A Hunger for the Forbidden (7 page)

“Well, yes, I suppose that’s true.”

“I don’t trust mine. I want things I shouldn’t want. I have already taken what I didn’t have the right to take.”

“If you mean my virginity, I will throw this herbal tea in your face,” she said, pregnancy hormones coming to the rescue, bringing an intense surge of anger.

“I’m not so crass, but yes. Your body, you, you aren’t for me.”

“For Alessandro? That’s who I was for?”

“That isn’t what I meant.”

“The hell it’s not, Matteo!” she shouted, not caring if she hurt his head. Him and his head could go to
hell. “You’re just like him. You think I can’t make my own decisions? That I don’t know my own mind? My body belongs to me, not to you, not to my father, not to Alessandro. I didn’t give myself to you, I took you. I made you tremble beneath my hands, and I could do it again. Don’t treat me like some fragile thing. Don’t treat me like you have to protect me from myself.”

He stayed calm, maddeningly so, his focus on his cup of coffee. “It’s not you I’m protecting you from.”

“It’s you?”

A smile, void of humor, curved his lips. “I don’t trust me, Alessia, why should you?”

“Well, let me put you at ease, Matteo. I don’t trust anyone. Just because I jumped into bed with you doesn’t mean you’re the exception. I just think you’re hot.” She was minimizing it. Minimizing what she felt. And she hated that. But she was powerless to do anything to stop the words from coming out. She wanted to protect herself, to push him back from her vulnerable places. To keep him from hurting her.

Because the loss of Matteo in her fantasies … it was almost too much to bear. As he became her reality, she was losing her escape, and she was angry at him for taking it. For not being the ideal she had made him out to be.

“I’m flattered,” he said, taking another drink of his coffee.

“How do you see this marriage going, then?”

“I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Assume it’s too late. Where do we go from here?”

He leaned forward, his dark eyes shuttered. “When exactly are you due?”

“November 22. It was easy for them to figure out since I knew the exact date I conceived.”

“I will make sure you get the best care, whatever you need. And we’ll make a room for the baby.”

“Well, all things considered, I suppose our child should have a room in his own house.”

“I’m trying,” he bit out. “I’m not made for this. I don’t know how to handle it.”

“Well, I do. I know exactly how much work babies are. I know exactly what it’s like to raise children. I was thirteen when my mother died. Thirteen when my baby sister and the rest of my siblings became my responsibility. Babies are hard work. But you love them, so much. And at the same time, they take everything from you. I know that, I know it so well. And I’m terrified,” she said, the last word breaking. It was a horrible confession, but it was true.

She’d essentially raised four children, one of them from infancy, and as much as she adored them, with every piece of herself, she also knew the cost of it. Knew just how much you poured into children. How much you gave, how much they took.

And she was doing it again. Without ever finding a place for herself in the world. Without having the fantasies she’d craved. True love. A man who would take care of her.

You’ve had some of the fantasies
.

Oh, yes, she had. But one night of passion wasn’t the sum total of her life’s desires.

“All of this,” he said. “And still you want this child?”

“Yes, Matteo. I do. Because babies are a lot of work. But the love you feel for them … it’s stronger than anything, than any fear. It doesn’t mean I’m not afraid, only that I know in the end the love will win.”

“Well, we can be terrified together,” he said.

“You’re terrified?”

“Babies are tiny. They look very easily broken.”

“I’ll teach you how to hold one.”

Their eyes met, heat arching between them, and this time her pregnancy hormones were making her feel something other than anger.

She looked back down at her breakfast. “How’s your head?”

“I feel like someone put a woodpecker in my skull.”

“It’s no less than you deserve.”

“I will treat you better than I did last night. That I promise you. I’m not sure what other promises I can make, but that one … that one I will keep.”

She thought of him last night. Broken. Passionate. Needy. She wondered how much of that was the real Matteo. How much he kept hidden beneath a facade.

How much he kept from escaping. And she knew just how he felt in some ways. Knew what it was like to hide everything behind a mask. It was just that her mask was smiling, and his hardly made an expression at all.

“Will you be faithful to me?” she asked, the words catching in her throat.

Matteo looked down into his coffee for a moment, then stood, his cup in his hand. “I have some work to see to this morning, and my head is killing me. We can talk more later.”

Alessia’s heart squeezed tight, nausea rolling through her. “Later?”

“My head, Alessia.”

My heart, you jackass
. “Great. Well, perhaps we can have a meeting tonight, or something.”

