A Hunger for the Forbidden

chapter EIGHT

MATTEO WASN’T SURE how he managed to get up and speak in front of the large crowd of people. Not when he could see Alessia in the audience, her face smooth, serene, her dark eyes the only window to the storm that lurked beneath.

A storm he was certain would boil over and onto him once they were alone.

He found he didn’t mind. That he welcomed the chance to take her on because it was better than the overwhelming, biting need to take her back to the elevator and have her again. To let the elevator continue up to his suite where he would have her again. And again. Tasting her this time, truly savoring her.

Yes, fighting was infinitely better than that. He would rather have her yelling at him than sighing his name in his ear.

Because he didn’t know what to do with her, what to do about his desire for her.

It wasn’t what he was used to. Wasn’t normal in any way.

Sex was simply a need to be met, like eating or breathing. Yes, he liked some food better than he liked others, but he wasn’t a slave to cravings. He believed in moderation, in exercising control in all areas of life.

Alessia was the one craving he didn’t seem to be able to fight, and that meant he had to learn how.

Anything else was inexcusable.

“Thank you all for coming tonight, and for your generous donations. I am happy to announce that I am personally matching all of the donations given tonight. And that thanks to your generosity, it is now possible for the Corretti Education Foundation to branch out into college grants. It is my belief that a good education can overcome any circumstance, and it is my goal that every person be given that chance. Thank you again, enjoy the rest of the evening.”

He stepped down from the podium, not paying attention to the applause that was offered up for his speech. He could hardly hear anything over the roar of blood in his ears. Could hardly see anything but Alessia. Which was one reason he allowed himself to be pulled to the side by some of the guests, interrupted on his way back to where his wife was standing.

He stopped and talked to everyone who approached him, using it as a tactic to keep himself from having to face Alessia without his guard firmly back in place. Cowardly? Perhaps. But he found he didn’t care. Not much, at least.

Alessia didn’t make a move to approach him; instead, she made conversation with the people around her. And every so often she flicked him a glare with those beautiful eyes of hers, eyes that glittered beneath the lights of the chandeliers. Eyes that made promises of sensual heaven, the kind of heaven he could hardly risk trying to enter again.

Every time he touched Alessia, she tore down another piece of the wall, that very necessary wall of control he’d built around himself.

People started to disperse, and as they both went along the natural line of people that wanted to converse with them, the space between them started to close. Matteo’s blood started to flow hotter, faster, just getting nearer to Alessia.

No matter there were still five hundred people in the room. No matter that he’d had her against a wall an hour earlier. Still she challenged him. Still she made him react like a teenage boy with no control over his baser urges.

Yes, think about that. Remember what that looks like.

Blind rage. Two young men, still and unmoving, blood everywhere. And then a calm. A cold sort of emptiness. If he felt anything at all it was a kind of distant satisfaction.

And then he’d looked at Alessia. At the terror in her eyes.

And he’d done what he’d sworn he would never do.

He’d wrapped his arms around her and pulled her into his chest, brushing away her tears. He’d made her cry. Horrified her, and he couldn’t blame her for being horrified. It wasn’t the kind of thing a girl of fourteen, or any age, should ever have to see.

When he pulled away, when he looked down at her face, her cheeks were streaked with blood. The blood from his hands. Not the only blood he had on his hands.

He breathed in sharply, taking himself back to the present. Away from blood-soaked memories.

Except it was still so easy to see them when he looked at Alessia’s face. A face that had been marred with tears and blood. Because of him.

The gap between them continued to shrink, the crowd thinning, until they met in the middle, in the same group. And there was no excuse now for him not to pull her against his side, his arm wrapped around her waist. So he did.

Alessia’s body was stiff at his side, but her expression was still relaxed, her smile easy. A lie. Why had he never noticed before that Alessia’s smile wasn’t always genuine?

He’d assumed that it was. That Alessia displayed and felt emotion with ease and honesty. Now he wondered.

The last of the guests started to file out, leaving Alessia and Matteo standing in the empty ballroom.

He looked around, at the expansive room. This was his hotel, separate from his family dynasty, and often, looking at it, at the architecture, the expanse of it, filled him with a sense of pride. He had hotels all over the world, but this one, back in Sicily, a hotel that belonged to him and not to his family in any part, had always filled him with a particular amount of satisfaction.

Now it just seemed like a big empty room.

He picked up his phone and punched in a number. “Delay cleaning until further notice, I require the ballroom for personal use for a while.”

Alessia looked at him, her dark eyes wide. “What do you need the ballroom for?”

He shrugged. “Anything I want.” He walked over to the edge of the stage and sat, gripping the edge. “It is my hotel, after all.”

“Yes, and you’re a man who takes great pride in the ownership of whatever he can possess,” she said.

