Her parents were both dead because of what their family did.
Grace had escaped that life once, and she wouldn’t allow herself to be dragged into it again.
Which meant what?
“One night,” she told Matteo.
He eyed her searchingly. “One night?”
She nodded. “We spend one night together. After which we agree not to see each other again.”
Matteo frowned his displeasure at what sounded like a dictate. “What if—”
“One night,” she repeated firmly, her green gaze unwavering on his.
Matteo drew in a deep breath, knowing from the determination in Grace’s expression that the immovable object had met the irresistible force. No matter how powerful he was, how many lives he held in the palm of his hand, Grace wasn’t about to be budged on her decision.
In truth, circumstances were such that Matteo had nothing to offer her either except this single night together.
A night he knew his two faithful bodyguards would advise strongly against after Grace had admitted to being more than just the bookstore manager he thought her to be.
Maybe he shouldn’t trust her either after the hell he’d been through the past nine years?
But Grace wasn’t asking for or demanding anything either. Instead, she was offering to give him one night with the woman he desired and needed more than his next fucking breath.
If that was the case, then he intended for this to be the most memorable night of their lives.
Chapter Eleven
“Matteo!” Grace let out a gasp of surprise as he swept her off her feet and all she could do was fling her arms about his neck and hang on.
“Bedroom?”
“Down the hallway and first door on the left. But—”
“This is me agreeing to your terms,” he bit out through gritted teeth.
“It is?” She eyed him uncertainly, not sure what to make of this tense and frustrated man. She could feel his body vibrating with a desire he was barely keeping under control. “You’re behaving like a caveman right now,” she protested after he’d kicked the door to the bedroom open, carrying her inside before kicking the door shut on a curious Mr. Darcy.
“I feel like a caveman when I’m with you,” Matteo acknowledged harshly. “Something raw and possessive inside me takes over, and it’s all I can do not to rip your clothes from your body and take you where you stand. Or bent over the bottom of the bed.” He glanced at that piece of furniture. “Or pressed against the wall.” His gaze moved to the wall beside her bed. “I don’t care where it happens, only that it does. Sooner rather than later.”
Grace turned her head to slowly and thoroughly kiss his parted lips. “We might as well use the bed now that we’re in here,” she teased throatily.
“Please don’t change your mind,” he all but begged, his gaze holding hers as he lowered her so that her body slid slowly down the length of his until her bare feet were on the carpeted floor. His hands remained possessively on her hips. “I’m going to totally lose it if you do.”
She reached up to gently caress the hardness of his cheek. “I won’t change my mind.”
Matteo believed her.
His position as head of the Zalotti organization meant he dealt with people involved in the criminal world most of the time. He had also learned a hard lesson from mistakenly trusting his previous second-in-command. The same trust his father and mother had paid for with their lives. Despite that—or because of it—he had developed and honed the knowledge of how to recognize a lie or prevarication when someone dared to give him one.
The steadiness of Grace’s gaze now meeting his told him she wasn’t doing either of those things. That her word, on this, at least, was true. There was still the problem of who she was, exactly, but she’d made it clear that after tonight, that wouldn’t be any of his concern.
She’d promised him one night.
Time for Matteo to make it count.
He took a packet of a dozen condoms from his jacket pocket—
“Ambitious much?” Grace teased as he placed them on the dresser beside the bed.
“Realistic,” he corrected before throwing off the ridiculous morning jacket and brocade waistcoat he’d worn to the wedding before once again grasping Grace’s hips as he dropped down onto his knees in front of her.
Grace gasped when Matteo pushed her vest top up beneath her breasts. “Matteo, what are— Oh God…” She grasped his shoulders the moment Matteo pressed the heat of his lips against the bare skin covering her hip bone.
“You taste delicious.” Matteo sat back on his heels to loop his fingers into the waistband of her sweats and pull downward.
Allowing the loose garment to fall to her ankles revealed Grace wore a cream lace thong beneath that was really just a couple of strips of lace that fitted below her hips and covered the soft red curls on her mound. Matteo could only imagine how that lace fitted into the valley between the globes of her bottom. A bottom he already knew intimately from when he had kissed and caressed her there. He intended knowing all of Grace’s body intimately before the night was over.
The heady perfume of her arousal invaded his senses, giving him the high he hadn’t felt even when he’d tried smoking pot—didn’t everyone?—during his early twenties. It seemed his metabolism didn’t respond to that stimulus.
But it responded to Grace. His cock was so hard and pulsing inside his boxers, he felt lightheaded.
“Matteo.” Grace waited until he looked up at her before speaking again. “I want your trousers off and for you to lie on the bed.”
His throat moved as he swallowed. “I need to taste you—”
“It’s my turn to taste you.” She reached down to grasp his hand and pull him to his feet. “Trousers off. Lie flat on the bed,” she repeated decisively, her gaze remaining steady on his as he slowly did as she asked.
Asked?
Grace had ordered, and Matteo now obeyed. What choice did he have when she looked so beautiful taking charge like this?
None that he wanted to make, that was for sure.
