Chapter 21 Twenty one
He didn’t lead me to a bedroom. That would have been too planned, too formal. Instead, in a fevered half-walk, half-stumble from the kitchen, he pulled me into a dark alcove in the main hall. Heavy velvet curtains, smelling of dust and forgotten years, closed behind us, plunging us into near blackness. The only light was a thin silver seam from the hall, outlining his silhouette.
His mouth found mine again in the dark. This kiss was different. Fiercer. Hungrier. There was no audience, not even the moonlight. It was just us, hidden. The world was the sound of our ragged breathing and the soft crush of fabric.
My hands, which had been braced against his chest, slid up to clutch his shoulders. The fine linen of his shirt was warm from his skin. I could feel the powerful muscle beneath, coiled tight. His tongue swept into my mouth, a bold, tasting invasion that sent a jolt straight to my core. I met it with my own, the last of my resistance melting like wax under a flame. A small, desperate sound escaped me swallowed by his kiss.
He broke away just long enough to turn me. His arm was a steel band around my waist, pulling me back flush against his chest. My back met the solid wall of him. Every hard line of his body imprinted on me through the thin layers of our clothes. Then I felt the hard, insistent press of his arousal against the curve of my backside. A hot, shocking proof of his want that made my legs feel weak. A low groan rumbled in his chest, vibrating through me, a sound of pure, unmasked need.
His lips left my mouth, trailing fire down the side of my neck. He nipped at the tender skin where my shoulder met my throat, not hard, but enough to make me gasp. His hand, which had been splayed possessively on my stomach, began to move. A slow, deliberate slide downward over the thin cotton of my nightgown. My breath hitched, coming in short, sharp pants. Every nerve ending was focused on the path of that hand, on the heat spreading in its wake.
“See?” he rasped in my ear, his voice raw, stripped of all polish and pretense. His breath was hot and damp against my skin. “Your body is wiser than your mind.”
His hand pressed flat, low on my stomach, a claiming, heavy weight. I felt myself arch back into him involuntarily, seeking more pressure, more contact. A traitorous movement.
“It knows its master,” he breathed, the words a dark promise.
Then his fingers dipped. Just an inch. Beneath the elastic waistband of my sleep shorts. A touch of skin on skin that was an electric shock in the dark. His fingertips brushed the sensitive skin below my navel. I stopped breathing. My whole world narrowed to that point of contact, to the heat of him at my back, to the dizzying, terrifying truth echoing in my blood.
This is wrong.
The thought was a paper boat on a stormy sea.
This is all that matters.
This was the truth, solid and undeniable as his body against mine. Logic was a distant language. There was only feeling. Need. Him.
I was utterly, completely lost.
Matteo's POV
The alcove was instinct. A primal need for darkness, for cover, for a space that belonged to no one but this moment. No cameras here. No prying eyes. Just the truth of our bodies, loud in the silent dark.
In the blackness, my other senses exploded. The scent of her warm skin, jasmine, and a sharp edge of fear that was intoxicating. The soft, catching sound of her breath. The feel of her, pliant and warm and finally yielding in my arms. The taste of her mouth, like mint and rebellion.
When I kissed her, it was a confession. This is what I am. Not a Don. Not a son. Just a man starving for you.
Turning her, pulling her against me, was a revelation. The fit was perfect, maddening. The soft, lush curve of her backside met the aching hardness of my desire, and a raw groan was torn from me. It was a sound of pure need, of surrender. I was supposed to be in control. I was never in control with her.
My mouth on her neck tasted like salt and her, a flavor I was becoming addicted to. My hand on her stomach felt the frantic, fluttering beat of her pulse beneath her skin. She was trembling. Not with cold. With the same desperate, high-voltage current that was scorching through my veins, burning away every carefully constructed layer.
The words left me, harsh and unforgiving. It knows its master. I didn’t say I was the master. Not in that moment. I meant this. This magnetic pull. This hunger. It was the master of us both. We were equals in this freefall.
When my fingers slipped beneath the soft cotton of her waistband, I felt her entire body tense. Not in rejection. In acute, shattering anticipation. A sharp, silent intake of breath. Her skin was so soft. A forbidden frontier I was claiming. In that dark, dusty space, every sly calculation, every devious long-term plan, evaporated. The future was a blank. The past was irrelevant.
I wasn't playing a game. The game was over. I was a man at the edge of a cliff, and she was the only thing worth falling for. The line had been crossed the moment my skin met hers. The point of no return was the feel of her, soft and warm under my fingertips, and the thunderous, echoing truth in my chest.
And I had no desire, not even a whisper of a thought, to ever go back.