He looked at her hands, pale and slender in his, and then he let them go and picked up a cloth when she wanted his kiss. Her lips moved towards him but he moved his head back.
‘Patience, Bella.’
‘I have none with you.’
‘Well, I’m going to teach it to you. Come here, little panda...’
He very carefully started to remove her make-up. The lipstick he had already taken care of with his mouth and she closed her eyes as he removed the streaked eyeliner and mascara and painted her eighteen and innocent again.
He was tender and yet it was so sensually done that her hands could not stay still beneath the water so she explored his thighs, feeling their power and stroking the lean muscle while resisting her true desire to touch him more intimately.
He dipped the cloth in the water again and now, as he removed the last traces of her foundation, her fingers could resist no more—they dusted his thick erection and she watched his jaw clench slightly and her eyes told him it had been no accident.
Her hands then told him the same as she held him more firmly, stroking him between her two hands as he continued on his mission to strip her of her armour.
He soaped her neck with the cloth but he was having trouble concentrating as one of her hands slipped lower and held the weight of his balls as she stroked him closer to the edge.
Her smile was pure decadence and so was his as he pushed her back. Her hands let go of their treasure and he deftly lifted her hips and pulled her towards him so that her hair fell into the water. She floated for a blissful moment as he moved her calves to his shoulders and the view for Matteo was pure temptation.
She came up and rested her arms on the edge of the bath, taking her sex from his immediate view, and he moved her hips further down so she could feel his erection press against her. She nearly died at the lust in his eyes.
Matteo had intended to take things more slowly—to take his time with washing her hair—but now that he’d seen the prettiest of pink it was his patience that had run out.
He hauled himself up and climbed out and then lifted her dripping wet body and carried her through to the bed.
He wanted to take her now but he had to taste her first so he knelt down on the floor and dragged her so that her bottom was at the edge of the bed.
Bella lay dizzy. The fan blew air and cooled her damp body and yet her sex was on fire as he parted her thighs and her legs made themselves at home on his shoulders. He splayed her intimate lips with his thumbs and exposed her just a touch more indecently.
Matteo was neither slow nor tender now. He might have teased her with kisses to her thigh, he might have lingered a little longer with his eyes, but a sudden moan of want and frustration from Bella—a sob that gave immediate consent—had Matteo burying his face.
Nothing could have prepared her for the sensations that his mouth delivered. She was wet, not just from the bath, or his tongue, but from her own need.
Her fingers were in his hair, both pressing him in and pushing him away, and her head thrashed on the damp sheet.
He petted her, he whetted her, he had full sex with her with his mouth.
She would have sat up if she were not falling into the abyss.
Or shout out if her jaws would only open.
When she came, it almost finished him too.
To feel her pulse to his mouth had Matteo reach down to stroke himself, he was so close, but he halted because there was a better pleasure to be had.
Still tasting her, his hand patted the bed, feeling his way to the bedside table where condoms had been so thoughtfully placed.
‘We don’t need them...’ Bella gasped, for she had gone on the Pill as a back-up, knowing that this night might arrive.
‘You always—’
‘We’re dating tonight,’ she breathed, and it was enough for now, for they were back in the moment, just a couple craving each other.
She moved up the bed and he came over where she lay, still trying to gather her breath.
He kissed her again, his mouth wet from her, his body so hard for her as he butted at her tight entrance. His hand moved down and he held himself, to allow for more precision.
It hurt, even with Matteo trying to be gentle, but as he seared in Bella let out a sob and he gave her a moment and felt her shallow breaths on his cheeks as she attempted to acclimatise.
He held himself there and she thought how the receding pain would lead to bliss.
Then his hand moved away and he drove in fully. Had his weight not come down on her she might have twisted away or pushed him because the hurt was so intense.
He knew she was hurting and so he loved her more slowly. He waited, with patience he had not known that he possessed, until she relaxed a touch around him.
Her thighs loosened, her head cleared and she opened her eyes to his.
She gave a small nod, she sought his lips and thanked him with a kiss, and now when he started to move her fingers, which had dug into his shoulders, loosened their grip and she let him take over and take her to places she had not known existed.
He was incredibly diligent. When she tensed he slowed, when she moaned he persisted, and persisted at the very point where her pleasure seemed to gather towards the most exquisite peak.
Bella tasted his neck and the salt of his shoulder and when still he carried on she could taste no more because her mouth was gasping in air. As she started to come, as her body turned rigid, her breath shallow on his cheek, she was shocked at the intensity of the peak and was just falling into pleasure when he forced her higher. To feel the very controlled Matteo so unleashed and relentless made Bella shout out.
She loved this side to him, the slight roughness, the pursuit of his pleasure, and then the shudder as he shot into her and she came again. She simply slipped into the next falling, holding onto him, tumbling with him so they hit back to earth together, kissing on a soft mattress, lost with each other, having escaped from the world.
