Chapter Twenty
Valentina
M atteo lives in what can only be described as the ultimate bachelor pad. It’s a three hundred and sixty degree penthouse at the top of the most exclusive residential building in the City, with sweeping views of the Thames and all of London.
He drove us here in his Maserati, seemingly uncaring of the fact that he was bleeding all over his front seat, parked in a private garage, and then ushered me into an elevator with a single button that opened up right into his apartment.
While I’d expected some kind of mansion the likes of which my brother lives in, this is somehow even more luxurious, with state of the art amenities and appliances. The palette is moody, in the dark blues, grays, and greens to match his hypnotizing eyes. The decor is tasteful and not too masculine, striking the perfect balance between functional and beautiful. For a moment, I allow myself to wonder if a woman helped him decorate it before I shut that thought down as quickly as it appeared.
“Why did you bring me here?” I ask, running my fingers along the marble kitchen island and moving over to the leather couch in the seating area.
“I thought it was high time I introduced you to my bed.”
I whirl around to find him grinning at me. His smile is charming and disarming, and I find myself thawing slightly, although very much against my will.
He’s leaning against the island, almost insolent in his confidence as he watches me intently.
“Kidding. Although the introduction will be made later.” My stomach flips at that announcement. “No, I thought the least you could do after getting me shot was help take care of me in my final minutes.”
I roll my eyes. “You’re not bleeding out.”
“I may very well be.” He pouts, looking forlorn. “You haven’t even checked.”
I know he’s teasing me, however my eyes can’t help but trail to the belt wrapped around his arm and the bloody, torn section of his shirt right beneath it. Blood continues to seep out of the opening, slowed but not completely stopped by my makeshift tourniquet.
Something shifts inside me seeing the blood drip steadily down his arm, something nameless and unidentifiable, yet that moves with the devastating impact of tectonic plates.
He saved my life.
Again.
And this time he was shot because of me.
“Do you have a first aid kit?”
His brows raise in surprise before his features smooth out to mask his reaction.
“Yeah, it’s in the guest bathroom.”
Matteo pushes off the island as if to go get it but I put my hand up. “I’ll go. Where is it?”
My skin prickles everywhere his searching, scrutinizing eyes touch. He clears his throat and says, “Down the hall, third door on your left.”
As promised, I find the kit in the cabinet under a beautiful copper sink. When I amble back down the hallway, I take my time and stare at the various pieces of art Matteo has selected to decorate his home, trying to use his choices to draw a better picture of who he is and what he likes.
When I walk past the last frame, I come to a sudden halt. Goosebumps flutter to life along the back of my neck, sending a startled shiver through my body.
I take two steps back. A dark and foreign emotion smacks me hard in the center of my chest.
Five peacock feathers are arranged against a solid background of navy blue and green, and encased in an expensive golden frame that takes pride of place over every other piece of art, positioned as the very first thing you see when you go deeper into Matteo’s apartment. I don’t know how I missed it when I first came down the hallway.
“I called you the original sin, but a more apt comparison would have been to Cinderella.” Matteo’s deep voice rings out behind me, gravelly and seductive. I turn to face him, stunned speechless by this discovery. Dark, lingering eyes meet mine. “She too left something of hers behind before she disappeared without a word.”
He watches me from the kitchen, taking in my reaction with lingering eyes that miss nothing and give away even less.
“Those feathers.” My voice cracks, my throat dry and unbearably tight. “They’re from my dress.”
The ones he ripped off my costume that night in his desperation to get access to me.
Matteo’s nod is languid, unhurried.
“ Pavona .” His eyes trail over to the frame, seemingly ensnared by the sight of the feathers. “It’s the first piece I hung when I bought the place.” A hint of pride colors his next words. “Made it myself.”
“You kept them.” Beneath my skin, my heart feels like it’s going to punch through the walls of my chest and fly away. “Why?”
Matteo frowns, looking at the frame like he’s waiting for it to give him the answer.
Eventually, he lifts a shoulder. “Masochism.”
He makes no other excuse, gives no other explanation for why he kept them. Why he framed them and hung them on his wall in his home when every likelihood said that we would never meet again after that night.
Matteo stares at me like I'm a skittish mare about to bolt, his gaze penetrating as I approach him with the first aid kit clutched in my hands. Shaking fingers reach to unbuckle the belt and unwind it from around his arm.
“Take off your shirt,” I instruct softly.
I can’t bring myself to meet his eyes. I’m afraid of what he might see in mine, so I explore the contents of the case instead. Whereas I can’t look at him, I feel his searing gaze pinned unflinchingly on me. He slowly opens his shirt, undoing the buttons one by one until it hangs open over his chest.
“I need help taking it off,” he murmurs erotically.
He looks into my eyes as I slide his shirt off his shoulders. His stare is indecent, borderline lewd even, communicating every dirty thought racing through his mind. It’s enough to heat my skin to the point that I feel almost feverish with lust.
Rock hard abs appear before me. Two distinct columns of muscles, each perfectly sculpted. His skin is smooth and pulled appetizingly tight over every dip and ridge. My fingers tingle with the need to touch him. There isn’t a single tattoo on him, which is unique amongst Underworld men. Enzo’s arms are covered in them, as is my brother’s entire body, down to his neck, head, and even his face.
