Chapter Thirteen
Valentina
M y heart hammers so frantically I fear it may actually be visibly straining against the walls of my chest. Judging by the thickness of the money clip, I’d say there’s more than enough there to keep me dancing for twelve hours and still take home a very generous tip.
My eyes move from the clip to Matteo. Fire ignites low in my gut when I see the way he stares back at me, with a look so searing it could make my body burst into flames. It’s hard for me to remain clear headed, to remember that he’s a Leone, when he stares at me like that.
I clear my throat of the mass that’s suddenly present there. “You said I couldn't do private dances.”
“I’m the boss.” Oh, god. His throaty voice isn’t helping. “I made that rule and I can change it.”
My hand finds my waist and I cock my hip. “So I’m allowed to do lap dances now?”
Matteo’s eyes darken. His gaze lingers on my hand. “If you knew the detailed list of every filthy, fucked up thing I want to do to you when you pop your hip at me like that, you’d never do it again.” He smiles arrogantly and spreads his legs. “Or maybe you would, just to bait me into doing them.”
My hand slides off my hip, my mouth parting in shock at his words. But my throat grows unbearably tight and heat crawls beneath my skin, lighting me on fire from the inside.
Matteo gives a sexy, smoky laugh that travels over my body, affecting my sanity as much as the trail of his fingers on my ass had.
“You’ll dance for me, pavona . No one else.”
“You’re overpaying.”
His eyes rake slowly down my body, leaving a burning path of arousal in their wake. The longing on his face makes me lightheaded.
“I can’t overpay for something that has no price,” he answers, voice tight with need.
Matteo looks at me like I’m something to be both treasured and desecrated. I can’t think of anything else when he stares at me like that. Nothing.
Nothing except dark green eyes and a plump, determined mouth I need stamped all over my body like I need my next breath.
“Dance for me.” His words are a seductive instruction that pebble my skin, especially when he adds with a teasing smirk, “Show me how well you know the family business.”
My mind is still waging an internal battle against itself when my body starts to obey his whispered command.
I turn my back to him and reach back to grab his thighs with both hands, swaying my hips provocatively as I lower myself to the ground.
Matteo moans deeply the second I touch him and I nearly falter. I dig my nails into his thighs instead, drawing a hiss from his lips as I inch my way forward. My hands make contact with the floor next and I push off my feet in tandem, arching my ass up as I lower myself onto my stomach.
Rolling over onto my back, I stare at him and arch my chest upwards, lifting myself back up into a seated position on the floor between his legs.
His breathing grows dangerously ragged, his chest moving forcefully as he stares down at me. His eyes trail down the length of my body like a branding heat on my skin. An answering powerful, needy pang pulses in my pussy.
I’m pinned beneath his hungry gaze, unable to look away. When I grab his thighs once more and use them to hoist myself back onto my feet, he swallows thickly.
His throat bobs, working with difficulty. His fixated, fascinated eyes track my journey until I’m leaning over him, my chest almost glued to his.
Matteo reaches for me but I wrap my fingers around his wrist and stop him.
“I control this,” I whisper, inches from his lips.
He nods desperately and I smirk, reveling in the way I’m making him lose control.
Then I turn and sit on his lap.
A strangled groan rips from his throat at the same time as I feel his hard cock throb against my ass. My spine stiffens, the shock of his massive length making me lose my rhythm and my mind simultaneously. His hand clamps down on my hip and holds me firmly in place, burning me with the heat of his touch. Hot breaths fan against the back of my neck.
“Are you frightened now?”
His voice borders on obsession, on compulsion, and I’m unprepared for it. When I throw a look at him over my shoulder, I swallow a gasp. He looks like a man who’s on the verge of breaking. His features are uncontained, with unmasked hunger ruling his expression.
“Frightened of you?” I whisper.
“Of how much I want you,” he corrects.
My breath hitches at his guttural announcement. I shake my head, tentatively grinding down on his cock. His eyes flutter in response, his teeth gritting in delicious agony. He licks his lips slowly, his gaze dropping unhurriedly to my mouth as he takes in the way he affects my breathing.
“It’s the dance,” I explain, breathless. I arch my backside, pushing my red lace covered ass back at him. He doesn’t even glance down.
“No,” he croaks. “I want you. Desperately. I have for a long time.”
My brows pinch together at his words. He’s only known me for three weeks so that’s a dramatic exaggeration.
Matteo’s lips part as I continue to roll my hips sensually against him, driving his hard cock slowly up and down between my cheeks.
The air between us is so sexually charged, you could cut it with a knife. He clings to whatever little presence of mind he still has to ask me, “Are you actually a stripper?”
