A Hunger for the Forbidden(39)

“As long as there are no double standards,” she said, keeping her words smooth and calm.

“If I release my hold on you, then I release it. We’ll have to be discreet in public, naturally, but what happens behind closed doors is no one’s business but our own.”

“Ours and the elevator security cameras,” she said.

“That will not happen again.”

“It won’t?”

“An unforgivable loss of control on my part.”

“You’ve had a few of those recently.”

She’d meant to spark an angry reply, to keep the fight going, because as long as they were fighting, she didn’t ache for him. Wasn’t so conscious of the tender emotions he made her feel. And she wasn’t so overwhelmed by the need to be skin to skin to him when they were fighting. But she didn’t get anger. Instead, she got a bleak kind of pain that echoed in her soul, a hopelessness in his dark eyes that shocked her.

“Yes,” he said. “I have. Always with you.”

“I don’t know how you are in other areas of your life. I only know how you are with me,” she said.

His eyes grew darker. “A pity for you. I’m much more pleasant than this, usually.”

“I make you misbehave.”

He chuckled, no humor in the sound. “You could say that. We should go home.”

She nodded. “Yes, we should.”

They were in an empty ballroom, and she really would have loved a romantic moment with him here. The chance to dance as the only two people in the room. To go up to his suite and make love. To share a moment with each other that was out of time, apart from reality.

But they’d had their fantasy. Reality was here now, well and truly.

She still didn’t want to leave.

Matteo picked up his phone and dialed. “Yes, you can send in the crew now.”

She swallowed hard, feeling like they’d missed a key moment. Feeling like she’d missed one.

“Let’s go,” he said. There was no press now, no one watching to see if he would put his arm around her. So he didn’t. He turned and walked ahead, and she followed behind him, her heart sinking.

Matteo didn’t know what he wanted. And she didn’t, either.

No, that was a lie, she knew what she wanted. But it would require her to start dealing with Matteo as he was, and at some point, it would require him to meet her in the middle, it would require him to drop his guard.

She wasn’t sure if either of them could do what needed to be done. Wasn’t sure if they ever had a hope of fixing the tangled mess that they’d created.

She wasn’t even sure if Matteo wanted to.





CHAPTER NINE


MATTEO WAS TEMPTED to drink again. He hated the temptation. He hated the feeling of temptation full stop. Before Alessia there had been no temptation.

No, that was a lie. The first temptation had been to break the rules and see what the Battaglias were really like. And so he had looked.

And from there, every temptation, every failing, had been tied to Alessia. She was his own personal road to ruin and there were some days he wondered why he bothered to stay off it.

At least he might go up in flames in her arms. At least then heat and fire might be connected with her, instead of that night his father had died.

Yes, he should just embrace it. He should just follow to road to hell and be done with it.

And bring her with you. Bring the baby with you.

Porca miseria. The baby.

He could scarcely think of the baby. He’d hardly had a moment. He felt a little like he was going crazy sometimes, in all honesty. There was everything that was happening with Corretti Enterprises, and he had to handle it. He should go in and try to wrench the reins back from Angelo, should kick Luca out of his position and expose whatever lie he’d told to get there because he was sure the feckless playboy hadn’t gotten there on merit alone.

Instead, Matteo was tied up in knots over his wife. Bewitched by a dark-haired vixen who seemed to have him in a death grip.

She was the reason he’d left, the reason he’d gone up to a remote house he owned in Germany that no one knew about. The reason he hadn’t answered calls or returned emails. The reason he hadn’t known or cared he was being usurped in his position as head of his branch of the family business.

He had to get a handle on it, and he had no idea how. Not when he felt like he was breaking apart from the inside out.