Chapter 6 Alessandro #2
“No, you have been. You didn’t try to sugarcoat it or make excuses or tell me everything’s going to be fine.
You just told me the truth.” She takes a step toward me, closing the distance between us.
“I need something real, Alessandro. I need something that isn’t built on lies or family loyalty or protecting the precious DeLuca princess. ”
There’s something in her voice, in the way she’s looking at me, that makes every alarm bell in my head start ringing.
She’s vulnerable, devastated, not thinking clearly.
Taking advantage of her emotional state would be unforgivable.
But then she reaches for me, her hands fisting in the front of my shirt, and every rational thought I’ve ever had disappears.
“Please,” she whispers, and the word breaks something fundamental inside me. “I just need to feel something real.”
I should step back.
I need to maintain the boundaries that have kept our relationship functional for years.
I need to remember that she’s nineteen and devastated and not capable of making clear decisions right now.
Instead, I cup her face in my hands, my thumbs brushing away the tears on her cheeks.
“Bianca,” I say, her name a warning and a prayer all at once.
“Please,” she says again, and then she’s rising up on her toes, and her lips are touching mine, and every boundary I’ve ever maintained dissolves like smoke.
The kiss is desperate, hungry, full of years of suppressed attraction and her current emotional devastation.
She tastes like salt from her tears and the cherry from her chapstick.
And I’m lost.
My hands slide into her hair, and she presses closer, like she’s trying to disappear into me.
Like I’m the only solid thing in a world that’s just collapsed around her.
And maybe I am.
Maybe right now, in this moment, I’m the only person who can give her what she needs—something honest and real and uncomplicated by family loyalty or protective lies.
But even as I kiss her back, even as every cell in my body responds to her touch, part of my mind is screaming warnings.
She’s vulnerable.
She’s hurt.
She’s making decisions based on emotional devastation rather than clear thinking.
And I’m taking advantage of that, no matter how much I want to pretend otherwise.
But Christ, she feels perfect against me.
Like something I’ve been waiting for without realizing it.
The way she responds to my touch, the small sound she makes when I deepen the kiss—it’s intoxicating and dangerous and absolutely wrong on every level that matters.
“Bianca,” I murmur against her lips, trying to inject some rationality into the situation.
“Don’t stop,” she whispers back. “Please don’t stop. I need this. I need you.”
And those words—I need you—shatter the last of my resistance.
I pull her closer, my hands spanning her waist, and she melts into me like she belongs there.
Her body fits against mine perfectly, soft curves pressing against hard muscle as she rises up on her toes to meet me.
The kiss deepens, becomes something desperate and consuming—her hands fisting in my shirt, pulling me down to her as if she can’t get close enough.
When she makes a small sound of need against my mouth, it nearly undoes me completely.
My hands slide up her back, feeling the warmth of her skin through the thin fabric of her sweater, and she arches into my touch like she’s been waiting for this as long as I have.
Her fingers tangle in my hair, tugging just hard enough to make me groan, and I back her against the edge of her desk.
The kiss turns hungrier, more desperate, years of careful distance and suppressed want pouring out between us.
When I trail my lips down to her neck, she tips her head back with a gasp that sends heat straight through me.
“Alessandro,” she breathes, and for a moment the rest of the world disappears entirely.
There’s only her warmth, her softness, the way she clings to me like I’m the only real thing in her collapsing world.
Until the door slams open behind us.
“What the hell—”
Matteo’s voice cuts through the moment like a blade, and we spring apart so quickly that Bianca stumbles backward into her desk.
I turn to face him, my heart pounding and guilt flooding through my system like poison.
His face cycles through shock, then rage, then something that looks like betrayal so profound it’s almost physical.
The color drains from his olive complexion, leaving him ashen except for two spots of fury burning high on his cheekbones.
Those piercing blue-gray eyes—so similar to Bianca’s—go from warm concern to glacial fury in the space of a heartbeat.
His jaw clenches so hard I can see the muscle jumping beneath his skin, and his hands curl into fists at his sides.
The sharp angles of his face seem more pronounced in his rage, his aristocratic nose flaring slightly as he struggles to control his breathing.
His eyes move between Bianca and me, taking in her disheveled appearance, her swollen lips, the broken glass around us, the obvious intimacy of what he just interrupted.
When his gaze finally settles on me, his eyes have gone completely cold—the kind of cold that’s gotten men killed in our world.
His mouth is pressed into a thin, unforgiving line, and there’s something predatory in the way he stands, like he’s calculating exactly how much damage he can do before anyone can stop him.
“Alessandro,” he says, his voice low and filled with rage. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
Whatever just happened between Bianca and me has just made an already impossible situation infinitely worse.
“Bianca, get away from him. Now.” Matteo’s voice is calmly quiet, the kind of tone that makes grown men step back and reconsider their life choices.
“No.”
The single word hangs in the air.
Bianca doesn’t move from where she’s standing next to me, doesn’t even flinch under the weight of his fury.
If anything, she lifts her chin in that defiant gesture that reminds me too much of Sophia.
“What did you just say to me?” Matteo’s voice drops even lower, dangerous in a way that would terrify anyone who didn’t know him as well as she does.
“I said no.” Bianca’s voice is steady, cold. “You don’t get to give me orders anymore. You’re not my father, remember? You’re my brother. And last I checked, brothers don’t get to control their sisters’ lives.”
The color drains completely from Matteo’s face, and I can see the exact moment her words hit their target.
His hands clench into fists at his sides, and when he speaks, his voice is raw with pain and fury.
“You think this changes everything between us?”
“It changes everything about us,” Bianca fires back. “So don’t you dare stand there and act like you have any authority over me. You have nothing.”
“Run that by me again, Bianca.” Matteo’s voice even makes me wince.
Bianca laughs coldly and every instinct in me is screaming to run. “Let me spell this out for you, Matteo. You’re not my father, you’re not special. You’re just another one of Giuseppe’s sons. At least Mario was honest about wanting to hurt me—you’ve been lying about loving me for nineteen years.”