A Hunger for the Forbidden

chapter NINE

MATTEO WAS TEMPTED to drink again. He hated the temptation. He hated the feeling of temptation full stop. Before Alessia there had been no temptation.

No, that was a lie. The first temptation had been to break the rules and see what the Battaglias were really like. And so he had looked.

And from there, every temptation, every failing, had been tied to Alessia. She was his own personal road to ruin and there were some days he wondered why he bothered to stay off it.

At least he might go up in flames in her arms. At least then heat and fire might be connected with her, instead of that night his father had died.

Yes, he should just embrace it. He should just follow to road to hell and be done with it.

And bring her with you. Bring the baby with you.

Porca miseria. The baby.

He could scarcely think of the baby. He’d hardly had a moment. He felt a little like he was going crazy sometimes, in all honesty. There was everything that was happening with Corretti Enterprises, and he had to handle it. He should go in and try to wrench the reins back from Angelo, should kick Luca out of his position and expose whatever lie he’d told to get there because he was sure the feckless playboy hadn’t gotten there on merit alone.

Instead, Matteo was tied up in knots over his wife. Bewitched by a dark-haired vixen who seemed to have him in a death grip.

She was the reason he’d left, the reason he’d gone up to a remote house he owned in Germany that no one knew about. The reason he hadn’t answered calls or returned emails. The reason he hadn’t known or cared he was being usurped in his position as head of his branch of the family business.

He had to get a handle on it, and he had no idea how. Not when he felt like he was breaking apart from the inside out.

The business stuff, the Corretti stuff, he could handle that. But he found he didn’t care to, and that was the thing that got to him.

He didn’t even want to think about the baby. But he had to. Didn’t want to try to figure out what to do with Alessia, who was still sleeping in the guest bedroom in the palazzo, for heaven’s sake.

Something had to be done. Action had to be taken, and for the first time in his life, he felt frozen.

He set his shot glass down on the counter and tilted it to the side before pushing the bottom back down onto the tile, the sound of glass on ceramic loud and decisive. He stalked out of the bar and into the corridor, taking a breath, trying to clear his head.

Alcohol was not the answer. A loss of control was not the answer.

He had to get a grip. On his thoughts. On his actions. He had a business to try to fix, deals to cement. And all he could think about was Alessia.

He turned and faced the window that looked out on the courtyard. Moonlight was spilling over the grass, a pale shade of gray in the darkness of night.

And then he saw a shadow step into the light. The brightness of the moon illuminated the figure’s hair, wild and curling in the breeze. A diaphanous gown, so sheer the light penetrated it, showed the body beneath, swirled around her legs as she turned in a slow circle.

An angel.

And then he was walking, without even thinking, he was heading outside, out to the courtyard, out to the woman who woke something deep in his soul. Something he hadn’t known existed before she’d come into his life.

Something he wished he’d never discovered.

But it was too late now.

He opened the back door and stepped out onto the terrace, walking to the balustrade and grasping the stone with his hands, leaning forward, his attention fixed on the beauty before him.

On Alessia.

She was in his system, beneath his skin. So deep he wondered if he could ever be free of her. It would be harder now, all things considered. She was his wife, the mother of his child.

He could send her to live in the palazzolo with his mother. Perhaps his mother would enjoy a grandchild.

He sighed and dismissed that idea almost the moment it hit. A grandchild would only make his mother feel old. And would quite possibly give her worry lines thanks to all the crying.

And you would send your child to live somewhere else?

Yes. He was considering it, in all honesty.

What did he know about children? What did he know about love? Giving it. Receiving it. The kind of nurturing, the father-son bond fostered by his father was one he would just as soon forget.

A bond forged, and ended, by fire.

He threw off the memories and started down the steps that led to the grass. His feet were bare and in that moment he realized he never went outside without his shoes. A strange realization, but he became conscious of the fact when he felt the grass beneath his feet.

Alessia turned sharply, her dark hair cascading over her shoulder in waves. “Matteo.”

“What are you doing out here?”

“I needed some air.”

“You like being outdoors.”

She nodded. “I always have. I hated being cooped up inside my father’s house. I liked to take long walks in the sun, away from the … staleness of the estate.”