Awareness zaps up my spine and I swallow with difficulty. His grip turns bruising on my hips in response to my silence.
“I want to know something about you that’s real,” he continues, voice harsh with need. “I need to know if you’ve done this for others.”
Matteo looks like he’s going to explode when I roll my lower lip contemplatively between my teeth. Leaning back against his chest, I settle in like I belong. For long moments, I simply let my body move up and down in time with the harsh saw of his breathing.
“How do I know I can trust you?” I murmur.
That’s the question.
After what happened in Rocco’s office, he obviously knows I’m hiding something, but I’ll lose all plausible deniability if I confirm it myself.
When I got home last night, I spent hours staring at the picture I’d discovered, hoping to see something I’d missed in my initial perusal. Try as I might, it remained the same picture of the scared girl with no new answers to give me.
I’d put the photo away and had fallen asleep thinking about Matteo. He was also in his brother’s office when he shouldn’t have been, he’d protected me instead of hurting me, and his reaction to his brother had been unexpected. In that moment, it was obvious how much he hated him.
My gut tells me that Matteo’s secrets rival my own, and that maybe he isn’t my enemy.
Maybe the enemy of my enemy is my friend… or whatever this thing is going on between us.
Or maybe that’s just wishful thinking on my part. If he ever finds out I’m Thiago da Silva’s adopted sister, I’ll be a prized hostage for the Famiglia .
My arms lift to hook behind his neck as I arch my hips in circles, further gyrating on his hard length. His right hand slides from my hip over to the smooth plane of my stomach and comes to rest dangerously low on my belly.
“You can’t.” His face turns into mine and his lips find my ear. “But I know for a fact that I can’t trust you, and yet you’re still here. You’re still breathing.” His breaths fan across my cheek. “Let that be enough, Valentina.”
My name is a plea on his lips. I can’t help but moan in response. Hearing him utter it for the first time has goosebumps erupting all over my body.
“Have you danced for other men like you are now?” He grips my jaw and forces my face up to look at him, his dark gaze piercing mine. “Have you rubbed your ass against their hard cocks like this? Stared deep into their eyes like you are now while you drove them mad with lust for you?”
Oh, god .
The desperate possessiveness in his tone steals the words from my lips, the breath from my lungs, the very thought from my brain. It shatters the last remaining defenses I have against him.
I can’t shake my head with the way he holds my face firmly in place, so instead my lips shape my answer.
“No.”
Dark, territorial satisfaction erupts in Matteo’s gaze. “Never?”
“Never. I’m not a stripper.” To try and lessen the thick sexual tension, I add, “Neither was my abuela .”
His heavy-lidded eyes drop to my mouth instead.
“Kiss me,” he demands in a throaty whisper.
Blood rushes to my ears. “No.”
“I paid,” he counters, need bleeding into his tone.
I push against his chest. Matteo lets me sit up in his lap, but his hands circle my waist and stop me from moving any further.
“You paid for a dance, not a kiss.”
“How much more do you want for a kiss?”
I shouldn’t look at his lips, but they’re right there . Calling to me. Set in a grim line of frustration for me.
When I lick my lips with my eyes still pinned on his mouth, his cock jerks against my ass. He spanks me sharply, the slice of pain vibrating through my flesh.
“Do that again and I’ll fuck you right here, Valentina,” he growls.
God, he has me weak-kneed at the sound of my own name.
I flush crimson at his crude words and look away. “I’m not a prostitute. You can’t pay for a kiss.”
“How much?”
Stubborn, obsessive bastard.
“You can’t afford it.”
A guttural rumble rolls up his throat. He fists my hair and tugs, forcing me to fall back against his chest with a squeak.
“Try me,” he breathes against my ear, a note of humor dancing along every word.
My stomach does the thing in response.
The thing . It flips and twists and curls and rolls, simultaneously swelling and caving in on itself, as pleasure and satisfaction light a wildfire in my belly.
“One kiss?”
He nods, once. Urgently.
“A hundred thousand pounds.”
Cool metal makes contact with the skin of my stomach and slides upwards, raising goosebumps along its path until whatever it is slots underneath the band of my red lace bra.
Glancing down, I see that it’s a black Amex.
Matteo’s eyes are fixed intently on my mouth. “Hold onto this. We’ll charge it when you’re done.”
His large hand curls around the back of my neck and he pulls me eagerly towards him. Butterflies erupt by the thousands in my belly as his mouth approaches.
I flatten my palms against his stomach to halt him. He pauses only briefly, his eyes narrowing in clear warning, then he drags me roughly into his chest until our excited breaths mesh together. I push him firmly away once more just as our lips are about to meet.
