KIMBER
In my room, I carefully remove the Dior dress and hang it up in the closet, brushing the dust off the back. I change into jeans and a T-shirt and slip on my leather jacket, then head back out.
Arrested by a strange sound, I stop in the hallway and cock my ear.
What’s that?
It’s a soft noise. Intermittent. It’s only after a few moments of listening to it that I realize the sound is muffled crying.
I stare at the door at the end of the hall, shocked to my core.
The marchesa’s room is behind that door. The marchesa is crying.
I put a hand over my throbbing heart and shake my head, pressing my lips together so I don’t sob. I can’t take anything else today. I don’t think I’ll survive one more surprise. My poor heart will burst into a million tiny bloody pieces, and I’ll drop dead where I stand.
Might be a blessing, now that I think of it.
My eyes stinging, I run through the house, throw open the front door, and immediately come to a skidding stop.
Across the driveway, Matteo leans against a black Maserati. His arms are folded over his chest. He’s staring at me from under lowered brows.
The passenger door is open.
Screw it.
I stride angrily across the distance, throw myself into the passenger seat, and slam the door shut. I sit slumped down with my arms crossed over my chest, not bothering to fasten the seat belt, breathing so hard it sounds as if I’ve been running.
Gravel crunches, then Matteo opens the driver’s door and gets in. Without a word, he leans over me and fastens my seat belt. Then he starts the car, closes his door, puts the car into gear, and pulls away.
We drive. I have no idea where. We simply drive in silence as the landscape slips by in a colorful blur, and I try so hard not to cry I dig bloody little crescents into my palms with my fingernails.
The whole time, Matteo’s knuckles are white around the steering wheel.
To the window and the passing view, I say faintly, “I always wanted to be married. When I was a little girl, I dreamed of how it would be. The flowers. The music. My wedding gown. I had this fantasy built up in my head of this perfect, beautiful day . . . and the perfect, beautiful man I’d marry. He’d be so in love with me, he’d die just for a kiss . . .”
Like my father was with my mother. That’s all I ever wanted—a man to love me so much he couldn’t see anything else. Instead it was me who couldn’t see. I’d like to kick my own ass for being so blind.
As the first of the tears crest my lower lids, I suck in a hitching breath. I whisper, “I’m so ashamed.”
“Don’t be stupid,” comes the hard response. “You have nothing to be ashamed of.”
I close my eyes, letting the tears flow because I know there’s no stopping them now. “Stupid to trust. Stupid to dream. Stupid to believe in the fairy tale.”
“I could kill him just for this,” Matteo mutters, taking a corner too fast. “Just for making you cry.”
He growls something in Italian. It sounds super murdery and makes me feel a little better.
“I heard your mother crying. Behind her closed bedroom door.”
His gaze on my face is burning. “Did you think she wouldn’t?”
I thought she didn’t know how, but keep my mouth shut. As I’m beginning to realize, I don’t know much of anything.
We drive for another ten minutes in silence until we pull up to a tall ancient stone wall covered in ivy. The wall breaks, revealing a massive iron gate flanked by a pair of enormous stone lions. Beside the gate is a small metal box on a stand that Matteo punches a code into. The gates swing open slowly, and we pull into a cobbled driveway. On my right is a sunken cloister with formal Italian gardens. On my left are lighted fountains and a rolling green lawn.
Directly ahead is a massive neo-Gothic castle, complete with crenellated tower.
Squinting out the windshield, I ask, “What is this place?”
“Castello di Moretti.”
I turn to him slowly as shock spreads throughout my body.
He smiles at the look on my face. “Home sweet home.”
He makes it sound like a double-wide trailer. “You live here?”
“I grew up here. This has been the seat of the Moretti family for more than eight hundred years.”
“Uh-huh.” I stare at him.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
I point at the monster castle. “This explains a lot.”
Shaking his head, he maneuvers the car into a courtyard and kills the engine. He gets out of the car and comes around and opens my door, something Brad never managed to do the entire time we were together.