“You used to walk by yourself a lot.”

“I still do.”

“Even after the attack?” The words escaped without his permission, but he found he couldn’t be sorry he’d spoken them.

“Even then.”

“How?” he asked, his voice rough. “How did you keep doing that? How did you go on as if nothing had changed?”

“Life is hard, Matteo. People you love die, I know you know about that. People who should love you don’t treat you any better than they’d treat a piece of property they were trying to sell for a profit. I’ve just always tried to see the good parts of life, because what else could I do? I could sit and feel sorry for myself, but it wouldn’t change anything. And I’ve made the choice to stay, so that would be silly. I made the choice to stay and be there for my brothers and sisters, and I can’t regret it. That means I have to find happiness in it. And that means I can’t cut out my walks just because a couple of horrible men tried to steal them from me.”

“And it’s that simple?”

“It’s not simple at all, but I do it. Because I have to find a way to live my life. My life. It’s the only one I have. And I’ve just learned to try to love it as it is.”

“And do you?” he asked. “Do you love it?”

She shook her head. “No.” Her voice was a whisper. “But I’m not unhappy all the time. And I think that’s something. I mean, it has to count for something.”

“What about now? With this?”

“Are you happy?”

“Happiness has never been one of my primary goals. I don’t know that I’ve ever thought about it too closely.”

“Everybody wants to be happy,” she said.

Matteo put his hands into his pockets and looked over the big stone wall that partitioned his estate from the rest of the world, looked up at the moon. “I want to make something different out of my family. I want to do something more than threaten and terrorize the people in Palermo. Beyond that … does it matter?”

“It does matter. Your happiness matters.”

“I haven’t been unhappy,” he said, and then he wondered if he was lying. “What about you, Alessia?”

“I made a decision, Matteo, and it landed me in a situation that hasn’t been entirely comfortable. It was my first big mistake. My first big fallout. And no, not all of it has been happy. But I can’t really regret it, either.”

“I’m glad you don’t regret me.”

“Do you regret me?”

“I should. I should regret my loss of control more than I do—” a theme in his life, it seemed “—but I find I cannot.”

“What about tonight? In the elevator? Why did you just walk away?”

“I don’t know what to do with us,” he said, telling the truth, the honest, raw truth.

“Why do we have to know what we’re doing?”

“Because this isn’t some casual affair, and it never can be.” Because of how she made him feel, how she challenged him. But he wouldn’t say that. His honesty had limits, and that was a truth he disliked admitting even to himself. “You’re my wife. We’re going to have a child.”

“And if we don’t try, then we’re going to spend years sniping at each other and growing more and more bitter, is that better?”

“Better than hurting you? I think so.”

“You’ve hurt me already.”

“I did?”

“You won’t promise to be faithful to me, you clearly hate admitting that you want me, even though as soon as we touch … Matteo, we catch fire, and you can’t deny that. You know I don’t have a lot of experience with men, but I know this isn’t just normal. I know people don’t just feel this way.”

“And that’s exactly why we have to be careful.”

“So we’ll be careful. But we’re husband and wife, and I think we should try … try for the sake of our child, for our families, to make this marriage work. And I think we owe it to each other to not be unhappy.”

“Alessia …”

“Let’s keep taking walks, Matteo,” she said, her voice husky. She took a step toward him, her hair shimmering in the dim light.

He caught her arm and pulled her in close, his heart pounding hard and fast. “I can’t love you.”

“You keep saying.”

“You need to understand. There is a limit to what we can share. I’ll have you in my bed, but that’s as far as it goes. This wasn’t my choice.”

“I wasn’t your choice?”

Her words hit him hard, and they hurt. Because no, he hadn’t chosen to marry her without being forced into it. But it wasn’t for lack of wanting her. If there was no family history. If he had not been the son of one of Sicily’s most notorious crime bosses, if there was nothing but him and Alessia and every other woman on earth, he would choose her every time.

But he couldn’t discount those things. He couldn’t erase what was. He couldn’t make his heart anything but cold, not just toward her, but toward anyone. And he couldn’t afford to allow a change.

