by Maisey Yates
She shook her head. “You were the hero of my story that day. And nothing will change that.”
Coldness invaded him. “Is that what led you to my bed that night?”
She didn’t look away. “Yes.”
He swore, the word loud in the empty expanse of the ballroom. “So that was my thank-you?”
“No!” she said, the exclamation reverberating around them. “It’s not like that at all. Don’t make it into something like that it’s. No.”
“Then what, Alessia? Your fantasy of a knight?” Her cheeks turned pink and then she did look away. “Dio, is that what it is? You expected me to be your chivalrous knight in shining armor? What a disappointment this must be for you. You would have likely been better off with Alessandro.”
“I didn’t want Alessandro.”
“Only because you lied to yourself about who I am.”
“Who are you, then?” she asked. “You’re my husband. I think you should tell me.”
“I thought we went over this already.”
“Yeah, you gave me that internet bio of a rundown on who you are. We told each other things we already knew.”
“Why do we have to know each other?”
“Because it seems like we should. We’re … married.”
“Not really.”
“You took me into an elevator and had me against the wall—what would make it more real for you?” she asked, the words exploding from her, crude and true, and nothing he could deny.
“That’s sex, Alessia, and what we have is great, explosive sex. But that kind of thing isn’t sustainable. It’s not meant to be. It’s not good for it to be.”
“And you know this because you’re constantly having spontaneous, explosive sex with strangers?”
“No.”
“Then how do you know?”
“There’s no control in it. No sense. We nearly let it get filmed, nearly let the elevator go to the next floor. Neither of us think when sex is involved.”
“Maybe you think too much.”
“And maybe you don’t think enough. You feel, and look where all of that feeling has gotten you.”
Her lip curled into a sneer. “Don’t you dare blame this on me! Don’t you dare act like it was me and my girlish feelings that led us here. That’s far too innocent of a take on it, first of all. Yes, I might have built you up as a hero in my head, but what I wanted that night in New York had nothing to do with you being some kind of paragon and everything to do with me wanting you as a woman wants a man. I didn’t want hearts and flowers, I wanted sex. And that was what I got. That wasn’t led by my feelings,” she said, her words cold, “that was led by my body and I was quite happy with the results.”
“Too bad the price was so steep.”
“Wasn’t it?”
Alessia looked at Matteo and, for a moment, she almost hated him. Because he was fighting so hard, against her, against everything. Or maybe she was the one fighting. And she was just mad at him for not being who she’d thought he was.
And that wasn’t fair, not really. He couldn’t help it if he didn’t line up with the fantasy she’d created about him in her head. It wasn’t even fair to expect him to come close.
But no one in her life had ever been there for her, not since her mother. It had all been about her giving. And then he’d been there, and he’d put it all on the line for her, he’d given her all of himself in that moment. And yes, what he’d done had been violent, and terrifying in a way, but it was hard for her to feel any sadness for the men who would have stolen her last bit of innocence from her.
She’d grown up in a house with a criminal father who lied and stole on a regular basis. She knew about the ugliness of life. She’d lost her mother, spent her days walking on eggshells to try to avoid incurring any of her father’s wrath.
But in all that time, at least, no one had forced themselves on her sexually, and considering the kind of company her father kept, it had always seemed kind of an amazing thing.
And then someone had tried to take that from her, too. But Matteo had stopped it.
“Do you understand how much of my life has been decided for me?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said slowly, obviously unwilling to admit to not understanding something.
“I don’t think you do. I spent my days mothering my siblings, and I don’t regret it, because it had to be done, but that meant I didn’t go away to school. It meant I stayed at home when a lot of girls my age would have been moving out, going to university. I went to events my father wanted me to go to, hosted parties in dresses he deemed appropriate. That day … that day on the road, those two men tried to take another choice from me. They tried to choose how I would learn about sex, how I would be introduced to it. With violence and pain and force. They tried to take something from me, and I don’t just mean virginity, I mean the way I saw myself. The way I saw men. The way I saw people. And you stopped them. So I’m sorry if you don’t want to have been my hero, but you were. You let me hold on to some of my innocence. You let me keep some parts of life a fantasy. I know about how harsh life can be. I know about reality, but I don’t need to have every horrible thing happen to me. And it was going to.” Her voice was rough, raw with tears she needed to shed.
She turned away from him, trying to catch her breath.
“And then my father told me that I was going to marry Alessandro. And I could see more choices being taken from me but this time I didn’t see a way out. Then my friend Carolina said she would host a bachelorette party for me. And for once my father didn’t deny me. I didn’t know you would be there. And Carolina suggested we go to your hotel and I … well, then I hoped you’d be there. And you were. And I saw another chance to make a choice. So don’t ask me to regret it.”
His eyes were black, endless, unreadable. “I won’t ask you to regret it, because then I would have to regret it, and I don’t. When I found out I was your first … I can’t tell you how that satisfied me, and I don’t care if that’s not the done thing, if I shouldn’t care, because I did. I still care. I’m still glad it was me.”