“And why not?” he asked, loosening his tie, trying not to think of Alessia’s fingers on the knot, trying not to imagine her fingers at the buttons of his dress shirt as he undid the collar. “That’s what it’s always been about in my family. I go out of town—” and off the grid “—and my bastard cousin has taken over my office. My younger brother has managed to charm his way into the top seat of the fashion houses for Corretti. So you see? In my family, ownership is everything. And if you have to stab someone to get it, all the better.”

“Metaphorical stabbing?” she asked, wrapping her arms around her waist, as if holding herself together. He hated that. Hated that he might cause her pain in any way.

“Or literal stabbing. I told you, my family has a colorful history.”

“You said you and your brothers weren’t criminals.”

“We’re not. Not convicted, anyway,” he added, not sure why. Maybe because, in his heart, he knew he was one.

Knew he could be convicted for assault several times over if evidence was brought before a court.

“Why are you saying this?”

“What do you mean, why am I saying this? I’m telling you the truth. Was what I did that day near your father’s gardens legal? Answer me,” he said, his words echoing in the empty room.

“You saved me.”

“Maybe.”

“They would have raped me,” she said.

He remembered it so clearly. And yet so differently.

Because he remembered coming upon Alessia, backed up against a tree, a stone wall behind her, two men in front of her, pressing her back to the tree, touching her, jeering at her. They had her shirt torn. They were pushing her skirt up. And he’d known what they intended to do. The evil they meant for his angel.

And then he remembered seeing red.

He pushed off from the stage, standing and pacing, trying to relieve the restless energy moving through him. Trying to ease the tightness in his chest.

He hadn’t simply stopped when he’d gotten those men away from Alessia. Hadn’t stopped when they quit fighting back. He hadn’t stopped until Alessia had touched his back. And then he’d turned, a rock held tightly in his hand, ready to finish what he’d started. Ready to make sure they never got up again, ready to make sure they could never hurt another woman again. Any other woman, but most especially Alessia.

But then he’d looked into her eyes. Seen the fear. Seen the tears.

And he’d dropped his hand back to his side, letting the rock fall to the ground. Letting the rage drain from his body.

That was when he’d realized what he had done. What he had been about to do. And what it had done to Alessia to see it. More than that, it confirmed what he’d always known. That if he ever let himself go, if he ever allowed himself more than his emotionless existence, he would become a man he hated.

“I did more than save you,” he said. “A lot more.”

“You did what you had to.”

“You say it as if I gave it some thought. I didn’t. What I did was a reaction. Blind rage. As I was, if you were not there, I wouldn’t have ended it until they were dead.”

“You don’t know that.”

“That’s the thing, Alessia, I do know that. I know exactly what my next move was going to be, and trust me, it’s not something people get back up from.”

“I wish you could see what I saw.”

“And I wish like hell you hadn’t seen any of it,” he said, his voice rough.

“You were … I thought … I thought they were going to get away with it. That no one would hear me scream. No one would stop them. I thought that they would do it. And then you came and you didn’t let them. Do you have any idea what that meant to me? Do you know what you stopped?”

“I know what I stopped.”

“Then why do you regret it so much?”

“I don’t regret it, not like you mean.” He could remember his father’s face still, as he’d administered punishment to men in his debt. The calm. The absolute calm. But worse, he could remember his father’s face when someone had enraged him. Could remember how volatile, how beyond reason, he became in those situations.

And always, the old man had a smug sense that he had done what must be done. Full and complete justification for every action.

Just as Matteo had felt after Alessia’s attack. How he had felt after the fire.

“To me you were just a hero,” she said, her words soft.

They hit him hard, like a bullet, twisted inside of him, blooming outward and touching him everywhere, scraping his heart, his lungs. For a moment, he couldn’t breathe.

“It’s so much more complicated than that,” he said.

“Not to me. Not to the girl you rescued. You were like … You were every unfulfilled dream from my entire life, showing up when I needed you most. How can you not understand that?”

“Maybe that,” he said, “is our problem now. You know a dream, a fantasy, and I am not that man. I’m not the hero of the story.”

She shook her head. “You were the hero of my story that day. And nothing will change that.”

Coldness invaded him. “Is that what led you to my bed that night?”

She didn’t look away. “Yes.”

He swore, the word loud in the empty expanse of the ballroom. “So that was my thank-you?”

“No!” she said, the exclamation reverberating around them. “It’s not like that at all. Don’t make it into something like that it’s. No.”

“Then what, Alessia? Your fantasy of a knight?” Her cheeks turned pink and then she did look away. “Dio, is that what it is? You expected me to be your chivalrous knight in shining armor? What a disappointment this must be for you. You would have likely been better off with Alessandro.”

“I didn’t want Alessandro.”

“Only because you lied to yourself about who I am.”

“Who are you, then?” she asked. “You’re my husband. I think you should tell me.”

“I thought we went over this already.”

