‘You can,’ Matteo said. ‘Well, you couldn’t swim to Kelibia but everyone is in the bar, people think you are here, and so you could leave tonight, and be in Rome by morning.’
‘I can’t leave my mother,’ Bella said, and then she rephrased it because she had had offers to do just that tonight. ‘I don’t want to leave my mother,’ she corrected.
‘You’d rather this life?’
‘Nobody wants this type of life,’ she said, and then threw him a look. ‘What would you know? You’re one of them.’
Matteo never gave away what he was thinking, he never really said much at all unless he had to. He saw her place the wine glass on her burning cheek to cool it and, no, he would not tell her that he knew plenty. Neither would he reveal that he had a one-way ticket out of hell in the morning. But tonight he decided to tell her a little of his past instead, in the hope it might make her leave. ‘I do know, though.’
She turned and looked at him.
‘I tried to leave once,’ Matteo admitted. ‘It was a couple of years ago—the night of the Natalia street party—and I hoped Malvolio would be too busy to notice I had gone until it was too late...’
‘I remember that night,’ Bella said, though she did not tell him yet just why she remembered it.
‘Earlier in the week I had told my brother that I’d had enough and that I was getting out.’
‘What did Dino say?’
‘Not much. Well, not much to me. He said plenty to Malvolio, though.’ Matteo was quiet for a long time before he spoke again. ‘There’s one road out of this place, Bella, and I used it. I got out of town and I made it to just past the river. I tried to hitchhike as I walked but no one stopped until...’
‘Malvolio?’
Matteo nodded, and, just as on that night, his face did not betray the fear that had gripped him as he’d watched that large red car pull up beside him. How, as Malvolio had opened his window to speak with him, he had glimpsed the gun beneath his jacket and Matteo had thought he would be left dead in the street.
‘What did he do?’
‘He told me to get in and we went for a drive.’ Every moment of that drive he had known that it might well be his last. ‘He took me to dinner—you know how he likes to pretend he is a reasonable man?’
Bella nodded.
‘I can think on my feet faster than anyone, Bella. I knew that if I told him the truth, I was finished. I knew that if I started grovelling and apologising then I’d be done for so, instead of showing him my fear, I showed him my anger...’
Bella frowned. She couldn’t imagine him scared, yet he had just admitted to fear, and neither could she imagine anyone getting angry with Malvolio and getting away with it.
‘I told him I was sick of being treated the same as all the others. I told him I was older than Dino, smarter than Dino and that I was more loyal to him than all the rest. I said that I wanted more respect, I wanted to be paid more than the others and to look smarter than the rest.’
‘He bought it?’
‘In part,’ Matteo said. ‘Now he gets some tailor from Milan over once a year and that is why Malvolio dresses like a golf player and that is why I look like a soccer star out on the pull.’
She laughed and he realised he was smiling as she did so.
‘I like how you dress,’ Bella said. ‘But, then, I love fashion.’
She looked at his smile and the shiver that ran down her arms wasn’t from fear or the slight cool breeze, it was that she was alone with him and his deep voice was beautiful.
‘He doesn’t fully trust me, though,’ Matteo admitted, and then he looked at Bella. ‘With reason.’
‘Why are you telling me this?’
‘I’m telling you because I do know how hard it is to get out of this place. There are few chances to do so—the night of the Natalia party I hoped was mine, but this night could be yours.’
‘That night, at the party, I was waiting for you...’
‘Why?’
‘I’ve liked you for a long time,’ Bella admitted, and she watched a small frown line form between his eyes. Matteo was used to women liking him but it was the way she admitted it so openly, so honestly that had him a touch taken back. ‘Didn’t you already know that?’ she asked.
‘No.’
‘You think my cheeks are always this pink?’ Bella laughed. ‘Then you must also assume that I have a stammer.’
‘I’ve never...’ He was about to say that he had never given her that much thought but then he found himself smiling again as he nodded. ‘Yes, I did notice you blush and mess up your words but I just thought you were very shy...’
‘No, I’m not in the least shy,’ she said. ‘I just get a little tongue-tied whenever you are around.’
‘Well, you’re certainly not tongue-tied now.’
She wasn’t, she realised. Perhaps because she was speaking now with the man she had always somehow known he was.
‘I’m still blushing, though.’
Her small provocation was unexpected, both welcome and unwelcome. Welcome to his body but not to his head, for he had brought her up here so that she could avoid all that.
‘You don’t have to do that, Bella.’
‘Do what?’
‘Play the game.’
It just didn’t feel as if she was.
As the phone in the room started ringing Bella gave a wry, hollow laugh.
‘They’ll be wanting to know why you’re not back down there—you should be finished with me by now.’
Matteo went in to answer and as he picked up the phone Bella closed her eyes when he told Gina that he was here for the night and to pass on the message to Malvolio. What he said was crude but it clearly appeased Malvolio because from the open French windows she heard the cheer go up from the bar below as undoubtedly the message was relayed.