“I am, too,” she said, her voice a whisper. The honesty cost them both, she knew.
His eyes met hers, so bleak, so filled with need. And she hoped she could fill it. Hoped she could begin to understand the man that he was and not just the man she’d created a fiction about in her head.
She nearly went to him then. Nearly touched him. Asked him to lie her down on the cold marble of the ballroom floor and make love to her again. But then she remembered. Remembered the question he hadn’t answered. The one she’d been determined to get the answer to before she ever let him touch her again.
She’d messed up earlier. She hadn’t been able to think clearly enough to have a conversation with him. But now, she would ask now. Again. And she would get her answer.
“Will you be faithful to me?” she asked.
He pushed his fingers through his hair. “Why do you keep asking me this?”
“Because it’s a simple question and one I deserve the answer to. I’m not sleeping with you if you won’t promise I’m the only woman in your life.”
“I can’t love you,” he said, the words pulled from him. Not I don’t love you, like he’d said earlier, but I can’t.
“I’m not asking you to love me, I’m asking you to not have sex with other women.”
His jaw tightened, his hands clenching into fists at his sides. “To answer that question, I would have to know how I planned on conducting our relationship, and I do not know the answer to that yet.”
“Were you planning on asking me?”
He shook his head. “I already told you we won’t have a normal marriage.”
“Why?” She knew she shouldn’t ask, not in such a plaintive, needy tone, but she couldn’t help herself, couldn’t hide the hurt that was tearing through her. How was it she’d managed to get her dream, only to have it turn to ash the moment her fingers touched it?
“Because I cannot be a hu
sband to you. I can’t. I won’t love you. I won’t … I can’t give what a husband is supposed to give. I don’t know where to begin. I have an empire to run, my hotels, plus I have my bastard cousin installed in my offices at the family corporation, with his ass in my chair, sitting at my desk like he’s the one who worked so hard for any of it. I don’t have time to deal with you. If you took me on as a husband you would have me in your bed and nowhere else. And I’m not sure I want to put either of us through that.”
“But you are my husband. Whether or not you want to be doesn’t come into it at this point. You are my husband. You’re the father of my baby.”
“And our baby has the protection of my name, the validity of having married parents. I’m able to strike the deal for the docklands with your father thanks to this marriage and your siblings will be cared for. I’m sending them all to school, I don’t think I told you.”
Her throat closed, her body trembling. “I … No, you didn’t.”
“My point is, regardless of what happens behind closed doors, our marriage was a necessity, but what we choose to do in our own home rests squarely on us. And there are decisions to be made.”
Decisions. She’d imagined that if she married Matteo her time for decision making would be over before it ever started. But he was telling her there was still a chance to make choices. That them legally being husband and wife didn’t mean it was settled.
In some ways, the opportunity to make decisions was a heady rush of power she’d only experienced on a few occasions. In other ways … well, she wanted him to want to be married to her, if she was honest.
You’re still chasing the fantasy when you have reality to contend with.
She had to stop that. She had to put it away now, the haze of fantasy. Had to stop trying to create a happy place where there wasn’t one and simply stand up and face reality.
“So … if I say I don’t want to be in a normal marriage, and if you can’t commit to being faithful to me, does that mean that I have my choice of other lovers, too?”
Red streaked his cheekbones, his fists tightening further, a muscle in his jaw jerking. “Of course,” he said, tight. Bitter.
“As long as there are no double standards,” she said, keeping her words smooth and calm.
“If I release my hold on you, then I release it. We’ll have to be discreet in public, naturally, but what happens behind closed doors is no one’s business but our own.”
“Ours and the elevator security cameras,” she said.
“That will not happen again.”
“It won’t?”
“An unforgivable loss of control on my part.”
“You’ve had a few of those recently.”
She’d meant to spark an angry reply, to keep the fight going, because as long as they were fighting, she didn’t ache for him. Wasn’t so conscious of the tender emotions he made her feel. And she wasn’t so overwhelmed by the need to be skin to skin to him when they were fighting. But she didn’t get anger. Instead, she got a bleak kind of pain that echoed in her soul, a hopelessness in his dark eyes that shocked her.
“Yes,” he said. “I have. Always with you.”
“I don’t know how you are in other areas of your life. I only know how you are with me,” she said.
His eyes grew darker. “A pity for you. I’m much more pleasant than this, usually.”
“I make you misbehave.”
He chuckled, no humor in the sound. “You could say that. We should go home.”
She nodded. “Yes, we should.”
They were in an empty ballroom, and she really would have loved a romantic moment with him here. The chance to dance as the only two people in the room. To go up to his suite and make love. To share a moment with each other that was out of time, apart from reality.
But they’d had their fantasy. Reality was here now, well and truly.
She still didn’t want to leave.
Matteo picked up his phone and dialed. “Yes, you can send in the crew now.”
She swallowed hard, feeling like they’d missed a key moment. Feeling like she’d missed one.
