CHAPTER EIGHT
MATTEO WASN’T SURE how he managed to get up and speak in front of the large crowd of people. Not when he could see Alessia in the audience, her face smooth, serene, her dark eyes the only window to the storm that lurked beneath.
A storm he was certain would boil over and onto him once they were alone.
He found he didn’t mind. That he welcomed the chance to take her on because it was better than the overwhelming, biting need to take her back to the elevator and have her again. To let the elevator continue up to his suite where he would have her again. And again. Tasting her this time, truly savoring her.
Yes, fighting was infinitely better than that. He would rather have her yelling at him than sighing his name in his ear.
Because he didn’t know what to do with her, what to do about his desire for her.
It wasn’t what he was used to. Wasn’t normal in any way.
Sex was simply a need to be met, like eating or breathing. Yes, he liked some food better than he liked others, but he wasn’t a slave to cravings. He believed in moderation, in exercising control in all areas of life.
Alessia was the one craving he didn’t seem to be able to fight, and that meant he had to learn how.
Anything else was inexcusable.
“Thank you all for coming tonight, and for your generous donations. I am happy to announce that I am personally matching all of the donations given tonight. And that thanks to your generosity, it is now possible for the Corretti Education Foundation to branch out into college grants. It is my belief that a good education can overcome any circumstance, and it is my goal that every person be given that chance. Thank you again, enjoy the rest of the evening.”
He stepped down from the podium, not paying attention to the applause that was offered up for his speech. He could hardly hear anything over the roar of blood in his ears. Could hardly see anything but Alessia. Which was one reason he allowed himself to be pulled to the side by some of the guests, interrupted on his way back to where his wife was standing.
He stopped and talked to everyone who approached him, using it as a tactic to keep himself from having to face Alessia without his guard firmly back in place. Cowardly? Perhaps. But he found he didn’t care. Not much, at least.
Alessia didn’t make a move to approach him; instead, she made conversation with the people around her. And every so often she flicked him a glare with those beautiful eyes of hers, eyes that glittered beneath the lights of the chandeliers. Eyes that made promises of sensual heaven, the kind of heaven he could hardly risk trying to enter again.
Every time he touched Alessia, she tore down another piece of the wall, that very necessary wall of control he’d built around himself.
People started to disperse, and as they both went along the natural line of people that wanted to converse with them, the space between them started to close. Matteo’s blood started to flow hotter, faster, just getting nearer to Alessia.
No matter there were still five hundred people in the room. No matter that he’d had her against a wall an hour earlier. Still she challenged him. Still she made him react like a teenage boy with no control over his baser urges.
Yes, think about that. Remember what that looks like.
Blind rage. Two young men, still and unmoving, blood everywhere. And then a calm. A cold sort of emptiness. If he felt anything at all it was a kind of distant satisfaction.
And then he’d looked at Alessia. At the terror in her eyes.
And he’d done what he’d sworn he would never do.
He’d wrapped his arms around her and pulled her into his chest, brushing away her tears. He’d made her cry. Horrified her, and he couldn’t blame her for being horrified. It wasn’t the kind of thing a girl of fourteen, or any age, should ever have to see.
When he pulled away, when he looked down at her face, her cheeks were streaked with blood. The blood from his hands. Not the only blood he had on his hands.
He breathed in sharply, taking himself back to the present. Away from blood-soaked memories.
Except it was still so easy to see them when he looked at Alessia’s face. A face that had been marred with tears and blood. Because of him.
The gap between them continued to shrink, the crowd thinning, until they met in the middle, in the same group. And there was no excuse now for him not to pull her against his side, his arm wrapped around her waist. So he did.
Alessia’s body was stiff at his side, but her expression was still relaxed, her smile easy. A lie. Why had he never noticed before that Alessia’s smile wasn’t always genuine?
He’d assumed that it was. That Alessia displayed and felt emotion with ease and honesty. Now he wondered.