“Those too,” Grace encouraged huskily as Matteo hesitated in removing his boxers.
God, he was so gorgeous. His skin was slightly swarthy, shoulders wide, chest muscular, with just a smattering of dark hair about copper-colored nipples and down the happy trail over his eight-pack stomach to the dark curls at the base of his beautiful cock.
A cock that was thick at the base and at least eight inches long fully aroused, with a thick and pulsing vein running the length of it. The bulbous top was flushed a deep red and glistening with the pre-cum leaking from the slitted tip.
“You’re beautiful,” she murmured appreciatively before sinking to her knees in front of him. “And you taste wonderful,” she groaned, lapping up and swallowing some of that pre-cum, the fingers of one hand wrapped about that pulsing flesh as she parted her lips and swallowed as much of the throbbing length as she could take.
“God, Grace…” Matteo reached out to grasp her shoulders as his knees threated to buckle. “You need to stop. You should stop. Don’t fucking stop!” The words came garbled out of his mouth as he watched Grace’s head bobbing up and down. She took his cock to the back of her throat before lifting up and doing it again. His balls were cradled and rolled in the palm of her other hand. “Grace, I can’t hold…” he warned when the dual arousal became too much. “I’m going to—fuckkkk!” he cried out as the heat of his cum shot down his cock and down the back of Grace’s throat and was instantly swallowed down in pulse after pulse of sweet, never-ending pleasure.
Grace finally released him, licking his cum from her lips as she looked up at him with teasing eyes. “Now will you lie down on the bed?”
Matteo chuckled as he bent down and placed his arms under hers so he could lift her to her feet before claiming her lips with own. His cock gave a twitch of renewed arousal when he plunged his tongue in her mouth and tasted himself there.
He swung
Grace up into his arms. “We’re both going to lie on the bed.” He laid her carefully down on top of the bedcovers. “After which, I am going to kiss and explore every inch of your body.”
She tilted her head. “Are you actually going to make love to me at some point?”
“Oh yes,” he promised as he knelt on the bed between her parted legs. “But the beauty of you needs to be appreciated first.” His hands and lips caressed her shoulders, her breasts, the slenderness of her waist, the curve of her hips, and the shadowed dip between her thighs. “Your taste is pure nectar.” Matteo greedily lapped up the juices between her thighs.
Grace cried out, quivering and trembling as Matteo took her to one climax after another, until her channel ached to be filled. “Please, Matteo,” she encouraged shakily. “I need you inside me. I need you,” she choked.
She latched greedily onto his kiss once he had slid up the length of her body, her thighs moving restlessly against his as the heavy length of his aroused cock teased and tempted against her pussy lips.
“Now, Matteo,” she groaned. “Please!”
Matteo sat back on his haunches to rip open one of the condom packets before discarding it and rolling the protection down his length. Part of him wished he didn’t need it, that he could impregnate Grace and watch her grow big with his child. Just the thought of that was enough to make his heart pound and his hands shake.
He held her gaze with his as he positioned the head of his cock against her wet entrance, entering her slowly, pushing into that velvet heat half an inch at a time until he was seated to the hilt. “Okay?” he checked gruffly.
Her legs encircled his waist. “Perfect,” she breathed huskily.
Matteo began to move, his thrusts shallow so as to allow Grace to adjust to his size. She eagerly met each of those thrusts, her heat gliding up and down his length, squeezing and contracting, until Matteo couldn’t restrain himself any longer and pistoned his hips harder and faster.
“I’m coming,” he cried out minutes later. “Come with me. Now!” he pressed urgently, dangerously poised on the edge of his release.
“Matteo…!” Grace’s release was so intense and prolonged, she clung to Matteo to stop herself from completely floating away, the heat of his cum pulsing into and filling the condom inside her.
She was barely conscious of Matteo pulling out before removing and tying off the condom. She could see him as a shadow as he went into the bathroom opposite her bedroom before coming back with a cloth to gently clean and soothe the heat between her thighs.
Afterward, he climbed into bed and switched off the light before gently pulling her into his arms so that her head rested on his shoulder.
Grace was overcome with a feeling of peace and belonging she’d never felt before.
They woke to make love twice more during the night, the last time so intense, it bordered on desperation.
To Grace, it was as if they were both aware the hours were ticking down until morning, when they had to part.
She lay awake once Matteo had dozed off again, careful not to move as he lay with his head resting against her breast, his tousled hair soft as silk against her skin. His arm was across her waist, one of his long legs draped over both of hers. As if, even in sleep, he knew he didn’t want to let her go.
After their hours of lovemaking, Grace now hated the idea of that too.
But what else could she do?
Matteo belonged front and center to a world she didn’t want to be a part of. A harsh and remorseless world where people could die or were killed for what they had or hadn’t done.
A sob caught in her throat at the very idea of never seeing Matteo again.
Because, against every caution she had given herself, she knew she had been reckless enough to fall in love with him.
She was stupid in love with Matteo Zalotti, head of the London Mafia empire.
Chapter Twelve
“Do you want coffee before you go?”