This time, he snarls.
“Now’s not the time for your stubbornness, V—”
“A hundred thousand pounds doesn’t buy you the use of your hands, Matteo.”
Thick lust explodes in his gaze, darkening the eyes he has trained unwaveringly on me. “Be careful how you whisper my name at me, pavona . I might become addicted to it.”
His gaze shines with clear provocation, his mouth curling into an arrogant smile. I wrap my hand around his nape, causing his smirk to fall away instantly.
Dilated, hungry eyes drop to my mouth. They go heavy with desire, his expression turning greedy as I approach and narrow the distance between us down to almost nothing.
With my heart in my throat and a dozen voices in my head telling me this is a spectacularly bad idea, I blow out a tiny, nervous breath, then slant my lips assertively over his.
Low heat simmers instantly to life in my belly. It sizzles slowly up my spine, growing in ardor and unfurling progressively until it’s a fireball barreling uncontrollably through my entire body. His mouth is warm and soft, his lips pillowy and pliant against mine with a hint of familiarity.
I frown as I tighten my hand on his neck, confused as to why I keep feeling that way. For long seconds, I hear nothing but the sound of my own frantic heartbeat buzzing in my ears.
Then there’s a loud, ear-splitting noise.
The velvet-covered wooden armrests scream their pain as Matteo grips them in a desperate attempt to keep himself from using his hands.
When my tongue demands entry, nudging intimately at the seam of his closed mouth, he parts his lips. I push inside and search for his in return, dancing with it in lazy, sensual strokes that have pure need rushing through me. My other hand comes up to cup his cheek as I settle in his lap, arching into him. The kiss is slow and carnal, every hedonistic thought I’ve ever had about him poured with abandon into one moment.
Matteo groans into my mouth, the sound feverish with frustration, almost bordering on anger. I feel his restraint straining at the edges. He’s letting me lead, but it’s costing him everything.
Even though my insides are screaming at me not to, I finally pull away.
Matteo immediately follows. His mouth chases blindly after mine in open revolt to the kiss ending, his chest pitching forward as far as it can in search of my lips until I’ve ripped myself off him.
His eyes remain closed as I blink up at him. His tongue swipes at his bottom lip before disappearing greedily back into his mouth. A deep, low growl erupts from his throat as he savors the taste of me.
My heart thunders in my chest. The beat is so loud that I can both hear and feel it in my ears. I’m dizzy, unsteady, and suddenly all too aware of my almost nude state.
Matteo’s eyes finally peel open. They’re slow to focus and unrecognizable when they do. The pupils are so blown, they’ve suffocated all the beautiful green color, leaving behind two near-black disks of hunger pinned searingly on my mouth.
His voice is nothing more than a low, guttural grunt when he demands, “How much for hands?”
The unrepentant desperation in his tone sends a fresh wave of lust shuddering through my body.
If this man touches me, I’m done for.
“I told you, I’m not a prostitute.”
Distantly, I hear the familiar voice of guilt singing the same song in my head. But where the voice was once too loud to ignore, I find that it’s drowned out by another that only needs to whisper to be heard. One that murmurs that I can trust him.
“How much just to touch.” His voice dips impossibly low. “Not take .”
My skin heats thinking about being taken by Matteo. The insistent press of his hungry lips against mine just now is the first time it’s felt like my world could be turned the right way up since Adriana disappeared. He was holding back and it still left that kind of mark on me. I know he’d ruin me for every other man, including my future husband.
“How much, Valentina?” he insists, hands still white-knuckling the armrests.
Telling him my real name was a mistake.
I throw out the most ludicrous number I can think of to dissuade him. “Two million.”
Matteo doesn’t bat an eye. His phone is up against his ear in the next breath, so fast that I miss it.
“Enzo?” His eyes move languidly between mine as he waits for his cousin to answer. “Wire two million pounds into Val– into Melody’s bank account.” He listens silently to whatever Enzo says, his eyes fixed on me. “Just do it.”
Nerves and anticipation course through me and tighten my entire body. I didn’t think he’d pay such an astronomical sum. I squirm, but all that accomplishes is grinding down on his still very obviously hard and throbbing cock.
He grunts, eyes flashing in warning, and reaches for me. He balls his fist before he touches me and pounds the surface of the armrest in frustration instead, growling “ Grazie ” angrily into the phone.
The call finished, Matteo leans back in his chair. Time ticks away. We stare at each other, the tension ratcheting up with every passing second.
He has the most beautiful eyelashes. Thick and black and long, darkly framing his emerald eyes like he’s wearing eyeliner. It makes his gaze smoky and sticky on me.