Alessia had no idea. Not of the real reasons why. Not the depth he was truly capable of sinking to. The man underneath the iron control was the very devil, as she had once accused him of being. There was no hero beneath his armor. Only ugliness and death. Only anger, rage, and the ability and willingness to mete out destruction and pain to those who got in his way.

If he had to choose between a life without feeling or embracing the darkness, he would take the blessed numbness every time.

“You know it wasn’t.”

She thrust her chin into the air. “And that’s how you want to start? By reminding me you didn’t choose me?”

“It isn’t to hurt you, or even to say that I don’t want you. But I would never have tied you to me if it wasn’t a necessity, and that is not a commentary on you, but on me, and what I’m able to give. There are reasons I never intended to take a wife. I know who I am, but you don’t.”

“Show me,” she said. And he could tell she meant it, with utter conviction. But she didn’t know what she was asking. She had no way of knowing. He had given her a window into his soul, a glimpse of the monster that lurked beneath his skin, but she didn’t know the half of it.

Didn’t know what he was truly capable of. What his father had trained him for.

And what it had all led to seven years ago during the fire that had taken Benito’s and Carlo’s lives.

That was when he discovered that he truly was the man his father had set out to make him. That was when he’d discovered just how deep the chill went.

He was cold all the way down. And it was only control that held it all in check.

There was only one place he had heat. Only one way he could get warm. But it was a fine line, because he needed the cold. Needed his control, even with it … even with it he was capable of things most men would never entertain thoughts of. But without it he knew the monster would truly be unleashed. That it would consume him.

“I know what I’d like to show you,” he said, taking a step toward her, putting his hand on her cheek. She warmed his palm. The heat, the life, that came from her, pouring into him. She shivered beneath his hand, as though his touch had frozen her, and he found it oddly appropriate.

If he kissed her, if he moved nearer to her now, he was making the choice to drag her into the darkness with him. To take what he wanted and use her to his own selfish ends.

He could walk away from her now and he could do the right thing. Protect her, protect their child. Give them both his name and a home, his money. Everything they would need.

She didn’t need him in his bed, taking his pleasure in her body, using her to feel warm.

To court the fire and passion that could burn down every last shred of his control. It would be a tightrope walk. Trying to keep the lusts of his body from turning into a desire that overwhelmed his heart.

If he wanted Alessia, there was no other choice.

It was easy with her, to focus on his body. What he wanted from her. Because she called to him, reached him, made him burn in a way no other woman ever had.

With her, though, there was always something else. Something more.

He shut it down. Severed the link. Focused on his body. The burn in his chest, his gut. Everywhere. He was so hard it hurt. Hard with the need for her. To be in her. To taste her.

He could embrace that, and that only. And consign her to a life with a man who would never give her what she deserved.

In this case, he would embrace the coldness in him. Only an utter bastard would do this to her. So it was a good thing that was what he was.

He bent his head and pressed his lips to hers. It wasn’t a deep kiss, it was a test. A test for him. To see if he could touch her without losing his mind.

She was soft. So soft. So alive. A taste of pure beauty in a world so filled with ugliness and filth. She reached into him and shone a light on him. On the darkest places in him.

No. He could not allow that. This was only about sex. Only about lust.

“Only me,” she said when they parted.

“What?”

“You either have only me, or every other woman you might want, but before you kiss me again, Matteo, you have to make that decision.”

His lips still tasted of her skin. “You.” It was an easy answer, he found.

She put her hands on his face and drew up on her tiptoes. Her kiss was deep. Filled with the need and passion that echoed inside of his body. He wrapped his arm around her waist and relished every lush detail of holding her. Her soft curves, those generous breasts pressed against his chest. He slipped his hand over her bottom, squeezed her tightly. She was everything a woman should be. Total perfection.

She kissed his jaw, her lips light on his skin, hot and so very tempting. She made him want more, stripped him of his patience. He had always been a patient lover, the kind of lover who worked to ensure his partner’s pleasure before taking his own. Because he could. Because even if he took pleasure with his body, his actions were dictated by his mind.

But she challenged that. Made him want so badly to lose himself. To think of nothing but her. Alessia. He was hungry for her in a way he had never hungered for anyone or anything.