The last of the guests started to file out, leaving Alessia and Matteo standing in the empty ballroom.
He looked around, at the expansive room. This was his hotel, separate from his family dynasty, and often, looking at it, at the architecture, the expanse of it, filled him with a sense of pride. He had hotels all over the world, but this one, back in Sicily, a hotel that belonged to him and not to his family in any part, had always filled him with a particular amount of satisfaction.
Now it just seemed like a big empty room.
He picked up his phone and punched in a number. “Delay cleaning until further notice, I require the ballroom for personal use for a while.”
Alessia looked at him, her dark eyes wide. “What do you need the ballroom for?”
He shrugged. “Anything I want.” He walked over to the edge of the stage and sat, gripping the edge. “It is my hotel, after all.”
“Yes, and you’re a man who takes great pride in the ownership of whatever he can possess,” she said.
“And why not?” he asked, loosening his tie, trying not to think of Alessia’s fingers on the knot, trying not to imagine her fingers at the buttons of his dress shirt as he undid the collar. “That’s what it’s always been about in my family. I go out of town—” and off the grid “—and my bastard cousin has taken over my office. My younger brother has managed to charm his way into the top seat of the fashion houses for Corretti. So you see? In my family, ownership is everything. And if you have to stab someone to get it, all the better.”
“Metaphorical stabbing?” she asked, wrapping her arms around her waist, as if holding herself together. He hated that. Hated that he might cause her pain in any way.
“Or literal stabbing. I told you, my family has a colorful history.”
“You said you and your brothers weren’t criminals.”
“We’re not. Not convicted, anyway,” he added, not sure why. Maybe because, in his heart, he knew he was one.
Knew he could be convicted for assault several times over if evidence was brought before a court.
“Why are you saying this?”
“What do you mean, why am I saying this? I’m telling you the truth. Was what I did that day near your father’s gardens legal? Answer me,” he said, his words echoing in the empty room.
“You saved me.”
“Maybe.”
“They would have raped me,” she said.
He remembered it so clearly. And yet so differently.
Because he remembered coming upon Alessia, backed up against a tree, a stone wall behind her, two men in front of her, pressing her back to the tree, touching her, jeering at her. They had her shirt torn. They were pushing her skirt up. And he’d known what they intended to do. The evil they meant for his angel.
And then he remembered seeing red.
He pushed off from the stage, standing and pacing, trying to relieve the restless energy moving through him. Trying to ease the tightness in his chest.
He hadn’t simply stopped when he’d gotten those men away from Alessia. Hadn’t stopped when they quit fighting back. He hadn’t stopped until Alessia had touched his back. And then he’d turned, a rock held tightly in his hand, ready to finish what he’d started. Ready to make sure they never got up again, ready to make sure they could never hurt another woman again. Any other woman, but most especially Alessia.
But then he’d looked into her eyes. Seen the fear. Seen the tears.
And he’d dropped his hand back to his side, letting the rock fall to the ground. Letting the rage drain from his body.
That was when he’d realized what he had done. What he had been about to do. And what it had done to Alessia to see it. More than that, it confirmed what he’d always known. That if he ever let himself go, if he ever allowed himself more than his emotionless existence, he would become a man he hated.
“I did more than save you,” he said. “A lot more.”
“You did what you had to.”
“You say it as if I gave it some thought. I didn’t. What I did was a reaction. Blind rage. As I was, if you were not there, I wouldn’t have ended it until they were dead.”
“You don’t know that.”
“That’s the thing, Alessia, I do know that. I know exactly what my next move was going to be, and trust me, it’s not something people get back up from.”
“I wish you could see what I saw.”
“And I wish like hell you hadn’t seen any of it,” he said, his voice rough.
“You were … I thought … I thought they were going to get away with it. That no one would hear me scream. No one would stop them. I thought that they would do it. And then you came and you didn’t let them. Do you have any idea what that meant to me? Do you know what you stopped?”