It’s yet another thing that makes Matteo stand out. I’ve always been attracted to tattoos but awareness dances through my lower belly seeing his bare skin.
His muscles first flex as he inhales, then tense deliciously when he blows out an amused breath.
“The bullet wound is up here, cara mia .”
I flush bright red, not missing the cocky smirk that spreads across his lips at my reaction.
It’s more difficult than I’d like to admit to pull my gaze away from his abs and up to the wound in his arm. My stomach pitches when I see the large red gash there.
Matteo cocks his head, his voice turning sultry. “Are you going to kiss it better for me?”
“This is barely a graze,” I blurt. “You had me thinking you were dying.”
His gaze roams inquisitively over the side of my face. “Were you worried?”
Was I worried? I snapped out of my fear-induced torpor the second I saw Matteo running towards me and watched as, behind him, the gunman blindly raised his gun again, this time in my direction.
In his direction.
A sick feeling of panic twisted my gut, one far more potent than the dread that had consumed me moments before.
“Hardly,” I scoff.
He hums. It might be my imagination playing tricks on me, but I think I pick up on a note of disappointment there.
Once I’ve pulled the thread through the eye of the needle I start stitching the wound closed. Joaquín showed me how but I’ve never actually done it myself.
“To think that just last week you had a knife to my neck, ready to slit my throat,” he muses. “Now you’re stitching up my wound. What will next week bring, I wonder?”
“Perhaps digging you an unmarked grave in a forest somewhere so I have a place to hide your body when I’m finished with you?” I comment dryly.
An easy, teasing grin plays along his lips. “Kinky, cara . Consider me an extremely willing participant.” He runs the backs of two fingers softly over my bottom lip, his pupils dilating with desire. “However, if I’m indulging your kinks, then you’re indulging mine back. And I’m going to make you realize that your fantasies really lacked imagination.”
His hushed promise pulls twin waves of heat to my cheeks and my core. The pleased rumble that rolls up his chest tells me my reaction doesn’t go unnoticed by him.
“Why’d you do it?” I ask, eyes fixed on his bleeding arm. My hands shake only slightly as I tug the needle through torn flesh. “Why’d you put yourself in harm’s way for me? You could have been seriously injured. Or worse.”
His fingers drum along the edge of the counter. For long moments, they provide the only sounds in a stretching silence between us.
“I didn’t lie to you the night of Carnivale ,” he replies. “There’s nothing more dangerous to my health than you.”
There’s that very inconvenient, very unwanted pinching in my stomach again.
“You’re not allowed to give up your life for me.”
Matteo hums again but doesn’t say anything else. He’s quiet as I stitch his wound. I’m sure it’s painful to be sown up without anesthetic, but he doesn’t move, doesn’t twitch. He doesn’t even look at what I’m doing.
He keeps his eyes fixed dutifully on me.
I’ve never been watched the way he watches me, like a tracking hawk waiting patiently for an opening to swoop in for the kill.
The silence stretches but it’s far from awkward. It’s companionable even. I reach into the kitchen and grab the tiny pair of scissors.
“Why did you freeze back there?”
My hand stutters and I miss a beat before I recover. Cutting the thread at the end of his stitches, I busy my hands cleaning up the items I used—the antiseptic wipe, the bloody gauze, the used thread and needle, the papers from the bandage I applied on top of the wound, the—
Matteo cups my cheek and turns my face, forcing me to look up at the visceral look of need burning hotly in his eyes. He’s shirtless, his shoulders broad, his legs crossed as he leans against the island, radiating the kind of effortless dominance that would be the envy of any man who saw it.
“I answered your question,” he presses gently. “An answer for an answer.”
I swallow thickly. The me from a month ago would have told him to fuck off. The me today realizes he’s saved my life at least twice, if not more, and deserves something in return. If not the full truth, then at least a small measure of it.
“I have post traumatic stress disorder. Specific triggers related to the traumatizing event will cause panic attacks sometimes. That was… That was the worse one so far. I don’t usually freeze. It’s never happened to me before.”
Matteo’s thumb brushes gently across my cheek in a comforting gesture. “Was the gun the trigger?”
I shake my head. “Sometimes just being at Firenze will trigger an attack.”
“Being at the club triggers it?” Matteo’s features tighten, as does his hand on my face. His words rip past his lips with urgent fury. “Tell me what happened to you there.”
I try to turn away but his hand tightens on my face, keeping me from being able to do so.
A soft murmur of disapproval escapes his lips before he pulls me against him, my cheek pressed against his bare chest, my ear over his steady heart. Six inches to the left and the bullet would have brought this comforting beat, and his life, to an end.
An unpleasant burn ignites in my chest and roasts my insides painfully slowly at the thought.
“You’re done answering my questions. I get it.” Somehow, Matteo’s voice manages to be both soft on the surface and flinty beneath it. “But you don’t need to run away.”
I pull back. “Do I look like I’m running?”
