Chapter 2
Chapter Two
MATTEO
C hastity Costa.
How many years had it been since that name had crossed my mind? Ten? Twelve? Somewhere in that range, I mentally shrugged. Long enough ago that she’d been a kid the last time I saw her.
Well, technically, we’d both been kids back then. At least we’d still been in school. Even though we came from different crime families, we’d both attended the same exclusive private catholic academy. It wasn’t surprising. Half the New York underworld sent their kids to Holy Sepulcher, figuring it was the safest place. There were lines even violent mobsters like our fathers wouldn’t cross, and shedding blood on sacred ground was at the top of the list.
I searched my memory for the last time I’d seen her. I must have been a senior, and she was…what? A freshman? Maybe not even that. More likely, she’d still been in the underclasses held on the lower floors of the old repurposed monastery. She’d certainly been small enough.
Not that she’d grown much in the past decade.
She was still tiny. And not just short—the top of her head barely reaching my shoulders—but slight as well. Clearly, whatever convent Michael Costa had shipped his daughter off to hadn’t spent his money on food. It had hardly taken any effort to whip her behind me in the hall, and her wrist had felt as thin and supple as a willow branch in my hand as I’d pulled her up the stairs.
That wasn’t all I noticed about the feel of her. Her skin was warm and nearly as soft as rabbit fur.
Whoa , I chided myself. That wasn’t the kind of thought a man should have about a nun.
Especially not a man like me.
Not even if that nun happened to be a Costa.
Still, the sensation of her skin against mine was so pleasant that I couldn’t bring myself to loosen my hold on her until after the office door closed behind us, the automatic lock audibly clicking into place. Once I finally did, though, I turned back to see her gently rubbing the spot on her wrist where my hand had been.
For a moment, I worried that I might have accidentally been too rough with her, even though there were no red marks or bruises on her perfect peach skin.
“Are you all right?” I asked.
She blinked before answering, lost in private thought. “Excuse me?” Then, following my pointed stare down at her wrist, immediately stopped her stroking and tucked both arms demurely behind her back. “I’m fine, but I need?—”
I stopped her with a groan as she glanced behind her at the closed door. “Please don’t say you need to get to the lounge again.”
An awkward pause hung in the air between us before she found the courage to look back at me. “But I do.”
“No, you don’t,” I told her plainly. “At least not until your cousins are done brawling in the hallway.”
She exhaled sharply, almost as if she was stuffing down a chuckle, even as her eyes demurely swept down to the floor. “Don’t be so dramatic, Mr. D’Angelo. A few slaps and insults can hardly be classified as a brawl.”
Mr. D’Angelo . I liked it better when she called me Matteo .
I strode back a few steps, leaned my hip against the antique, carved walnut desk behind me—a remnant from the club’s previous owner—and crossed my arms.
“Is that right?” I asked, my eyes zeroing in on her face, studying her meek expression under the golden glow of the room’s covered lamps. “What would you call it, then?”
Her slim shoulders shrugged. “Any given Friday night at my father’s house.”
I struggled to fight back a smile. Even in the crime world, the Costa family were known for their chaotic behavior—though I’d never heard one of their own admit it so openly.
“Be that as it may, you can’t leave this office until the club is safe and secure.”
“You’re holding me against my will?”
“No,” I answered plainly.
Her eyes narrowed slightly, showing a spark of defiance that only intrigued me more. “So, you wouldn’t stop me if I tried to open that door?”
“Of course not,” I assured her calmly. “Go right ahead.”
Her skeptical gaze zeroed in on my face for another beat before she suddenly turned and practically bolted for the exit. But no matter hard she yanked on the knob, the door didn’t budge. After a few strained tries, she finally gave up and turned back around.
“It’s locked,” she said with an annoyed huff.
“That’s right.”
“So, un lock it.”
“I can’t.” It was the truth. “It’s part of the club’s safety protocol. Any time there is an incident, all doors are automatically locked and can only be opened with code from the outside.”
“ Any time?” She rolled her eyes. Judgment dripped from her tone. “You’re saying this happens a lot?”
