“But you haven’t really. Taken the helm of your father’s empire, I mean.”
“Not as such. We’ve all taken a piece of it, but in the meantime we’ve been working to root out the shadier elements of the business. It’s one thing my brothers and I do not suffer. We’re not criminals.”
“A fact I appreciate. And for the record, neither is Alessandro. I would never have agreed to marry him otherwise.”
“Is that so?”
“I’ve had enough shady dealings to last me a lifetime. My father, for all that he puts on the front of being an honorable citizen, is not. At least your fathers and your grandfather had the decency to be somewhat open about the fact that they weren’t playing by the rules.”
“Gentleman thugs,” he said, his voice hard. “But I’ll let you in on a little secret—no matter how good you are at dancing, no matter how nicely tailored your suit is, it doesn’t change the fact that when you hit a man in the legs with a metal cane, his knees shatter. And he doesn’t care what you’re wearing. Neither do the widows of the men you kill.”
Alessia was stunned by his words, not by the content of them, not as shocked as she wished she were. People often assumed that she was some naive, cosseted flower. Her smile had that effect. They assumed she must not know how organized crime worked. But she did. She knew the reality of it. She knew her father was bound up so tightly in all of it he could hardly escape it even if he wanted to.
He was addicted to the power, and being friendly with the mob bosses was what kept him in power. He couldn’t walk away easily. Not with his power, possibly not even with his life.
And yet, the Correttis had disentangled themselves from it. The Corretti men and women had walked away from it.
No, it wasn’t the content of his words that had surprised her. It was the fact that he’d said them at all. Because Matteo played his cards close to his chest. Because Matteo preferred not to address the subject of his family, of that part of his past.
“You aren’t like that, though.”
“No?” he asked. “I’m in a suit.”
“And you wouldn’t do that to someone.”
“Darling Alessia, you are an eternal optimist,” he said, and there was something in his words she didn’t like. A hard edge that made her stomach tighten. “I don’t know how you manage it.”
“Survival. I have to protect myself.”
“I thought that was where cynics came from?”
“Perhaps a good number of them. But no matter how I feel about a situation, I’ve never had any control over the outcome. My mother died in childbirth, and no amount of feeling good or bad about it would have changed that. My father is a criminal, no matter the public mask he wears, who has no qualms about slapping my face to keep me in line.” They swirled in a fast circle, Matteo’s hold tightening on her, something dangerous flickering in his eyes. “No matter how I feel about the situation, that is the situation. If I didn’t choose to be happy no matter what, I’m not sure I would have ever stopped crying, and I didn’t want to live like that, either.”
“And why didn’t you leave?” he asked.
“Without Marco, Giana, Eva and Pietro? Never. I couldn’t do it.”
“With them, then.”
“With no money? With my father and his men bearing down on us? If it were only myself, then I would have left. But it was never only me. I think we were why my mother stayed, too.” She swallowed hard. “And if she could do it for us, how could I do any less?”
“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?”
“Somewhere,” he said.
He led her out of the ballroom, ignoring everyone who tried to talk to them. A photographer followed them and Matteo cursed, leading them a different way, down a corridor and to the elevators.
He pushed the up button and they both waited. It only took a moment for the elevator doors to slide open, and the moment they did, she was being tugged inside, tugged up against the hard wall of his chest and kissed so hard, so deep, she was afraid she would drown in it.
She heard the doors slide closed behind them, was dimly aware of the elevator starting to move. Matteo shifted their positions, put her back up against the wall, his lips hungry on hers.
“I need you,” he said, his voice shaking.
“I need you,” she said.
Her entire body had gone liquid with desire, her need for him overshadowing everything. Common sense, self-protection, everything. There was no time for thought. This was Matteo. The man she wanted with everything she had in her, the man who haunted her dreams. This was her white knight, but he was different than she’d imagined.
There was a darkness to him. An edge she’d never been able to imagine. And she found she liked it. Found she wanted a taste of it. She didn’t know what that said about her, didn’t know what it meant, but at the moment, she didn’t care, either.