“Yeah, you gave me that internet bio of a rundown on who you are. We told each other things we already knew.”

“Why do we have to know each other?”

“Because it seems like we should. We’re … married.”

“Not really.”

“You took me into an elevator and had me against the wall—what would make it more real for you?” she asked, the words exploding from her, crude and true, and nothing he could deny.

“That’s sex, Alessia, and what we have is great, explosive sex. But that kind of thing isn’t sustainable. It’s not meant to be. It’s not good for it to be.”

“And you know this because you’re constantly having spontaneous, explosive sex with strangers?”

“No.”

“Then how do you know?”

“There’s no control in it. No sense. We nearly let it get filmed, nearly let the elevator go to the next floor. Neither of us think when sex is involved.”

“Maybe you think too much.”

“And maybe you don’t think enough. You feel, and look where all of that feeling has gotten you.”

Her lip curled into a sneer. “Don’t you dare blame this on me! Don’t you dare act like it was me and my girlish feelings that led us here. That’s far too innocent of a take on it, first of all. Yes, I might have built you up as a hero in my head, but what I wanted that night in New York had nothing to do with you being some kind of paragon and everything to do with me wanting you as a woman wants a man. I didn’t want hearts and flowers, I wanted sex. And that was what I got. That wasn’t led by my feelings,” she said, her words cold, “that was led by my body and I was quite happy with the results.”

“Too bad the price was so steep.”

“Wasn’t it?”

Alessia looked at Matteo and, for a moment, she almost hated him. Because he was fighting so hard, against her, against everything. Or maybe she was the one fighting. And she was just mad at him for not being who she’d thought he was.

And that wasn’t fair, not really. He couldn’t help it if he didn’t line up with the fantasy she’d created about him in her head. It wasn’t even fair to expect him to come close.

But no one in her life had ever been there for her, not since her mother. It had all been about her giving. And then he’d been there, and he’d put it all on the line for her, he’d given her all of himself in that moment. And yes, what he’d done had been violent, and terrifying in a way, but it was hard for her to feel any sadness for the men who would have stolen her last bit of innocence from her.

She’d grown up in a house with a criminal father who lied and stole on a regular basis. She knew about the ugliness of life. She’d lost her mother, spent her days walking on eggshells to try to avoid incurring any of her father’s wrath.

But in all that time, at least, no one had forced themselves on her sexually, and considering the kind of company her father kept, it had always seemed kind of an amazing thing.

And then someone had tried to take that from her, too. But Matteo had stopped it.

“Do you understand how much of my life has been decided for me?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said slowly, obviously unwilling to admit to not understanding something.

“I don’t think you do. I spent my days mothering my siblings, and I don’t regret it, because it had to be done, but that meant I didn’t go away to school. It meant I stayed at home when a lot of girls my age would have been moving out, going to university. I went to events my father wanted me to go to, hosted parties in dresses he deemed appropriate. That day … that day on the road, those two men tried to take another choice from me. They tried to choose how I would learn about sex, how I would be introduced to it. With violence and pain and force. They tried to take something from me, and I don’t just mean virginity, I mean the way I saw myself. The way I saw men. The way I saw people. And you stopped them. So I’m sorry if you don’t want to have been my hero, but you were. You let me hold on to some of my innocence. You let me keep some parts of life a fantasy. I know about how harsh life can be. I know about reality, but I don’t need to have every horrible thing happen to me. And it was going to.” Her voice was rough, raw with tears she needed to shed.

She turned away from him, trying to catch her breath.

“And then my father told me that I was going to marry Alessandro. And I could see more choices being taken from me but this time I didn’t see a way out. Then my friend Carolina said she would host a bachelorette party for me. And for once my father didn’t deny me. I didn’t know you would be there. And Carolina suggested we go to your hotel and I … well, then I hoped you’d be there. And you were. And I saw another chance to make a choice. So don’t ask me to regret it.”

His eyes were black, endless, unreadable. “I won’t ask you to regret it, because then I would have to regret it, and I don’t. When I found out I was your first … I can’t tell you how that satisfied me, and I don’t care if that’s not the done thing, if I shouldn’t care, because I did. I still care. I’m still glad it was me.”

“I am, too,” she said, her voice a whisper. The honesty cost them both, she knew.

His eyes met hers, so bleak, so filled with need. And she hoped she could fill it. Hoped she could begin to understand the man that he was and not just the man she’d created a fiction about in her head.

She nearly went to him then. Nearly touched him. Asked him to lie her down on the cold marble of the ballroom floor and make love to her again. But then she remembered. Remembered the question he hadn’t answered. The one she’d been determined to get the answer to before she ever let him touch her again.

She’d messed up earlier. She hadn’t been able to think clearly enough to have a conversation with him. But now, she would ask now. Again. And she would get her answer.

“Will you be faithful to me?” she asked.