“We’re busy tonight.”

“Oh. Doing what?”

“Celebrating our marriage, quite publicly, at a charity event.”

“What?” She felt far too raw to be in public.

“After what happened with Alessandro, we have to present a united front. Your not-quite wedding to him was very public, as was your announcement of your
pregnancy. The entire world is very likely scratching their heads over the spectacle we’ve created, and now it’s time to show a little bit of normal.”

“But we don’t have a normal marriage—I mean, so I’ve been told.”

“As far as the media is concerned we do.”

“Why? Afraid of a little scandal? You’re a Corretti.”

“What do you want our child to grow up and read? Because thanks to the internet, this stuff doesn’t die. It’s going to linger, scandal following him wherever he goes. You and I both know what that’s like. To have all the other kids whisper about your parents. For our part, we aren’t criminals, but we’ve hardly given our child a clean start.”

“So we go out and look pretty and sparkly and together, and what? The press just forgets about what happened?”

“No, but perhaps they will continue on in the vein that they’ve started in.”

“What’s that?” She’d, frankly, spent a lot of energy avoiding the stories that the media had written about the wedding.

“That we were forbidden lovers, who risked it all to be together.”

It wasn’t far from the truth, although Matteo hadn’t truly known the risk they’d been taking their night
together. But she had. And she’d risked it all for the chance to be with him.

Looking at him now, dealing with all the bruises he’d inflicted on her heart, she knew she would make the same choice now. Because at least it had been her choice. Her mistake. Her very first big one. It was like a rite of passage in a way.

“Well, then, I suppose we had better get ready to put on a show. I’m not sure I have the appropriate costume, though.”

“I’m sure I can come up with something.”

“S
OMETHING
”
TURNED OUT
to be an evening gown from the Corretti fashion line. It was gorgeous, and it was very slinky, with silky gold fabric that molded to her curves and showed the emerging baby bump that she almost hadn’t noticed until she’d put on the formfitting garment.

Of course, there was no point in hiding her pregnancy. She’d announced it on television, for heaven’s sake. But even so, since she hadn’t really dealt with it yet, she felt nervous about sharing it with the public like this.

She put her hand on her stomach, smoothing her palm over the small bump. She was going to be a mother. Such a frightening, amazing thing to realize. She’d been tangled up in finding Matteo, and then in the days since—had it really only been days?—she’d been dealing with having him back in her life.
With marrying him. She hadn’t had a chance to really think of the baby in concrete terms.

Alessia looked at herself in the mirror one more time, at her stomach, and then back at her face. Her looks had never mattered very much to her. She was comfortable with them, more or less. She was taller than almost every other woman she knew, and a good portion of the men, at an Amazonian six feet, but Matteo was taller.

He managed to make her feel small. Feminine. Beautiful.

That night they were together he’d made her feel especially beautiful. And then last night he’d made her feel especially undesirable. Funny how that worked.

She turned away from the mirror and walked out of the bedroom. Matteo was standing in the hall waiting for her, looking so handsome in his black suit she went a little weak-kneed. He was a man who had a strong effect, that was for sure.

“Don’t you clean up nice,” she said. “You almost look civilized.”

“Appearances can be deceiving,” he said.

“The devil wore Armani?”

“Something like that.” He held his hand out and she hesitated for a moment before taking it and allowing him to lead her down the curved staircase and into
the foyer. He opened the door for her, his actions that of a perfectly solicitous husband.

Matteo’s sports car was waiting for them, the keys in the ignition.

Alessia waited until they were on the road before speaking again. “So, what’s the charity?”

He shifted gears, his shoulders bunched up, muscles tense. “It’s one of mine.”

“You have charities?”

“Yes.”

“I didn’t realize.”

“I thought you knew me.”

“We’re filled with surprises for each other, aren’t we? It’s a good thing we have a whole lifetime together to look forward to,” she said drily.

“Yes,” he said, his voice rough, unconvincing.

And she was reminded of their earlier conversation in the dining room. She’d asked him point-blank if he would be faithful, and he’d sidestepped her. She had a feeling he was doing it again.

She gritted her teeth to keep from saying anything more. To keep from asking him anything, or pressing the issue. She had some pride. She did. She was sure she did, and she was going to do everything she could to hold on to her last little bit of it.

“Well, what is your charity for, then?”

“This is an education fund. For the schools here.”

“That’s … great,” she said. “I didn’t get to do any higher education.”