‘Come inside,’ Matteo said.
‘Why?’ she asked. ‘So that we can eat the free nuts and drink the cheap wine? It doesn’t change the outcome, Matteo. You only delay the inevitable. Don’t you get it that you’re not saving me here? I’m not Talia with my children all gathered up by the back door and ready to get out.’
‘How do you know about that?’ Matteo frowned. ‘Talia would never tell anyone.’
‘Except perhaps her husband,’ Bella said, and then she smiled at Matteo’s frown. ‘My mother knows everyone’s business. Men tell her things that they would not dare speak of when they are in the bar.’ The smile slid from her face then. ‘Tomorrow night I’ll be back working, and guess what? It’s going to hurt a whole lot more than it would have with you.’
‘Don’t talk like that.’
‘Why not?’ she said. ‘It’s the truth.’ He opened his mouth to argue but she spoke over him. ‘Please, don’t suggest again that I leave. If you want to help me then...’
‘Then what?’
Bella stared out at the dark Mediterranean, to the escape route that she had always deep down known was an impossible one but at least it had kept hope alive. Tonight, though, she could have a part of that dream. Tonight, even if it was just a little while, one of her wishes could come true.
‘You could make love to me. I don’t want my first time to be rough...’ she said, and he closed his eyes and shook his head but she persisted. ‘I know what my future is going to be but I would like it to be different for my first time.’
‘You want me to break you in for others?’ Matteo sneered.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But I also want you to show me how good it could be.’
‘Should be.’
‘Not for the likes of me,’ she said, and she was not playing the martyr, she just knew how it was. ‘Are you a considerate lover, then?’ She smiled and so did Matteo, because his own ‘should be’ response had caught h
im by surprise.
‘No.’
‘It’s really not my lucky night, then, is it?’ Bella shrugged.
Why, he wondered, did she make him smile? There was something about her openness, born perhaps from colourful discussions with her mother, yet the tease to her voice was still somehow sweet.
‘Hey,’ Bella said, ‘maybe I could be like Gina—available just for you.’
Matteo looked at her with his near-black eyes and he was on the edge of telling her the truth—that in the morning he would be gone.
It was too dangerous to do that, though.
He didn’t really know Bella at all.
‘That’s not going to happen,’ he said instead.
‘So we just have tonight?’ she checked, and he nodded. ‘We could rewrite history, then.’
‘How?’
‘Perhaps you did come to the Natalia party after all. We could dance as we might have danced that night...’
‘I don’t dance,’ he said.
‘Neither do I.’ Bella shrugged but then she put down her glass and walked over and wrapped her arms around his neck, and for Matteo it was his last night on the edge of heaven, with Tunisia but a dream away. Maybe tonight he could dance, could make love, could give her the one night they suddenly both wanted.
‘Come inside, then,’ he said, and unwrapped her arms from him, and this time they were holding hands as they walked into the bedroom.
He closed the French windows behind them and he put on some music to drown out the sounds of the bar below, but he opened the drapes so the moon would later bathe them.
She had dreamt of this moment for ever, the moment that Matteo Santini took her nervous but wanting into his arms.
His fingermarks were still there on her cheek and it was a little bit swollen, and he hated how badly he had scared her. His hand was back on her cheek but gentle now. ‘You’re going to bruise...’
‘It was worth it for him to believe us,’ she said.
Malvolio would not believe this, though, she thought as his lips grazed hers.
No one would believe that the brooding, silent man could kiss so gently. The touch of his lips was so feather-light at first that even the scratch of his jaw felt soft to her.
It was, Bella decided, her first kiss because the rough one in the hall and elevator would never count. He was gentle and tender and there was barely any pressure on her mouth, just the soft caress of his lips, and when he pulled away his lips were as red as hers.
‘You’re wearing lipstick,’ Bella said, and he kissed her again, till their faces were smeared red and their tongues were hot.
The hows and whys that had brought them to this point no longer mattered as they danced their first dance, as they kissed first kisses, as they turned each other on slowly and made believe it was two years ago.
And so it was Christmas, and she pretended that she was sixteen and he had come to the street party and wasn’t out on the dark streets, looking to escape.
‘The street looked beautiful. The trees were all dressed in lights...’ She told him about all he had missed. Her voice was a little breathless and her breasts felt as if they had grown for they ached in her tight bra, and he seemed to know that because his hand took the strain of one of them.
‘What were you wearing that night?’ Matteo asked, as she rested her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes to the soft caress of his hand.
‘I had made a dress that was the colour ginger,’ Bella said.
‘You made it?’ he checked.
‘I made it with you in mind,’ she said. ‘You have no idea how beautiful that dress was. I tried make-up for the first time that night and when I went to go out my mother made me wash it off.’ She smiled at the memory. ‘I told her that that was rich, coming from her.’
‘What did she say to that?’
