Ache For You

46

When we enter through a small wooden side door into the main part of the building, a laugh unexpectedly bursts out of me and echoes up into the rafters.

Matteo glances back at me.

“Total shithole,” I say with a straight face.

He turns away, but not before I see his smile.

We walk, and walk, and walk. The place is a maze of marble and stone and hanging tapestries, heavily carved wood furniture and gilt mirrors, flowers spilling from porcelain urns. We pass what I decide to call the Wall of Death, which features a variety of medieval axes, swords, spears, and other items designed to deprive a person of life in the most painful of ways in a giant glass cabinet lit from underneath just to make it all the more creepy.

“You grew up here?” I mutter under my breath, unable to imagine a young child wandering around this place. It’s a miracle he didn’t accidentally kill himself running into one of the thousand sharp edges everywhere or falling down and cracking open his skull on the slippery and unforgivingly hard marble floor.

“When I wasn’t away at boarding school.”

There’s a dark undertone in his voice that suggests boarding school wasn’t all fun and games. I want to ask him about it but am distracted by the smell of baking bread. It seems we’re headed toward a kitchen. I hear women laughing and the sound of clanging pans. Then we pass through an open arched doorway into an enormous room that makes the word kitchen seem insufficient.

There are bread ovens and two wood-burning fireplaces and a long sink built right into the thick stone walls. Three large oak tables command the center space on the floor. There’s a hearth so large it could fit several cauldrons, and a long row of shelves filled with pantry goods.

The two women I heard laughing fall silent when we walk in. Plump and grandmotherly with identical uniforms of black with starched white aprons, they could be sisters.

In unison, they curtsey.

“Mio signore.”

I barely know any Italian, but I do know they just called Matteo “My lord.”

When I snort, he slants me an irritated look. He says something to the ladies, gesturing toward the stainless-steel refrigerator on the other side of the room. Then he nods at them in farewell and leads me away as they gape after us in surprise.

As soon as we’re out of earshot, I snicker. “Where are you taking me, my lord?”

He’s still holding my hand, which he uses to pull me around a corner. Then he whirls on me and presses me against the wall.

Shocked, I stare up at him. His eyes are dark, and that muscle in his jaw is jumping.

I’m in trouble.

He says roughly, “If it were up to me, I’d be taking you to bed and putting that mouth of yours to good use. Now I can see why your attitude is so bad—there’s no way in hell that boy you were going to marry could ever satisfy a woman like you.”

His blistering gaze drops to my mouth.

Surely he must be able to hear the scream of sheer joy my uterus is making. It’s so loud I’m deafened for a moment.

My body erupts into flames. I can’t catch my breath. My armpits go damp, and so do my panties. The wall is cool and hard against my back, but Matteo is all heat against my front. Heat and muscle and palpable desire.

My hands are somehow flattened against his stomach. His hands are flattened on the wall on either side of my head. Neither of us moves, except for our chests, which are both heaving.

“You think you can do better?”

It’s out of my mouth before I have any idea I’m going to say it, a husky whisper that sounds like I’m auditioning for a role in a porno. Apparently my uterus has taken control of all my bodily functions because though I should be pushing him away, what I really want to do is let him show me exactly what his eyes are saying he wants to do to me.

All the dirty, wonderful things.

He lowers his head and puts his mouth next to my ear. “Bella,” he chides. “You know I can.” Then he takes my earlobe into his mouth and gently suckles it as if it’s my c******s.

I almost die from the blast of lust that explodes inside my body. His mouth is wet and soft, his breath down my neck is hot, his stomach under my hands is as hard as steel. The little gasp that leaves my lips makes him chuckle.

He whispers, “Don’t you?” and bites me on the neck.

It’s not hard, not enough to break the skin or even leave a mark, just enough to be dominant. To let me know that he’s the man. He’d be in control of whatever we did in bed, and he’d make sure I f*****g loved every second of it.

It’s a good thing my knees are locked because there’s no way they’d be holding me up otherwise. He’s turned my bones to gelatin.

He shifts his weight forward so I know he’s as aroused as I am. I feel every long, thick inch of him, and exhale a breath that inconveniently sounds exactly like a moan.

Matteo takes my face in his hands. I take fistfuls of his shirt. He holds me there against the wall with his hard c**k pressed into my crotch and looks deep into my eyes.

“Don’t you.”

This time it’s not a question. It’s a promise and a dare and above all an invitation. An invitation to say yes, to admit I know that if I had s*x with him, he’d ruin me for all other men. That I know he’d pay close attention to my every arch and moan and shudder, that he’d read my body like a book and make it sing like a violin under his patient, plying hands.