Through the night they made love and then both lay there silently dreading the morning, talking to each other, getting to know each other as the moments counted down.
He told her how he wished he’d seen her in the ginger dress she’d made.
‘I’ve still got it,’ she said, and she wished, how she wished that he would suggest that soon he see it.
That maybe later, when she wasn’t working, he might suggest they go out, that she might wear the same dress for him...
But Matteo said nothing and Bella was starting to understand her mother’s words when finally he spoke.
‘I bet you would have looked beautiful,’ he said.
She belonged in the bedroom now, Bella thought.
She shrugged away the hurt with casual words. ‘Cut the cloth right and any figure can be beautiful,’ she said. ‘I tried to get into some design courses but...’ She shook her head. ‘Maybe I’m not as good as I think I am.’
‘You’re probably better,’ he said.
‘What would you do if you could do anything?’
He was about to find out, Matteo knew. In a few short hours he’d be away from here for ever.
The light was starting to filter in. Morning, whether they were ready or not, was arriving and Matteo climbed out of the bed and opened the French windows.
The party below was over. Bordo Del Cielo lay silent and the only sound was the ocean.
‘I love this place,’ Bella said. ‘I know there are so many bad things that go on here but there is so much beauty too.’
She told him about the ancient baths, which was her favourite place in the world. ‘Sometimes I pretend that I was born then, that I lived then, that the baths are still alive.’
‘I’ve never been,’ he admitted.
‘We could go there,’ Bella pushed, trying to
pretend that all they had found last night existed, that it didn’t end here and now. ‘We could take a picnic, just spend the day exploring...’
‘A picnic?’ His voice was scathing. It was not the sort of thing he would do or had ever done.
‘Some wine,’ Bella said. ‘We could pretend...’
He glanced over but she was staring out at the scenery and his head tightened because he was picturing himself in a place he had never been—exploring with Bella, spending a day doing nothing but being with her.
‘Is there any better view?’ she asked, but he didn’t answer as he headed to the shower.
It wasn’t a view to die for, Matteo thought.
Or kill for.
He showered, his intention to dress and go. He didn’t know how to leave her, yet there was no way that he could stay.
Matteo wanted to make something of himself. He was sick of the crime and depravity and knew that as of today his role became more serious. He wanted a future, a perfect one, a clean one, to remove himself completely from his past.
Instead of dressing, though, he wrapped a towel around his hips and went into the bedroom, where Bella was still gazing out at the view.
Her hair, which was usually straight, was knotted and wavy, there a touch of mascara that he must have missed smudged beneath her eyes and her smile was waiting for him.
If ever there was a moment he might regret, this wasn’t one of them. It was one Matteo might later question—because instead of dressing and leaving he dropped the towel and got into the bed and took her in his arms and she rested her head on his chest.
It would be his last day here for ever, perhaps—if he returned there would be a bullet waiting with his name on it.
He lay there thinking for a long time and so too did Bella.
All she had wanted was one perfect night and now that she had known one, it made her future somehow worse. She knew she was breaking the deal she had pushed for—one night of making love.
He had given her more than she had asked for and she knew she had to play fair and accept things when he walked away.
Her hand was idly exploring him, stroking his flat stomach and moving the snake of hair in the wrong direction, and the sensation for Matteo must be just right because she could see him hardening and her mouth started to kiss his chest as her hand moved down.
‘Bella,’ he said finally, ‘I have to go soon but first we need to speak.’
‘I know that you have to go,’ she said. ‘But before you do...’
It was her acceptance of him, her lack of demands, that she would kiss him so readily even as he prepared to walk away, that sealed things for Matteo.
He didn’t care if it was illogical to feel like this after only one night. All he knew was that he could no more leave her behind than Bella could leave her mother.
Her mouth moved further down and met with his growing erection.
‘Bella,’ Matteo said, ‘you’re coming with me.’
She laughed, her mind not really on the conversation. Certainly she had not known that Matteo had plans to leave and so she corrected the brief miscommunication as she continued her brave kiss, felt his hand move to her head and whispered words that had made him moan.
‘No, you’re the one who will be coming.’
He tasted soapy and clean and he remained patient. Bella looked up once to find him watching as she took him deeper into her mouth.
Tentatively her tongue explored him, scared of her teeth, that she was doing it wrong, but his fingers tightened in her hair.
‘That’s it...’ he said, when she did not dare go deeper, so she stroked his base with her hand as her tongue continued its exploration.
She remembered how last night he had simply devoured her and growing bolder she started to do the same.
She knelt up and he played with one small breast, delivering gentle twists and pinches as her mouth did the same. The hand on her head exerted just a touch more pressure and yet she resisted and he gave up trying to guide things, to rush things, he just accepted the rare pleasure of an unskilled yet willing mouth.
When he started to come it took him by surprise, and the thrusts and moans from him served as only the briefest of warning. Bella held him alive in her hand, tasting and licking, and that it wasn’t enough pressure for him only made his orgasm all the more intense.