“Typically, only when someone with the name Costa reserves one of our rooms for the night,” I said without blinking.
Surprisingly, Alessia didn’t appear the least bit offended…or ashamed. “Far be it from me to tell you how to run your club, Mr. D’Angelo, but a competent businessman might consider banning known troublemakers from his establishment.”
Her words were as sharp as the cutting look in her honey-brown eyes.
Interesting.
I was starting to think that maybe she wasn’t as meek as her ridiculous outfit made her seem.
“Maybe,” I conceded. “But a savvy one lets them keep coming and tacks a hefty service fee to the end of their bill every night.”
Her mouth snapped shut at that. Clearly, she knew better than to waste her breath defending her family. Instead, she clasped her hands in front of her shapeless black dress and drew a long breath. “So, how long are we stuck in here?”
“Until my head of security deems the situation resolved.”
“And when will that be?”
“That depends on your cousins,” I told her plainly. “Some nights, they settle down quickly. But other times, when they’ve been drinking, it can take…a while.”
A defeated look washed over her face. “Heaven help me. We must have gone through a whole case of champagne. I’m going to be stuck in here for hours, aren’t I?”
I didn’t answer, and not just because I could tell she’d been talking to herself, but because the longer I watched her, the more obvious it became that the soft sway of her body as she shifted her weight from one foot to the other had little to do with impatience or nerves.
We must have gone through a whole case of champagne, she’d said.
We.
Behind that demure expression and those downcast eyes, little Chastity Costa was just as drunk as her cousins.
I wasn’t sure why the realization stunned me. She wasn’t a child anymore. And even if her father had finally succeeded in his life-long dream of making her into a nun, she was still a Costa.
And Costas always found their way into trouble.
“You should sit,” I told her, gesturing toward the worn leather couch tucked against the dark wood paneled walls.
She shook her head and gripped her hands even tighter as she leaned back against the door. “I’m fine right here.”
“If that’s what you want,” I said with a shrug. “But like you said, it might be a while before Marcus and his crew get your cousins under control.”
Might.
That one word kept me from being an outright liar. Anything might happen. Hundred-dollar bills might rain down from the sky. Sister Chastity Costa might slip her hands up my shirt and her tongue down my throat before the night was through. And the Costa family might overwhelm my security.
None of that was outside the realm of possibility.
Just highly, highly unlikely.
Marcus and his men were the best security team in Manhattan. It had never taken them more than a few minutes to squash even the nastiest fights and drag the rowdies out the door, but if Chastity wanted to believe her drunk cousins were tough enough to last hours, let her.
“Can I at least offer you something to drink?” I asked, pushing away from the desk and heading toward the mahogany bar cart in the corner.
“Do you have soda water?”
“Of course.”
“Then, yes,” she said as I scooped ice into two tumblers and began to pour.
Once the glasses were full, I turned back around and held one out toward her. Just the sound of ice clinking against the sides of the cut crystal was enough to cause her to unconsciously wet her lower lip with the tip of her tongue.
But she still didn’t move away from the door.
And I didn’t take a step toward her.
No, if she wanted this drink, she would have to come to me.
For a long moment, she didn’t say a word. Her eyes flicked silently back and forth between the glass and my face. Tiny creases at the corners of her lips and eyes crinkled as she warred within herself, trying to decide what she wanted more—to satisfy her thirst or stay shaded in the imaginary safety of the doorway.
In the end, her thirst won out, and she pushed away from the wall, her movements slow and hesitant. Even her tone was wary as she finally came close enough to take the tumbler from my hand.
“Thank you,” she said, cradling it with two hands before raising it up and downing half the glass in one go.
Immediately, she sputtered, struggling to swallow the oversized gulp. When she finally managed to get it down, those golden brown eyes of hers flashed up at me with a mixture of surprise and anger.
“You said this was soda water,” she said, still coughing.
“It is,” I answered.
“Then why does it taste burn like vodka?”
“Because no one drinks plain soda water.” I moved past her and sat on the edge of the couch.
“Of course they do,” she protested.
