MATTEO (Dance with the Devil 1)

by Carole Mortimer

  “That’s Matteo Zalotti?” Carla’s eyes had widened. She looked horrified, obviously well aware, with her own Italian background, that Matteo was the most powerful Italian living in the city.

  “I believe so, yes,” she confirmed softly. “Not now, Carla,” she cautioned as the huge display of roses and Matteo came to a halt several feet in front of them.

  Carla was staring in his direction like a victim caught in the mesmerizing gaze of a snake about to strike. “But he’s—”

  “I’m well aware of who and what he is,” Grace stated firmly, grasping Carla’s shoulders to turn and point her in the direction of the travel section. “I can handle this,” she assured as she gave Carla a gentle push. “If you would like to come to my office, Mr. Zalotti.” She didn’t wait to see if Matteo followed her down the corridor to where her office was situated at the back of the store, nor did she look back. She didn’t need to do either of those things when she was so totally aware of everything this man did or said.

  Chapter Seven

  She held the door open for him to enter her office before she followed him and the roses into the room. She closed the door firmly behind her before moving forward to lean against the front of her desk. “Well?” she snapped.

  The bouquet was slowly lowered to reveal Matteo’s slightly sheepish expression. He wore another one of those bespoke suits, dark gray this time, with a pale gray shirt and a gray-and-black-striped tie. “I was told that I needed to give you flowers and apologize.”

  “By whom?”

  “My future brother-in-law.”

  Her eyes widened. “You told him about me?”

  “Not you specifically, only that I had majorly fucked up with the woman I…like.” Matteo shrugged. “He suggested I give you flowers, and the florist recommended yellow roses as being suitable as an apology.”

  As opposed to red roses, which represented love, and would have caused Grace to laugh him out of the store. “A florist who obviously knew how to manipulate a huge sale when she saw one,” she derided. “Someone should have told you that size isn’t everything!” Her gaze swept scathingly over the dozens of blooms.

  As Matteo’s cock was larger than average and he’d never had any complaints in the past, he begged to differ. Size could make all the difference. Not that he intended saying any of that to Grace. He was very aware of still being balanced on an edge—or a ledge—where Grace was concerned, and he didn’t want to do or say anything that was going to piss her off. Anything else, he corrected self-derisively.

  With that in mind, he just hoped Grace didn’t notice his larger-than-average-cock had become half engorged the moment he looked at her in a pale green blouse tucked into the waistband of pencil-slim black trousers that, as she walked in front of him to this office, he could see and admire as they fitted perfectly over her arse.

  His cock had thickened and lengthened to an aching throb now he was alone in this office with her and was once again breathing in her unique and sensual perfume. The same alluring scent that had gotten him into such trouble on Friday evening. Something floral mixed with the musk of Grace’s arousal.

  Part of him had wondered, after speaking to Bryce last night, if he might not have imagined the depth of the effect Grace’s innate sensuality induced in him. One minute in her company today, and he knew that he hadn’t imagined a thing.

  Everything about Grace made him and his cock hard and aching. The delicacy of her appearance. The deep red of her hair. Her emerald-colored eyes. Those full and pouting lips he longed to kiss and suck and—

  “Take your flowers, and your apology, and just go!” she snapped at his lengthy silence.

  “I haven’t got as far as making an apology yet.”

  “Isn’t that what the roses are for?” she scorned.

  He frowned, not liking her attitude in the slightest. Yes, he’d admitted he’d fucked up on Friday evening, moved too quickly too soon, which he was fully prepared to apologize for. What he wouldn’t willingly tolerate was Grace’s dismissal of him or her scorn.

  He placed the flowers carefully on the desktop. “Would you like to adjust your attitude?”

  Her chin rose. “Not particularly, no.”

  He arched dark brows. “Sure?”

  “Very.”

  He turned and locked the office door. “That’s a pity.”

