A Hunger for the Forbidden

chapter THREE

MATTEO’S OWN WORDS echoed in his head.

My child will be a Corretti. On that there can be no compromise.

It was true. No child of his would be raised a Battaglia. Their family feud was not simply a business matter. The Battaglias had set out to destroy his grandfather, and had they succeeded they would have wiped out the line entirely.

It was the hurt on her face that surprised him, and more than that, his response to it.

Damn Alessia Battaglia and those dark, soulful eyes. Eyes that had led him to ruin on more than one occasion.

“Because you won’t allow your child to carry my name?” she asked.

“That’s right.”

“And what of my role in raising my child?”

“You will, of course, be present.”

“And what else? Because more than mere presence is required to raise a child.”

“Nannies are also required, in my experience.”

“In your experience raising children, or being raised?”

“Being raised. I’m supremely responsible in my sexual encounters so I’ve never been in this situation before.”

“Supremely responsible?” she asked, cheeks flushing a gorgeous shade of rose that reminded him of the blooms in his Sicilian palazzo. “Is that what you call having sex with your cousin’s fiancée with no condom?”

Her words, so stark and angry, shocked him. Alessia had always seemed fragile to him. Sweet. But tangling with her today was forcing him to recognize that she was also a woman capable of supreme ruthlessness if the situation required it.

Something he had to reluctantly respect.

“I didn’t know you were engaged to be married, as you withheld the information from me. As to the other issue, that has never happened to me before.”

“So you say.”

“It has not,” he said.

“Well, it’s not like you were overly conscious of it at the time.”

Shame cracked over his insides like a whip. He had thought himself immune to shame at this point. He was wrong. “I knew. After.”

“You remembered and you still didn’t think to contact me?”

“I did not think it possible.” The thought hadn’t occurred to him because he’d been too wrapped up in simply trying to avoid her. Alessia was bad for him, a conclusion he’d come to years ago and reaffirmed the day he’d decided not to go after her.

And now he was bound to her. Bound to a woman who dug down far too deep inside of him. Who disturbed his grasp on his control. He could not afford the interruption. Could not afford to take the chance that he might lose his grip.

“Why, because only other people have the kind of sex that makes babies?”

“Do you always say what comes to your mind?”

“No. I never do. I never speak or act impulsively, I only think about it. It’s just you that seems to bring it out.”

“Aren’t I lucky?” Her admission gripped him, held him. That there was something about him that brought about a change in her … that the thing between them didn’t only shatter his well-ordered existence but hers, too, was not a comfort. Not in the least.

“Clearly, neither of us are in possession of much luck, Alessia.”

“Clearly,” she said.

“There is no way I will let my child be a bastard. I’ve seen what happens to bastards. You can ask my cousin Angelo about that.” A cousin who was becoming quite the problem. It was part of why Matteo had come to New York, why he was making his way back into circulation. In his absence, Angelo had gone and bought himself a hefty amount of shares for Corretti Enterprises and at this very moment, he was sitting in Matteo’s office, the new head of Corretti Hotels. He’d been about to go back and make the other man pay. Wrench the power right back from him.

Now, it seemed there was a more pressing matter.

“So, you’re doing this to save face?”

“For what other reason? Do you want our child to be sneered at? Disgraced? The product of an illicit affair between two of Sicily’s great warring families?”

“No.”

Matteo tried not to read the emotion in her dark eyes, tried not to let them pull him in. Always, from the moment he’d seen her, he’d been fascinated. A young girl with flowers tangled in her dark hair, running around the garden of her father’s home, a smile on her lips. He could remember her dancing in the grass in her bare feet, while her siblings played around her.

And he had been transfixed. Amazed by this girl who, from all he had been told, should have been visibly evil in some way. But she was a light. She held a brightness and joy like he had never seen. Watching it, being close enough to touch it, helped him pretend it was something he could feel, too.

She made him not so afraid of feeling.

She’d had a hold on him from day one. She was a sorceress. There was no other explanation. Her grip on him defied logic, defied every defense he’d built inside of himself.

And no matter how hard he tried, he could read her. Easily. She was hurt. He had hurt her.

“What is it?” he asked.

She looked away. “What do you mean?”

“Why are you hurt?”

“You’ve just told me how unlucky we both are that I’m pregnant—was I supposed to look happy?”

“Don’t tell me you’re pleased about this. Unless it was your plan.”

“How could I have … planned this? That doesn’t make any sense.”

He pushed his fingers through his hair and turned away from her. “I know. Che cavolo, Alessia, I know that.” He turned back to her.