Matteo stared at Grace as she stood across the kitchen. She had her back toward him but was obviously aware of him standing in the kitchen area behind her.
He had woken alone in Grace’s bed, which hadn’t pleased him in the slightest. He would have liked the two of them to linger in bed together, to make love again, to talk, to maybe see if there wasn’t a way they could somehow—
That’s where his thinking had stopped. He was expected to announce his engagement to Natalia Brunelli this weekend, and Grace didn’t deserve—even if she would agree to it—to be cast in the role of the other woman in his life. To place her in that position without her knowledge would be even more despicable.
No, this one night together was it, and the sooner Matteo accepted it, the better.
Even if it made his chest hurt and his head ache.
A quick shower before pulling on the formal trousers and shirt from yesterday, a hand run roughly through the dampness of his hair, and he’d come looking for Grace. He’d found her in the kitchen feeding the large ginger cat that, once it had eaten, lifted its nose and tail in the air and walked past Matteo as if to say, See, I come first, not you.
Grace was wearing a pair of black sweats low on her hips this morning, teamed with a fitted pale green vest top, obviously her choice of leisure wear for when she was at home. Her hair was gathered up and secured at her crown in a messy bun, leaving the slenderness of her neck and nape bare except for several loose tendrils that had escaped the black scrunchie.
Grace appeared somehow smaller this morning.
Fragile.
The fact she hadn’t even turned to look at him—couldn’t look at him?—only added to that impression of vulnerability.
Had he done this to her?
Had giving him that one night taken something from Grace that she could never take back?
Their lovemaking last night had been beyond anything, a closeness to another human being Matteo had ever experienced before. But that didn’t mean Grace felt the same way about it. They’d been so careful not to mention emotions during the night other than what pleasured them.
“I asked if you wanted coffee?”
“Oh my God…” Matteo gasped, Grace having finally turned to look at him.
Not only could he now see the pallor of her face and the shadows of sleeplessness beneath her eyes, but also the half a dozen or so bruised love bites scattered down her throat and across her shoulders. Bites Matteo had deliberately inflicted during their lovemaking in an effort to mark her, to claim her, to have her remember him, at least until that discoloration faded.
He stepped forward to lightly grasp her shoulders. “I’m so sorry— No, I’m not,” he dismissed his apology impatiently. “I’m not in the least sorry,” he stated firmly. “If I had my way, you would have ‘Property of Matteo Zalotti’ tattooed across your forehead.”
Grace hadn’t known whether to be angry or inwardly pleased when she looked in the bathroom mirror this morning and saw not only the red abrasions on her skin from where Matteo’s stubble had scratched her, but also the half dozen love bites he’d given her when their passions were at their highest.
Now she couldn’t stop herself from laughing at his typical high-handedness. “Property of Matteo Zalotti?” she repeated mockingly. “Really?”
“Really.”
“And I thought you were a caveman last night!”
“Where you’re concerned, yes.” His expression softened. “This can’t be the end, Grace. You can’t ask me to just walk away from you.”
“I can’t?”
He shook his head. “Last night was… I don’t even know how to begin to describe how I feel about last night.” His gaze held hers. “How I feel about you,” he added huskily.
Grace knew how she felt about Matteo, but… “We had an agreement of one night, Matteo.” She slipped out of his grasp and stepped away. “Now I’d like you to leave.”
A nerve noticeably pulsed in his jaw. “Grace, I—”
“No.” Grace quickly silenc
ed him. “I have to get ready for work, and you are joining your sister and her husband for breakfast,” she reminded.
He scowled his irritation. “You’re going to just calmly go off to work as if none of this ever happened and expect me to do the same?”
“Yes.”
He winced at the firmness of her tone. “You can shut me out, just like that?”
“I never let you in.”
Angry color appeared along his cheekbones. “That’s a lie—”
She gave a shake of her head. “We had sex together. Incredible sex,” she conceded when his eyes narrowed. “But now it’s over, and it’s time for you to fulfil your commitment to your sister.”
He reached out to grasp the tops of Grace’s arms. “Have lunch with me today? Dinner? Any-fucking-thing,” he voiced his frustration when Grace shook her head to his first two invitations.
Grace wanted to say yes! To lunch, to dinner, to anything that would allow her to see and be with Matteo again.
But she had allowed herself one night with Matteo and no more. To go against that decision would only be asking for more heartache when he walked away. Because he would walk away. Tomorrow. Next week. Maybe next month. But Matteo would eventually leave her behind.
Grace knew from experience that powerful men like Matteo Zalotti craved and wanted more power, and one of the ways of achieving that was to form alliances with other criminal organizations, such as the one he now had with the Russian bratva.
Another way was to marry a woman whose family would give him that power, which was the reason her father had married her mother. Admittedly, he had fallen madly in love with his Spanish wife to the point of obsession, but the initial reason for the marriage had been much more prosaic. Marriage to a Mendoza had given her father’s family an alliance with the Spanish Mafia.
It was because Grace had grown up knowing all this that she also knew hard and ruthless men like Matteo didn’t allow themselves to fall in love.
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