‘Bella,’ he said as she came back to lie by his side, and he was so glad that she did because he could see the confusion in her eyes as he said, ‘I’m leaving this morning and you’re coming with me.’
‘I—’
He didn’t wait for her to say that she couldn’t; he ended that conflict then and there.
‘Your mother too. We’re getting out of Bordo Del Cielo.’
CHAPTER TEN
BELLA SAT UNSEEING as the morphine infusion dripped into her mother’s thin arm.
Her mind was back on that morning—and all the hope that had carried her home.
That Matteo had said that Maria could come with them had meant everything to her. Not just that it gave her a means to leave but that he had accepted the whole of her heart—the love she had for her mother was a part of Bella.
And, too, he had accepted her mother as a person when all too often Maria’s wants and needs and rights to exist safely had been cast aside.
Bella’s shoulders and back ached from sitting in a chair all night and long into today but after three months of fighting to live, her mother had finally given in and was fast fading.
A nurse came in and Bella looked up and gave her a tired smile.
‘There’s a phone call for you, Bella,’ she said. ‘You can take it in the office...’ She gestured to her sleeping mother and Bella was grateful for the nurse’s insight because she didn’t want to discuss just how ill her mother was beside her bed. ‘I’ll be in to change your mother’s IV soon.’
Bella nodded and stood up. She knew that the next twelve-hour infusion would probably be the last one her mother had. She didn’t like to leave her even for a moment but she knew it would probably be Sophie calling—yesterday Paulo had been sentenced.
When she had first arrived in Rome, Sophie had called her friend and Sylvia had been at Bella’s home, cleaning up the mess from Maria’s fall, and had answered the phone and told Sophie the sad news.
Now Sophie rang when she could, usually from a pay phone, and so of course she wasn’t able to speak for long.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Bella said. ‘I saw it on the news.’
‘They gave him forty three years minimum,’ Sophie said, her voice thick with tears. ‘He’ll never get out.’
‘I know. How is he taking it?’
‘He keeps crying, he is very weak and confused, and so worried about me too. I’ve told him that Luka is here in Rome with me and that he is taking care of me well.’
‘Good,’ Bella said. ‘At least that gives him one less thing to worry about.’
‘I have found work,’ Sophie said. ‘It is at Hotel Fiscella. You have never seen such luxury, Bella...’ And then when Bella said nothing Sophie asked the difficult question. ‘How is she?’
Bella couldn’t speak.
She looked out at the ward and the nurse was going in to change her mother’s IV.
‘Bella?’ her friend pushed gently. ‘Tell me.’
‘I think she is very near the end.’
Sophie was silent for a long moment too and then she said what she had to to her friend. ‘Then you need to make plans.’
‘I know,’ Bella said. ‘After the funeral...’
‘Bella, you can’t go back there. If you do, he won’t let you leave.’
She knew Sophie was right.
Very deliberately Bella had not gone home, telling Malvolio, when he’d dropped in
, that her mother drew comfort from her being near.
True.
His patience had just about run out.
‘I have to go,’ Sophie said. ‘I’m using the work phone and I’ll get into trouble if I’m caught.’
They said their goodbyes but as Bella stepped into her mother’s room she saw that Malvolio had just arrived. He came in every now and then, more, Bella thought, to check on her than Maria.
‘The nurse said that you were on the phone.’
‘It was a friend...’ Bella shrugged ‘...wanting to see how my mother was.’
‘It must be a day for catching up. Matteo called Dino earlier today...’
‘That brute,’ Bella said, grateful, ever grateful for the bruise Matteo had made on her cheek that night.
Malvolio had been livid that his son and second man had gone and he had grilled Bella over and over about anything Matteo, Luka or Sophie might have told her.
Sophie he cared nothing about, but the leaving of the other two he had taken very personally indeed.
‘Matteo asked after you,’ Malvolio said, and Bella shrugged, even though her heart was pounding. She knew that it was important that she did not leap, as she wanted to, at his name. ‘Dino didn’t tell him about your mother, he didn’t know if you might want to keep that private, so instead Dino said that you were enjoying working at the bar...’ Malvolio was still determined to find Matteo’s Achilles’ heel and it took everything Bella had not to react as he spoke on.
‘Dino also said how much he was enjoying you.’
She stood silent for a second, willing herself not to react to that vile inference. She could recall Matteo saying that it was important he never reveal that he cared for her and wondered how he would have reacted to Dino’s words.
Finally she managed to speak.
‘I need to get back to my mother.’
‘I hear that she’s not doing well at all. She’s hung on far longer than we all expected. How long has it been now?’ Malvolio asked, and Bella knew what he was implying—Bella had been gone from the bar for far, far too long.
‘Three months,’ she answered.
‘That’s a long time to go without work, Bella,’ Malvolio said. ‘I know you must be worried about funeral costs and things but you don’t need to worry, I’ll sort that out for you—your mother deserves a dignified send-off.’
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