“I just wanted to tell you about the baby.”

He felt like he was drowning, like every breath was suffocating him. A baby. She was having his baby. And he was just about the last man on earth who should ever be a father. He should walk away. But he couldn’t.

“And this was the only way?”

Her eyes glittered with rage. “You know damn well it was!”

He did. He’d avoided her every attempt at contacting him. Had let his anger fuel the need for distance between them. Had let the very existence of the emotion serve as a reminder. And he had come back frozen again. So he’d thought. Because now Alessia was here again, pushing against that control.

“Why didn’t you meet me at the airport?” she asked, her words a whisper.

“Why didn’t I meet you?” he asked, his teeth gritted. “You expected me to chase after you like a dog? If you think you can bring me to heel that easily, Alessia, you are a fool.”

“And if you think I’m trying to you’re an idiot, Matteo Corretti. I don’t want you on a leash.”

“Well, you damn well have me on one!” he said, shouting for the first time, his tenuous grip on his control slipping. “What am I to do after your public display? Deny my child? Send you off to raise it on your own? Highly unlikely.”

“How can we marry each other? We don’t love each other. We barely like each other right now!”

“Is that so bad? You were prepared to marry Alessandro, after all. Better the devil you know. And we both know you know me much better than you knew him.”

“Stop it,” she said, the catch in her voice sending a hot slash of guilt through his chest. Why he was compelled to lash out at her, he wasn’t sure.

Except that nothing with Alessia was ever simple. Nothing was ever straightforward. Nothing was ever neat or controlled.

It has to be.

“It’s true, though, isn’t it, Alessia?” he asked, his entire body tense now. He knew for a fact he was the first man to be with her, and something in him burned to know that he had been the only man. That Alessandro had never touched her as he had. “You were never with him. Not like you were with me.”

The idea of his cousin’s hands on her … A wave of red hazed his vision, the need for violence gripping his throat, shaking him.

He swallowed hard, battled back the rage, fought against images that were always so close to the surface when Alessia was around. A memory he had to hold on to, no matter how much he might wish for it to disappear.

Blood. Streaked up to his elbows, the skin on his knuckles broken. A beast inside of him unleashed. And Alessia’s attackers on the ground, unmoving.

He blinked and banished the memory. It shouldn’t linger as it did. It was but one moment of violence in a lifetime of it. And yet, it had been different. It had been an act born of passion, outside of his control, outside of rational thought.

“Tell me,” he ground out.

“Do you honestly think I would sleep with Alessandro after what happened?”

“You were going to. You were prepared to marry him. To share his bed.”

She nodded wordlessly. “Yes. I was.”

“And then you found out about the baby.”

“No,” she said, her voice a whisper.

“What, then?”

“Then I saw you.”

“Guilt?”

“We were in a church.”

“Understandable.”

“Why didn’t you meet me?” she asked again, her words holding a wealth of pain.

“Because,” he said, visions of blood washing through his brain again, a reminder of what happened when he let his passions have control, “I got everything I wanted from you that night. Sex. That was all I ever wanted from you, darling.”

She drew back as though he’d struck her. “Is that why you’ve always watched me?”

“I’ll admit, I had a bit of an obsession with your body, but you know you had one with mine.”

“I liked you,” she said, her words hard, shaky. “But you never came near me after—”

“There is no need to dredge up the past,” he said, not wanting to hear her speak of that day. He didn’t want to hear her side of it. How horrifying it must have been for a fourteen-year-old girl to see such violence. To see what he was capable of.

Yet, she had never looked at him with the shock, the horror, he’d deserved. There was a way she looked at him, as though she saw something in him no one else did. Something good. And he craved that feeling. It was one reason he’d taken her up on her invitation that night at the hotel bar.

Too late, he realized that he was not in control of their encounter that time, either. No, Alessia stole the control. Always.

No more, he told himself again.

Alessia swallowed back tears. This wasn’t going how she’d thought it would. Now she wasn’t sure what she thought. No, she knew. Part of her, this stupid, girlish, optimistic part of her, had imagined Matteo’s eyes would soften, that he would smile. Touch her stomach. Take joy in the fact that they had created a life together.

And then they would live happily ever after.

She was such a fool. But Matteo had long been the knight in shining armor of her fantasies. And so in her mind he could do no wrong.

She’d always felt like she’d known him. Like she’d understood the serious, dark-eyed young man she’d caught watching her when she was in Palermo. Who had crept up to the wall around her house when he was visiting his grandmother and stood there while she’d played in the garden. Always looking like he wanted to join in, like he wanted to play, but wouldn’t allow himself to.