He slid his hands over the bodice of her nightgown, cupped her breasts through the thin fabric and found she had nothing on underneath. He could feel her nipples, hard and scarcely veiled by the gauzy material.

He lowered his head and circled one of the tightened buds with his tongue, drew it deep into his mouth. It wasn’t enough. He needed to taste her.

Her name pounded through his head in time with the beat of his heart. His need a living, breathing thing.

He gripped the straps of her gown and tugged hard, the top giving way. It fell around her waist, exposing her to him. He smoothed his hand over her bare skin, then lowered his head again, tasting her, filling himself with her.

He dropped to his knees and took the fabric in his hands, tugging it down the rest of the way, ignoring the sound of tearing fabric.

“I liked that nightgown,” she said.

“It was beautiful.” He kissed her stomach. “But it was not as beautiful as you are.”

“You could have asked me to take it off.”

“No time,” he said, tracing a line from her belly button down to the edge of her panties. “I needed to taste you.”

Her response was a strangled “Oh.”

“Everywhere.” He tugged at the sides of her underwear and drew them down her legs, tossing them to the side. He kissed her hip bone and she shuddered. “I think you should lay down for me, cara.”

“Why is that?”

“All the better to taste you, cara mia.”

“Can’t you do it from where you are?”

“Not the way I want to.”

She complied, her movements slow, shaky. It was a sharp reminder of how innocent she still was.

You let me hold on to some of my innocence.

Her words echoed in his mind as she sank to the ground in front of him, lying back, resting on her elbows, her legs bent at the knees.

No, he would not allow himself to be painted as some kind of hero. He might have saved her innocence then, but he had spent the past months ensuring that what remained was stripped from her. And tonight, he would continue it.

Keeping her bound to him would continue it.

It was too late to turn back now. Too late to stop. He put his hand on her thigh and parted her legs gently, sliding his fingers over the slickness at the entrance of her body. “Yes,” he said, unable to hold the word back, a tremor of need racking his body.

He lowered his head to take in her sweetness, to try to satiate the need he felt for her. A need that seemed to flow through his veins along with his blood, until he couldn’t tell which one was sustaining him. Until he was sure he needed both to continue breathing.

He was lost in Alessia. Her flavor, her scent.

He pushed one finger deep inside her while he continued to lavish attention on her with his lips and tongue. She arched up against him, a raw cry escaping her lips. And he took it as her approval, making his strokes with mouth and hands firmer, more insistent.

She drove her fingers deep into his hair, tugging hard, the pain giving him the slight distraction he needed to continue. Helping him hold back his own need.

He slipped a second finger inside of her and her muscles pulsed around him, her body getting stiff beneath him, her sound of completion loud, desperate. Satisfying to him on a level so deep he didn’t want to examine it too closely.

He didn’t have time to examine it because now he needed her. Needed his own release, a ferocity that had him shaking. He rose up, pausing to kiss her breasts again, before taking possession of her mouth.

He sat up and tugged his shirt over his head, shrugging his slacks down as quickly as possible, freeing his aching erection.

“Are you ready?” he asked. He needed the answer to be yes.

“Yes.”

He looked at her face, at Alessia, and as he did, he pushed inside the tight heat of her body. He nearly lost it then, a cold sweat breaking out over his skin, his muscles tense, pain coursing through him, everything in him trying to hold back. To make this last.

“Matteo.”

It was her voice that broke him. Her name on his lips. He started to thrust hard into her, and no matter how he told himself to take it slow, take it gentle, he couldn’t. He was a slave to her, to his need.

Finesse was lost. Control was lost.

She arched against him every time he slid home, a small sigh of pleasure on her lips. He lowered his head, buried his face in her neck, breathing her in. Lilacs and skin. And the one woman he would always know. The one woman who mattered.

Sharp nails dug into the flesh on his shoulder, but this time, the pain didn’t bring him back. He lost himself, let his orgasm take him over, a rush of completion that took him under completely. He was lost in a wave, and burning. Burning hot and bright, nothing coming to put him out. To give him any relief. All he could do was hang on and weather it. Try to survive a pleasure so intense it bordered on destructive.