  “Unlock that— What the hell are you doing?” she gasped in outrage when Matteo grasped her shoulders to turn her before placing one of his hands against the middle of her back and bending her over the desk, crushing some of the yellow roses in the process and causing their heady perfume to add to an already lethal mix of sexual arousal. “Matteo?” she demanded indignantly as, despite her attempts to wriggle out of his grasp, he easily held her in place.

  Matteo heard her breathy gasp once he stepped forward until his erection was nestled between her arse cheeks. “Last chance to drop the attitude,” he warned softly.

  “I’m not frightened of you!”

  “I can feel you trembling.”

  “That isn’t fear.”

  “No, it’s arousal.”

  “Go to hell!”

  He sighed, moving his hand to her nape as he stepped to the side. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  “Warn me about what— Matteo!” she screeched her protest as his hand came down heavily on her bottom.

  Again.

  Then again.

  Each time harder—and, Matteo was sure, more painfully—than the last.

  “You’ll regret this,” she warned him through gritted teeth.

  “Actually, I’m enjoying it too much to ever regret it,” he answered conversationally as he continued to spank her. “Do you want to know what would make it even more enjoyable?”

  “It isn’t in the least enjoyable to me!”

  “If your arse was bare,” he continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “That way, I could see the marks my hand is leaving on your flesh.”

  “You wouldn’t dare!”

  “Never dare a pissed-off man, Grace,” he warned grimly.

  “I’m the one who should be angry, you—you Neanderthal!” she spat.

  Matteo tensed his jaw. “I never apologize for any reason, nor do I buy flowers for a woman, and yet I’ve done both with you.”

  “You’re still a barbarian!”

  Matteo tutted. “Just when I was thinking of letting you go. After you’ve apologized to me, of course.”

  “Hell will freeze over first!”

  “Is that so?”

  Matteo kept his hand on Grace’s nape as he snaked the other one about her waist so that he could unfasten the button and zip of her trousers. He then pulled them down at the back to reveal she wore white lace panties beneath. Matteo left them in place as he lightly caressed the globes of her lace-covered bottom, murmuring his approval when he could feel the heat from where he had spanked her.

  “It’s become far too hot in here for either of us to freeze, Grace.” He lowered the white lace until he had bared her bottom completely, revealing smooth flesh with the noticeable imprints left by his hand as he spanked her. “God, that’s so fucking sexy!” he groaned as he released her nape to fall to his knees on the carpeted floor behind her.

  Grace drew in a hissing breath when she felt Matteo’s hands cup the painfully sensitive globes he had just spanked and then bared. That hiss became a surprised squeak when she felt cool lips, and then a moist tongue, gently laving that hot flesh.

  Matteo Zalotti is kissing and licking my bare bottom!

  In broad daylight.

  In her office.

  In the bookstore.

  Admittedly, the office door was locked, but that didn’t mean—

  “Matteo?” Grace gasped. Not in protest this time, but in want, arousal, as she felt the heat of his tongue, once he had nudged her legs apart, lapping up the juices from her swollen pussy lips and along the perineum. She ceased breathing altogether when Matteo’s hands parted her bottom cheek
s and she felt that probing tongue licking her there. “If this is your idea of an apology…”

  He chuckled, the heat of his breath against her skin causing a shiver to run the length of her spine. “Then I could apologize all day and night,” he murmured appreciatively. “You taste wonderful.”

  Grace’s groans now were ones of pleasure. She had never— She didn’t— Having his lips and tongue there was— Oh God… “Matteo, you have to stop!” she cried out.

  “Why do I?”

  “Because I’m going to come!”

  “God, yes,” he encouraged throatily, that wicked mouth moving back to her pussy. “Come for me, Grace.” His tongue licked and probed between those swollen lips into her channel. “Give it to me. Give me all of your release!”

  She couldn’t— It wouldn’t—

  “I want it now, Grace.” His tongue roughly licked the throb of her clit.

  Again and again, remorseless in its demand, until—

  Grace let out a keening wail, her fingers tightly gripping the edge of the desk in front of her as her climax ripped through her with the force of a tidal wave.

