15. Matteo
I stareat her in awe as she takes off the robe and turns over onto her hands and knees on the table, presenting me with her ass.
Fuck me. I want to lock her up in my house and never let her go. No way I can ever let another man have the chance to touch her again. If I bordered on mild obsession before, the way we fuck has turned it up to full volume.
I want her in my bed and no one else, and not only now, but for as long as I can imagine. I need to rethink my plan. I need to tell her how it started, confess my transgressions, and then beg her to stay. Lock her up here if I must, until she has her anger to a level where she’s ready to hear me. Not now, though. Not with her ass right in front of me.
Slapping her ass, I order her to stay and not move, then I race to the bathroom and grab some lube and a condom. Both will help make this a smoother experience for her. I glove up with the lubed condom and then add extra lube. I’m not small, and with the piercings, I want to be gentle and make this pleasurable for her.
I return to the kitchen and find Renata listened to my orders, still firmly in place, face-down, ass up on the table. I drizzle the lube down her most secret place, and she shivers. Her back bows as I rub the lube around the tight circle of flesh. I reach around to play with her clit. I want her warmed up and panting for this.
I work her clit, and now and again leave it for a moment to roll and pinch her nipples, before I go back to stimulating the bundle of nerves. Her ass has two fingers now, and she’s taking them so well.
“You’re so fucking beautiful,” I breathe against her back as I plant kisses there.
I pull her toward the edge of the table and line up perfectly against her.
I push the tip in and pause for a moment, not only to give her space to breathe, but so that I don’t blow my load. She’s so fucking tight, and her ass is so perfect.
I take it slow, making sure to playing with her and kiss her back as I sink in a little deeper each time I withdraw and push back inside.
To my surprise, I’m soon deep in her, and she doesn’t protest. “You okay?” I ask, wanting to check in.
“Perfect,” she breathes huskily.
I’m deep now, and instead of long drawn-out thrusts, I pulse in her deep, and she gasps.
“Oh wow, do that again.”
I do, enjoying the way the moans fall from her lips. Soon, I’m fucking her properly, and she takes it so beautifully.
She grinds her ass against me and makes sounds that seem to be knocked from her throat with each thrust.
“Holy shit, Matteo. I’m going to come. Don’t stop.”
I have no damn intention of stopping and pinch her clit.
She cries out loudly enough it echoes in the space around us, and she tightens around me as her back bows against me.
I hold onto her tight and enjoy the ride. She’s fucking wild. As she’s still pushing against me, her back slicked with exertion, I lose it and fill the condom.
Not wanting this to be over just yet, I drape myself over her back and hold her for a few moments.
Kissing her neck, licking it, tasting salt, I let myself sink into the wonder that is her.
Wincing, I pull out of her and dispose of the condom.
“Shower?” I ask.
“God, yes. I am so sweaty and messy.”
“I like you sweaty and messy,” I say.
We spend the rest of the weekend together, and it”s amazing. We watch movies together and eat popcorn until our lips tingle from the salt. We swim in the pool naked, and I take her on the edge of the pool.
We eat fresh fruit, and I feed her strawberries, loving the way they stain her lips.
At some point, we find ourselves feeling a little stir crazy, so we take a long walk through the woods that back onto the house. There are many beautiful paths through these woods, and some rare birds nest here. Tentatively, I tell her about some of them, thinking she will view me as a complete geek. She seems interested, however. Particularly when we come across the woodpecker, and we watch him for a while as he drills away at the wood. The sound rings out around us, and the only other thing you can hear is the gentle rustle of the leaves in the breeze and birds singing.
“This place is heavenly,” she says. “I like my little apartment, but it”s nice to be somewhere so close to wildness, you know?”
“You deserve a better apartment than the one you have,” I tell her.
“You don”t know because you haven’t been in it,” she says.
“The sofas in the waiting area a fake leather,” I point out with disdain.
“Are you for real?” She shakes her head as her laughter rings out. The woodpecker stops his work and turns to stare our way. She claps a hand over her mouth, and her expression is priceless. “Whoops,” she whispers. “I don”t want to scare him away. Are you seriously saying that my apartment is crappy because the sofas in the reception aren”t genuine leather?”
“Yes.” I shrug. “You deserve the best. You should be living somewhere fit for a queen.”
Her eyes narrow as she considers me. “I could afford somewhere more opulent if I so wished. I like the place, though. It has everything I need, so why pay out loads more just for a fancy reception area?”
I take her hand, and we stroll on past the woodpecker. “I guess I imagined you as someone who would want the very best,” I say.
“I do,” she says. “In general. It isn’t somewhere that I”ve bought to live; I”m just renting it while I figure things out. I’m perfectly happy there, and I like the area.”
“What kind of place would you like to live in?”
“Truthfully, something like this.” She turns around and looks at the woods around her. “You have the best of both worlds. This place is gorgeous, and yet you’re close to the capital city.”
She walks ahead of me, arms out wide as she looks up at the canopy. I hang back and watch her.
This woman has taken up far too much space in my head for years. I told myself I hated her, but I don’t think I did.
I think I wanted her. All along. I never stopped wanting her.
Her hair shines under the dappled sun, and when she turns to me there’s a vulnerability in her gaze. Something else too. Confusion maybe?
I reach for her and pull her close. The sun breaks through the treetops, and I realize with a jolt she still has the smattering of freckles on her nose that she had when she was younger. She isn’t wearing makeup, and those tiny brown flecks dusted across her nose and cheeks hit me right in the gut.
