A Hunger for the Forbidden - By Maisey Yates Page 0,11
stupid, girlish, optimistic part of her, had imagined Matteo’s eyes would soften, that he would smile. Touch her stomach. Take joy in the fact that they had created a life together.
And then they would live happily ever after.
She was such a fool. But Matteo had long been the knight in shining armor of her fantasies. And so in her mind he could do no wrong.
She’d always felt like she’d known him. Like she’d understood the serious, dark-eyed young man she’d caught watching her when she was in Palermo. Who had crept up to the wall around her house when he was visiting his grandmother and stood there while she’d played in the garden. Always looking like he wanted to join in, like he wanted to play, but wouldn’t allow himself to.
And then … and then when she’d needed him most, he’d been there. Saved her from … she hardly even knew what horror he’d saved her from. Thank God she hadn’t had to find out exactly what those two men had intended to use her for. Matteo had been there. As always. And he had protected her, shielded her.
That was why, when she’d seen him in New York, it had been easy, natural, to kiss him. To ask him to make love to her.
But after that he hadn’t come to save her.
She looked at him now, at those dark eyes, hollow, his face like stone. And he seemed like a stranger. She wondered how she could have been so wrong all this time.
“I don’t want to dredge up the past. But I want to know that the future won’t be miserable.”
“If you preferred Alessandro, you should have married him while you had him at the altar with a priest standing by. Now you belong to me, the choice has been taken. So you should make the best of it.”
“Stop being such an ass!”
Now he looked shocked, which, she felt, was a bit of an accomplishment. “You want me to tell you how happy I am? You want me to lie?”
“No,” she said, her stomach tightening painfully. “But stop … stop trying to hurt me.”
He swore, an ugly, crude word. “I am sorry, Alessia, it is not my intent.”
The apology was about the most shocking event of the afternoon. “I … I know this is unexpected. Trust me, I know.”
“When did you find out?” he asked.
“At the airport. So … if you had met me, you would have found out when I did.”
“And what did you do after that?”
“I waited for you,” she said. “And then I got on a plane and came to New York. I have a friend here, the friend that hosted my little bachelorette party.”
“Why did you come to New York?”
“Why not?” She made it sound casual, like it was almost accidental. But it wasn’t. It had made her feel close to him, no matter where he might have been in the world, because it was the place she’d finally been with him the way she’d always dreamed of. “Why did you come to New York?”
“Possibly for the same reason you did,” he said, his voice rough. It made her stomach twist, but she didn’t want to ask him for clarification. Didn’t want to hope that it had something to do with her.
She was too raw to take more of Matteo’s insults. And she was even more afraid of his tenderness. That would make her crumble completely. She couldn’t afford it, not now. Now she had to figure out what she was doing. What she wanted.
Could she really marry Matteo?
It was so close to her dearest fantasy. The one that had kept her awake long nights since she was a teenager. Matteo. Hers. Only hers. Such an innocent fantasy at first, and as she’d gotten older, one that had become filled with heat and passion, a longing for things she’d never experienced outside of her dreams.
“And if …” she said, hardly trusting herself to speak “… if we marry, my family will still benefit from the merger?”
“Your father will get his money. His piece of the Corretti empire, as agreed upon.”
“You give it away so easily.”
“Because my family still needs the docklands revitalization. And your father holds the key to that.”
“And it will benefit Alessandro, too.”
“Just as it would have benefitted me had he married you.”
Those words, hearing that it would have benefitted him for her to marry someone else, made her feel ill. “So a win all around for the Correttis, then?”
“I suppose it is,” he