  She rode out the tempest of that release for long, shattering minutes, until she was too weak to do anything more than collapse over the desktop. Her breathing was ragged and shallow, the beat of her heart loud in the otherwise silent room.

  Reality came back slowly. Where she was. Who she was with. What Matteo had done to and with her. Not once but twice now.

  Grace had never thought of herself as a sensual person, but Matteo only had to look at her for her senses to be aroused and her defenses start to crumble.

  Crumble!

  This man demolished each and every barrier Grace had spent years building up to protect herself from men like him. Dangerous men. Men who wanted to rule and control the life of others.

  Grace was having none of it.

  She straightened abruptly, pulling up her panties and trousers as she did so, and forcing Matteo back on his heels. Taking advantage of that brief respite, Grace quickly moved to the side and then round behind her desk.

  Heat suffused her body from her head to her toes when she looked at Matteo, still on his knees, and saw the heavy sensuality in those dark blue eyes and the slickness on his full and sensual lips. Her slickness. The same slickness that now dampened the gusset of the panties pressing against her oversensitive clit.

  “Get out,” Grace instructed through gritted teeth. “Leave now, and never come back.”

  Matteo continued to look at her through narrowed lids as he sat back comfortably on the heels of his shoes.

  He’d gone too far too quickly again.

  Because he couldn’t seem to keep his fucking hands or mouth to himself where Grace was concerned!

  This had never happened to him before. Never. Ten years ago, he’d been one of the biggest players in Europe, a selfish one too, taking all that women were willing to give him but giving nothing back. Since his parents died, he’d had the occasional hookup, but only with women who knew that’s exactly what it was, and he never repeated the encounter with the same woman twice. It was better that way, when there had been no room for anything or anyone else in his life, with his blackmailer pulling the strings.

  That was over now, the blackmailer’s body burned to ashes and scattered somewhere out in the countryside.

  Matteo’s arousal died a death with those thoughts.

  His blackmailer might no longer exist, but it was because of him, the destruction and fear he had wrought on the people of London during his despotic rule, that Matteo had now agreed to marry Leonardo Brunelli’s daughter. The older man would be here in three days so they could settle the details of that agreement.

  This thing with Grace could only exist for now, because once Leon arrived on Friday, Matteo would never be able to see her again.

  Even the thought of that made his chest tighten.

  He rose agilely to his feet. “Are you sure that’s what you really want?”

  What Grace really wanted to do was to sit down and cry. To lament and scream over the things she couldn’t have. Especially with a man like Matteo Zalotti. He represented everything she’d been running away from when she came to England five years ago. During those years, she had made a life for herself here, one of calm and of a sameness that had previously been missing from her life.

  The desire she felt for Matteo would pass.

  It had to.

  Her chin rose. “Yes, it’s what I really want.”

  A nerve pulsed in Matteo’s tightly clenched jaw. “Very well. I… We might have crushed the roses.” He winced as he looked at the squashed blooms on the desk top. “But the apology they represent was genuine.”

  Her eyes widened. “How can you say that after what just happened?”

  He drew in a slow and controlling breath. “I can’t help myself. It’s as if I’m obsessed. I can’t seem to keep my hands, or anything else, off you.”

  “I noticed.” Grace felt the sting of humiliated tears in her eyes. “Please leave, Matteo, and don’t attempt to see me again.”

  He winced. “What if I can’t do that?”

  “Try!”

  He took his wallet out of his jacket pocket and removed a business card. “I… If you need me for anything, day or night, my telephone numbers, landline and cell phone, are on here.” He placed the card on the desk when she made no move to take it. “I don’t… Fuck it,” he rasped fiercely. “Come to my sister’s wedding with me tomorrow.”

  “What?” Grace stared at him incredulously.

  “Come with me to Bella’s wedding as my plus one,” he urged. “The notice on the door says the store is closed on Wednesday afternoons anyway.”