“Here at La Sera, they don’t.”
“Well, half the people working here don’t wear pants either,” she countered.
“It’s a lot more than half,” I assured her, even as I forced back the smile threatening to lift the corners of my lips.
As not just the owner of this club but also the consigliere of the D’Angelo family business , my days were usually filled with life-or-death discussions and high-stakes negotiations. It had been a long time since I’d been as amused by a conversation as I was with this one.
Unfortunately, based on the darkening scowl on Chastity’s face, she didn’t share the sentiment.
“My point is this place is far from normal,” she scolded. “Or moral.”
There was no arguing that.
“Sit,” I said, gesturing to the empty cushion beside me.
She shook her head like I’d offered her a seat in the center of a viper pit. “I’m fine where I am.”
The hell she was.
After that last swallow of vodka soda, she was even more wobbly on her feet than before. I figured there had to be some reason other than saintly pride keeping her from relaxing.
I studied her face as I took a sip of my own drink. Her lips were pressed into a tight, flat line. Every muscle was tense from her temples to her toes. So much so that her knuckles were ringed with white where she gripped her glass.
“Sister Chastity,” I said, cocking my head to the side as realization took root. “Are you scared of me?”
“What?” Her eyes widened. Her answer came out rushed. Breathy, even. “No. Absolutely not.”
Right .
“Then why are you refusing my hospitality?” I questioned. “Why won’t you sit down and relax?”
“It’s not that I’m afraid,” she insisted…but the little nun was a terrible liar. Her gaze flickered around the room even more nervously than before. “It’s just that I don’t trust you. There’s a difference.”
“Is there?” I asked, pulling her attention back to me—and away from the small, green light on the keypad on the wall that had just lit up, indicating the fight was over and the doors unlocked. “Fascinating. Why don’t you sit down and explain the distinction?”
She let out a sharp breath, her guard still sky high. “Nice try.”
“I thought so,” I admitted before taking another sip of my drink. “All right, then answer this. If you disapprove of this club, then why did you agree to come here with your cousins?”
Apparently, that was an easier question for her to answer. The tension in her shoulders relaxed a touch. “I didn’t know where they were taking me.”
“Straight into the heart of Sodom and Gomorrah.” This time, there was no holding back the flash of amusement that curled my lips.
She shot me another disapproving glance…though this time, she couldn’t seem to muster the same level of censure as before.
“Don’t flatter yourself, Mr. D’Angelo,” she said quickly. “This place might be sinful, but it’s nothing unique—just a gilded version of every other strip club in the city.”
“Is that right?” I asked, slowly twirling the tumbler between my fingers.
She nodded. “It is.”
“Maybe, but it was still enough to send you running, Chastity.”
A hint of pink rose up in her cheeks. A flush of anger or demure blush? It was hard to tell…until she spoke.
“Please don’t call me that.”
My brows pulled together. “ Chastity ? But it’s your name.”
“Not anymore.” She shook her head. “I’m Sister Teresa now…Or I will be in two weeks when I take my final vows.”
“ Ah .” I leaned back into the comfort of the cushion behind me, stretching my arm out along the leather-lined back. The nuns back at school had done the same thing—adopted a holy name as they gave their lives over to the church. “Do your cousins know about this name change? They were still calling you Chastity.”
She glared down at me, her eyes narrowed in a show of contempt. The only trouble was that same scornful emotion didn’t quite make it to her gaze.
No, if I wasn’t wrong, her golden eyes shimmered with an entirely different emotion.
And I was never wrong.
Not about reading people.
The moment I’d shown a flicker of a talent for it as a child, my father had taken me under his wing. It was a gift, he’d said. One that would prove invaluable to the family business .
So, just as my twin brother, Gabriel, was raised to one day become the boss of the D’Angelo empire, and my adopted brother, Dorian, was trained to protect it—I was brought up to be the steady hand that guided us through the treacherous waters of the New York underworld.
I had stared down cops and killers, street thugs and federal judges—and I’d read them all with a single glance. I could tell from a twitch of a lip or a flash of an eye if they could be swayed by a bribe or strong-armed by threats of violence or if more… extreme methods needed to be used to take care of a problem.
