Chapter Fifteen #3
Matteo sets me back down on my feet with a gentleness that doesn’t match the way he just fucked me senseless. My legs wobble, but his arms are already there, wrapping around me like I’m something precious he’s scared I’ll shatter.
The steam swirls thick around us, wrapping us in heat, in something heavier and softer than either of us know what to do with.
Without a word, Matteo reaches for the body wash. I watch as he pours it into his hands, and starts to clean me. It’s slow, caring, almost worshipful. His palms glide softly over my skin, over every bruise and mark he made, over every place he’s claimed.
He doesn’t rush it. He doesn’t tease. Just touches me like he’s trying to memorize what he broke and put back together all at once.
"Turn around," he whispers.
I move slowly, every muscle trembling as I turn for him.
His strong hands slide up to my shoulders, kneading deep, washing away the tension. When his fingers drift higher, threading into my hair, working shampoo through the strands, I close my eyes and lean back into him, letting myself feel it.
This is the Matteo I remember.
The boy who used to brush my hair out of my face. The boy who would tell me I was beautiful when I felt like nothing but scars. The boy who loved me before the world taught him how to bleed.
His fingers glide through my hair, careful, almost reverent, rinsing the soap away with clean, steady passes. And then his mouth finds the back of my neck, lips pressing soft against my wet skin, and fuck… my heart thumps for him.
I turn back around, lifting my eyes to his… and then I see it. He loves me.
Even with everything he’s been through. Even with all those scars on his soul. The cold, ruthless man he’s become is still there, etched into every brutal line of him. But under it all, buried but still beating, is the boy who was always mine. The boy who still is.
Matteo lifts his hand and brushes my wet hair from my face, his fingers lingering, trembling a little—afraid to let go. His touch maps the shape of me, slow and reverent, as if he’s trying to memorize every inch all over again.
"I should’ve never let you go," he says, voice rough and low, each word bleeding out of him as if it costs more than blood. "I thought... if I kept you away, I could protect you. But the truth is... I was just trying to protect myself."
I don’t speak. Because I don’t know what to say to that. All I see is the cracks in his armor. The guilt he’s been dragging around, heavy as an anchor. The way his hands still shake when they touch me. Not from lust this time, but from everything he’s been swallowing down for years.
"I’m not that kid anymore," he says. "But fuck... when I’m with you… I feel like maybe there’s still a piece of him left. The part you loved. The part that still fucking loves you."
I reach up, my hand sliding along the sharp line of his jaw. My thumb brushing against the rough stubble there. Holding him like he’s something fragile.
"I never stopped looking for him," I whisper. "Even when you buried him. Even when you tried to make me hate you. I never stopped."
He exhales hard, like my words punched straight into something he’s been trying to bury for years.
Then he pulls me tighter, crushing me against him, his lips pressing to my temple, my cheek, my jaw. Soft desperate kisses, like he’s trying to say all the things he still can’t find the words for.
We stay that way, suspended in a moment that stretches on forever.
Us wrapped in steam, in heat, in each other. His fingers trail slowly down my spine. It’s not sexual, just calming—his touch reverent, as though he’s retracing something sacred he nearly lost. Every inch of me, memorized again, worshipped like a prayer he thought he’d never get to say twice.
He lifts my hand, presses a kiss to my knuckles, then lower, to my wrist, where my pulse thrums wild beneath his mouth.
"Let me take care of you now, Emery, " he murmurs, his voice a breath against my skin, a vow and a plea all at once.
He reaches behind me and shuts off the water. For a moment, we just stand there, dripping, shivering, breathing each other in.
Matteo snatches a towel off the rack and wraps it around me. Then he grabs another towel, barely drags it across his chest and arms before tossing it to the floor like he couldn’t care less.
And just like that, he’s on me again, closing the space—refusing to let distance exist between us, as if even air is too much separation.
His eyes lock onto mine. When he speaks, his voice is low, certain.
"If we do this, Em," he says, brushing the wet strands from my face with a touch so gentle it wrecks me all over again, "we do it together. No more fucking distance between us.”
I blink up at him, and he continues, the words tearing out of him faster than he can stop them.
"I don’t give a shit if we’ve only got a few days left or a few fucking hours," he says, voice rough, savage with emotion.
"I’m choosing you, Emery. You." His hands frame my face, holding me steady.
“If everything goes to shit tomorrow, I want to go down knowing I had you next to me.
Fuck it all, Em," he snarls, voice cracking open.
"Your father. My father. The blood. The fucking legacy. None of it matters if I don’t have you. "
I press my forehead to his. My heart is pounding so loud, I swear he can feel it crashing against him.
"Then don’t let me go this time, Matteo," I whisper, voice shaking. “Not like before.”
His breath shudders against my mouth as he leans in, brushing his lips over mine. "I promise I won’t," he breathes against me. "Not ever fucking again."