Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
Sophia
“Do you remember?” His words seemed to echo around my head.
“Yeah.” My voice broke, and I had to clear my throat. “Yeah, I remember. You rescued me from a party.”
Matteo’s eyes darkened. “I rescued you from a date from hell. One where he wanted to…well, he wasn’t planning on being a gentleman with you.”
I blushed. It had been years and years since that night, but the fear and shame were still heavy weights in my chest.
“You never did tell me where you had met him.”
“At a coffee shop,” I mumbled. “I met him at a coffee shop. He seemed like a nice guy.” I gave him a small shrug.
“Well, he wasn’t that, was he?”
“No”, I admitted softly. “No, he wasn’t a nice guy at all.”
“Come on.” Zane’s hand tightened around mine, crushing my bones and refusing to let go even when I tried to drag my hand back. “Let’s go somewhere more private, Sophie.”
I bristled. “Sophia.”
He rolled his blue eyes at me, his blond hair reflecting the lights that strobed overhead like a rainbow. “Like it matters.”
Frowning, I looked around for any sign of anyone I knew. Only I knew before I looked that there wasn’t going to be anyone. This wasn’t the kind of party anyone I knew from school would be seen dead at.
I was completely on my own.
“Yeah, it does kind of matter,” I snapped, and his eyes flashed angrily. “Because it’s my name.”
“Of course it is, babe.” He loosened my hand long enough to slide it around my waist. With one jerk, he pulled me into his body and crushed me against his polo shirt.
“I know you’re name is Sophia. But in my head, I just call you beautiful.
” He whistled through his teeth. “Especially in that dress.”
His hand, tanned from the beach, roved up and down my back, lifting the sequinned pink dress high on my thighs.
Scrambling, I tried to pull it down, but his hand kept it barely below my ass.
“What do you mean?” The music was so loud that my voice sounded like a whisper.
“I mean, when we met, I could see you were pretty, but damn.” His hand slid down and cupped my ass. “I didn’t really think your body was like this.”
Over and over again, he squeezed me, so hard that I lifted myself onto my tiptoes to try and get away from it, only he wouldn’t let go.
Fear twisted my gut. I was in the middle of a party, but I didn’t know these people. I couldn’t be sure anyone would come to my aid if I needed help.
Hell, I wasn’t even sure I did need help. Yes, he was making me uncomfortable, but was he actually doing anything wrong?
“I think we should go upstairs.” The time when he squeezed my ass, he lifted me, rubbing me against the hard bulge in his jeans that left nothing to the imagination. “I’m going to need to see what else you’re hiding from me under that dress.”
“I uh…no.” The words were barely a squeak.
“What the fuck do you mean, no?”
“I’m…” How did girls in this position get out of this? I didn’t want to go upstairs with him. In fact, I didn’t want to be touched by him or even be in his vicinity, but I couldn’t see a way of getting out of it without causing a scene.
Damn it, if I’d had any kind of normal upbringing, I would have been prepared for this. Instead of going to my first date at the age of nineteen, completely ignorant.
I was blaming my brother, my brother, and Matteo. If they hadn’t been so protective, I would have known how to handle this.
“We don’t…” his lips tried to find mine, and I turned my head away, “have to do anything.” Again, he tried to kiss me, and this time, I used all of my weight to push myself out of his arms.
I didn’t want my first kiss to be with him and his beer-scented breath.
“I would like to go home.”
I was standing there barely a foot away from him, and he reached out and grabbed my hair. Tangling the curls in his hand, he dragged me back toward him.
“You?” His voice dripped with sarcasm. “You would like to go home? Well, I would like you to come upstairs with me and—"
I moved on instinct, pulling my arm back and slapping his face so hard that his head rocked back.
“Fucking bitch.”
He slapped me back. The slap took me completely by surprise. My hand pressed against my cheek, and I stared at him with tears in my eyes, making my vision blurry.
Had he seriously just slapped me? Sure, I had done it first, but what the hell?
No wonder no one wanted me to date if this was what it was like.
Spinning on my heel so fast I twisted my ankle, I ran, my pink heels crunching over the red plastic cups that were all over the carpet.
“Sophie!” My date’s voice rang out behind me, closer than I wanted him to be. I picked up my pace, weaving in and out of the people in the living room who were too busy dancing to pay any attention to a crying girl.
Yanking my phone into my hand, I had a split second to think about who to call, but my fingers were already hitting his name before I’d actually thought about it.
I couldn’t call my brother. He would come in all guns blazing, literally. So that left only one person.
“Sophia?” Matteo’s voice sounded so far away and echoey, like he was going through a tunnel.