  “It might be,” she conceded. “But I’m pretty sure that the brother of the bride, who also happens to be giving her away, can’t turn up to the wedding with a random woman he met only a few days ago.”

  “I can do whatever the hell I please.”

  He probably could, Grace accepted. Not just because he was arrogance personified, but because he was also Matteo Zalotti, head of the Zalotti Mafia family.

  “No,” she answered him heavily.

  He glared his frustration. “I’m going to write the details of the wedding on the back of this card, in case you change your mind.” He took a white-topped black pen from the pocket of his jacket before picking up his business card and writing on the back of it. “The wedding is at three o’clock. The reception starts at five. I’ve written the where on the card.”

  “I won’t change my mind.”

  Matteo looked as if he was going to argue but then thought better of it. Instead, he placed the card carefully down on the desk in front of her. “Day or night, Grace,” he repeated, giving her one last smoldering look before turning on his heel, unlocking the door, and striding out into the hallway.

  Grace sat abruptly in the chair behind the desk, staring at that business card as if it were a viper.

  No, not a viper.

  A temptation.

  One Grace wasn’t sure she had the willpower to resist.

  Chapter Eight

  “Guess the apology didn’t work, huh?” Bryce drawled, dropping onto the bar stool next to Matteo as he stared down into his whisky glass. Both men were still in the formal morning suits they’d worn to the wedding four hours earlier.

  Matteo glanced about the room, relaxing slightly when he saw his sister, Bella, stunningly beautiful in her frothy white wedding gown, was happily chatting and laughing with Bryce’s parents. The last thing Matteo wanted to do was put any sort of dampener on Bella’s wedding by taking Bryce’s company from her. For some reason, his sister loved the mocking bastard, and Bryce loved her as deeply.

  “It might have done if I hadn’t immediately compounded the first reason I needed to apologize with another, even worse, one,” he answered the other man heavily.

  Bryce’s eyes widened. “Worse than behaving inappropriately in a restaurant?”


  “Much worse,” Matteo acknowledged. “But at least it wasn’t in public this time.” Which wasn’t in the least reassuring when he’d tongue-fucked Grace over the top of her desk.

  “What the hell did you do, Matteo?” his brother-in-law mused.

  Matteo didn’t answer. Instead, he threw the contents of his glass to the back of his throat before placing the glass back on the bar and nodding for the barman to go ahead and refill it when he held the half-full bottle of the amber liquid up questioningly.

  Bryce placed his hand over the top of the glass. “He’s had enough,” he dismissed the barman.

  “I’ll decide when I’ve had enough,” Matteo snapped.

  “Bella is worried about you,” Bryce warned.

  A statement that was guaranteed to deflate Matteo’s belligerence over having his whisky supply cut off. It was misplaced anger anyway, because it was himself Matteo was angry with.

  He hadn’t heard from Grace since he left the bookstore yesterday, but the wary look her assistant—Carla?—had given him was enough to tell him that she knew exactly who he was: Matteo Giorgio Marco Zalotti, the feared head of the Zalotti family. No doubt that was because her dark hair and eyes, along with her name, indicated Carla was probably of Italian descent.

  As soon as he was out of the building, the other woman had probably hurried to Grace’s office to tell her all the reasons why she shouldn’t become involved with him.

  He had every reason to believe his business card, with his telephone numbers and the details of the wedding today, would have been consigned to the bin beside Grace’s desk once Carla had told her all his sins. If not before. Because Grace had made it perfectly clear before he left her office that she wouldn’t be making any effort to see him again.

  It was ridiculous of Matteo to have held out even the glimmer of a hope Grace might, just might, change her mind and come to the wedding today.

  He released a heavy sigh. “Tell Bella I’m fine,” he reassured Bryce. “I’m drinking because I just gave away my one and only baby sister to another man,” he defended, and then felt guilty for using that as an excuse for the darkness of his mood. He had absolutely no doubt that Bella’s heart was safe in Bryce’s hands.