I blink hard to clear the water suddenly pooling in my eyes. Don’t start crying again. Don’t you dare.
“Come,” Matteo says softly. “There are many old, priceless objects inside you’ll no doubt enjoy breaking.” He extends his hand.
I shouldn’t do this, but I’m feeling reckless. So I take his hand and let him help me out of the car. He closes the door behind me but doesn’t let go of my hand.
He leads me through a stone archway into another smaller courtyard. I don’t know all the technical terms for what I’m seeing, but suffice it to say that it’s all very castlelike. Fortified stone walls, towers, those little slits in the walls medieval archers could shoot through, all that.
When we enter through a small wooden side door into the main part of the building, a laugh unexpectedly bursts out of me and echoes up into the rafters.
Matteo glances back at me.
“Total shithole,” I say with a straight face.
He turns away, but not before I see his smile.
We walk, and walk, and walk. The place is a maze of marble and stone and hanging tapestries, heavily carved wood furniture and gilt mirrors, flowers spilling from porcelain urns. We pass what I decide to call the Wall of Death, which features a variety of medieval axes, swords, spears, and other items designed to deprive a person of life in the most painful of ways in a giant glass cabinet lit from underneath just to make it all the more creepy.
“You grew up here?” I mutter under my breath, unable to imagine a young child wandering around this place. It’s a miracle he didn’t accidentally kill himself running into one of the thousand sharp edges everywhere or falling down and cracking open his skull on the slippery and unforgivingly hard marble floor.
“When I wasn’t away at boarding school.”
There’s a dark undertone in his voice that suggests boarding school wasn’t all fun and games. I want to ask him about it but am distracted by the smell of baking bread. It seems we’re headed toward a kitchen. I hear women laughing and the sound of clanging pans. Then we pass through an open arched doorway into an enormous room that makes the word kitchen seem insufficient.
There are bread ovens and two wood-burning fireplaces and a long sink built right into the thick stone walls. Three large oak tables command the center space on the floor. There’s a hearth so large it could fit several cauldrons, and a long row of shelves filled with pantry goods.
The two women I heard laughing fall silent when we walk in. Plump and grandmotherly with identical uniforms of black with starched white aprons, they could be sisters.
In unison, they curtsey.
“Mio signore.”
I barely know any Italian, but I do know they just called Matteo “My lord.”
When I snort, he slants me an irritated look. He says something to the ladies, gesturing toward the stainless-steel refrigerator on the other side of the room. Then he nods at them in farewell and leads me away as they gape after us in surprise.
As soon as we’re out of earshot, I snicker. “Where are you taking me, my lord?”
He’s still holding my hand, which he uses to pull me around a corner. Then he whirls on me and presses me against the wall.
Shocked, I stare up at him. His eyes are dark, and that muscle in his jaw is jumping.
I’m in trouble.
He says roughly, “If it were up to me, I’d be taking you to bed and putting that mouth of yours to good use. Now I can see why your attitude is so bad—there’s no way in hell that boy you were going to marry could ever satisfy a woman like you.”
His blistering gaze drops to my mouth.
Surely he must be able to hear the scream of sheer joy my uterus is making. It’s so loud I’m deafened for a moment.
My body erupts into flames. I can’t catch my breath. My armpits go damp, and so do my panties. The wall is cool and hard against my back, but Matteo is all heat against my front. Heat and muscle and palpable desire.
My hands are somehow flattened against his stomach. His hands are flattened on the wall on either side of my head. Neither of us moves, except for our chests, which are both heaving.
“You think you can do better?”
It’s out of my mouth before I have any idea I’m going to say it, a husky whisper that sounds like I’m auditioning for a role in a porno. Apparently my uterus has taken control of all my bodily functions because though I should be pushing him away, what I really want to do is let him show me exactly what his eyes are saying he wants to do to me.
All the dirty, wonderful things.
He lowers his head and puts his mouth next to my ear. “Bella,” he chides. “You know I can.” Then he takes my earlobe into his mouth and gently suckles it as if it’s my clitoris.