And when it was over, she was there, soft arms wrapped around him, her scent surrounding him.

“Will it always be like this?” Alessia’s voice was broken with sharp, hard breaths.

He didn’t have an answer for her. He couldn’t speak. Couldn’t think. And he hoped to God it wouldn’t always be like this because there was no way his control could withstand it. And at the same time he knew he couldn’t live with her and deny himself her body.

He would keep it under control. He would keep his heart separate from his body. He’d done it with women all his life. He’d done it when his father had asked him to learn the family business. The night his father had forced him to dole out punishment to a man in debt to the Corretti family.

He had locked his heart in ice and kept himself from feeling. His actions unconnected to anything but his mind.

He could do it again. He would.

“We should go inside,” he said, sitting up, his breathing still ragged.

“Yeah. I’m pretty sure I have grass stains in … places.”

He turned to her, a shocked laugh bursting from him. A real laugh. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d laughed and meant it. “Well, you should be glad I made quick work of your gown, then.”

“You tore it,” she said, moving into a standing position and picking up her shredded garment.

“You liked it.”

He could see her smile, even in the dim light. “A little.”

There was a strange lightness in his chest now, a feeling that was completely foreign to him. As though a rock had been taken off his shoulders. “I’m hungry,” she said.

She started walking back toward the house, and he kept his eyes trained on her bare backside, on the twin dimples low on her back. She was so sexy he was hard again already.

He bent and picked his underwear up from the ground, tugging the black boxer briefs on quickly and following her inside. “Do you want to eat?” he asked.

“Yes, I do.” She wandered through the maze of rooms, still naked, and he followed.

“And what would you like?”

“Pasta. Have you got an apron?”

“Have I got an apron?”

“You have a cook, yes?”

“Yes.”

“Does he have an apron?”

“She.” He opened the pantry door and pulled a short red apron off a hook.

Alessia smiled and slipped the apron over her head, tying it tight. She was a lot taller than the little round woman he’d hired to cook his meals. The apron came down just to the tops of her thighs and it tied in the back, exposing her body to him from that angle.

“Dinner and a show,” he said.

She tossed him a playful glare, then started riffling through the cabinets. “What kind of pasta have you got?”

“Fresh in the fridge,” he said.

She opened up the stainless-steel fridge and bent down, searching for a few moments before popping up with a container that held pappardelle pasta and another that had marinara sauce.

She put a pan of water on the stove, then put the sauce in another pan to reheat, and leaned back against the counter, her arms crossed beneath her breasts.

“Didn’t you ever hear that a watched pot never boils?”

“No. Who says that?”

“People do,” he said.

“Did your mom say it to you?”

“No. A cook we had, I think.”

“Oh. It’s the kind of thing my mother probably would have said to me someday. If she had lived.”

“You miss her still.”

“I always will. But you lost your father.”

Guilt, ugly, strangling guilt, tightened in his chest. “Yes.”

“So you understand.”

He shook his head slowly. “I’m not sure I do.”

“You don’t miss him?”

“Never.”

“I know your father was hard to deal with. I know he was … I know he was shady like my father but surely you must—”

“No,” he said.

“Oh.”

“Will you miss your father?”

“I think so. He’s not a wonderful man, but he’s the only father I have.”

“I would have been better off without one than the one that I had.”

Alessia moved to put the pasta into the pan. “You say that with a lot of certainty.”

“Trust me on this, Alessia.”

They stood in silence until the pasta was done. Matteo got bowls out of the cupboard and set them on the counter and Alessia dished them both a bowl of noodles and sauce.

“Nothing like a little post … you know, snack,” she said, lifting her bowl to her lips, her eyes glued to his chest. “You’re barely dressed.”

“You should talk,” he said.

She looked down. “I’m dressed.”

“Turn around.” She complied, flashing her bare butt to him. “That’s not dressed, my darling wife.”

“Are you issuing a formal complaint?”

“Not in the least. I prefer you this way.”

“Well, the apron is practical. Don’t go tearing it off me if you get all impatient.” She took a bit of pasta and smiled, her grin slightly impish. It made it hard to breathe.

