Chapter 20 Twenty
Elena's POV
The wedding was a week away. The date was a black mark on every calendar, a final hour clicking down in my head. Anxiety was a living thing in my stomach, a coiled snake that tightened every morning when I woke up in the gilded cage.
Sleep became impossible. The dark felt full of formless dread. On the third night of staring at the ceiling, I got up. I needed water. Something to unstick my dry throat.
The compound at night was a different beast. Silent and deep. Moonlight fell in cold stripes through the tall windows. I padded barefoot to the kitchen, a vast, modern cave of steel and marble.
I wasn’t alone.
He stood at the island, a glass of amber liquid in his hand, silhouetted against the moonlit window. Just a shadow in the dark. He still wore his suit pants, his shirt undone at the throat. He turned, and his eyes found me instantly, a glint in the low light.
We didn’t speak. The air between us was a wire pulled taut.
I went to the refrigerator, my back to him. I could feel his gaze like a physical touch. I opened the door, the light blinding. I grabbed a water bottle. Closed the door.
He was there. He’d moved without a sound. He caged me against the cool steel door, his hands flat on either side of my head. His body was a wall of heat. His eyes were black, hungry.
No words. No sly remarks. Just a raw, desperate energy coming off him in waves.
His mouth crashed down on mine.
This wasn't like the courtyard kiss. That was skill and challenge. This was pure hunger. A starving man’s claim. It was hard and deep and messy. A kiss of teeth and shared breath and frantic need.
And I kissed him back.
Every fear, every coiled anxiety, exploded into a different kind of fire. My hands flew to his face, then into his hair, pulling him closer. A sound broke from my throat—half sob, half sigh. My body arched into his, fitting against the hard lines of him like we were made to slot together. The water bottle fell from my hand, thudding on the floor.
His hands left the refrigerator, gripping my hips, yanking me flush against him. I could feel every desperate inch of his need. It mirrored my own. The cool steel at my back, the hot press of him against my front—I was trapped in the best way. Thought vanished. The future vanished. There was only this. The taste of whiskey on his tongue, the scent of his skin, the low groan that vibrated from his chest into mine.
This is wrong.
The thought was a distant, flickering signal.
This is all I want.
This was the truth, bright and blazing.
Matteo's POV
The wedding date was a noose. My own doing. A brilliant, idiotic plan. I couldn’t sleep. The thought of her walking down an aisle to a fiction, even if I was pulling the strings, made my skin feel too tight. I drank to quiet the noise. It didn’t work.
When she walked into the kitchen, a vision in a white nightgown, I thought I’d imagined her. A beautiful, anxious figment. But then she moved, solid and real. The moonlight caught the curve of her neck. The fear on her face was for the future. For the monster.
I was done talking. Done playing. The wire of my control, worn thin over weeks, finally snapped.
Pinning her against the refrigerator was an animal impulse. Her eyes went wide, not with fear of me, but with recognition of the same wild thing howling inside her.
When I kissed her, it was a confession. This is what I am. Hungry. Desperate. Yours.
And she kissed me back.
God, she kissed me back. Not with hesitation, but with a fury that matched mine. Her surrender wasn’t passive. It was an attack. Her fingers in my hair were demanding. The press of her body was an answer to a question I’d been asking since the moment I saw her.
The world narrowed to the points where we connected. My mouth on hers. Her hands on me. The soft give of her body against mine. The cold steel at her back. It was a whirlwind, a freefall. Every calculated move, every sly word, was burned away in this simple, desperate truth: I needed her closer. I needed her now.
I forgot the cameras. I forgot my name. I was just a man, unraveled by a woman in a moonlit kitchen.
Her little gasp against my lips, the way her legs shifted to wrap around me as I lifted her was total perfection. It was ruin.
The thought surfaced, cold and clear even in the heat: This changes everything.
But I didn’t care. For the first time in my life, I didn't care about the strategy. I only cared about the next second, the next taste, the next broken sound I could pull from her throat.
She was the cage and the key. And I was finally, willingly, locking myself in.