A Hunger for the Forbidden (11 page)

His lips still tasted of her skin. “You.” It was an easy answer, he found.

She put her hands on his face and drew up on her tiptoes. Her kiss was deep. Filled with the need and passion that echoed inside of his body. He wrapped his arm around her waist and relished every lush detail of holding her. Her soft curves, those generous breasts pressed against his chest. He slipped his hand over her bottom, squeezed her tightly. She was everything a woman should be. Total perfection.

She kissed his jaw, her lips light on his skin, hot and so very tempting. She made him want more, stripped him of his patience. He had always been a patient lover, the kind of lover who worked to ensure his partner’s pleasure before taking his own. Because he could. Because even if he took pleasure with his body, his actions were dictated by his mind.

But she challenged that. Made him want so badly to lose himself. To think of nothing but her. Alessia. He was hungry for her in a way he had never hungered for anyone or anything.

He slid his hands over the bodice of her nightgown, cupped her breasts through the thin fabric and found she had nothing on underneath. He could feel her nipples, hard and scarcely veiled by the gauzy material.

He lowered his head and circled one of the tightened
buds with his tongue, drew it deep into his mouth. It wasn’t enough. He needed to taste her.

Her name pounded through his head in time with the beat of his heart. His need a living, breathing thing.

He gripped the straps of her gown and tugged hard, the top giving way. It fell around her waist, exposing her to him. He smoothed his hand over her bare skin, then lowered his head again, tasting her, filling himself with her.

He dropped to his knees and took the fabric in his hands, tugging it down the rest of the way, ignoring the sound of tearing fabric.

“I liked that nightgown,” she said.

“It was beautiful.” He kissed her stomach. “But it was not as beautiful as you are.”

“You could have asked me to take it off.”

“No time,” he said, tracing a line from her belly button down to the edge of her panties. “I needed to taste you.”

Her response was a strangled “Oh.”

“Everywhere.” He tugged at the sides of her underwear and drew them down her legs, tossing them to the side. He kissed her hip bone and she shuddered. “I think you should lay down for me,
cara
.”

“Why is that?”

“All the better to taste you,
cara mia
.”

“Can’t you do it from where you are?”

“Not the way I want to.”

She complied, her movements slow, shaky. It was a sharp reminder of how innocent she still was.

You let me hold on to some of my innocence
.

Her words echoed in his mind as she sank to the ground in front of him, lying back, resting on her elbows, her legs bent at the knees.

No, he would not allow himself to be painted as some kind of hero. He might have saved her innocence then, but he had spent the past months ensuring that what remained was stripped from her. And tonight, he would continue it.

Keeping her bound to him would continue it.

It was too late to turn back now. Too late to stop. He put his hand on her thigh and parted her legs gently, sliding his fingers over the slickness at the entrance of her body. “Yes,” he said, unable to hold the word back, a tremor of need racking his body.

He lowered his head to take in her sweetness, to try to satiate the need he felt for her. A need that seemed to flow through his veins along with his blood, until he couldn’t tell which one was sustaining him. Until he was sure he needed both to continue breathing.

He was lost in Alessia. Her flavor, her scent.

He pushed one finger deep inside her while he continued to lavish attention on her with his lips and
tongue. She arched up against him, a raw cry escaping her lips. And he took it as her approval, making his strokes with mouth and hands firmer, more insistent.

She drove her fingers deep into his hair, tugging hard, the pain giving him the slight distraction he needed to continue. Helping him hold back his own need.

He slipped a second finger inside of her and her muscles pulsed around him, her body getting stiff beneath him, her sound of completion loud, desperate. Satisfying to him on a level so deep he didn’t want to examine it too closely.

He didn’t have time to examine it because now he needed her. Needed his own release, a ferocity that had him shaking. He rose up, pausing to kiss her breasts again, before taking possession of her mouth.

He sat up and tugged his shirt over his head, shrugging his slacks down as quickly as possible, freeing his aching erection.

“Are you ready?” he asked. He needed the answer to be yes.

“Yes.”

