Chapter 29 Tell Me to Stop
TELL ME TO STOP
Caitríona
The rain wakes me before the fear can. A hard, slanting curtain slams against the old panes, the kind that makes the house breathe and the dunes hiss. Every nerve is awake now, on full alert. I lie still and listen. I search for the wrong sound, the right one, anything that doesn’t belong.
There. My pulse skyrockets. A scuff under the portico. Not the wind.
I slide off the couch, knife in hand, and creep toward the door. The window is the wrong angle, and the peephole is useless in the dark, so I draw in a steadying breath before I crack the chain and ease it open an inch.
Matteo.
He’s hunched under the shallow overhang, soaked to the bone. Rain gutters off the brim of his hood, and his hands are jammed into his pockets like he’s trying to keep them warm.
Anger hits me first, clean and bright. Why the hell is he still here? Then the second thing, so much worse. It rises like a tide I can’t command back: want, memory, the ache of a name inked beneath my collarbone. The I still love you that has been playing over and over in my mind since last night.
I yank the door wider and step into the rain. The cool droplets hiss against my heated skin. “What part of don’t follow me sounded like a riddle?” I growl over the storm. Cold needles my bare legs and Noel’s borrowed sweatshirt clings to my ribs. “Why are you still here?”
He doesn’t flinch. Water tracks his jaw. “Because you’re still here.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one that matters.” He rises slowly, backing away a step, but only a tiny one.
“That’s not good enough.” I push closer, stupid and furious and suddenly too awake. “Why can’t you just leave me alone?”
His throat works. For a moment the pounding storm is the only voice.
Then a long minute later, he replies simple as a fact, “You know why.” He lifts his eyes to mine, the tempest brewing beneath the emerald surface rivaling the one surrounding us.
“I already told you why. Because I’m still fucking in love with you, Cat. ”
“No…”
He huffs out a dark laugh. “Yes.”
“You don’t get to say that. You lost that right a long time ago, when you left me… when you left us.”
Pain scorches across his features, something ugly and wrenching.
“And I’ve regretted every moment since. I went back for you, Kitty Cat.
To that bar in Sicily where we first met.
No one knew where I could find you. Hell, I searched all of Belfast for you a few weeks later.
I had no idea where you were, where to look. But I fucking tried…”
The world jerks. A gull screams like a bad violin. My grip on the knife falters, and I slap it against the doorframe, as if that can pin the night in place. He came back for us?
“Don’t,” I finally whisper, because his confessions are flaying me open.
Matteo steps forward a fraction, the rain breaking on the line of his shoulders. “Then tell me to go and mean it this time.” He pauses, and I swear he’s holding his breath. “Say it like you never meant it on that beach.”
I hate him for being right. I hate myself more.
The anger crests into something meaner, wilder, older. Then it rips through me and takes my balance with it. I grab his sweatshirt with both hands and crash into him.
The first kiss is all teeth and rain and four years of starving.
He stumbles back into the post, and I follow, climbing into the heat of his mouth like I forgot how to breathe.
He tastes like seawater and regret and home.
His hands hit my hips and hold, his fingers possessive, the kind of touch I’ve been pretending I don’t need.
We don’t come up for air. The rain soaks my hair, runs down his throat. I chase a drop with my mouth, and he groans like it hurts. My fingers fist in his hood and yank it back. The bruise I gave him blooms under the porch light and, God help me, I kiss it like an apology I don’t have words for.
Matteo answers with hunger. His palm slides to the small of my back, pulls me flush against the hard planes of his body like he remembers exactly how I fit.
The old rhythm snaps on like it’s been waiting under my skin.
His mouth shapes my name, and my body moves to meet his.
His cock is hard against my belly and heat pools between my legs.
I press a hand flat to my sweatshirt to the blossom and the small name beneath.
It’s a brief, desperate prayer, then I shove the ache down where it can’t be seen.
“Cat,” he rasps against my lips, voice shredded. “Tell me to stop.”
“I can’t,” I breathe, and it’s the truest thing I’ve said all day. Because I don’t want him to stop. Ever. I pretend we’re teenagers again on that sun-soaked beach.
He kisses me like a promise he was born to break. The storm folds around us and the house disappears. The only map I trust is his hands learning me again. I bite his lower lip, and he swears into my mouth in Italian. That rough sound should be illegal, and it frays what’s left of my restraint.
The porch offers no cover. The wind drives the rain in sideways. We’re drenched, shivering, even laughing as a cold sheet of icy rain hits our skin. He cups my face, thumbs gentle where everything else is brutal, and the contrast unmoors me.
“Inside,” he whispers against my mouth, forehead against mine and breath hot in the cold. “Before you freeze.”
“Bossy,” I mutter, but I’m already moving.
He lifts me like it’s muscle memory, hands sure beneath my thighs, my arms locking around his neck. The knife clatters harmlessly to the doormat. He kicks the door wider, shoulders us through the opening, and the slam swallows the storm behind us.
