A Hunger for the Forbidden - By Maisey Yates Page 0,59

it. Damn him for making her.

He bent down and started collecting his clothes, running his fingers over his silk tie, remembering how she’d undone it only hours before with shaking fingers. How she’d kissed him. How she’d given to him.

He dressed quickly, Alessia still standing by the window, frozen, watching him.

He did the buttons on his shirt cuffs and opened his closet, retrieving his suit jacket. Then he took a breath, and turned his back on Alessia.

“I should be back later today. Feel free to go back to bed.”

“In here?”

“Perhaps it would be best if you went back to your room. You haven’t had your things moved, after all.”

“But I made my decision.”

“Perhaps I haven’t made mine.”

“You said you had earlier.”

“Yes, I did, and then you decided you needed more time to think about it. Now I would like an extension, as well. That seems fair, doesn’t it?”

He took his phone off the nightstand and curled his fingers around it. A flashback assaulted him. Of how it had been when he’d turned his back on the burning warehouse, leaving the people inside of it to deal with the consequences of their actions without his help.

But this was different. He was walking away for different reasons. It wasn’t about freeing himself. This was about freeing her.

And when he returned home later in the day, perhaps he would have the strength to do it. To do what needed to be done.

Alessia didn’t go back to sleep. Instead, she wandered around the palazzo like a zombie, trying to figure out why she’d exploded all over Matteo like that. And why he’d responded like he had.

It was this love business. It sucked, in her opinion.

Suddenly she’d felt like she was being torn open, like she was too full to hold everything in. Like she’d glossed over everything with that layer of contentment she’d become so good at cultivating.

She wanted more than that, and she wasn’t sure why. Wasn’t sure why she couldn’t just keep making the best of things. She had Matteo. That should be enough.

But it wasn’t.

Because you don’t really have him.

She didn’t. She had his name. She was married to him. She was having his baby, sharing his bed and his body, but she didn’t really have him. Because the core of him remained off-limits to her. Not just her, but to everyone.

She wanted it all. Whether she should or not. Whether it made sense or not. But that was love. Which brought her back around to love sucking. Because if she could just put on a smile and deal with it, if she could just take what he was giving and not ask for any more, she was sure there could be some kind of happiness there.

But there wouldn’t be joy. There wouldn’t be anything deep and lasting. And she was tired of taking less than what she wanted to keep from making waves. She was so tired of it she thought she might break beneath the strain of it.

“Buongiorno.”

Alessia turned and saw Matteo standing in the doorway, his hair a mess, as though he’d run his fingers through it a few too many times, his tie undone, his shirt unbuttoned at the collar. His jacket had been discarded somewhere else.

“Hello, Matteo. Did you have a good day at work?”

“I didn’t go to work,” he said.

His admission hit her hard. “You didn’t?”

“No. I was running again. Like I did the day of your first wedding. That was what I did, you know. You asked me to go to the airport, and I nearly went. But in the end I was too angry at you. For lying. For being ready to marry him. So I went to my house in Germany, mainly because no one knows about it. And I did my best to be impossible to reach, because I didn’t want to deal with any accusations. I didn’t want to hear from my family. And I didn’t want to hear from you, because I knew you would be too much of a temptation for me to resist. That if I read your emails or listened to your messages, I would want you back. That I would come back to you.”

“So you hid instead?”

“It was easier. And today I thought I might do the same thing. Because I don’t like to see you cry. I don’t like seeing you sad, knowing that it’s my fault.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“Mainly I just drove,” he said, as if she hadn’t spoken. “A little too fast,