Behind me, someone let out a yell. I didn’t know whether it was a shout of anger or joy.
“Matteo.” Yanking open the door, I shivered as the cold rain pelted down on me and flattened my curls to my head. “Matteo, please.” Slipping down the steps, I almost lost my footing on the wet grass. “Help me.”
There was a hissing pause. “Sophia, where are you?”
“I…” I looked around wildly, tears and rain water making it impossible to get my bearings. “I don’t know.” I sobbed loudly. “But he…he…”
“Get somewhere safe, Sophia.” There was a hardness in Matteo's voice that I had never heard before. A sharp, dangerous coldness. “I’m coming for you.”
Somewhere safe. Again, I looked around. There wasn’t anywhere safe. Not that I could see anyway.
“Come on, babe,” Zane called out behind me. “Come inside and let me warm you up.”
God, he was disgusting. How had I ever thought otherwise? Maybe because in the cold heart light of day, he had seemed clean cut and charming. He had been almost preppy and the complete opposite of the men and boys that surrounded me normally.
I’d been so desperate to be a normal girl that I hadn’t even thought about the consequences before I had agreed to go to the party with him and snuck out of my bedroom.
“Sophia?” Matteo’s voice was sharp. “Talk to me, princess.”
“I…”I dropped my voice to a whisper. “There’s nowhere to hide but a bush.”
“Get behind it. Stay on the line, okay, princess. You don’t need to talk, but stay on the line. I am a few minutes out.”
I didn’t ask why he was in this area or how he had tracked me because that didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was that he was coming for me.
Matteo would save me. He would protect me just like he always did.
On my hands and knees, I scuttled behind the thorny brush. My knees and hands sank into the wet mud.
“Sophie.” Zane’s voice rose up again, closer this time. “Come on. Stop playing silly games.”
I held my breath.
“Where the fuck is she?” someone else asked. Was there more than one person out there looking for me?
“No idea, but she couldn’t have gotten far. Find her and I’ll give you a go on that tight virgin.”
Their disgusting laughter floated up around me, making me colder than the rain and mud. This was what women and girls went through all the time. No wonder my brother and family were so against me dating. They knew what men were like.
They said something else that I couldn’t hear over the screech of tires.
“Where is she?”
“Who the fuck are you?” Zane’s voice was a screech. And it didn’t take a genius to know why. Matteo was a scary man.
“Where is Sophia?”
“Oh, that little cock teasing bitch? If you want a go on her virgin pussy then—"
There was a crack and a thud that sounded suspiciously like a body hitting the ground.
“Fuck! Get off of him!”
Over and over, the sound of a fist hitting flesh rang in my ears. Pushing myself upward, I stumbled forward.
“Matteo.” Freezing, I stared down at him, straddling Zane in the wet mud and pummeling his face into what looked like hamburger meat with his fists.
“Matteo, stop.”
If he carried on, he was going to kill him. Rushing forward, I touched his shoulder, and he turned to me with a snarl that made me almost fall back.
“Sophia?”
“Stop now,” I said again. “That’s enough.”
“I’ll decide when it’s enough.” In the darkness, his eyes found my cheek and narrowed. Anger spiralled off of him, thick and almost wet.
Fisting Zane’s blue polo shirt, he lifted Zane’s prone body off the floor. “Did you do that to her face?”
Zane couldn’t answer, but he gargled something.
“You marked her. Fucking touched what wasn’t yours. You disrespected her?” Matteo's voice was getting lower and lower as he let himself be taken by the anger. “Touch her again, and I’ll kill you.”
He surged forward, using his head as a weapon. The sound of Zane’s nose breaking was loud in the silence.
“Now we are done.” Wiping the blood from his face, Matteo jumped up. “Get in the car, Sophia.”
I scurried away. My hair and makeup were ruined, and my dress was a muddy, tattered mess.
“Car. Now,” he said again, and I folded myself into it. Hugging myself, I bit my lip, chewing on it as he pulled away and onto the quiet street.
“Thanks for coming to get me.”
Matteo didn’t answer me. His eyes barely darted in my direction, but his hands tightened on the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white.
I let out a sigh. He was angry at me. I got that. I’d been stupid, but did he have to give me the silent treatment?
“How did you get to me so quickly?” I asked when several more seconds had passed in silence.
“I was in the area visiting a friend.”
I frowned. “I didn’t know you knew anyone around—oh.” I blushed. “You were on a date as well.”
He swerved to the right and killed the engine. “Was that what this was for you, Sophia? A date? What the hell were you thinking?” His eyes narrowed to my lips. “And stop doing that.”