“Let’s go,” he said. There was no press now, no one watching to see if he would put his arm around her. So he didn’t. He turned and walked ahead, and she followed behind him, her heart sinking.
Matteo didn’t know what he wanted. And she didn’t, either.
No, that was a lie, she knew what she wanted. But it would require her to start dealing with Matteo as he was, and at some point, it would require him to meet her in the middle, it would require him to drop his guard.
She wasn’t sure if either of them could do what needed to be done. Wasn’t sure if they ever had a hope of fixing the tangled mess that they’d created.
She wasn’t even sure if Matteo wanted to.
CHAPTER NINE
MATTEO WAS TEMPTED to drink again. He hated the temptation. He hated the feeling of temptation full stop. Before Alessia there had been no temptation.
No, that was a lie. The first temptation had been to break the rules and see what the Battaglias were really like. And so he had looked.
And from there, every temptation, every failing, had been tied to Alessia. She was his own personal road to ruin and there were some days he wondered why he bothered to stay off it.
At least he might go up in flames in her arms. At least then heat and fire might be connected with her, instead of that night his father had died.
Yes, he should just embrace it. He should just follow to road to hell and be done with it.
And bring her with you. Bring the baby with you.
Porca miseria. The baby.
He could scarcely think of the baby. He’d hardly had a moment. He felt a little like he was going crazy sometimes, in all honesty. There was everything that was happening with Corretti Enterprises, and he had to handle it. He should go in and try to wrench the reins back from Angelo, should kick Luca out of his position and expose whatever lie he’d told to get there because he was sure the feckless playboy hadn’t gotten there on merit alone.
Instead, Matteo was tied up in knots over his wife. Bewitched by a dark-haired vixen who seemed to have him in a death grip.
She was the reason he’d left, the reason he’d gone up to a remote house he owned in Germany that no one knew about. The reason he hadn’t answered calls or returned emails. The reason he hadn’t known or cared he was being usurped in his position as head of his branch of the family business.
He had to get a handle on it, and he had no idea how. Not when he felt like he was breaking apart from the inside out.
The business stuff, the Corretti stuff, he could handle that. But he found he didn’t care to, and that was the thing that got to him.
He didn’t even want to think about the baby. But he had to. Didn’t want to try to figure out what to do with Alessia, who was still sleeping in the guest bedroom in the palazzo, for heaven’s sake.
Something had to be done. Action had to be taken, and for the first time in his life, he felt frozen.
He set his shot glass down on the counter and tilted it to the side before pushing the bottom back down onto the tile, the sound of glass on ceramic loud and decisive. He stalked out of the bar and into the corridor, taking a breath, trying to clear his head.
Alcohol was not the answer. A loss of control was not the answer.
He had to get a grip. On his thoughts. On his actions. He had a business to try to fix, deals to cement. And all he could think about was Alessia.
He turned and faced the window that looked out on the courtyard. Moonlight was spilling over the grass, a pale shade of gray in the darkness of night.
And then he saw a shadow step into the light. The brightness of the moon illuminated the figure’s hair, wild and curling in the breeze. A diaphanous gown, so sheer the light penetrated it, showed the body beneath, swirled around her legs as she turned in a slow circle.
An angel.
And then he was walking, witho
ut even thinking, he was heading outside, out to the courtyard, out to the woman who woke something deep in his soul. Something he hadn’t known existed before she’d come into his life.
Something he wished he’d never discovered.
But it was too late now.
He opened the back door and stepped out onto the terrace, walking to the balustrade and grasping the stone with his hands, leaning forward, his attention fixed on the beauty before him.
On Alessia.
She was in his system, beneath his skin. So deep he wondered if he could ever be free of her. It would be harder now, all things considered. She was his wife, the mother of his child.
He could send her to live in the palazzolo with his mother. Perhaps his mother would enjoy a grandchild.
He sighed and dismissed that idea almost the moment it hit. A grandchild would only make his mother feel old. And would quite possibly give her worry lines thanks to all the crying.
And you would send your child to live somewhere else?
Yes. He was considering it, in all honesty.
What did he know about children? What did he know about love? Giving it. Receiving it. The kind of nurturing, the father-son bond fostered by his father was one he would just as soon forget.
A bond forged, and ended, by fire.
He threw off the memories and started down the steps that led to the grass. His feet were bare and in that moment he realized he never went outside without his shoes. A strange realization, but he became conscious of the fact when he felt the grass beneath his feet.
Alessia turned sharply, her dark hair cascading over her shoulder in waves. “Matteo.”
“What are you doing out here?”
“I needed some air.”
“You like being outdoors.”
She nodded. “I always have. I hated being cooped up inside my father’s house. I liked to take long walks in the sun, away from the … staleness of the estate.”
“You used to walk by yourself a lot.”
“I still do.”
“Even after the attack?” The words escaped without his permission, but he found he couldn’t be sorry he’d spoken them.
“Even then.”