‘That if he liked me there would be no need for make-up and perfume.’ She moved from his shoulder to meet his gaze. ‘Then she asked me what his name was.’
‘Did you tell her?’
She nodded.
‘And what did she say?’
‘To be careful,’ Bella admitted. ‘Then she told me that perhaps you were not as bad as your brother...’ Their hips were swaying, his other hand was feeling her bottom through the dress and she was closer, not just physically but closer and safer than she had ever felt with another person. Oh, Bella loved her mother but Maria’s lifestyle meant that Bella had never ever really known how it felt to be truly safe.
Tonight for the first time she did.
She danced and leant on him and then they kissed some more. Her dress was thin and he loathed the padded bra that did not let him stroke her nipples so he slipped the straps of her dress down and she closed her eyes as he removed her bra, sure he would be disappointed.
He wasn’t. His thumb caressed her nipple and his palm was warm on her skin as they danced...but as he buried his mouth beneath her hair to kiss her neck he was honest. ‘I loathe that scent,’ Matteo said.
‘So do I.’
‘Let’s get rid of it, then.’
He ran the bath and then peeled off her dress and they danced in the bathroom for a while longer until the bath was full. Bella, in her underwear and high heels, Matteo still in his suit, and she saw that her make-up had smeared his shirt.
She liked how when he let her go he pulled up his sleeve and put his hand in the water and added more cold water and then he took her hand and she sat on the edge of the bath.
He did not look up as he unclipped her stockings and rolled them down, and she could hear a ragged edge to his breathing as he undid her shoes and undressed her some more.
He kissed the inside of one pale thigh as an apology for his earlier uninvited touch there and Bella’s legs were shaking as he kissed the other thigh the same way. She lifted her bottom just enough so that he could take down her panties and suspender belt and he knelt as she sat naked.
The room was warm and steamy and her legs were apart and her throat closed as she silently wished he would kiss her there. Bella knew, though, that if he did she would topple, for even gripping the sides of the bath she was barely steady as his kiss to her thigh deepened.
He could feel her shaking so he stood and took her hand and Bella was helped into a bath for the first time.
She liked it even more as she lay shoulder deep in bubbles and his eyes did not leave her face as he undressed.
‘You’re getting in?’ she asked as she watched him slip off his jacket and hang it behind the door.
‘I am,’ he said, his eyes never leaving her face. ‘I want to be with you rather than simply watching you.’
Bella lay back and she watched as he responded to the slow smile on her face with one of his own.
She had never seen him smile like that. Usually he was ice—his features held closed and his eyes either behind sunglasses or guarded. If he ever did smile, it was usually an arrogant one or a triumphant smirk, but tonight his smile was slow and sensual and for her alone.
He undressed slowly and it was suddenly important to Bella that he did. She had already put out of her mind what had taken place in the corridor but even aside from that, the Matteo she had heard about was neither tender, slow nor patient.
He was tonight.
She watched as he undid the buttons on the front of his shirt and then the sleeves and then he took it off. Bella wanted to reach out and touch his skin. She wanted her fingers on dark, flat nipples as his had been on hers. Soon they would touch but for now she took in the delicious view of his torso. He was masculine and raw in his beauty. Even his arms turned her on as she knew soon they would be wrapped around her and that they would be skin to skin. She watched the stretch of his muscles as he hung his shirt on a hook and her eyes fell on a long, very neat scar.
‘What happened?’ Bella asked.
‘A fight,’ he said, and then shook his head. ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’
He tossed aside his socks and shoes with far less care than his other clothes and she lay there, a dense feeling forming between her legs as he saved the best till last.
He slid open the buckle of his belt.
Too slowly for Bella for, beneath the fabric, she could see his erection bulging.
His tongue he held between his lips as he slid down the zipper.
Bella wasn’t even breathing.
The bathroom shrank, steam fogged the mirrors, even her shoulders and face, which were out of the water, were damp.
But her mouth was dry.
She licked her lips as he freed himself and, no, the rest of his clothes he did not hang up, he just stepped out of them.
He was always impressive dressed and yet he was perfection naked.
His calves were lean, his thighs were long and muscular and they would be hers to enjoy later, but all she could focus on now was his erection. Impressive, dark and long, and growing even as she looked, beneath the bubbly water her fists clenched. She lifted her knees as he approached, but not just to make room for him. It was a necessary motion because her thighs ached as they never had before.
He was so tall and had run the bath so deep that the water slipped over the edge as he joined her.
‘We don’t want to flood the bathroom,’ she said, loving the strength of his legs as they moved around the sides of her body and captured her like a vice.
‘We might end up crashing through the floor and into the bar,’ he said, and he laughed a deep, low laugh, and it was the first time she had heard it.
No one really heard it, Bella was sure, and that made her sad enough for it to show in her expression but he misread it.
‘Are you scared?’ he asked.
She shook her head. How could she possibly be scared with Matteo gazing into her eyes and his legs holding her body and his hands taking hers in his? Fear had no place here tonight.
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