The Italian's Twin Consequences

by Caitlin Crews

  Something flashed in those stormy eyes of his, but his devastating mouth only curved. Almost gently, she might have said—if he was someone else.

  Because she could handle almost anything from a man like Matteo except unsolicited glimpses of what she refused to consider evidence of his humanity. Anything at all but that.

  “I am forced to consider the evidence, little one,” he said then, and there was something about the way he used that phrase. Little one. It should have enraged her and Sarina assured herself it did—but really, what she felt was weak. As if three strange syllables had stolen her feet out from under her. “So much focus, determination, and drive. One close friend, lost too soon. No relationship since. Not even any stories of hard drinking in all those hotel bars you frequent. I am forced to wonder...”

  Then he made everything worse. He reached over, threading his fingers through her hair, and tugging it out of the clip she’d fastened at the back of her head as if it was an inconvenience to him. She felt the mass of it fall around her shoulders, and she hardly knew where to look, as he wrapped a thick sheaf of it around one finger. Then tugged.

  “Sarina. Dr. Fellows.” His voice was a velvet scrape down the very center of her. “Are you a virgin?”

  There was a ringing in her ears. And she knew, somehow, that it was connected to all the rest of her ailments. But she managed to arch her brows, meet his gaze, and even smirk a little bit. Because if the Titanic was going down, she might as well rearrange as many deck chairs as she could while it sank.

  “Virginity is a very specific, pejorative patriarchal construct,” she told him. “Even you must recognize that, I hope.”

  “You have either had sex, or you have not.” Matteo’s mouth was in that patient curve, and if sheer, male amusement was a scent he would have reeked of it. “Construct it or deconstruct it to your heart’s content.”

  “I don’t like that word. I don’t believe in it.” She lifted a shoulder, then dropped it, but she knew even as she did it that it was hardly the effortless example of how little she cared that she’d wanted it to be. Because everything inside her was too... Sick, she told herself. She was sick, that was all. “What a ridiculous unit of measurement.”

  “I believe that depends very much on the unit in question.”

  “Do you know who cares about things like virginity? Excitable preteen girls. And certain men who should know better.”

  But if he was listening to her, he gave no sign. “The particular unit, and if I’m being honest, the man who wields it. And how. It is a talent, not a skill.”

  “I’m not going to answer that question,” Sarina said, with a sniff. And she couldn’t describe the look that moved over Matteo’s face then, especially when he laughed.

  “But you see, you already have.”

  Sarina pulled in a breath, ready to launch into another set of arguments, about something, anything—

  But Matteo...picked her up.

  It was like the world made sense one moment, and then in the next, she was drop-kicked into a parallel universe.

  Where all she could do was feel.

  His arms wrapped tight around her. That chest, hard and impossible and pressed against hers.

  The crook of his neck, right there where her mouth wanted to go, and that scent of his surrounding her, making her wish she could bathe in it. Hard, hot male, with a certain spice that was entirely Matteo.

  She let out a sound she didn’t recognize as her own when her back came up against the wall.

  He held her there, pressing into her as his hands worked to pull her legs around his waist.

  “What are you...? What is...?”

  She couldn’t find the right words. The sentences didn’t seem to work.

  There was nothing but Matteo, hard against her. Everywhere.

  And that almost-stern sort of knowledge in his gaze as he looked down at her. Stone and certainty, and it made her shudder in a different way altogether.

  It made her wonder if she had wanted precisely this all along. If her body had known things she didn’t since the moment she’d met this man in Venice.

  “There are different ways to fight, little one,” Matteo said, his voice rough and perfect at the same time, and all the better for being so close to her now. “Let me show you.”

  And he bent his head, taking her mouth in another kiss.

  When she had barely survived the first.

  This was different. Hotter. Wilder.

  But it had the same effect on Sarina. It was like being struck by lightning, shivering straight into the hit, and then begging for more.

  She stopped thinking.

  She twined her arms around the hard column of his neck. She was delighted that he had already wrapped her legs around his waist, so she could clench them tight. She found the hard ridge of him in his trousers, and followed some ancient, feminine wisdom locked in her hips as she moved that molten, wet heat of hers against him.

  And if she was sick, he made her sicker. And well at the same time.

  Until she couldn’t really tell the difference.

  The only thing that made her breasts stop hurting was to hurt them more, deliciously, as she pressed them against his chest. He kissed her like he owned her—like he knew her, inside and out—angling his head from one side to the next until he found a better fit.

  Deeper, darker and more intense.

  And Sarina gloried in it.

  If this was a fight, she had been waiting for it all her life. She threw herself into it. Heedless. Reckless.

  She didn’t care if he had an entire film crew set up across the room this time. She wasn’t sure she even cared if he was broadcasting it live to the world.

  She hadn’t known that anyone could taste like this, dark promises of wild pleasure, male and right. She hadn’t known that she could feel so bright and hot between her legs, and fit him the way she did, arching against him as if she’d come alive right here. Today.