And then … and then when she’d needed him most, he’d been there. Saved her from … she hardly even knew what horror he’d saved her from. Thank God she hadn’t had to find out exactly what those two men had intended to use her for. Matteo had been there. As always. And he had protected her, shielded her.

That was why, when she’d seen him in New York, it had been easy, natural, to kiss him. To ask him to make love to her.

But after that he hadn’t come to save her.

She looked at him now, at those dark eyes, hollow, his face like stone. And he seemed like a stranger. She wondered how she could have been so wrong all this time.

“I don’t want to dredge up the past. But I want to know that the future won’t be miserable.”

“If you preferred Alessandro, you should have married him while you had him at the altar with a priest standing by. Now you belong to me, the choice has been taken. So you should make the best of it.”

“Stop being such an ass!”

Now he looked shocked, which, she felt, was a bit of an accomplishment. “You want me to tell you how happy I am? You want me to lie?”

“No,” she said, her stomach tightening painfully. “But stop … stop trying to hurt me.”

He swore, an ugly, crude word. “I am sorry, Alessia, it is not my intent.”

The apology was about the most shocking event of the afternoon. “I … I know this is unexpected. Trust me, I know.”

“When did you find out?” he asked.

“At the airport. So … if you had met me, you would have found out when I did.”

“And what did you do after that?”

“I waited for you,” she said. “And then I got on a plane and came to New York. I have a friend here, the friend that hosted my little bachelorette party.”

“Why did you come to New York?”

“Why not?” She made it sound casual, like it was almost accidental. But it wasn’t. It had made her feel close to him, no matter where he might have been in the world, because it was the place she’d finally been with him the way she’d always dreamed of. “Why did you come to New York?”

“Possibly for the same reason you did,” he said, his voice rough. It made her stomach twist, but she didn’t want to ask him for clarification. Didn’t want to hope that it had something to do with her.

She was too raw to take more of Matteo’s insults. And she was even more afraid of his tenderness. That would make her crumble completely. She couldn’t afford it, not now. Now she had to figure out what she was doing. What she wanted.

Could she really marry Matteo?

It was so close to her dearest fantasy. The one that had kept her awake long nights since she was a teenager. Matteo. Hers. Only hers. Such an innocent fantasy at first, and as she’d gotten older, one that had become filled with heat and passion, a longing for things she’d never experienced outside of her dreams.

“And if …” she said, hardly trusting herself to speak “… if we marry, my family will still benefit from the merger?”

“Your father will get his money. His piece of the Corretti empire, as agreed upon.”

“You give it away so easily.”

“Because my family still needs the docklands revitalization. And your father holds the key to that.”

“And it will benefit Alessandro, too.”

“Just as it would have benefitted me had he married you.”

Those words, hearing that it would have benefitted him for her to marry someone else, made her feel ill. “So a win all around for the Correttis, then?”

“I suppose it is,” he said.

There was a ruthless glint in his eyes now. One she had never seen directed at her before. One she’d only seen on one other occasion.

“What if I say no?” she asked, because she had to know. She wasn’t sure why she was exploring her options now. Maybe because she’d already blown everything up. Her father likely hated her.… Her siblings … they must be worried sick. And she wondered if anyone was caring for them properly.

Yes, the youngest, Eva, was fourteen now and the rest of them in their late teens, but still, she was the only person who nurtured them. The only person who ever had.

The life she’d always known, the life she’d clung to for the past twenty-seven years, was changed forever. And now she felt compelled in some ways to see how far she could push it.

“You won’t say no,” he said.

“I won’t?”

“No. Because if you do, the Battaglias are as good as bankrupt. You will be cared for, of course our child will be, too. I’m not the kind of man who would abandon his responsibility in that way. But what of your siblings? Their care will not be my problem.”

“And if I marry you?”

“They’ll be family. And I take care of family.”

A rush of joy and terror filled her in equal parts. Because in some ways, she was getting just what she wanted. Matteo. Forever.

But this wasn’t the Matteo she’d woven fantasies around. This was the real Matteo. Dark. Bitter. Emotionless in a way she’d somehow never realized before.

He’d given her passion on their night together, but for the most part, the lights had been off. She wondered now if, while his hands had moved over her body with such skill and heat, his eyes had been blank and cold. Like they were now.

She knew that what she was about to agree to wasn’t the fantasy. But it was the best choice for her baby, the best choice for her family.

And more fool her, she wanted him. Still. All of those factors combined meant there was only ever one answer for her to give.

“Yes, Matteo. I’ll marry you.”