“What?” she asks.
Her aqua eyes widen as she gazes up at me, and I feel something fierce, and it isn’t desire. It’s protective and powerful.
The way she looks now, stripped of her makeup and designer clothes, is ten years younger than she is and just as innocent.
It makes me want to wrap her in cotton wool and never hurt her again. Except, I’m going to hurt her, aren’t I? Even if she doesn’t care about hurting her family, which I think deep down she will, she’ll care that I set her up.
An acidic sourness settles in my stomach. It’s corrosive and bitter. Fuck.
I can’t do this.
I need to call it off, but how without talking to her? Without admitting what I’ve done. I know she read those papers, photographed them too because I have a camera in the corner of the study.
“What?” she asks again as I continue to stare, like a fawn blinded by the headlights.
“Your freckles are still there,” I say gruffly. I run the pad of my finger over them, across her cheek.
She wipes at her nose self-consciously as if brushing them off.
“Don’t,” I say. “I like them.”
“They make me feel like a gawky teenager again.”
“I loved you as a gawky teenager,” I say, half jokingly.
Then it hits me. A bullet to the head of realization.
I did love her.
I fucking loved her.
For all my teenage hard man act, the reason I was so cut up for so long about what she did was because I loved her.
She was my first, and now here she is again, in my arms and reigniting old feelings.
I can’t do this.
Shit.
“Renata, there’s something I need to talk to you about?—”
The jarring trill of my phone makes me jump. I pull it out of my pocket and frown when I see Clifford’s number.
“I need to take this.” I walk away from her and answer. “Yes.”
“You need to come meet me now. We have an issue.”
“What issue?”
“Two dead men. That kind of issue.”
“Ours?”
“Yes.”
“Fuck.”
“Meet me at the docks.”
The docks ceased being used for moving goods a long while ago and became gentrified. But areas of them are still run down and almost empty. That’s where we have our office, and if one needs to, can bring shipments up the old canals at night.
“I have to head out. Work.” I pull Renata to me and kiss her forehead. “Let me walk you back to the house, and you can chill until I get back.”
She nods, and we take a brisk path through the woods to the house. I change quickly and kiss Renata as I leave.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to go home?” she asks.
“No.” I shake my head. “Make yourself comfortable. Enjoy yourself. I want you here when I get back.”
“Okay. See you later.”
I climb into my car, and she waves at me from the door.
The last time a woman waved me off it was Francesca, and seeing Renata standing there doing the same as if she’s my wife makes me realize how right that would be.
“You’re in so much fucking trouble,” I grouse to myself.
I arrive at the warehouse and office down by the old disused docks and find Clifford inside pacing as he waits for me. Vlad stands stock-still like a stone soldier, waiting for one of us to call out a demand.
His face is hard in the yellow lights of the old, sodium streetlamps. They haven’t replaced them with the bright white LED lights. It’s as if this part of town is forgotten and abandoned.
“Two bodies, here.”
He leads me into the warehouse, and I stall at the door as I take in the sight. Two of our men and packages all around them, torn open. Some of the money is scattered around on the floor, but most of it is gone.
“They were obviously dealing with some of the newly brought in funds to rinse and were taken out.” Clifford’s face is thunderous as he stares down at them.
“Might be opportunistic,” Vlad says.
“Is it fuck,” I growl. “This is purposeful and planned.”
The bodies are beaten, and many bones have been broken. Legs bend at odd angles, and the stench of blood and excrement fills the air. Their pants are down around their knees, and their cocks have been cut off.
I swallow the nausea rising in my throat.
“This is a warning.” My hands ball into fists. “It’s rivals, has to be.”
“Who would do this?” Vlad asks.
“Russians?” Clifford says.
“Not really their style.” I stare at the men, a sense of foreboding cloaking me. “Who was it you said you interrogated and hurt, Cliff?” I ask my cousin. “Over the missing shipment?”
He shrugs. “Just street kids. Part of a small Greek gang.”
“Are you sure it was small?” I ask.
He frowns. “Some new information came to light this week. They might have been more connected than I realized.”
My stomach twists. The Greek organized crime groups here tend to be small, super tight, and ruthless as fuck. They’ll chop you into bits and burn you. They’ll burn your women too. Kids, dogs, fucking goldfish. They’re not big in presence like the Albanians, but they’re fucking scary.
“Cliff, are you telling me we might be in the crosshairs of a Greek clan or family, and you neglected to inform me?”
He frowns. “Cuz, I do shit all the time that I don’t tell you about. Plausible deniability.”
“Yes, but this could put us and our families in danger.”
He snort-laughs. “There is no family, man. There’s you, me, Vlad and all our men. Family are all safely far away from here. It’s one of the reasons we can act without fear. We have nothing for them to come at.” He walks over to me and ruffles my hair. “Worried they’re going to mess up your pretty face?”
He blows me a kiss and laughs again, but I’m not laughing.
All I’m thinking about is Renata.
The idea of the animals who did this getting a hold of her has my gut churning.
I have Renata.
She doesn’t know it yet.
I only just realized it truly today, but she belongs to me.
“Fuck.” I ball my hands into fists and stalk out the door.
“Where the fuck are you going?” Clifford demands. “We have the meeting later.”
“Home. I’m going home,” I say.