We stand dripping on Noel’s tired rug and stare at each other like we’ve done something irreversible. Maybe we have. My pulse is a drum against his mouth and his is an earthquake under my palm. Water puddles under us in a ring, the world’s most damning halo.
“Cat,” he whispers again, softer now, like a question and a vow.
I answer the only way I can. I pull him down and kiss him, wrapping my hand around the back of his neck. Then we’re on each other again. There are no speeches, no strategy, just the kind of hunger that makes reason look insignificant.
He kisses me like a vow he can’t keep, and I answer in equal measure.
My fingers find the hem of his soaked sweatshirt and shove.
The thick material peels away as heavy as a second skin.
The porch light through the blinds cuts his chest into strips of gold and shadow.
I shouldn’t look. I do anyway. He’s as beautiful as he was all those years ago.
His torso is carved perfection, tattoos inked across muscles honed for violence.
“Are you still cold?” His voice is as ruined as I feel.
“Yes, fix it.”
He carries me to the couch, laughing, stumbling and breathless, the sound breaking when his mouth catches mine again. He sinks into the cushions, and I climb into his lap, knees bracketing his hips. The heat of him is shocking, and desperately needed, after the rain.
“Merda, Cat…” he groans, and the rough sound slides straight through me.
Buttons, zippers, and wet fabric surrender under impatient hands, mine and his. Finally, his clothes thud to the floor, leaving him bare beneath me. His cock stands, thick and erect between my legs, and that heat rushes my veins.
I drag my wet sweatshirt over my head, then reach for my top before cursing and tugging it back down, keeping the neckline tight to block the place under my collarbone where an orange blossom and a small name live. In the dimness, he doesn’t seem to notice.
“Tell me to slow down,” he rasps against my jaw as his tongue drags across my skin.
“Don’t you dare.”
He lifts me up, just long enough to drag my panties off before claiming my mouth once again.
We’re clumsy and perfect as we reacquaint ourselves with one another.
Each touch igniting the smoldering heat.
His palms brand my waist, then sink lower, curving around my ass.
I rub my clit against his hard length, the friction building deep in my core.
My nails rake his shoulders, and he groans from somewhere deeper than his chest. Every kiss is a collision.
Every touch says mine and not yours in the same breath.
The world narrows to heat and breath and the way our bodies remember the map without asking for directions.
“I want you,” I murmur against his lips. “Inside me.”
His eyes meet mine, that tempest alive in his gaze. “Are you sure?”
I reach for his cock and wrap my fingers around it, sliding up and down along the thick shaft.
He lets out a satisfying hiss. “Fuck, Cat. Dio, I’ve been dreaming about this moment for the last four years.”
I press a finger to his lips, silencing him. “No reminiscing. Just fuck me, Matteo.”
“Are you on the pill?”
“Of course, I am. I’m not stupid enough—” My words fall away before they catapult us to the past. “Just do it already.”
His chin dips, and his hands tighten around my hips, guiding me over his throbbing head. I’m wet and aching, desperate to take all of him. He presses at my entrance and raw pleasure streaks through my veins.
I arch against him as he thrusts into me, and he catches my gasp with his mouth. The rhythm finds us, urgent and ruthless, a fierce storm of its own, and the room blurs. Springs complain and the old couch rocks as he drives into me, harder, faster. Rain ticks the windows like it’s keeping time.
“Cat,” he breathes, forehead pressed to mine, eyes blown wide. “Look at me.”
I do, and it wrecks me. I move with him, against him, into him, the need spiking so fast my vision whitens at the edges. He holds my hips like he’s both anchoring me and letting me burn. We stop pretending to be quiet.
Moans fill the living room, a perfect symphony to the battering storm outside. It’s wild and ravenous, my hips bucking against each thrust. He pushes long and deep, then fast, and a fire burns in my core. He reaches between us, his thumb pressing against my clit and my entire body tightens.
Shite, I’m going to come.
The orgasm hits hard, bright and shattering. I break around his name groaning, “Matteo…”
He follows me over the edge, a rough sound torn from his throat. His hands lock on me like he’s afraid I’ll vanish if he lets go. For a long moment after, all I can hear is rain and the drum of our hearts refusing to remember how to slow.
Then he kisses my cheek, my temple, and then the hinge of my jaw.
He’s soft where everything else was brutal.
His mouth slips lower, and I jolt, catching his face, steering him away from the place above my heart.
“Hey,” I murmur, smiling and shaking, “stay with me.” He does, obedient for once.
His forehead drops against mine, breaths hot and uneven.
We fold together on the ruined couch, my thighs still trembling and his hand splayed wide over my ribs like he’s counting my breaths. The house creaks and the storm pounds. Somewhere, a buoy bell rings across the sea like it knows our secret.
“This changes nothing,” I murmur the lie into the curve of his shoulder.
“I know.” He kisses my hair. His voice is wrecked and tender all at once. “Nothing.”
I pull the damp sweatshirt close again, fingers covering the hidden blossom and the name that should never be a target. He doesn’t see because I don’t let him.
Outside, the rain keeps writing the same story. Inside, we pretend we don’t know how it ends.