Chapter Fifteen
Morena
Iwoke to soft white fabric twisted around my hips. Morning light cut thin gray bars across the sheets. The diary sat open on the nightstand, pages filled with everything I had finally given him. Proof that the secret was no longer mine alone to carry.
Matteo was in the room.
He stood at the side of the bed in black trousers and a fresh shirt with the sleeves rolled to the elbows, like clockwork.
In one hand he held a tray. French toast cut into neat triangles, with powdered sugar on top.
Cheesy scrambled eggs that steamed faintly.
Strawberries, papaya, grapefruit,sliced into precise pieces.
A glass of freshly squeezed orange juice was there, too.
Matteo set the tray on the mattress and sat on the edge, close enough that the chain brushed his thigh when he shifted.
“What happened last night?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
The word was quiet. Not cold. Not sharp. Just steady, the way a man speaks when he has decided the outcome and is simply waiting for the body in front of him to catch up.
The gentleness was worse. It made me want things I had no right to want from a man who had bought me.
I kept my eyes on the plate. Looking at him too long always cost me something.
The sharp line of his jaw. The dense black ink that climbed his forearms. The quiet power in the way he held the fork like it was just another tool he knew how to use.
He was beautiful in the way knives are beautiful.
Clean. Dangerous. Impossible to look at without remembering what they can do.
“Is my sister here?” I whispered.
A long silence followed.
“No,” he finally relented. “I’m sorry, Morena.”
I swallowed, forcing myself to nod and not say a word. I’m sure he knew how disappointed I was without me pointing it out. “Is she alive?”
“Yes,” Matteo said.
I closed my eyes for a few minutes, thinking of my sister.
Then I forced myself to keep eating. I needed to be strong for Camilla.
When the plate was empty, I needed… something like aftercare. Even though we were married, I felt too awkward to ask Matteo. But somehow, he seemed to know what I was thinking.
“Come with me.”
Matteo led me to the bathroom. The hot shower was his hands.
Careful. Thorough. He washed the last traces of the night from my thighs with slow strokes that made heat pool low in my belly even while shame burned under my skin.
He dried me himself with a towel that smelled of clean cotton and something darker that was purely him.
He dressed me in fresh white clothes. A long, sheer maxi dress that brushed my bare feet when I walked.
None of it was sexual, and all of it felt special.
He brought me back to the living room and I put the TV on, sprawling on the couch.
Matteo worked at the long table under the windows, quiet calls, maps, the cold logistics of taking my sister out of Dario’s hands, while I sat only a few feet away, watching the city move far below like something that had never known what it felt like to be owned.
The domestic quiet was almost unbearable. I kept waiting for the cold to return. It did not. Not yet.
Every few minutes my husband’s gaze flicked to me, dark and assessing, and I felt the weight of it settle between my shoulder blades the same way it had in the club all those weeks ago when I thought the tall man in the shadows was only another pair of hungry eyes.
By late afternoon the residual ache had turned sharp.
I could feel every place the cream had touched before. My clit throbbed in time with my pulse, a low insistent pressure that refused to fade. The soft white fabric between my thighs was damp..I broke first. I couldn’t last, even knowing how he’d smirk hearing me.
“The cream,” I said. My voice came out rough, scraped raw by hours of holding everything in. Matteo looked up from his laptop screen. “The one the doctor gave you. Will you use it again tonight?”
The room went in the particular way that meant every sound after this would matter. I forced the rest out, cheeks burning, eyes on the floor because looking at him while I said it felt like handing him another piece of myself I could not afford to lose. “I want it.”
Silence stretched. Then the soft click of the laptop closing. He stood, crossed the space, and tipped my chin up with two fingers. Gentler than usual. Dark gray eyes searching my face the way a man searches for cracks in something he has decided to keep.
“Say it properly.” The words sat on my tongue like something filthy and necessary at the same time.
“I want the cream. I want you to put it on me. Please.” I swallowed.
Something dangerous and satisfied moved behind his eyes.
“Bedroom,” he said. “Let’s go.”
In charged silence, we moved to the bed in my room.
He sat me on the edge of the bed, opened the sealed tube, and warmed a generous amount between his palms.
He started at my lower abdomen. Slow, firm circles.
The cream absorbed into my skin leaving a subtle sheen that caught the late light.
My muscles tensed under his hands. He worked lower, over the soft curve of my hips, the sensitive crease where thigh met body, until every stroke made my breath catch and my pulse stutter.
When he reached the insides of my thighs he pushed them wider.
I tried to resist for half a second, some last scrap of pride rising even now.
He held me open with one hand and continued with the other, massaging the cream into the soft skin in long thorough strokes that climbed higher with each pass.
Heat bloomed under his palms. My clit began to throb in earnest, a deep insistent ache that made my hips restless against the sheets.
I rarely wore panties now. My sheer dress had ridden up, and I was exposed for him.
A faint flush spread across my chest and up my neck. The sensitivity the doctor had promised was beginning, turning every brush of air into something sharper, hungrier. I was wet before he even touched the center of me.
The knowledge made shame coil tight in my stomach, but the need was stronger. It always was with him.
Matteo moved there without pause.
Two fingers parted my swollen folds. I was soaked, the evidence of how thoroughly the cream worked glistening against his skin. He applied more directly where it would matter most, coating every sensitive surface with slow circling pressure.
Over my clit first, the swollen bud so sensitive that the first firm stroke dragged a broken sound from my throat before I could lock it down.
Along the entrance that had taken him, tender, marked by everything he had done.
Just inside, enough to coat the first tight inch, the cream making the stretch burn in the best and worst way.
I jerked hard. A helpless whimper escaped me. My hips lifted off the black sheets against my will, chasing the pressure even as my mind screamed that I should not want this, that wanting it made me exactly what Dario had always called me.