“Physically? No. But in here?” His other hand skims across my temple when he reaches up to brush the hair delicately from my face. “Yeah, you’re running, cara .”
Matteo leans forward and presses a kiss to my forehead. His mouth lingers, his bottom lip dragging erotically over my skin until it tingles.
He moves lower, kissing one eyelid.
Then the other.
“How about,” he breathes against my skin, “we have a code word for when you’re done answering questions?”
He kisses my cheek next.
Then the other.
The corner of my mouth.
My lips part on a soft whine, but he avoids them, moving down the line of my jaw instead.
“And then what?” I ask breathlessly.
I turn my face into his, searching for his lips, but he ignores me. Instead, the hand in my hair drops to cuff my throat. Pulsing need thrums to life in my core at his dominating touch.
“Then I stop,” he says simply.
A breath catches on my lips. Something about the way he whispers that to me is so fucking seductive.
“I don’t want you disappearing again,” Matteo rumbles, a faint note of distress infiltrating his voice. “Especially not because I pushed you to answer me when you weren’t ready.” He buries his face in the crook of my neck, his lips moving up the column of my throat. “But, cara , know that whenever you do tell me…” Matteo’s mouth presses hotly against my ear, his breaths fanning across my burning skin. “I’ll kill him.”
I shudder violently at the dark emotion in his tone. “Who?” I croak.
“Whoever hurt you.”
“What if—” What if they’re your family? What would you do then? “What if there’s more than one?”
Lips press against mine, but not in a kiss. In a claim. “I’ll kill them all,” he vows fervently. “What’s your word?”
The scent of him, the feel of him, the sheer size of him overwhelms me. He turns us around so that I’m the one pressed against the counter, trapped between his arms.
The marble digs into my back.
“Cherry,” I gasp.
His body moves against mine as a deep, raspy chuckle hits my ear. “Pick something else.”
“Why?”
Finally, finally , he pulls back just enough to hover his face over mine. His eyes drop to my mouth and I watch as a fresh wave of primal arousal rolls through them.
“Because that’s going to be your safe word when I tie you to my bed, cara .”
I gulp. A slow, arrogant smile curves the corner of his lips when he sees the expression on my face.
“Um…” I say, suddenly brainless. “Peacock?”
“ Pavona ,” he corrects.
I notice Matteo hasn’t called me that since I recognized who he was. It’s almost like he was pushing me into remembering.
If he was, I failed that test spectacularly.
Now he only calls me what he called me that night; cara or cara mia .
“Yes. Pavona .”
The charming smile is back, sending my stomach into a turmoil of twists and turns.
“Thanks for stitching me up, cara .”
“Thanks for taking a bullet for me.”
Easy grin. “Anytime.”
Never again.
Matteo’s mouth crashes down on mine, surprising me. A hungry tongue forces my lips open, and then he’s plundering my mouth with a feverish intensity that borders on ferality. He cups the back of my neck and angles me up towards him.
A frustrated groan leaves his lips at our height difference. His hands span my waist and then he picks me up and drops me on the island, parting my legs and stepping between my thighs. I moan happily as my hands twine through his hair and arch into him, seeking the contact with his bare chest, wanting his body heat to envelop me whole.
Matteo rips his lips from mine but doesn't pull away. His mouth remains against mine, separated only by our frantic breaths. The expression on his face is rabid, quickly veering towards tortured.
“Do you know you moan every single time I kiss you?” he questions hoarsely, urgently. “It’s this throaty little whimper that falls desperately from your lips and it drives me fucking crazy.”
“You say that like I’m the only one. You also groan every time we kiss,” I answer feverishly.
“That’s the sheer disbelief I feel that I get to kiss you again after all this time.” He stares at my lips, his eyes darkening. “Who was the last man to kiss these lips?” he questions again. When my mouth parts, his eyes flash in warning. “And don’t you dare say pavona .”
Frustration simmers inside me. “I’ve already answered that question.”
“You said it was me. But before we met again, who was it? Who did you kiss last?”
“Why do you keep asking?”
Matteo’s hand finds my throat and tightens. His unfounded possessiveness should be a massive turn off. Instead it’s like an accelerant added to an already blazing inferno, snowballing it into a cataclysmic explosion of heat.
“I want to know who you kissed in the year and a half between our two meetings. I want to know every single man and every single name, but I’ll start with the last. He’s the one I’ll find first.”
“You.”
Matteo’s features twist in anger. “Valentina—”
“ You !” I exclaim. “You wanted me to be honest? I have been. I kissed you the night of Carnivale and I kissed you last week.” Matteo’s eyes fly between mine, the territorial anger in them now colliding with confusion. “ You are the only man I’ve kissed in the past year and a half.”
His fingers loosen and fall away as surprise etches itself across his features.
“You haven’t—?”
My answer is clipped. “No.”
A strangled groan rumbles up his chest and erupts from deep within him. It comes from such depths that the sound lasts seconds before it ever makes it past his lips. My eyes fly up to his to find the darkest look of possession I’ve ever seen on any man before, let alone this man.
“You fucked up,” he mutters before claiming my mouth in a scorching kiss.