11. Matteo
— ? —
Matteo
She left her underwear on my pillow.
I stare at the scrap of silk like it’s going to explain itself. Like it’s going to tell me how the ice queen of Manhattan high society ended up in my bed, in my lighthouse, making sounds I’m going to hear every time I close my eyes for the rest of my life.
Thirteen years.
Thirteen years of watching her from across ballrooms. Thirteen years of trading insults because it was the only way I could talk to her without revealing how badly I wanted to touch her. Thirteen years of wanting what I couldn’t have, and now.
Now she’s outside, wearing my shirt, having deliberately left me a message that a blind man could read.
I pick up the underwear. Bring it to my face without thinking, catch her scent, and lose what’s left of my composure.
I need cold water. I need to think. I need to do something other than charge out there and take her against the lighthouse wall in full view of whatever fishing boats might be passing.
The shower. Yes. Cold shower. Clear head. Then I can face her like a civilized person instead of a man who’s been starving for thirteen years and just got his first taste of food.
The bathroom is small, all white tile and chrome fixtures I installed myself. I turn on the water, wait for it to heat because apparently cold showers are beyond me, and step under the spray.
The hot water hits my shoulders and I brace my hands against the tile and try to breathe.
She’s outside. In my shirt. With nothing underneath. And she left her underwear on my pillow like a flag planted in conquered territory.
I’ve been conquered. I’m not too proud to admit it. Years of armor, of keeping my distance, of telling myself she was off-limits and I didn’t want her anyway, and she dismantled all of it in one night. One kiss. One perfect, devastating night.
Her name comes out of my mouth without permission. “Ursula.”
I think about the way she looked in the firelight. The way she gasped when I touched her. The way she said my name, Matteo, like it meant something, like I meant something.
“Ursula.”
Rougher now. Remembering. The taste of her skin. The sound she made when I first pushed inside her. The way she arched against me, demanding more, always more.
“Ursula.”
The bathroom door opens.
I should have heard it. Should have noticed. But I was too far gone in memory, in want, and now she’s standing in the doorway watching me with those green eyes and I’m not hiding anything. Couldn’t even if I wanted to.
“I heard you,” she says.
“I meant you to.”
She’s still wearing my shirt. Her feet are bare on the tile. Her hair is loose and tangled and she’s looking at me like I’m something worth looking at.
“I found a gift on my pillow this morning.”
“Did you like it?”
“I lost my mind.”
She smiles, slow and wicked. “Good.”
She starts unbuttoning the shirt. One button, then two. The fabric falls away and she’s standing there naked, backlit by the morning light streaming through the window, and I stop breathing entirely.
“You look like a goddess.” The words are out before I can stop them. “You look like something I made up.”
“I’m real.” She steps into the shower, into my space, into my arms. “I’m right here.”
The water cascades over both of us, hot and relentless. I pull her close, feel her body against mine, and wonder what I did in a past life to deserve this moment.
“I thought you wanted the view.” My voice is hoarse. “After the storm.”
“I do want the view.” Her hands slide up my chest, over my shoulders, into my hair. “This is a much better view.”
I kiss her. Can’t help it. She tastes like morning and desire and something that feels terrifyingly like forever. Her mouth opens under mine and I’m lost, completely lost, drowning in her.
“Matteo.” She pulls back just enough to speak, her lips still brushing mine. “I want to try something.”
“Anything.”
“Can I...”
She doesn’t finish the sentence. Instead, she sinks to her knees in front of me, the water streaming over her hair, her shoulders, and looks up at me with those green eyes.
My heart stops. “You don’t have to...”
“I want to.” Her hands slide up my thighs. “I’ve been thinking about this. Wondering what sounds you’d make.”
“Ursula...”
She wraps a hand around me, gives one slow stroke that makes my knees threaten to quit, and then she takes me in her mouth and I stop being able to form words.
She’s thorough and patient. Everything I should have expected from a woman who does nothing by half measures.
She takes me deep, hollows her cheeks, works what she can’t fit with her hand, and every so often she pulls off to lick up the length of me and look up through the water like she wants to see me suffer.
My hips jerk forward despite my best efforts at control.
My hand fists in her wet hair and she moans around me like she likes being held there.
“Like that,” I manage. “God, just like that.”