A slut.
Matteo did not tell me to be still.
My clit was swollen and slick under his thumb, the cream turning each careful circle into a pulse of heat that radiated outward through my entire body. My entrance fluttered around the tip of his finger each time he pressed inside, greedy for more even while I tried to hold myself rigid.
Soft involuntary sounds kept escaping me despite every effort I made to stay silent.
The chain stayed tight in his fist as my thighs trembled.
By the time he wiped his hands on his own mouth, I was flushed from chest to cheeks, aching so deeply it bordered on pain, and openly dripping onto the black sheets beneath me.
He stepped back. Still fully dressed. Still out of reach.
“Hands on the sheets,” he said, voice low and absolute. “Legs open. You do not get to touch yourself. You do not get to close them. You asked for the cream. Now you feel exactly what it does while I decide whether you earn more.”
I obeyed. The position left me completely exposed. Knees bent. Thighs spread wide. The evidence of the cream shining between them in the low light. Cool air brushed over places that felt too hot, too sensitive, and the simple act of holding made my clit throb harder.
He stayed just far enough that I could see everything. The dense black ink on his forearms. The way his jaw flexed when he looked at me. The quiet control in every line of his body.
He unbuckled his belt, a well-known sight to me by then.
The sound was loud in the quiet room, leather sliding free with a soft hiss that made my stomach drop. He drew it free, opened his trousers, and freed himself. He was hard. Thick. Heavy. Like always, the head was wet with the first bead of precum.
He wrapped his hand around the base and stroked once, slow, eyes locked on me the entire time like he was memorizing the way I looked spread open and denied.
“I can’t believe you broke for me,” he murmured. The words were quiet, almost conversational, and somehow that made them worse. “Cream making that pretty pussy drip onto my sheets. You asked for this. Now you watch me make it worse, baby.”
He stroked himself with deliberate control.
Slow at the base, tighter over the head, thumb spreading the wetness that gathered there until the sound of skin on skin filled the space between us.
Every movement was for me. He edged himself, stopped when the muscles in his stomach flexed and his breath went rough, started again when the urgency faded.
All the while he described what he was looking at in that same low clinical voice that made heat coil tighter and tighter in my belly until I felt dizzy with it.
“So wet the cream is running down to the sheets. Clit swollen and obvious,” he laughed. “You’re clenching around nothing. Desperate for the cock you’re not allowed to have yet. Look at the way your hips keep lifting. You can’t help it, can you?”
I whimpered. The sound was broken. Shameful.
My hips tried to lift again, chasing friction that was not there.
My clit throbbed so hard it bordered on pain.
Every slow stroke of his hand made the need climb higher, made the empty ache between my legs feel like a living thing.
I was so close to the edge that the simple act of watching him was almost enough.
The sight of his cock, thick and flushed and glistening under his fist, the way the veins stood out along the shaft, the controlled power in every movement of his wrist. I wanted it inside me so badly my thighs shook with the effort of staying open and still.
“Please.” The word slipped out before I could stop it, raw and desperate. “Matteo, please.”
He slowed. “Not yet. You asked for the cream, right? You didn’t ask to come.”
He edged himself again. Once. Twice. The third time he did not stop.
His breathing went rough, chest rising harder under the black shirt.
His hand moved faster, tighter, the wet sound of it obscene in the quiet.
I watched every second, legs spread, cream dripping from me onto the sheets, the need so sharp I felt tears gather at the corners of my eyes.
When he came it was standing over me, out of reach, thick pulses spilling onto the marble floor between us in deliberate filthy ropes.
Some of it landed close enough that I could smell the salt of him, warm and sharp.
None of it landed on me. The denial of even that small claim made something inside me twist hard and hungry.
Silence stretched.
He looked down at the mess he had made on the floor. The white marble was marked with thick streaks of him, warm, glistening.
My stomach dropped. The cream had me so sensitive that the simple act of moving made me whimper, every shift of my thighs sending fresh sparks of heat through places that felt too full of need. I slid off the bed. I crawled, the soft white fabric of the trousers pulling tight across my hips.
“What are you doing, Rena?”
I lowered my head. The first taste of him on the cold marble made a broken sound catch in my throat. Salt. Heat. The unmistakable evidence of how hard he had come while watching me stay open and denied.
“Holy fuck,” Matteo muttered.
I dragged my tongue through the thickest puddle, slow, thorough, cleaning the floor.
The position left me completely exposed.
Ass up. Thighs slick with cream. The soft white fabric of the dress pulled up just enough that the air kissed the wetness between my legs.
He watched every second, dark eyes unreadable, the same cold focus he had worn the night he walked into that private room and took Dario’s knife like it belonged to him.
I cleaned the next streak. Then the next.
The taste of him filled my mouth, thick and familiar, and the cream made every small movement of my body feel like another form of denial.
My clit throbbed against nothing. My entrance clenched around emptiness.
Shame burned through me hot and thick, but the need was stronger, meaner, the kind of need that made me press my thighs together for half a second before the chain reminded me of the rules.
I kept my eyes on him, even when the humiliation of it made fresh tears slip down my cheeks and drip onto the marble beside his release.
When I finished the last drop he tipped my chin up with two fingers so I had to look at him with his taste in my mouth. My lips were wet. My face was flushed. “Good girl.”
The words were quiet. Dangerous. They settled under my skin the same way the cream had, slow and impossible to ignore.
“You stay exactly like that. Open. Aching. Denied. While I finish the calls that bring your sister home. The cream will keep working. You will not touch yourself. If you come without permission, the next time I use the cream I will keep you on the edge for hours. Do you understand me, baby?”
“Yes, Matteo.”