I could read minute expressions and tiny fluctuations in tone to know what drove and motivated people. What they felt and what they wanted. What they really wanted.
And right now, it was glaringly obvious that the disgusted scowls Chastity Costa was shooting my way were nothing more than an act. One meant to disguise another—far more scandalous—emotion underneath.
Interesting…
“So the pious Chastity Costa is choosing to rename herself after the hot-blooded Saint Theresa. I’m surprised.”
Chastity’s eyes narrowed even further. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“ Santa Teresa ,” I said, thickening my New York Italian accent. “The passionate one. The polar opposite of the kind of woman your father wanted you to be.”
“Don’t talk about my father. He’d kill you if he heard you talking like that,” she sniped before rolling her eyes up toward heaven. “Lord knows, he’d kill you if he knew I was locked up in here with you.”
Well, he’d want to, at any rate. But there was a big difference between wanting to kill a D’Angelo and actually being able to do it.
And that was something even someone as pig-headed as Michael Costa understood.
That’s why, without even a tingle of fear, I stretched my arm invitingly across the back of the leather sofa. “I’m not interested in your father. Right now, you’re the only one that interests me.”
Her face flushed at that, her cheeks filling with a charming blush of innocent pink. Something deep and primal in my core tightened at the sight.
Damn, I guess I really was interested.
Strange . Untouched virgins weren’t usually my type. Sure, I understood the fantasy on a purely intellectual level—the thrill of a sexual challenge, the untouched spoils of conquest, the ecstasy of complete and total possession. But it wasn’t for me.
As someone who spent his days teasing out the hidden motives and desires of felons and feds, the last thing I wanted was to play the same games with a woman. That was one relationship I was happy to keep plain and simple.
Professional even.
Money paid for services rendered—it didn’t get much more straightforward than that.
Which was one of the reasons buying this club when it had come up for sale had appealed to me. I knew the business as well as anyone. Hell, I had intimate knowledge of most of the employees.
And, so far, it was a business arrangement that worked out well. I helped run the family business during daylight hours and the club at night. My brother Gabriel’s new wife had started helping me manage the books, and, along with her own liquor distribution company, the two legitimate businesses helped keep the feds and task forces chasing their tails.
All in all, it was a dream situation...and only an idiot would risk endangering it all by flirting with his enemy’s untouched daughter.
“Don’t worry, Chastity,” I assured her. “Your father’s not here.”
Someone else might have missed the rush of gooseflesh that ran down the smooth column of her neck as I spoke her name.
“Theresa,” she corrected me, but this time her voice trembled. “ Sister Theresa.”
“Right.” I nodded. “But you don’t really strike me as the Saint Theresa type. She wasn’t exactly the hide-in-the-lounge type. She wouldn’t have been afraid of me or my club.”
“Neither am I,” Chastity protested a little too vehemently. “And watch your mouth. You’re talking about a saint.”
Oh, I knew exactly who I was talking about.
“A saint who told a story about an angel thrusting a fiery staff inside her until she was overcome with ecstasy.”
“ Religious ecstasy,” Chastity rushed to clarify.
“You don’t have to convince me,” I assured her. “I’ve seen Bernini’s statue in Rome. The look on her face made it clear the act was quite the religious experience.”
“Don’t be vulgar.”
Oh, but something about the way her teeth grazed against the full softness of her upper lip as she enunciated that last word made me want to be even more suggestive.
“You think sex is vulgar ?” I asked.
Her blush deepened, shifting from innocent pink to passionate red. She shook her head so forcefully that the fall of her plain white head covering whipped over her shoulder.
What color was her hair under there? That same shimmering golden brown of her eyes? I scolded myself for not remembering.
“I don’t think about sex at all,” she answered.
You didn’t need my keen sense of people to know that was a lie.
The truth was written in her whole body, from the way she suddenly could no longer bear to look me in the eye to the white-knuckle tension in her hands as she wrung her glass back and forth between them.
