Chapter 8 Eight
Matteo's POV
She is fire in my arms.
I expected nerves. Shyness. Perhaps a quiet, sad surrender. I did not expect this.
She doesn’t just yield. She challenges. Her hands are not passive; they grip, they explore, they claim my shoulders, my back, pulling me closer with a strength that surprises me. When I touch her, she doesn’t flinch away. She arches into the contact, a silent demand for more. Her passion isn’t given; it’s unleashed. It meets mine, matches it, and for a moment, surpasses it. It stuns me.
The plan was clear: spoil her for other men. Be so thorough, so attentive, that any other touch would feel like a pale imitation. A strategic haunting.
But as my mouth traces the line of her throat, as my hands learn the delicate shape of her, the plan dissolves into something more primal. This is no longer just a strategy. It is a claiming, yes, but one I feel in my bones. I commit every detail to a memory that has nothing to do with calculation: the exact sound of her gasp when I first taste her skin, the way her back bows off the bed, the whispered, broken syllables of my name that are not a performance, but a surrender to feeling.
The lines blur. The Don, who calculates every move, is shoved aside by the man who simply wants. I am overwhelmed by her. By the feel of her, the taste, the honest, desperate way she responds. A real praise slips from me in my own tongue, unbidden. "Sei magnifica," I whisper against her damp skin. You are magnificent. It is not a line. It is the only truth left in the room.
I am meticulous. I worship her with a focus I’ve never given anything. I learn what makes her fingers clutch the sheets. What makes her cry out. I bring her to the edge once, twice, watching her shatter, feeling a possessive triumph each time. I want her pleasure to be a brand. I want her to feel so much that she forgets her own name.
When I finally slide into her, the world narrows to a single, white-hot point. Her eyes fly open, wide, locked on mine. There is no past, no future. Only this perfect, searing fit. Her legs wrap around my waist, pulling me deeper, and a groan is torn from my chest. She moves with me, a rhythm we find together, fierce and consuming.
Later, she sleeps. The storm has passed. I prop myself on an elbow and just watch her. The soft curve of her mouth in peace. The way her hair fans across my pillow. Even in repose, there is a fierceness in the line of her brow. The obsession that was an intellectual spark is now a solid, living thing in my chest. It is deeper. It is dangerous.
She was supposed to be a transaction. A beautiful, fiery complication to be managed.
In the space of hours, she has become a necessity.
Dawn begins to bleed around the edges of the curtains, turning the room grey. A new, cold truth settles over me, clearer than any strategy.
You cannot marry the myth, Elena. You have already married the man. I just need to make you see it.
Elena's POV
The world narrowed to his hands. To the heat of his skin under my palms, the solid plane of his chest, the rough texture of his jaw against my cheek. My brave plan was ashes. My defiant stand was gone. There was only this: the shocking reality of a man’s weight, his scent, the quiet intensity of his eyes watching me in the dim light.
He didn’t rush. His touch was a slow exploration, a mapping. His fingers traced the line of my collarbone, the curve of my hip, as if memorizing a precious artifact. I should have felt like one. Instead, I felt seen. Not just looked at, but seen. Every nerve ending he passed over woke up, singing a sharp, aching song. A shiver had nothing to do with the cool air.
“Look at me,” he whispered, his voice gravel-rough.
My eyes, which had fluttered shut, opened. His gaze held mine. In it, I didn’t see conquest. I saw a deep, focused hunger, and a question. It undid my last bit of pretense. This wasn’t happening to me. I was here. I was choosing.
So I kissed him. I poured every bit of my pent up fury, my fear of the future, my desperate need to own just one thing, into that kiss. It was messy and fierce. He met it with a low groan, his control slipping. His hands, which had been so careful, became possessive. They gripped my waist, pulled me flush against him until I could feel every hard, wanting inch of him.
The last of my stubbornness melted into pure, liquid need. I wasn’t a saint in a painting. I was a woman. My hands slid over the powerful muscles of his back, learning him, claiming him right back. I arched against him, a silent, demanding plea. A sound escaped me, raw and real.
He broke the kiss, his breathing ragged. His forehead rested against mine. “Elena,” he breathed, and my name on his lips was a prayer and a command.
Then his mouth was everywhere. On my throat, the sensitive slope of my shoulder, the frantic pulse at my wrist. He worshipped me with a patience that felt like torture. He found places I didn’t know could feel like that, drawing sighs and gasps from me I didn’t recognize as my own. Each touch was a promise and a theft. He was stealing my resolve, my anger, my very thoughts, and replacing them with sensation.
I was drowning in it. In him. My fingers tangled in his hair, holding him to me, guiding him. I was not passive. I was a partner in this unraveling. When his mouth finally closed over my breast, a sharp cry tore from my throat. The world blurred at the edges, sharpening only to the point of contact, to ysweet pulling heat.
He was relentless. He brought me to a trembling, shaking peak with just his hands and his mouth, shattering me into a thousand glowing pieces. I cried out, the sound swallowed by the night outside the windows. Before I could even float down, he was building the fire again, stoking it higher, until I was begging, my voice a broken thing.
“Please.”
It was all I could say. Please. More. Now.
He shifted over me, his body a welcome darkness blotting out the room. His eyes held mine, black and endless. I saw my own wild reflection in them. He hesitated for a second, a final, silent question.
My answer was to lift my hips, to take him in, to wrap my legs around him and pull him home.
The feeling was a shock. A full, stretching, breathtaking completeness that stole the air from my lungs. A gasp. His name. A fractured sigh.
Then he moved.
And it was not just a joining. It was a conversation. A furious, tender, desperate dialogue written in sweat and touch. Every thrust was an answer to my ache. Every roll of my hips was a challenge he met. We found a rhythm that was ours alone alternating between deep and slow, then fast and frantic. I matched him, move for move, my hands gripping his shoulders, my mouth seeking his.
The careful man was gone. In his place was just a man, as lost in this as I was. His whispers against my skin were in Italian, raw and real. “Così bella.” So beautiful. “Mia.” Mine. The word should have chilled me. In that moment, it felt like a truth my body already knew.
The coil inside me, wound so tight for weeks, snapped. Pleasure detonated, a white-hot wave that ripped through me, relentless and total. I shattered around him, a silent scream on my lips, my body convulsing. The force of it pulled him over the edge with me. He buried his face in my neck with a ragged groan, his whole body shuddering, his own release echoing through me.
For a long time, there was only the sound of our ragged breaths, slowing together. The frantic beat of two hearts against one another. He was still wrapped around me, inside me, a heavy, warm anchor in the sudden quiet.
In the stillness, a terrible, beautiful clarity rose through the haze.
This was not a rebellion.
This was a surrender. And I never wanted it to end.