There was something so normal about this. But it wasn’t a kind of normal he knew. Not the kind he’d ever known. He wasn’t the sort of man who walked barefoot in the grass and then ate pasta at midnight in his underwear.

He’d never had a chance to be that man. He wondered again at what it would be like if all the things of the world could simply fall away.

“Matteo?”

“Yes?”

“I lost you for a second. Where were you?”

“Just thinking.”

“Mmm.” She nodded. “I’m tempted to ask you what about but I sort of doubt you’d want to tell me.”

“About my father,” he said, before he could stop himself.

“You really don’t miss him?”

“No.” A wall of flame filled his mind. An image of the warehouse, burning. “Never.”

“My father has mainly ignored my existence. The only time he’s ever really acknowledged me is if he needs something, or if he’s angry.”

Rage churned in Matteo’s stomach. “Did he hit you?”

“Yes. Not beatings or anything, but if I said something that displeased him, he would slap my face.”

“He should feel very fortunate he never did so in front of me.”

Alessia was surprised at the sudden change in Matteo’s demeanor. At the ice in his tone. For a moment, they’d actually been getting along. For a moment, they’d been connecting with clothes on, and that was a rarity for the two of them.

He was willing to try. He’d told her that. And he would be faithful. Those were the only two promises she required from him. Beyond that, she was willing to take her chances.

Willing to try to know the man she’d married. Past her fantasy of him as a hero, as her white knight, and as the man he truly was. No matter what that might mean.

“I handled it,” she said.

“It was wrong of him.”

She nodded. “I know. But I was able to keep him from ever hitting one of the other kids and that just reinforced why I was there. Yes, I bore the brunt of a lot of it. I had to plan parties and play hostess, I had to take the wrath. But I’ve been given praise, too.”

“I was given praise by my father sometimes, too,” Matteo said. There was a flatness to his tone, a darkness in his words that made her feel cold. “He spent some time, when I was a bit older, teaching me how to do business like a Corretti. Not the business we presented to the world. The clean, smooth front. Hotels, fashion houses. All of that was a cover then. A successful cover in its own right, but it wasn’t the main source of industry for our family.”

“I think … I mean, I think everyone knows that.”

“Yes, I’m sure they do. But do you have any idea how far-reaching it was? How much power my father possessed? How he chose to exercise it?”

She shook her head, a sick weight settling in her stomach. “What did he do, Matteo? What did he do to you?”

“To me? Nothing. In the sense that he never physically harmed me.”

“There are other kinds of harm.”

“Remember I told you I wasn’t a criminal? That’s on a technicality. It’s only because I was never convicted of my crimes.”

“What did he do to you, Matteo?” Her stomach felt sick now, and she pushed her bowl of food across the counter, making her way to where Matteo was standing.

“When I was fifteen he started showing me the ropes. The way things worked. He took me on collection calls. We went to visit people who owed him money. Now, my father was only ever involved on the calls where people owed him a lot of money. People who were in serious trouble with him. Otherwise, his men, his hired thugs, paid the visits.”

“And he took you on these … visits?”

Matteo nodded, his arms crossed over his bare chest. There was a blankness in his eyes that hurt, a total detachment that froze her inside.

“For the first few weeks I just got to watch. One quick hit to the legs. A warning. A bone-breaking warning, but much better than the kind of thing he and his thugs were willing to do.”

“Dio. You should never have … He should never have let you see …” She stopped talking then, because she knew there was more. And that it was worse. She could feel the anxiety coming off him in waves.

She took a step toward him, put her hand on his forearm. It was damp with sweat, his muscles shaking beneath her touch.

“One night he asked me to do it,” he said.

His words were heavy in the room, heavy on her. They settled over her skin, coating her, making her feel what he felt. Dirty. Ashamed. She didn’t know how she was so certain that was what he felt, but she was.

“What happened?” She tried to keep her voice steady, tried to sound ready to hear it. Tried to be ready to hear it. Because he needed to say it without fear of recrimination from her. Without fear of being told there was something wrong with him.

She knew that as deeply, as innately, as she knew his other feelings.

“I did it,” he said. “My father asked me to break a man’s legs because he owed the family money. And I did.”