He pushed his fingers through his hair. “Why do you keep asking me this?”

“Because it’s a simple question and one I deserve the answer to. I’m not sleeping with you if you won’t promise I’m the only woman in your life.”

“I can’t love you,” he said, the words pulled from him. Not I don’t love you, like he’d said earlier, but I can’t.

“I’m not asking you to love me, I’m asking you to not have sex with other women.”

His jaw tightened, his hands clenching into fists at his sides. “To answer that question, I would have to know how I planned on conducting our relationship, and I do not know the answer to that yet.”

“Were you planning on asking me?”

He shook his head. “I already told you we won’t have a normal marriage.”

“Why?” She knew she shouldn’t ask, not in such a plaintive, needy tone, but she couldn’t help herself, couldn’t hide the hurt that was tearing through her. How was it she’d managed to get her dream, only to have it turn to ash the moment her fingers touched it?

“Because I cannot be a husband to you. I can’t. I won’t love you. I won’t … I can’t give what a husband is supposed to give. I don’t know where to begin. I have an empire to run, my hotels, plus I have my bastard cousin installed in my offices at the family corporation, with his ass in my chair, sitting at my desk like he’s the one who worked so hard for any of it. I don’t have time to deal with you. If you took me on as a husband you would have me in your bed and nowhere else. And I’m not sure I want to put either of us through that.”

“But you are my husband. Whether or not you want to be doesn’t come into it at this point. You are my husband. You’re the father of my baby.”

“And our baby has the protection of my name, the validity of having married parents. I’m able to strike the deal for the docklands with your father thanks to this marriage and your siblings will be cared for. I’m sending them all to school, I don’t think I told you.”

Her throat closed, her body trembling. “I … No, you didn’t.”

“My point is, regardless of what happens behind closed doors, our marriage was a necessity, but what we choose to do in our own home rests squarely on us. And there are decisions to be made.”

Decisions. She’d imagined that if she married Matteo her time for decision making would be over before it ever started. But he was telling her there was still a chance to make choices. That them legally being husband and wife didn’t mean it was settled.

In some ways, the opportunity to make decisions was a heady rush of power she’d only experienced on a few occasions. In other ways … well, she wanted him to want to be married to her, if she was honest.

You’re still chasing the fantasy when you have reality to contend with.

She had to stop that. She had to put it away now, the haze of fantasy. Had to stop trying to create a happy place where there wasn’t one and simply stand up and face reality.

“So … if I say I don’t want to be in a normal marriage, and if you can’t commit to being faithful to me, does that mean that I have my choice of other lovers, too?”

Red streaked his cheekbones, his fists tightening further, a muscle in his jaw jerking. “Of course,” he said, tight. Bitter.

“As long as there are no double standards,” she said, keeping her words smooth and calm.

“If I release my hold on you, then I release it. We’ll have to be discreet in public, naturally, but what happens behind closed doors is no one’s business but our own.”

“Ours and the elevator security cameras,” she said.

“That will not happen again.”

“It won’t?”

“An unforgivable loss of control on my part.”

“You’ve had a few of those recently.”

She’d meant to spark an angry reply, to keep the fight going, because as long as they were fighting, she didn’t ache for him. Wasn’t so conscious of the tender emotions he made her feel. And she wasn’t so overwhelmed by the need to be skin to skin to him when they were fighting. But she didn’t get anger. Instead, she got a bleak kind of pain that echoed in her soul, a hopelessness in his dark eyes that shocked her.

“Yes,” he said. “I have. Always with you.”

“I don’t know how you are in other areas of your life. I only know how you are with me,” she said.

His eyes grew darker. “A pity for you. I’m much more pleasant than this, usually.”

“I make you misbehave.”

He chuckled, no humor in the sound. “You could say that. We should go home.”

She nodded. “Yes, we should.”

They were in an empty ballroom, and she really would have loved a romantic moment with him here. The chance to dance as the only two people in the room. To go up to his suite and make love. To share a moment with each other that was out of time, apart from reality.

But they’d had their fantasy. Reality was here now, well and truly.

She still didn’t want to leave.

Matteo picked up his phone and dialed. “Yes, you can send in the crew now.”

She swallowed hard, feeling like they’d missed a key moment. Feeling like she’d missed one.

“Let’s go,” he said. There was no press now, no one watching to see if he would put his arm around her. So he didn’t. He turned and walked ahead, and she followed behind him, her heart sinking.

Matteo didn’t know what he wanted. And she didn’t, either.

No, that was a lie, she knew what she wanted. But it would require her to start dealing with Matteo as he was, and at some point, it would require him to meet her in the middle, it would require him to drop his guard.

She wasn’t sure if either of them could do what needed to be done. Wasn’t sure if they ever had a hope of fixing the tangled mess that they’d created.

She wasn’t even sure if Matteo wanted to.