Chapter 35 Thirty five
Elena's POV
Sleep didn't come easy. The paintings, his words, the charcoal smears I’d scrubbed from my skin only to find them etched in my memory, all buzzed under my skin. At 2 AM, I gave up. The silence of my room was a loud, waiting thing. I needed water. Space.
The kitchen was a cavern of shadows and stainless steel. The only light came from the digital clock on the oven. 2:07. I went to the sink, filling a glass.
I didn’t hear him come in. I just felt him. A shift in the air, a presence that warmed my back. I turned.
He stood there, silhouetted in the archway. He wore low-slung grey sweatpants and nothing else. His hair was messy, his jaw shadowed. He looked rumpled and real and utterly dangerous. His eyes found me, taking in my thin silk camisole, my shorts, my bare feet on the cold tile.
No words. None were possible. The charge between us was a live wire in the hum of the refrigerator.
He crossed the space in three silent strides. His hands went to my waist, lifting me as if I weighed nothing, setting me on the cold, hard marble of the center island. The shock of the cold surface against my bare thighs made me gasp. His mouth swallowed the sound.
The kiss was not gentle. It was frantic, hungry, a direct conduit for all the sleepless, coiled energy between us. His tongue swept into my mouth, claiming, demanding. My hands flew to his shoulders, feeling the solid heat of his skin, the bunching of muscle. This was need, pure and simple.
His hands slid from my waist up my bare thighs, pushing the fabric of my shorts aside. His touch was sure, intimate. There was no hesitation, no request. He knew what I wanted, what I’d come here for without knowing it myself. His fingers found me, and I was already ready for him, soaked and aching. A broken moan tore from my throat.
He captured the sound with his mouth, his other arm banding around my back, holding me flush against him as his fingers worked a devastating, perfect rhythm. The cold marble beneath me, the heat of his chest against mine, the skilled, relentless motion of his hand it was too much. Pleasure coiled, tight and urgent, deep in my core. I buried my face in the curve of his neck, my cries muffled against his skin as I bit down to stay silent.
The climax hit me fast and hard, a shocking, silent detonation that shattered my bones and stole my breath. I convulsed against him, my fingers digging into his back, my entire world narrowing to the pulse between my legs and the solid strength of the man holding me together.
He held me through the tremors, his own breathing ragged in my ear. When the last wave passed, I went limp, a puppet with cut strings, my forehead resting on his shoulder. He didn’t move his hand away. He kept it there, a warm, claiming cradle, as my breathing slowly evened out.
He simply held me. My legs dangled over the edge of the counter, his body between them. His face was buried in my hair. We stayed like that for long minutes, in the dim light, with only the hum of the refrigerator for company. The domestic stillness of the late hour, the kitchen smells, the ordinary darkness was more intimate than any grand declaration. This was what it looked like to need someone in the quiet, lonely middle of the night.
And the guilt came then, seeping in like the cold from the marble into my bones. This is what it feels like to cheat on a monster.
But as his hand gently stroked my back, as his lips pressed a soft, absent kiss to my temple, the question followed, inevitable and devastating: Why does it feel so right?
Matteo's POV
Insomnia was a familiar foe. Tonight, it was painted in gold and gray. Her painting haunted me. The truth of her vision was a brand. I prowled the lower floors, a ghost in my own house, trying to outwalk the restlessness.
The kitchen was empty. Then it wasn’t. She was at the sink, a silhouette of silk and long legs in the gloom. A dream made flesh. The sight of her bare shoulders, the defenseless line of her neck unraveled the last of my control. Strategy evaporated. There was only want.
I didn’t speak. Language was for daylight, for games. This was darker, simpler. The lift onto the counter was instinct. The cold marble, the heat of her through the silk the contrast was perfect. Her gasp was a prize.
The kiss was a conflagration. All the pent-up tension from the studio, from the concert, from every moment of forced restraint, poured into it. She tasted of mint and sleep and surrender. Her hands on my shoulders weren’t pushing away; they were pulling me closer, anchoring herself to the storm.
My hands on her thighs were claiming what was already mine. Finding her ready, wet for me, was a savage triumph. Her moan was a drug. I swallowed it, wanting her sounds inside me. I felt her tighten around my fingers, her body bowing into mine. When her climax took her, the violent, helpless shudders against my chest were the most beautiful thing I’d ever felt. I held her through it, my own need a painful, throbbing second thought.
After, as she went boneless against me, I just held her. The quiet was profound. The hum of the appliance, the feel of her damp cheek on my shoulder, her slow, settling breaths. This was not part of any plan. This was domestic, real, and it undid me more completely than any calculated seduction ever could.
I kept my face in her hair, breathing her in. The guilt would be coming for her now. I could feel the shift in her breathing, the slight tension returning to her limbs. She was thinking of the monster, of the contract.
But she hadn’t stopped me. She hadn’t said no. She had clung to me and shattered in my arms. That was the only answer that mattered.
Her silent question hung in the cool air: Why does it feel so right?
Because it is right, gattina, I thought, my hand tracing slow circles on her back. Because the monster is a fiction. Because I am the only real thing in this house of lies, and your body, your stubborn, passionate soul, knows it.
I didn’t say it. I just held her in the 2 AM silence, letting the rightness of it sink into her bones, hoping it would drown out the guilt. The battle was no longer for her compliance. It was for her peace. And in this quiet kitchen, holding her spent and trusting in my arms, I felt closer to winning it than I ever had before.