Chapter 16 Sixteen
Elena's POV
The days bled together in a haze of tense proximity. He was everywhere. In the library when I sought a book. Walking the garden path just as I finished my sketch. A silent, magnetic presence at the far end of the dining hall during my lonely meals.
It was a special kind of torture. My body remembered his. Every glance, every low word, was a spark on dry tinder. I hated him. I craved him. The two feelings were a knot in my chest I couldn’t unravel.
I started avoiding the sunroom. It felt too much like his territory now. I took to walking the inner courtyards after dinner, when the shadows were long and deep.
He found me there. Of course he did.
One evening, in a courtyard strung with wisteria, he simply materialized from the gloom, blocking the path back to the house. The air was thick with the scent of night-blooming jasmine and danger.
“You think of him, don’t you?” His voice was a quiet murmur in the dark. “The old man in the dark. Your phantom groom.”
I tried to step around him. He moved, just enough to cage me against the cool stone wall. “I try not to think of him at all,” I snapped.
His hand came up. Not to hurt. His thumb traced the line of my lower lip, a feather-light, devastating touch. A bolt of pure, shocking lightning shot straight through me, pooling low in my belly.
“Think of me instead,” he breathed.
And then his mouth was on mine.
The kiss wasn’t gentle. It was slow, deep, and devastatingly skilled. It was a conquest and a seduction all at once. His taste, the feel of his lips, the hard press of his body against mine, was a key turning in a lock I’d sworn was sealed shut. Every memory of our night together came flooding back, a wave of heat that drowned my anger.
My body betrayed me. Utterly. A soft, helpless sound escaped my throat. My hands, which had come up to push him away, instead fisted in the front of his shirt. For one catastrophic second, I melted into him. I kissed him back. I was starving, and he was a feast.
The horror of my own response hit me like ice water.
I shoved him away, hard. We broke apart, both gasping for air. My lips felt swollen, branded.
“Don’t,” I choked out, the word trembling.
He didn’t look angry. He looked… satisfied. A slow, predator’s smile touched his mouth. His eyes gleamed in the dim light.
“You already are,” he said softly.
He turned and walked back into the shadows of the house, leaving me leaning against the wall, my legs shaking, my heart pounding a frantic, shameful rhythm. The scent of him was all over me. The taste of him was on my tongue.
The worst part? He was right.
Matteo's POV
The waiting was its own pleasure. Watching her try to navigate a world I filled. Seeing the war in her eyes every time she saw me. She wanted to hate me. She wanted me. The conflict was a beautiful thing to orchestrate.
I gave her space to miss me. I let her avoid the sunroom. I let her think she was choosing new territory in the courtyards. I owned those, too.
Cornering her in the wisteria courtyard was deliberate. The shadows, the intimacy of the scent, the dead end. She was a rabbit in a snare, all flashing eyes and tense energy.
I mentioned the old man. I wanted the contrast sharp in her mind. The cold, unknown monster versus the hot, present reality of me.
When I touched her lip, I felt the jolt that went through her. It mirrored the one that went through me. The chemistry wasn’t a game. It was a live wire. But I could still play with it.
The kiss was a test. A claim. I poured every bit of skill, every ounce of the craving I’d banked since she walked out of my penthouse, into it. I wanted to wipe every other thought from her mind.
For a second, I succeeded. Her surrender was sweet and hot and real. Her hands clutching my shirt, the little sound she made was pure victory. It was oblivion.
Then she shoved me. The rejection was physical, sharp. It should have angered me.
But it didn’t. Because I’d felt her. I’d tasted her honest, unwanted passion. She could push me away, but she couldn’t push away the truth now vibrating in the air between us.
“Don’t,” she gasped, trying to reclaim control.
I smiled. I couldn’t help it. The predator in me was fed and happy. “You already are.”
Walking away was the hardest thing I’d done in weeks. Every instinct screamed to push her against that wall and finish what we’d started. To make her admit it with her body since her words would lie.
But that would be a defeat. That would be need, not strategy.
I needed her to come to me. I needed her to be so tangled up in wanting me that the idea of the old Don became ridiculous. I needed her to choose the devil she knew.
Back in my study, the taste of her was still on my lips. My hands weren’t quite steady. She was getting under my armor. The game was thrilling, but the stakes were shifting. It wasn't just about winning her anymore.
It was about the terrifying possibility that I might need her to win me, too.
The sly, calculating part of my mind was already plotting the next move. But the man, the one who still felt the ghost of her fists in his shirt, just stared into the dark and wondered what it would be like to have her come to him willingly.
Not as a prisoner. Not as a rebel.
But as his.