I almost die from the blast of lust that explodes inside my body. His mouth is wet and soft, his breath down my neck is hot, his stomach under my hands is as hard as steel. The little gasp that leaves my lips makes him chuckle.
He whispers, “Don’t you?” and bites me on the neck.
It’s not hard, not enough to break the skin or even leave a mark, just enough to be dominant. To let me know that he’s the man. He’d be in control of whatever we did in bed, and he’d make sure I fucking loved every second of it.
It’s a good thing my knees are locked because there’s no way they’d be holding me up otherwise. He’s turned my bones to gelatin.
He shifts his weight forward so I know he’s as aroused as I am. I feel every long, thick inch of him, and exhale a breath that inconveniently sounds exactly like a moan.
Matteo takes my face in his hands. I take fistfuls of his shirt. He holds me there against the wall with his hard cock pressed into my crotch and looks deep into my eyes.
“Don’t you.”
This time it’s not a question. It’s a promise and a dare and above all an invitation. An invitation to say yes, to admit I know that if I had sex with him, he’d ruin me for all other men. That I know he’d pay close attention to my every arch and moan and shudder, that he’d read my body like a book and make it sing like a violin under his patient, plying hands.
That he’d break me and make me beg before he’d give me everything I never knew I needed.
When I’m silent too long, he softly warns, “Kimber.”
My uterus pulls the final plug on my brain functions. I breathe, “Yes,” and stand on my toes and kiss him.
He allows it just long enough for my nipples to tighten and begin to ache until he takes control back and pulls away. He keeps my face in one of his hands. The other he flattens against my chest. He spreads his big hand wide, the heel of his palm resting at the top swell of my breasts and his fingers flared out, as if he’s claiming the space.
When he kisses the corner of my mouth, I close my eyes and give myself over to sensation.
He nips my lower lip, taking it between his teeth and then gently sucking on it. He slips his tongue into my mouth with soft, delicious suction, using that hand on my chest to hold me back when I become impatient, leaning into him because I want more. I want it deeper.
Against my mouth, he murmurs, “Sei cosí dolce.”
I’m wet and throbbing between my legs. I want him to do the earlobe-sucking thing down there. I squeeze my thighs together restlessly, and he chuckles again.
“Voglio mettere la mia faccia tra le tue gambe.”
“Are you . . . are you talking dirty to me?”
He slants me a heated look and smiles.
Oh dear sweet lord in heaven. That burning smell is my panties going up in smoke.
He takes my mouth again. This time his kiss is deeper, the way I wanted it. It’s searching. Needing. I slide my arms up his chest and over his shoulders and sink my fingers into all that glorious thick hair, using it to pull him even closer. We’re both breathing hard through our noses.
He slides his hand down from my chest to the side of my ribs. When his thumb nudges my hard nipple, it sends a shock wave through my lower body. I moan into his mouth.
He breaks the kiss and nuzzles his nose into my hair. “I want to suck on this,” he whispers, breathing raggedly, stroking his thumb lazily back and forth across my nipple. “I want to pinch it and suck on it and lick it. I want to test it with my teeth, see how much pressure you can take before you squirm.”
I’m panting now. Literally panting, like a dog. Cornelia’s got nothin’ on me.
But Mr. Hot Dirty Talk isn’t done yet.
Right into my ear, in a tone somehow both hard and soft, he says, “I want to take off all your clothes and get you naked underneath me, spread you out on a bed so I can see all that beautiful skin. I want to put my face between your legs and eat your sweet pussy until you’re hoarse from screaming and limp from coming. Then I want to slide my hard cock deep inside you and fuck you, bella.”
His hand tightens around my breast. He flexes his hips, dragging the fabric of my panties across my engorged clitoris, making me shudder.
His voice turns rough. “I want to fuck you until you forget everyone and everything else but me. Until you’re satisfied. Until you’re mine.”
The kiss we share is explosive. It’s hard and passionate and almost sloppy, our teeth clashing and both of us making animal sounds as we claw at each other in greed.
