A Hunger for the Forbidden(31)

“Your mother was good to you?”

“So good,” Alessia said, remembering her beautiful, dark-haired mother, the gentle smile that had always put her at ease when her father was in the other room shouting. The sweet, soothing touch, a hand on her forehead to help her fall asleep. “I wanted to give them all what she gave to me. I was the oldest, the only one who remembered her very well. It seemed important I try to help them remember. That I give them the love I received, because I knew they would never get it from my father.”

“And in New York? With me?”

“What do you mean?”

“You toed the line all of your life, Alessia. You were prepared to marry to keep your brothers and sisters safe and cared for. Why did you even chance ruining it by sleeping with me?” His hold tightened on her, his voice getting back that rough edge. That genuine quality it had been missing since they’d stepped inside the hotel.

It was a good question. It was the question, really.

“Tell me, cara,” he said, and she glimpsed something in his eyes as he spoke. A desperation.

And she couldn’t goad him. Couldn’t lie to him. Not now.

“Did you ever want something, Matteo, with all of yourself? So much that it seemed like it was in your blood? I did. For so many years. When we were children, I wanted to cross that wall between our families’ estates and take your hand, make you run with me in the grass, make you smile. And when I got older … well, I wanted something different from you, starting about the time you rescued me, and I don’t want to hear about how much you regret that. It mattered to me. I dreamed of what it would be like to kiss you, and then, I dreamed of what it would be like to make love with you. So much so that by the time I saw you in New York, when you finally did kiss me, I felt like I knew the steps to the dance. And following your lead seemed the easiest thing. How could I not follow?”

“I am a man, Alessia, so I fear there is very little romance to my version of your story. From the time you started to become a woman, I dreamed of your skin against mine. Of kissing you. Of being inside you. I could not have stopped myself that night any more than you could have.”

“That’s good to know,” she said, heat rushing through her, settling over her skin. It made her dress, so lovely and formfitting a few moments ago, feel tight. Far too tight.

“I don’t understand what it is you do to me.”

“I thought … I was certain that I must not be so different from all your other women.”

“There weren’t that many,” he said. “And you are different.”

It was a balm to her soul that he felt that way. That she truly hadn’t been simply one in a lineup. It was easy for her, she realized, to minimize the experience on his end. It had been easy for her to justify being with him, not being honest with him, giving him a one-night stand, because she’d assumed he’d had them before. It had been easy to believe she was the only one who’d stood to be hurt or affected, because she was the virgin.

That had been unfair. And she could see now, looking into his eyes, that it wasn’t true, either.

“Kiss me,” he said, all of the civility gone now.

She complied, closing the short distance between them, kissing him, really kissing him, for the first time in three months. Their wedding kiss had been nothing. A pale shadow of the passion they’d shared before. A mockery of the desire that was like a living beast inside of them both.

She parted her lips for him, sucked his tongue deep inside of her mouth, not caring that it would be obvious to the people around them. Matteo was hers now, her husband. She wouldn’t hide it, not from anyone. Wouldn’t hide her desire.

He growled low in his throat, the sound vibrating through his body. “Careful, Alessia, or I will not be responsible for what happens.”

“I don’t want you to be responsible,” she said, kissing his neck. Biting him lightly. There was something happening to her, something that had happened once before. A total loss of control. At the hands of Matteo Corretti.

It was like she was possessed, possessed by the desire to have him, to take him, make him hers. Make him understand what she felt. Make herself understand what she felt.

“We can’t do this here,” he said.

“This sounds familiar.”

“It does,” he said. He shifted, pulled her away from his body, twining his fingers with hers. “Come with me.”

“Where?”