Chapter 63: LXIII. “I’m not yours.”
⋄ Marina Arellano ⋄
“Answer me, fuck!” Matteo grabs my chin and yanks my face up, locking his gaze on mine, letting me see his rage, desire, and a kind of pain that scorches me along with him. “Did you fuck him already? Let that asshole touch you? Huh, bitch?”
“No!” The word cracks out, and I don’t even know if I’m lying, because technically, he didn’t touch me. Not really. But what happened in that bathroom… what I almost did on my knees, mouth open, breathing ragged…
Shit, I’m done for.
“Speak, goddamn it.” Matteo’s hand tightens around my chin, and I let out a low moan, my rage and arousal tangled in a sharp sound that slips out of me without control. “You’re looking at me with that fucking fire in your eyes, and you want me to believe you weren’t ready to drop to your knees for him?”
“He didn’t touch me.” My voice is low but sharp, provocative, meant to sting and feed the beast inside him. He has no right to talk to me like he owns me or that I owe him anything. “But I wanted him to, Matteo.”
He grabs my waist, fingers digging in hard, pulling me against his body so I feel every inch of his rock-hard abs pressing into my breasts and his thick, brutal cock throbbing against my stomach like a silent threat, making my inner walls clench even tighter, already tortured by the lust Enzo sparked earlier.
“You like this, don’t you?” Matteo’s hand on my chin spreads possessively beneath, his fingertips sinking into my cheeks. “You like provoking me, crawling under my skin.”
The laugh that escapes me is sarcastic, filthy, and almost cruel. A challenge thrown straight into the fire burning in his eyes.
“…You love seeing how I lose my fucking mind when it comes to you.” He spits, breathing harder.
I tilt my face just enough to feel his hand drag across my skin as I smile—that smile I know he hates.
“You think this is about you? I’m Enzo’s personal maid now, Matteo. I ran his bath and undressed him. His cock… was inches from my mouth,” I whisper, my lips so close to his I can taste the cigarette on him. “And you know what? I wanted him to grab my hair and shove it down my throat while I looked up at him, my mouth full—”
The sound he makes now is almost a muffled roar. His hand leaves my face only to grab the back of my neck, yanking my hair and forcing my head to tilt, exposing my throat. He presses his mouth there, no kisses, no biting, just that heavy, scorching breath searing my skin.
Matteo’s cock throbs against my belly, and the closeness drives me crazy. I squirm, my body arching, begging without words for more contact, more friction, anything to relieve the suffocating pressure between my thighs.
“Keep talking,” his voice scrapes against my neck, so close I feel the sound vibrating through my skin, “and I’ll show you what happens when a bitch plays with a Romano’s jealousy.”
His fingers grip my neck harder, and when he drags his mouth to my jawline, almost grazing his teeth along my skin, I laugh, short, defiant—the kind of laugh that always rips fury straight from his gut, the one that says, ‘you never really controlled me’.
“I got so wet it dripped down my thigh, Matteo… And he just looked at me.” My mouth drags to the corner of his, not quite touching. “Do you have any idea what that feels like? Almost coming just from a look, from another man’s voice? Feeling my whole body tremble from the anticipation of what he could do to me?”
Matteo’s fingers dig into my waist. I know it’ll leave a mark, but I don’t care. Because even after everything fell apart, this fucking need still pulses in my veins.
He burned me before.
Yes, he did.
And still… my body leans towards his flames all over again.
“I was just there, on my knees, looking up at him, wanting him to fuck me until I forgot why I was even there—”
With a sudden, angry motion, Matteo’s fist slams into the cabinet beside my head, shaking the shelves and everything on them. The crack of impact rips a stifled gasp from my throat, and the sound echoes through my bones.
Matteo is practically falling apart. His breathing is ragged, his jaw clenched, and his pupils blown so wide they swallow the brown, devouring me like they want to strip me bare, tear me apart, destroy me.
And still, I can’t help myself. I know I’m playing a dangerous game, but when you’ve been in hell for years, the flames stop scorching.
He grabs my face with both hands now, rough and hot, his fingers locking around my chin and cheeks as if trying to mold my expression back into silence.
“You want to drive me insane, don’t you?” he spits out. “You want to provoke the monster, Marina? You want to see me snap? Is that it? See how far I’ll go—how much I’ll destroy for you?”
“And what are you gonna do, Matteo?” I rasp, slowly turning my face toward his, my lips brushing his for a second that sparks like gasoline catching fire. “What are you gonna do to me, huh? Because honestly…”
I drag my tongue slowly across my lips, and my lips rise in a knowing smile, “…All you’ve done so far is bark.”
He holds my face with both hands, and there’s not an ounce of gentleness in it. Not that I really expected any. Matteo isn’t made of calm. He’s the kind of man who loves with clenched fists, kisses as he bites, and fucks like it’s a war.
Then, something inside simply… snaps.
Matteo’s mouth crashes against mine like an explosion, raw, violent, desperate. There’s no prelude, no hesitation… just teeth and tongue and punishment, and it feels like he’s trying to erase every trace of Enzo with his lips alone.
I sink my nails into his arms, clawing through his shirt and dragging him closer, because this—this—is the only language we’ve ever spoken fluently. Rage and lust, pain and need, all tangled into something neither of us can survive, yet somehow, against all reason, we still crawl back to it.
He pulls my bottom lip between his teeth and bites, hard enough to draw a bit of blood, then licks it off like it’s a delicacy. I moan into his mouth, one of those broken sounds that says I hate him, I crave him, and I want to wreck him as much as he wants to ruin me.
“You really think I’d allow you to follow Cesare’s little plan, crawl to Bianchi, beg him, and open your legs for him…” His breath tastes like rage and cigarettes and something darker—something that has nothing to do with control and everything to do with possession. “While I sit back and watch like a good little dog?”
“You don’t have to allow anything, Matteo,” I snap, even as I arch into him, my thighs pressed so tightly together I’m shaking. “I’m not yours.”
He scoffs, “You think you stopped being mine just because I let you walk away?”
Matteo bites again, not my lip this time, but the edge of my jaw. And when I flinch, he growls into my skin as it fuels him… like he needs my reactions to keep breathing.
“I let you go. I fucking let you.” His voice breaks, the last word cracked wide open like an old wound he never let scab. But then, it drops a few tones, colder, more dangerous. “Because that’s what you do, isn’t it, Marina? You use people and don’t give a shit about the wreckage you leave behind.”