid his hands down her waist, over her hips, her thighs, and gripped her hard, tugging her up into his arms, those long, lean legs wrapping around his waist as he walked them both to the bed.

Alessia started working on the knot on his tie, her movements shaky and clumsy and all the sexier for it. He sat on the bed, and Alessia remained on top of him, now resting on her knees. She tugged hard on the tie and managed to get it off, then started working at the buttons on his shirt.

He continued to kiss her, deep and desperate, pushing her dress up, past her hips, her waist, her breasts, and over her head. Her lips were swollen from kissing, her face flushed, her hair disheveled from where he’d run his fingers through it.

She looked wild, free, the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. But then, Alessia had been, from the moment he’d seen her, the most beautiful sight he’d ever beheld. And then, when his vision of her had been one of innocence, protectiveness, it had been all about that glow that was inside of her.

He could see it, along with the outer beauty that drove him to madness. Now that their lives, their feelings, had no more innocence left, he could still see it. Still feel it deep inside of him, an ache that wouldn’t ease.

She pushed his shirt off his shoulders, the buttoned cuffs snagging on his hands. A little growl escaped her lips. He wrapped one hand around her waist to hold her steady and lay back on the bed, leaving her perched over him, then he undid the buttons as quickly as possible and tossed the shirt to the side.

Alessia moved away from him, standing in front of the bed, in front of him. She met his eyes, and put her hands behind her back, her movement quick. Her bra loosened, then fell, baring her breasts to him. His stomach tightened, he could barely breathe.

She smiled, then hooked her fingers into the sides of her panties and tugged them off.

He wanted to say something. To tell her how beautiful she was, how perfect. But he couldn’t speak. He could only watch, held completely under her spell.

She approached the bed, her fingers deft on his belt buckle, making quick work of his pants and underwear, and leaving him as naked as she was.

“You’re so much more … Just so much more than I ever imagined,” she said. “I made fantasies about you, but they were a girl’s fantasies. I’m not a girl, though, I’m a woman. And I’m glad you’re not only that one-dimensional imagining I had of you. I’m glad you’re you.”

She leaned in, running the tip of her finger along the length of his rock-hard erection. Every thought ran from his head like water, his heart thundering in his ears.

Lush lips curved into a wicked smile and she leaned in, flicking her tongue over the head of his shaft. “I’ve never done this before. So you have to tell me if I do it wrong.”

“You couldn’t possibly do it wrong,” he said, not sure how he managed to speak at all. It shouldn’t be possible when he couldn’t breathe.

And she proved him right. Her mouth on him hot, sweet torture that streaked through his veins like flame. But where other flames destroyed, this fire cleansed. He sifted his fingers through her hair, needing an anchor. Needing to touch her, to be a part of this. Not simply on the receiving end of the pleasure she was giving him.

He needed more. Needed to taste her, too.

“Get on the bed,” he growled.

She complied, not abandoning her task as she got up onto the bed, onto her knees. He sat up and she raised her head, her expression confused. Then he grasped her hips and maneuvered her around so that she was over him, so that he could taste her like she was tasting him.

She gasped when his tongue touched her.

“Don’t stop,” he said, the command rough, firmer than he’d intended it to be, but she didn’t seem to mind.

He slipped a finger inside of her while he pleasured her with his tongue, and she gasped again, freezing for a moment before taking him fully into her mouth. His head fell back, a harsh groan on his lips.

“I can’t last much longer,” he said.

“Neither can I,” she panted, moving away from him, returning a moment later, her thighs on either side of his. She bent down and pressed a kiss to his lips. “Ready?” she asked.

“More than.”

She positioned her body so that the head of his erection met with her slick entrance, then she lowered herself down onto him, so slowly he thought he would be consumed utterly by the white heat moving through him.

She moved over him, her eyes locked with his. He grasped her hips, meeting each of her thrusts, watching her face, watching her pleasure.

He moved his hand, pressed his palm flat over her stomach, then slid it upward to cup one of her breasts. He liked the view. Liked being able to see all of her as she brought them both to the brink.

She leaned forward, kissing his lips, her breath getting harsher, faster, her movements more erratic. He lowered his hand back to her hip and strengthened his own movements, pushing them farther, faster.

They both reached the edge at the same time, and when he tipped over into the abyss, all he could do was hold on to her as release rushed through him like a wave, leaving no part of him untouched. No part of him hidden.

When the storm passed, Alessia was with him.

She rested her head on his chest, her breath hot on his skin. He wrapped his arms tight around her, held her to him.

He would keep her with him, no matter what.

Yes, he was a selfish bastard.

But in this moment, he couldn’t regret it. If it meant keeping Alessia, he never would.