  Wrapped up in her enemy’s arms.

  God, the things she hadn’t known.

  He shifted, pulling his mouth from hers to drop it against her neck, where he lit new blazes and sent the flames dancing and spinning all over her body.

  “Hold on,” he advised her, and she thought he cursed then, some long string of Italian syllables that sounded to her like music.

  She held him tighter, and he reached down between them, working his hand beneath the drawstring of her trousers.

  He found the soft core of her easily, and then his hand was there where she needed him most, sliding into all her heat.

  He did something with those fingers of his, hard and talented at once, and she caught fire.

  She shook and she shook, and the world shook with her, and it wasn’t until he was coming down over her, there on the thick, deep carpet where she’d ended up without her knowing, that she understood what was happening.

  And she didn’t care, because Matteo was braced over her, and then his mouth was on hers again, and she’d had no idea until today that anything could burn this much and keep right on going.

  And she had never done this before, but that hardly mattered. She had always fought, and so she fought here, too.

  To get closer. To taste him, everywhere, now that she knew what that was like. And how good he was against her tongue. He pulled her soft shirt over her head, then tossed it aside, so she did the same with his. He spread her out on her back, then found her breasts with his mouth, his hands. Until she was arching into him, moaning out his name.

  And when it was her turn to fight her way on top of him, she tasted every part of that impossible chest of his that she could find.

  He stopped her when she made it down over the hard ridges of his abdomen, tracing her way toward the waistband of his trousers. He rolled away, kicking off his trousers as he went, so Sarina tug
ged hers off, too.

  “You will be the death of me,” he said in a low, dark tone, his voice so thick he hardly sounded like himself.

  “Then we will become ghosts of Combe Manor, just like the rest,” she told him, lit up from inside with some kind of ferocity she’d never felt before.

  And she was the one who crawled on top of him, desperate to hurl her way back into that fire again.

  He let her, laughing darkly against her mouth as she rocked against him. She was drunk on the feel of it, his flesh against hers, and she thought she could go on like this forever—

  Until clearly, he’d had enough. She tried to focus on him and saw his mouth was that stern line again. And his gaze was like rain.

  And the hands wrapped around her hips brooked no argument, not even one of hers.

  He lifted her, then shifted, so she could feel the hardest part of him, nudging up against the place where she was hottest. Softest.

  “All you need do is take what you can,” he told her, and his expression was as certain as his voice. She trusted him—something she had no desire to tear apart or look at more closely, especially not now—and more than that, she wanted him. This.

  All of this.

  She braced her palms on his chest, settled herself against him as best she could, and then slowly, slowly, took him inside of her.

  There was a pinch. Or more a kind of scraping sensation, so she paused. But it went away again, and she kept on.

  By the time he was fully sheathed, deep inside of her, she’d gone bright hot again, red and wild. Everywhere.

  And she could feel all the tension in him, sharp and hot.

  “Now what?” she asked, breathless and beside herself, and yet utterly focused on the man beneath her.

  And the part of him that was inside of her.

  Inside her.

  “Are you in pain?” he asked, and though he sounded strained, she saw no hint of it on his face.

  “I told you. Virgin is just a word.”

  “And not one that applies to you any longer,” Matteo replied, his voice the kind of dark that seemed to flood her, filling her up until she felt it everywhere. “And all you need to do now is move. However you like.”

  Sarina experimented. She rolled her hips. She lifted herself up, then moved herself back down.

  And everything was more of that same fire. She felt powerful beyond measure, and yet soft and bright straight through.

  And she didn’t know when she stopped playing, and started panting, deep shudders working their way through her as she searched and searched for something...

  “Sarina.” His voice was harsh, but it only made her want him more. “Sooner or later, you must surrender. You must.”

  And she wanted to tell him she didn’t know how. That she refused. That she didn’t have it in her to surrender—

  But then, when he reached down between them and did something marvelous, she did.

  In a bright fireball of something too sharp for joy, too sweet for pain, that exploded inside her over and over and over again.

  He flipped her over onto her back, bracing himself against her as he surged even deeper inside of her. Teaching her that quickly and that thoroughly the difference between playtime and passion.

  She seemed to hit one peak, then hurtle straight on into another.

  Then another still, until the room was filled with the sound of sobbing, and she knew it must be her.

  Sarina didn’t have it in her to care about that, either. Not when she was lit on fire and burning as if she would never stop.

  And when he followed her over, into that same fire, the only thing she heard was the way he said her name.

  When she found her way back to herself again, Matteo was moving.

  He had pulled a soft throw from somewhere, draped it over her, then lifted her into his arms again. She nestled her face against his wide shoulder and wondered dreamily if it was possible to put all the different, swirling pieces of herself back together.

  Or if she even wanted to.