“Did you want to?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so. I mean … I didn’t really have anything I wanted to be when I grew up.”

“Nothing?”

“There weren’t a lot of options on the table. Though I did always think I would like to be a mother.” A wife and a mother. That she would like to have someone who loved her, cherished her like the men in her much-loved books cherished their heroines. It was a small dream, one that should have been somewhat manageable.

Instead, she’d gone off and traded it in for a night of wild sex.

And darn it, she still didn’t regret it. Mainly. “Mission accomplished.”

“Why, yes, Matteo, I am, as they say, living the dream.”

“There’s no need to be—”

“There is every need to be,” she said. “Don’t act like I should thank you for any of this.”

“I wasn’t going to,” he said, his tone biting.

“You were headed there. This is not my dream.” But it was close. So close that it hurt worse in some ways than not getting anywhere near it at all. Because
this was proving that her dream didn’t exist. That it wasn’t possible.

“My apologies,
cara
, for not being your dream.” His voice was rough, angry, and she wanted to know where he got off being mad after the way he’d been treating her.

“And my apologies for not being yours. I imagine if I had a room number stapled to my forehead and a bag of money in my hand I’d come a little closer.”

“Now you’re being absurd.”

“I don’t think so.”

Matteo maneuvered his car through the narrow city streets, not bothering with nice things like braking before turning, and pulled up to the front of his hotel.

“It’s at your hotel,” she said.

“Naturally.” He threw the car into Park, then got out, rounding to the passenger side and opening the door for her. “Come, my darling wife, we have a public to impress.”

He extended his hand to her and she slowly reached her hand out to accept it. Lighting streaked through her, from her fingertips, spreading to every other part of her, the shock and electricity curling her toes in her pumps.

She stood, her eyes level with his thanks to her shoes. “Thank you.”

A member of the hotel staff came to where they
were and had a brief exchange with Matteo before getting into the car and driving it off to the parking lot. Alessia wandered to the steps of the hotel, taking two of them before pausing to wait for her husband.

Matteo turned back to her, his dark eyes glittering in the streetlamps. He moved to the stairs, and she advanced up one more, just to keep her height advantage. But Matteo wasn’t having it. He got onto her stair, meeting her eyes straight on.

“There are rules tonight, Alessia, and you will play by them.”

“Will I?” she asked. She wasn’t sure why she was goading him. Maybe because it was the only way in all the world she could feel like she had some power. Or maybe it was because if she wasn’t trying to goad him, she was longing for him. And the longing was just unacceptable.

A smile curved his lips and she couldn’t help but wonder if he needed this, too. This edge of hostility, the bite of anger between them.

Although why Matteo would need anything to hold her at a distance when he’d already made his feelings quite clear was a mystery to her.

“Yes, my darling wife, you will.” He put his hand on her chin, drawing close to her, his heat making her shiver deep inside. It brought her right back to that night.

To the aching, heart-rending desperation she’d felt when his lips had finally touched hers. To the moment they’d closed his hotel room door and he’d pressed her against the wall, devouring, taking, giving.

He drew his thumb across her lower lip and she snapped back to the present. “You must stop looking at me like that,” he said.

“Like what?”

“Like you’re frightened of me.” There was an underlying note to his voice that she couldn’t guess at, a frayed edge to his control that made his words gritty.

“I’m not.”

“You look at me like I’m the very devil sometimes.”

“You act like the very devil sometimes.”

“True enough. But there are other times …”

“What other times?”

“You didn’t used to look at me that way.”

“How did I look at you?” she asked, her chest tightening, her stomach pulling in on itself.

“When you were a girl? With curiosity. At the hotel? Like you were hungry.”

“You looked at me the same way.”

“And how do you think I look at you now?”

“You don’t,” she whispered. “When you can help it, you don’t look at me at all.”

He moved his other hand up to cup her cheek, his
thumb still stroking her lower lip. “I’m looking at you now.”

And there was heat in his eyes. Heat like there had been their night together, the night that had started all of this. The night that had changed the course of her life.

“Because you have to,” she said. “For the guests.”

“Oh, yes, the guests,” he said.

Suddenly, a flash pierced the dim light, interrupting their moment. They both looked in the direction of the photographer, who was still snapping pictures in spite of the fact that the moment was completely broken.

“Shall we go in?” he asked. Any evidence of frayed control was gone now, the rawness, the intensity, covered by a mask. And now her husband was replaced with a smooth, cool stranger.