“Wait—wait.”
Panting, I push him away. We stare at each other for a beat as my brain reboots and I once more become capable of rational thought. “You’re using my designs.”
He licks his lips, shakes his head a little as if to clear it. “What?”
“My designs. From my sketch pad. You’re using them in your new collection. Right?”
There’s a long silent moment where he simply looks at me and breathes raggedly. Then, through gritted teeth, he says, “Yes.”
I shove him away, wipe my mouth with the back of my hand, and curse. Loudly. It echoes off the stone walls. “I don’t want you to. Don’t.”
He straightens his tie. Smooths his hair. Says casually, “Are we negotiating?”
Between him and Brad, it’s a miracle I haven’t committed murder already. “You know, you have to go to sleep at some point. But you don’t necessarily have to wake up.”
He ignores my threat on his life. “Here’s my offer you didn’t want to hear earlier: a kiss for every page I return.”
When I don’t respond, because I’m too breathless, he smirks. “Not a peck on the cheek, either. A kiss like the one we just shared.”
A wave of hurt makes tears well in my eyes. How could he? How could he do this to me? Today, of all days, when I’m the most vulnerable I’ve ever been?
I whisper, “When I’m telling my best friend the story of the exact moment I went from disliking you and distrusting you to hating you, this will be it.”
His eyes flash with emotion, but he quickly regains control of whatever he was feeling. His handsome face becomes a cold mask. He says flatly, “There are twenty-six designs in that sketch pad. I’ll give you credit for the kiss we just had, plus the kiss at your father’s shop. That leaves twenty-four. I’ll leave it up to you when we start, but we’ll have to be done by the night before the shows in Milan.”
I stare at him with my mouth open. “That’s three weeks.”
One corner of his mouth lifts. “Better get started.”
I’m somehow hot and cold at the same time. I’m sweating, but shivering. The shivering could be fury. “I’ll tell everyone. I’ll make sure everyone knows those designs are mine. I’ll call the press—”
“Really? You want more press?” His gaze on mine is level.
The thought of the stories that would circulate on the internet makes me sick. He knows exactly which target to aim for, that’s for sure.
“It doesn’t matter. I can prove they’re mine.”
“How? Your name is nowhere on that pad.”
Shit. He’s right. I never wrote my name on the inside of the cover. I never thought I’d have to.
“And you didn’t sign any of the sketches, so . . .” He shrugs.
My face is so hot it burns. Furious, I glare at him. “I have copies of everything. In San Francisco. On my computer. I always make copies of what I’m working on.”
The smile that was flirting with one corner of his mouth blooms into a grin. “One of these days you’ll learn how to lie convincingly. Today isn’t it.”
I want to hit him. I want to stab him. I want to set fire to his face. Spending the rest of my life in prison would be a fair price to pay to get rid of this ruthless prick once and for all. “I said I’d pay you back for the ticket, and I meant it. Once the shop is back on its feet—”
“I don’t want your money, bella.”
His voice is so soft, like fingertips lightly stroked down my cheek. It leaves no doubt as to his meaning.
Starting to get desperate, I try a different tactic. “You don’t need my designs. Your company is the hottest thing going. Your menswear line alone is one of the most profitable—”
“We’re expanding the ladies’ evening wear line.”
I can tell he’ll have a comeback ready for anything I throw at him. I think he might have spent a considerable amount of time thinking this through.
Like Brad and his plan for us to live a lie.
My voice shakes with rage when I say, “My father would hate you for this.”
He flinches. He recovers quickly, plastering the smile back on, but I know I got to him.
But he effortlessly checkmates me. “No. Your father would be disappointed that you’re trying to go back on your word.”
I gasp. That hurt so much he might as well have kicked me in the ovaries.
He speaks again before I can spit out some curse. “We made a trade. A fair trade. One you agreed to freely.” His voice grows quieter. “A trade you admitted was the best gift you’ve ever been given, if you recall.”
I can’t look at him anymore. I just can’t look at his awful, beautiful face one second longer.
I turn and run.