But there was no point in calling her out on that falsehood…not yet.
“Is that right?” I asked, relaxing deeper into the cushions behind my back before finishing my last measure of vodka soda.
Choosing to mirror my actions instead of answering my question, Chastity followed suit and drained her own glass.
“Here,” I said, reaching out for her empty tumbler. Instinctively, she held it out to me, and when she did, I wrapped my hand, not around the glass, but the warm and supple skin of her wrist, and guided her down to the couch, saying, “Sit.”
“I shouldn’t,” she protested, even as she settled herself down on the very edge of the seat.
“Because of your father?” I asked as I slipped the empty glass from her grasp and settled it on the table at my side. “Again, he isn’t here.”
“Not just him,” she said, shaking her head. Still, I couldn’t help but notice that now that she was down and my fingers were no longer around her wrist, she didn’t try to get back up. “It’s just this whole situation. It’s not… right .”
“No?” I let my head fall to the side as I studied her face. Framed against the stark black wool of her habit, her features looked particularly delicate. Soft. Fragile…And so very tempting. How had I never noticed that back in school? “We’re just two people in a room, talking. There’s nothing sinful about that.”
“I didn’t say it was sinful ,” she rushed to say.
“But it’s what you were thinking, wasn’t it, Chastity?”
“Theresa,” she insisted again, though less adamantly this time. “ Sister Theresa.”
“I’ll start calling you Theresa when you start acting like her,” I told her flatly.
This time, there was no hidden emotion behind the glare she shot me.
“All right then,” she huffed. “If we’re going to address each other by actions, then I guess from now on, I’ll be calling you Perverted Asshole .”
I laughed—louder and harder than I had in years, the air bursting out of my lungs in a rush.
Well, goddamn. It appeared the little nun could surprise the hell out of me after all.
“Careful,” I teasingly warned her after I’d recovered. “I’m not sure about swearing, but I know for a fact that judging others is a sin.”
“I’m sure it won’t take the Lord much convincing to forgive me this one time,” she huffed. “Besides, it’s your own soul you should be worrying about. Not mine.”
“Thank you for the concern, Sister,” I said, a smile lifting my lips. “But my conscience is clear, and my soul’s no dirtier than anyone else’s. As far as I’m concerned, everything’s good between me and the big man upstairs.”
Her gold eyes widened in disbelief.
“How can you believe that?” For the first time since setting foot in my office, she leaned in closer. Not much—an inch or two—but still, closer . “You’re a D’Angelo. Everyone knows what your family has done.”
“And you are a Costa,” I said with a shrug. “Does that make you culpable for your family’s crimes?”
“No, of course not,” she shot back with a passionate heat that only a few flutes of champagne followed by a strong vodka chaser could ignite. “But I became a nun. My whole life was meant as penance for my father’s sins.”
Of course, I’d heard the rumors of how Michael Costa had pledged his only daughter to the church at birth, but I’d never given them much thought. Not until now.
Ridiculous stories about the five families were as commonplace in New York as cups of coffee. Everyone on the streets seemed to have one. Most you took with a large grain of salt, but this one looked like it might actually be true.
“That might be the saddest thing I’ve heard,” I remarked honestly, but Chastity didn’t appear to be listening. Either that or the things I was saying weren’t the ones she wanted to hear.
“ You , on the other hand,” she continued, “differentiated yourself from the rest of your family by buying a sleazy sex club.”
That last drink must have washed the last of her inhibitions away. Gone was the nervous tension that had been there when she’d first walked in. There were no shaking hands. No trembling voice.
Now she was all shoulders-back confidence—even if it did come with a slight slur at the end of her words.
“ Sex club ? Yes,” I admitted without shame. “ Sleazy ? No.”
“Oh, come on, Matteo.” She shook her head hard. “You can line the hallways with all the crimson velvet and marble in the world, but nothing will cover up the fact that this place is nothing more than a den of Jezebels stripping off their clothes for cash.”
“You’re wrong,” I informed her dispassionately, my gaze fixed on the single wavy lock of caramel-colored hair that had come loose from its covering and was now gently brushing against her cheek.