She’d love to say it wasn’t the man she’d married, but this was exactly the man she’d married. This guarded man with more layers of artifice than anyone she’d ever met. She had been so convinced she’d seen the man behind the fiction, that the night in the hotel she’d seen the real Matteo. That in those stolen glances they’d shared when they were young, she’d seen the truth.

That in the moment of unrestrained violence, when
he’d put himself in harm’s way to keep her from getting hurt, she’d seen the real man.

Now she realized what small moments those were in the entirety of Matteo’s life. And for the first time, she wondered if she was simply wrong about him.

A feeling that settled sickly in her stomach, a leaden weight, as they continued up the stairs and into the entrance to the hotel’s main ballroom.

There were more photographers inside, capturing photographs of the well-dressed crème de la crème of Sicilian society. And Alessia did her best to keep a smile on her face. This was her strength, being happy no matter what was going on. Keeping a smile glued to her face at whatever event she was at on behalf of her father, making sure she showed her brothers and sisters she was okay even if she’d just taken a slap to the face from their father.

But this wasn’t so simple. She was having a harder time finding a place to go to inside of herself. Having a harder time finding that false feeling of hope that she’d become so good at creating for herself to help preserve her sanity.

No one could live in total hopelessness, so she’d spent her life creating hope inside of herself. She’d managed to do it through so many difficult scenarios. Why was it so hard now? So hard with Matteo?

She knew she’d already answered that question. It
was too hard to retreat to a much-loved fantasy when that much-loved fantasy was standing beside you, the source of most of your angst.

Though she couldn’t blame it all on Matteo. The night of her bachelorette party was the first night she’d stopped trying to find solace in herself, had stopped just trying to be happy no matter what, and had gone for what she wanted, in spite of possible consequences.

She spent the night with Matteo’s arm wrapped around her waist, his touch keeping her entire body strung tight, on a slow burn. She also turned down champagne more times than she could count. Was she normally offered alcohol so much at a party? She’d never been conscious of it when she was allowed to drink it. Right now it just seemed a cruelty, since she could use the haze, but couldn’t take the chance with her baby’s health.

Anyway, for some reason it all smelled sour and spoiled to her now. The pregnancy was making her nose do weird things.

Although Matteo smelled just as good as he ever had. The thought made her draw a little closer to him, breathe in the scent of him, some sort of spicy cologne mingling with the scent of his skin. She was especially tuned into the scent of his skin now, the scent of his sweat.

Dio
, even his sweat turned her on. Because it reminded her of his bare skin, slick from exertion, her hands roaming over his back as he thrust hard into her, his dark eyes intent on hers. And there were no walls. Not then.

She blinked and came back to the present. She really had to stop with the sexual fantasies, they did her no good.

A photographer approached them. “Smile for me?” he asked.

Matteo drew her in close to his body, and she put her hand on his chest. She knew her smile looked perfect. She had perfected her picture smile for events such as these, to put on a good front for the Battaglia family. She was an expert.

Matteo should have been, as well, but he looked like he was trying to smile around a rock in his mouth, his expression strained and unnatural.

“A dance for the new bride and groom?” the photographer asked while taking their picture, and she was sure that in that moment her smile faltered a bit.

“Of course,” Matteo said, his grin widening. Was she the only one who could see the totally feral light in his eyes, who could see that none of this was real?

The photographer was smiling back, as were some of the guests standing in their immediate area, so they must not be able to tell. Must not be able to
see how completely disingenuous the expression of warmth was.

“Come. Dance with me.”

And so she followed him out onto the glossy marble dance floor, where other couples were holding each other close, slow dancing to a piece of piano music.

It was different from when they’d danced in New York. The ballroom was bright, crystal chandeliers hanging overhead, casting shimmering light onto caramel-colored walls and floors. The music was as bright as the lighting, nothing darkly sensual or seductive.

And yet when Matteo drew her into his hold, his arms tight, strong around her, they might as well have been the only two people in the room. Back again, shrouded in darkness in the corner of a club, stealing whatever moments together they could have before fate would force them to part forever.

Except fate had had other ideas.

She’d spent a lot of her life believing in fate, believing that the right thing would happen in the end. She questioned that now. Now she just wondered if she’d let her body lead her into an impossible situation all for the sake of assuaging rioting hormones.

“This will make a nice headline, don’t you think?”

he asked, swirling her around before drawing her back in tight against him.

“I imagine it will. You’re a great dancer, by the way. I don’t know if I mentioned that … last time.”