“When your phone dings, that means the money has hit your account, pavona ,” he informs me. “It means you’re mine.”
Something darker and more primitive than possession grows in his gaze, something as claiming as a hot iron pressed into my skin.
My phone dings.
I gasp.
And he snaps.
Matteo lunges for me before the sound is even over.
That’s the only way to describe it, he lunges .
His right arm closes around my lower back, his left hand collars my neck and he seals his lips over mine with a tortured groan that sounds like it’s being ripped from the very depths of his soul.
Demanding, harsh lips tangle with mine, the kiss hard and hungry and completely out of control. Two seconds in and this already rivals the best kiss I’ve ever had in my life.
The one I don't let myself think about.
He consumes me with the hunger of a starving man needing to be sated, and he draws an answering long, needy moan from my throat.
Matteo rips his lips from mine mid-kiss.
“ Fuuuck ,” he snarls.
“What?” I ask, lust-addled.
“That fucking sound you just made. Whimpering like I sunk my cock ten inches deep into your tight pussy.”
I blink. “Ten…?”
His teeth score the length of my neck, sending a tremulous shiver raking through my whole body.
“Yes. Ten .”
He tilts his head up to find my mouth once more, swallowing my lustful gasp in the process.
There’s no finesse in this kiss. His lips are bruisingly hard, eager, and dizzying in their relentless passion. Something niggles at my memory, urging me to think , to let myself remember, but I can’t. Not when his kiss is an assault on all of my senses, drowning me in everything warm, citrusy, and unapologetically Matteo.
Every moan ripped from my throat is laced with desperation, a not so silent plea for more, now, please . Pure unadulterated ecstasy has me grinding down on his lap, his hard cock rubbing against my aching pussy.
“That’s my girl,” he grunts approvingly against my mouth.
Then he shoves me off his lap and down to the floor, sending his Amex skittering out from under the band of my bra. I brace myself to hit the solid ground hard, but his palm catches us. He’s gentle when he lays me down before he crushes me into the floor with his body.
This can hardly be called touching .
It’s claiming.
Claiming with a mindless need and intensity that speak to the depth of his lust. If I don’t put a stop to this, he really is going to fuck me right here.
Ripping my lips from his, I mutter breathlessly, “That’s two million’s worth, I think.”
Matteo shakes his head with his eyes closed. His hand wraps around the front of my throat in a dominating grip. He yanks me back against his mouth, muttering, “Not quite yet, pavona . More,” he begs, “I need more”, and then he’s taking my lips again, and with it, the last remnants of my willpower to push him off.
His hands roam my entire body, one grabbing handfuls of my ass while the other cups my breasts, kneading them with greedy fingers before pinching and tugging at my taut nipples. When I arch into his touch, a deeply pleased rumble rolls up his chest.
“I can’t wait to fuck you. I can’t wait to part these pretty lips and shove my cock down your throat. I can’t wait to eat out your weeping pussy and make myself a permanent home between your legs.” He grinds into me, thick shaft pulsing against my core. Fingers tighten around handfuls of my cheeks. “I can’t wait to sink into your ass, to see your thighs quiver as you work to accept me back here. I can’t wait to take it all and watch as my cum drips out of every hole of yours,” he rasps.
I gasp, my pussy and ass clenching in anticipation of his feverishly muttered plans for them. I can taste his arousal, his demented lust for me, and it electrifies me in return.
I find myself gripping his hair and arching my hips up to meet him, rubbing my wet pussy against his demanding cock. A strangled moan rips from Matteo’s throat and heat seeps into my lower stomach, intoxicating and wild. He stares at my mouth, eyes glazed with satisfaction when he sees how swollen and red my lips are.
“Kissing you is like giving in to the original sin,” he proclaims. He bends his head and claims my mouth once more.
His words land as his lips touch mine.
It takes long seconds for me to register them, to interrogate why they sound so familiar, and to finally realize why they do. Because they are .
It’s not the first time I’ve heard them.
It’s not the first time he’s said them to me.
My eyes fly open, the lust receding sharply as reality slams into me.
Suddenly, it’s like all the pieces connect. All the times I felt like I’d seen the curve of his lips before or felt the hard planes of his body. All the times I disregarded those feelings as being impossible.
Matteo feels the abrupt change in my body when I stiffen.
Slowly, he pulls away. His mouth leaves mine and he retreats. He peers down at where I lie trapped beneath his hard body. His gaze traces over the hand that comes up to my lips in shock and his mouth stretches into an arrogant smirk, his eyes shining triumphantly.
Danger dances along every word when he speaks, his voice low and sultry. “Do you remember me now, pavona ?”