“No, I’m not,” she said, leaning in even closer as if she was about to whisper a secret. “You forget, I was in that room with my cousins. I saw what those dancers were doing.”
“Did you?” I arched a brow. “Tell me what you saw, Chastity. Tell me everything you saw.”
That pink flush came roaring back, filling her cheeks and making me wonder if it was just her face that blushed when she was bashful or if it was her whole body.
Damn, if I wasn’t tempted to peel off all that heavy wool and cotton to find out for myself.
“I saw enough,” she said, ducking her head down, trying to hide her face from view. “Enough to realize that it was time for me to leave.”
But I wasn’t about to let her off that easy. Reaching out, I hooked my two fingers under her chin and lifted her eyes to mine again.
“Right, but you also saw your cousins,” I said, dropping my voice down low. Now that we were this close—her face, her lips mere inches from mine—there was no need to be any louder. “You saw them enjoying themselves. Indulging in their deepest fantasies.”
“I don’t know about that,” she scoffed…or at least she tried. But the closeness between us, the contact of my skin against hers, made it nearly impossible for her to shrug off my words so easily. “I saw them acting like lustful idiots. I watched them succumbing to their baser instincts.”
“Which is something you would never do?” My half-smile made it clear I didn’t believe her.
“Absolutely not,” she said, still trying to convince me. “I was in that room for hours and wasn’t tempted for a single second.”
“That’s only because you don’t share your cousin’s tastes,” I told her. “Their fantasies are simple—hot men, readily available. Yours, I have a feeling, are much more complex.”
Her gaze shifted from mine. “I wouldn’t know. I’ve never thought about things like that.”
The whole of her face filled with color. The bow of her lips twitched. It was a good thing Chastity Costa had chosen a life of quiet devotion because she would have made a terrible poker player.
“Lying is a sin,” I reminded her.
“So is corrupting an innocent,” she shot back.
I couldn’t help but smile. Again .
Spending my intimate hours with club girls and prostitutes might make for a more straightforward love life, but even I had to admit that those kind of relationships lacked the heated spark this simple back-and-forth conversation lit up in me.
“There’s no corruption here,” I said, even as I moved my hand over hers. She was so small that my palm encompassed it completely, but she made no move to pull away. “Just two people talking.”
“Good,” she said with a firm nod. “Because I don’t want you thinking I’m anything like my cousins.”
“Oh, I’m well aware of that,” I assured her.
“I’m not so easily seduced.”
My core tightened again just at the mention of seduction.
“No, I imagine that a man would have to work very hard to seduce someone like you, Sister Chastity,” I said, slowly working my fingers up from the back of her hand to the cuff of her ridiculous habit. “He’d have to be patient. Take his time. Talk to you in just the right way to coax you into letting your guard down. Work his way in from the edges so you wouldn’t be frightened by his touch.”
Her eyes widened as a sense of warning crept into her gaze. “Matteo. Please. We shouldn’t be talking like this.”
“I like it when you say my name, Chastity.”
Her lips trembled again, and I watched her swallow down a lump in her throat. Was it fear? Guilt? Excitement? A mix of all three, if I had to guess.
“And you shouldn’t say things like that,” she said when she’d managed to open her mouth again.
“Why?” I asked, gently curling my fingers around her wrist and guiding her even closer. “It’s the truth, and we’ve already established it’s a sin to lie.”
“But my father?—”
“Would want to kill me,” I finished for her. “Probably. But there are a lot of people who’ve wanted the same thing, and I’m still here. It’s not easy to get rid of a D’Angelo. Besides, he’s not here.”
Not yet, at any rate.
“But…but I’m going to be a nun.” Her voice was no longer adamant, though. Now, she sounded almost sorrowful, like her life was some kind of tragic prophecy set in stone. Something no one could change. “I take my final vows in two weeks.”
“Is that what you want?” I asked.
“What do you mean?”