She hums in response, and the vibration nearly ends me.
I look down at her, this woman I’ve wanted for so long, on her knees in my shower, and something cracks open in my chest. Not just desire, though there’s plenty of that. Something deeper. Something that feels like recognition.
She chose me.
Of all the men in Manhattan, all the men who would have lined up to comfort her through her divorce, she chose me.
The rival, the enemy, the man her husband hated most. She could have anyone, and she’s here, in my lighthouse, in my shower, making me feel things I didn’t know I was capable of feeling.
“Stop.” The word comes out strangled. “Stop, I’m going to...”
She pulls back, looks up at me, and smiles. “That’s the idea.”
“No.” I drop to my knees in front of her, cup her face in my hands. “Not like that. Never alone.”
I kiss her, tasting myself on her lips, not caring. My hands find her hips, pull her close, and she gasps against my mouth as our bodies align under the spray.
“I need to taste you.” The words are rough, desperate. “I’ve been thinking about it since the gala. Since the wine on your neck. Let me taste you.”
“Yes.”
I turn her, press her back against the tile wall, and sink down until my mouth is level with her hips. She’s trembling already, her hands braced against the shower walls, water running down her body like something out of a dream I once had.
“Beautiful.” I press a kiss to her hip bone, her thigh, the soft skin of her inner leg. “Look how wet you are. All of this for me?”
“Matteo, please...”
I stop teasing. Lick into her, slow and flat and greedy, and feel her whole body jolt.
She tastes like want. Like need. Like everything I’ve been missing without knowing what to call it.
I work her with my tongue, my lips, drag two fingers into her while I suck at the spot that makes her thighs try to close around my head, learning her the way she learned me, cataloging every gasp and moan and whispered plea.
“There. Right there. Just like that, just like that...”
I don’t let up. I couldn’t if I tried.
When she shatters, my name on her lips, I catch her before she falls. Hold her against the tile wall until her legs stop shaking, until her breathing evens out, until she opens her eyes and looks at me like I’ve given her something precious.
“I need you.” Her voice is barely a whisper. “Inside me. Now.”
I stand. Lift her, hands full of her ass, and pin her to the tile. Her legs wrap around my waist like they were made to be there.
“Are you sure? We did this all night...”
“I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.”
I drive up into her in one rough thrust and we both groan.
She’s tight and slick and gripping me like she never wants me to leave, and I have to hold still for a second just to survive it.
Then I start to move, using the wall for leverage, driving up into her, and there’s nothing left in the world but this.
Just us. Just the hot water running over our skin and the tile cool against my shoulders and the woman in my arms making sounds that I want to record and play on repeat for the rest of my life.
“You feel incredible.” I’m babbling now, past the point of coherent thought. “You feel like everything. Like home.”
“Harder. God, please, I need it harder.”
I couldn’t stop if the lighthouse caught fire.
We move together, desperate and perfect, and when she comes again I’m right there with her, both of us gasping and shaking and holding on like we might disappear if we let go.
The water runs cold eventually. I don’t notice until she laughs, breathless and shivering.
“We should probably get out.”
“Probably.”
Neither of us moves.
“Matteo?” Her head is on my shoulder, her arms around my neck. We’re still pressed against the tile wall, still connected.
“Yes?”
“I don’t know what this is.” Her voice is soft. Vulnerable. “I don’t know what to call it. But I know I don’t want it to stop.”
I pull back enough to look at her. To see her face, flushed and satisfied and more open than I’ve ever seen it.
“I don’t either.” I press a kiss to her forehead, her cheek, her lips. “I’ve wanted you for thirteen years, Ursula. I can wait a little longer to figure out what to call it.”
Her smile is like sunrise.
“Now can we get out? I’m freezing.”
I laugh, help her down, wrap her in the biggest towel I own. She looks ridiculous, swaddled in terrycloth with her wet hair dripping everywhere, and I’ve never seen anything more beautiful.
“I should probably tell you something,” I say as I wrap a towel around my own waist.
“What?”
“I think I’m falling in love with you.”
She goes still. Stares at me. For one terrible moment, I think I’ve said too much, pushed too fast, ruined everything.
Then she steps forward, cups my face in her hands, and kisses me softly.
“I think,” she whispers against my lips, “that I’m falling too.”