He looked at her face, at Alessia, and as he did, he pushed inside the tight heat of her body. He nearly lost it then, a cold sweat breaking out over his skin,
his muscles tense, pain coursing through him, everything in him trying to hold back. To make this last.

“Matteo.”

It was her voice that broke him. Her name on his lips. He started to thrust hard into her, and no matter how he told himself to take it slow, take it gentle, he couldn’t. He was a slave to her, to his need.

Finesse was lost. Control was lost.

She arched against him every time he slid home, a small sigh of pleasure on her lips. He lowered his head, buried his face in her neck, breathing her in. Lilacs and skin. And the one woman he would always know. The one woman who mattered.

Sharp nails dug into the flesh on his shoulder, but this time, the pain didn’t bring him back. He lost himself, let his orgasm take him over, a rush of completion that took him under completely. He was lost in a wave, and burning. Burning hot and bright, nothing coming to put him out. To give him any relief. All he could do was hang on and weather it. Try to survive a pleasure so intense it bordered on destructive.

And when it was over, she was there, soft arms wrapped around him, her scent surrounding him.

“Will it always be like this?” Alessia’s voice was broken with sharp, hard breaths.

He didn’t have an answer for her. He couldn’t speak. Couldn’t think. And he hoped to God it wouldn’t always
be like this because there was no way his control could withstand it. And at the same time he knew he couldn’t live with her and deny himself her body.

He would keep it under control. He would keep his heart separate from his body. He’d done it with women all his life. He’d done it when his father had asked him to learn the family business. The night his father had forced him to dole out punishment to a man in debt to the Corretti family.

He had locked his heart in ice and kept himself from feeling. His actions unconnected to anything but his mind.

He could do it again. He would.

“We should go inside,” he said, sitting up, his breathing still ragged.

“Yeah. I’m pretty sure I have grass stains in … places.”

He turned to her, a shocked laugh bursting from him. A real laugh. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d laughed and meant it. “Well, you should be glad I made quick work of your gown, then.”

“You tore it,” she said, moving into a standing position and picking up her shredded garment.

“You liked it.”

He could see her smile, even in the dim light. “A little.”

There was a strange lightness in his chest now, a
feeling that was completely foreign to him. As though a rock had been taken off his shoulders. “I’m hungry,” she said.

She started walking back toward the house, and he kept his eyes trained on her bare backside, on the twin dimples low on her back. She was so sexy he was hard again already.

He bent and picked his underwear up from the ground, tugging the black boxer briefs on quickly and following her inside. “Do you want to eat?” he asked.

“Yes, I do.” She wandered through the maze of rooms, still naked, and he followed.

“And what would you like?”

“Pasta. Have you got an apron?”

“Have I got an apron?”

“You have a cook, yes?”

“Yes.”

“Does he have an apron?”

“She.” He opened the pantry door and pulled a short red apron off a hook.

Alessia smiled and slipped the apron over her head, tying it tight. She was a lot taller than the little round woman he’d hired to cook his meals. The apron came down just to the tops of her thighs and it tied in the back, exposing her body to him from that angle.

“Dinner and a show,” he said.

She tossed him a playful glare, then started riffling
through the cabinets. “What kind of pasta have you got?”

“Fresh in the fridge,” he said.

She opened up the stainless-steel fridge and bent down, searching for a few moments before popping up with a container that held pappardelle pasta and another that had marinara sauce.

She put a pan of water on the stove, then put the sauce in another pan to reheat, and leaned back against the counter, her arms crossed beneath her breasts.

“Didn’t you ever hear that a watched pot never boils?”

“No. Who says that?”

“People do,” he said.

“Did your mom say it to you?”

“No. A cook we had, I think.”

“Oh. It’s the kind of thing my mother probably would have said to me someday. If she had lived.”

“You miss her still.”

“I always will. But you lost your father.”

Guilt, ugly, strangling guilt, tightened in his chest. “Yes.”

“So you understand.”

He shook his head slowly. “I’m not sure I do.”

“You don’t miss him?”

“Never.”

“I know your father was hard to deal with. I know he was … I know he was shady like my father but surely you must—”

“No,” he said.