“It’s a simple question, Chastity. Do you want to live a cloistered life, locked away from the world? Never touching another soul. Never feeling their bare skin against yours. Never locking eyes with a man as he plunges himself deep?—”
“Stop,” she said, shaking her head before I could go any further. “You don’t understand. My life has been planned out from the moment I was born. What I want doesn’t matter.”
“It does to me,” I told her, leaning in and swallowing up the little space between us. “Right now, it’s the only thing I care about. So, do us both a favor and tell me what you want. Tell me, so I can give it to you.”
Her lips parted, but for a few long seconds, the only sound that came out were trembling breaths. Then finally, “I-I don’t understand.”
“I think you do,” I said, refusing to give her an inch of wiggle room. Not literally or figuratively. “I think someone in your situation has had years to think about what she wants. To sit and fantasize about it. To play one finely tuned scenario after another over and over again in her mind until it almost seems real. Almost .”
“Matteo...”
Damn, I liked the sound of that. From the first time I’d heard it on her lips in the hallway.
Which made me wonder...
“How did you recognize me when you came out from your cousin’s party?”
“I haven’t been living under a rock,” she explained shakily. “We have newspapers at the convent. It might have been years since I’ve seen you last, but even nuns know what the D’Angelo brothers look like.”
Maybe so, but…
“But Gabriel’s the one with his face in the papers, not me.”
“Sure, but you’re twins,” she argued as if she was telling me something new.
“Which is why everyone always assumes I’m Gabriel when we’re not together.” His name was the one in the headlines. He was the subject of the news stories—not me. My name was hardly ever printed. Most times, I was simply referred to as the twin . “But not you, Chastity. You instantly knew it was me. How?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Anyone could tell you two apart,” she nervously explained. “You hold yourselves differently. You speak differently. Even the way you breathe is different.”
Very interesting .
“How is it different?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” she said, trying to brush off the question. But she couldn’t. Not when she’d clearly been thinking about the answer for so damn long. “Your brother is brash, almost careless. But you…you…”
Now, it wasn’t just my core that was tightening and swelling. It was regions just below as well.
“Keep talking, Chastity,” I prompted when she sounded like she might trail off. “Tell me what you noticed about me. Tell me what was so important that you’ve kept it locked in your head all these years. Tell me what’s kept me in your fantasies.”
Her jaw fell open. “I-I never said I fantasized about you.”
“But you did, didn’t you?”
She opened her mouth to protest, but nothing came out. Maybe she’d remembered that lying was a sin. Or, more likely, she’d finally realized what a terrible liar she was.
In the end, she shook her head and tried to stand. But I wasn’t about to let that happen.
I kept my grip on her wrist as she made a half-hearted attempt to lift herself off the couch. She didn’t struggle to free herself, though. She didn’t wriggle or twist or try to pull away.
And when I tugged her back down half a second later, she didn’t fight the motion.
Not even when her slight, little frame landed squarely on my lap.
“What is it you want from me, Matteo?” she asked—her face, her lips, just inches from mine.
And here, I’d thought I’d made that perfectly clear.
“I want you.”
Her perfectly pink lips parted as her mouth fell open. For a moment, the only sound that echoed through the room was her breath—short and stuttering. I couldn’t look away as the tip of her tongue peeked out to wet her lower lip.
Finally, after several long seconds, she spoke.
“You can’t have me.”
I lifted my hand to her cheek, twirling that stray, forbidden lock of hair that had come loose around one of my fingers. It felt every bit as silken and soft as I’d imagined.
“Is that right?” I asked, cocking my head to the side. “Because I think if I tried to kiss you right now, you wouldn’t stop me.”
“Matteo…” Her voice was heavy. Breathy. Dripping with the kind of sensual emotions no true innocent would know.
“Hell, I’m starting to think you might kiss me back.”
She didn’t say a word. With the way she was trembling in my lap, I wasn’t even sure she could have if she wanted to.
“Should we see if I’m right?” I teased, moving my hand from her cheek to back around her head, cupping the nape of her neck.
I was just about to pull her in even closer when she surprised me by moving herself, closing the gap between us in an instant, and pressing her lips against mine.
Hard.