  Especially when she was fairly certain there were things waiting there she didn’t want to look at directly.

  Matteo carried her up the grand stairs, then down a hall she hadn’t seen before. At the end, he pushed through a door into a set of rooms far more grand and glorious than hers, with the gleaming lights of the village down below visible through all the windows.

  He didn’t take her to the stately platform bed that dominated the whole of the bedroom, but carried her instead into the bathroom suite adjoining it. He set her down on her feet, then waited until she was steady, which she wanted to tell him was unnecessary. But her mouth didn’t seem to work the way it had before.

  Then he let go and Sarina felt exactly how rubbery her knees were. She held on to the side of the huge tub with its sweetly sloped sides, and couldn’t seem to do a single thing but watch as he filled it.

  When the water was hot and steaming, he lifted her up and set her into the water, then made her heart flip over inside her chest when he followed her in.

  Matteo settled down against one sloping back of the tub, and she did the same, facing him, their legs tangled together in a casual sort of intimacy that made her heart skip a beat.

  And suddenly, all the things she ought to have remembered seemed to buffet her, rising like the steam between them, making her think—

  “Stop.” Matteo’s voice was harsh, the way it had been when he was deep inside her. And she shuddered as if he still was. “The world isn’t going anywhere, Sarina. No need to invite it into this bath, I think.”

  She frowned at him, but he was moving again. He plucked her up, shifted her around, and settled her so her back was to his chest.

  And Sarina had been holding on tight for the whole of her life. First to acquit herself well academically, as the only child of two intellectual superstars who barely noticed she was alive. Then there had been Jeanette, and she’d held on to her lost friend, the sister of her heart, even harder. She’d nurtured that tight grip. She built her life around it.

  It had never occurred to Sarina to let go.

  She would have said she didn’t know how.

  But here, plunged deep in hot water that felt like silk against her skin, Matteo hard and hot beneath her and around her, she felt herself... Open up.

  And for once in her life, she didn’t overthink it.

  She let go.

  * * *

  It was the light that woke her, too bright when she always preferred to close her curtains tight against the very hint of dawn. It was the only way to handle the inevitable jet lag she suffered while she followed misbehaving corporate executives around the world.

  She never, ever left her windows uncovered.

  Sarina woke up with a frown, confused—

  She felt him shift next to her in the wide bed, and remembered where she was in the next moment. And worse by far, who she was with.

  Her eyes shot open.

  And the reality of what she’d done slammed into her so hard she was surprised she wasn’t sick there and then.

  It had been a very long night, like some kind of dream. She had let go in that bath, and then she had simply... Let it happen.

  She’d leaned her head back against him in that tub, he’d taken her mouth, and then—eventually—he’d carried her from the water to the great expanse of his bed.

  And they had stayed there while he’d taught her just how much it was she didn’t know, and how delectable it was to learn it.

  Over and over again, until she was limp and out of her mind, glutted on all that impossible sensation.

  Sarina hadn’t thought once about the fact this man was blackmailing her. The fact he held her entire future in his hands, or that she’d placed herself right there between his palms. Literally. And of her own volition. She hadn�
��t considered the professional implications, particularly the fact she’d slept with a man who wasn’t her client, but only because of a technicality. She was still supposed to be psychoanalyzing him.

  She hadn’t thought about any of that, and she certainly hadn’t let herself think about all the ways she’d betrayed herself, and was continuing to betray herself, all through the very long night.

  And worse, by far, she hadn’t given a single thought to how her presence in this man’s bed meant she had thoroughly and completely betrayed Jeanette.

  Jeanette, who had always told her that she couldn’t understand why Jeanette had lost herself the way she’d done—but she would. Someday, she would.

  Sarina felt her stomach heave, her heart kicking at her so hard and loud she was surprised it didn’t wake the man still asleep beside her.

  She eased herself to the edge of the bed, then slipped out of it. Outside she could see the first light hit the village, all the old brick buildings and narrow streets, then set the river to gleaming. She felt more than a little disoriented as she crept through the room, but she found that same throw he’d used when he carried her upstairs, wrapped it around herself, and tiptoed out of the master suite.

  It took her longer than she thought it should have to find her way out of a wing of this house she’d never been in before, then all the way back down to the library. The clothes she was certain she’d left thrown on the floor were neatly folded on one of the chairs, reminding her that the staff, at the very least, knew exactly what she’d been up to.

  That it was real. It had happened.

  A suffocating shame squatted on her, fat and thick, as she pulled her clothes on.

  And then she was moving blindly, racing back up to her room, throwing her things into her suitcase, and heading for the door before she could think better of it. Or worse still, talk herself into staying. When she knew better.

  When she had let Matteo Combe ruin her. When she had enthusiastically cooperated, in every possible way, with her own demise.

  The sob that threatened to break free of her throat was too big. She knew if she let it out, it would take her down to the ground. Sarina held it in. Somehow, she held it in.