“Oh.”

“Will you miss your father?”

“I think so. He’s not a wonderful man, but he’s the only father I have.”

“I would have been better off without one than the one that I had.”

Alessia moved to put the pasta into the pan. “You say that with a lot of certainty.”

“Trust me on this, Alessia.”

They stood in silence until the pasta was done. Matteo got bowls out of the cupboard and set them on the counter and Alessia dished them both a bowl of noodles and sauce.

“Nothing like a little post … you know, snack,” she said, lifting her bowl to her lips, her eyes glued to his chest. “You’re barely dressed.”

“You should talk,” he said.

She looked down. “I’m dressed.”

“Turn around.” She complied, flashing her bare butt to him. “That’s not dressed, my darling wife.”

“Are you issuing a formal complaint?”

“Not in the least. I prefer you this way.”

“Well, the apron is practical. Don’t go tearing it off
me if you get all impatient.” She took a bit of pasta and smiled, her grin slightly impish. It made it hard to breathe.

There was something so normal about this. But it wasn’t a kind of normal he knew. Not the kind he’d ever known. He wasn’t the sort of man who walked barefoot in the grass and then ate pasta at midnight in his underwear.

He’d never had a chance to be that man. He wondered again at what it would be like if all the things of the world could simply fall away.

“Matteo?”

“Yes?”

“I lost you for a second. Where were you?”

“Just thinking.”

“Mmm.” She nodded. “I’m tempted to ask you what about but I sort of doubt you’d want to tell me.”

“About my father,” he said, before he could stop himself.

“You really don’t miss him?”

“No.” A wall of flame filled his mind. An image of the warehouse, burning. “Never.”

“My father has mainly ignored my existence. The only time he’s ever really acknowledged me is if he needs something, or if he’s angry.”

Rage churned in Matteo’s stomach. “Did he hit you?”

“Yes. Not beatings or anything, but if I said something that displeased him, he would slap my face.”

“He should feel very fortunate he never did so in front of me.”

Alessia was surprised at the sudden change in Matteo’s demeanor. At the ice in his tone. For a moment, they’d actually been getting along. For a moment, they’d been connecting with clothes on, and that was a rarity for the two of them.

He was willing to try. He’d told her that. And he would be faithful. Those were the only two promises she required from him. Beyond that, she was willing to take her chances.

Willing to try to know the man she’d married. Past her fantasy of him as a hero, as her white knight, and as the man he truly was. No matter what that might mean.

“I handled it,” she said.

“It was wrong of him.”

She nodded. “I know. But I was able to keep him from ever hitting one of the other kids and that just reinforced why I was there. Yes, I bore the brunt of a lot of it. I had to plan parties and play hostess, I had to take the wrath. But I’ve been given praise, too.”

“I was given praise by my father sometimes, too,” Matteo said. There was a flatness to his tone, a darkness in his words that made her feel cold. “He spent
some time, when I was a bit older, teaching me how to do business like a Corretti. Not the business we presented to the world. The clean, smooth front. Hotels, fashion houses. All of that was a cover then. A successful cover in its own right, but it wasn’t the main source of industry for our family.”

“I think … I mean, I think everyone knows that.”

“Yes, I’m sure they do. But do you have any idea how far-reaching it was? How much power my father possessed? How he chose to exercise it?”

She shook her head, a sick weight settling in her stomach. “What did he do, Matteo? What did he do to you?”

“To me? Nothing. In the sense that he never physically harmed me.”

“There are other kinds of harm.”

“Remember I told you I wasn’t a criminal? That’s on a technicality. It’s only because I was never convicted of my crimes.”

“What did he do to you, Matteo?” Her stomach felt sick now, and she pushed her bowl of food across the counter, making her way to where Matteo was standing.

“When I was fifteen he started showing me the ropes. The way things worked. He took me on collection calls. We went to visit people who owed him money. Now, my father was only ever involved on the
calls where people owed him a lot of money. People who were in serious trouble with him. Otherwise, his men, his hired thugs, paid the visits.”