The silence that follows is suffocating. My heartbeat is the only sound in the room.
“Then let me help you.”
She shakes her head hard. “I can’t. My parents—he’d go after them. Giacomo is… he’s unpredictable.”
I step in,take her face in my hands, make her look at me. “I can protect you, Beatrice. Let me.” My voice is low, raw, scraped open from wanting too much.
Her fingers curl around mine, stopping me. “You can’t. Not from him.”
The words crack through me, but I lean in anyway, touching my forehead to hers, holding her like she’s the only thing tethering me to the earth. I want to rip every weight off her shoulders and carry it until my bones break.
“Then tell me what Icando,” I breathe, close enough to taste her exhale.
Our breaths fuse—hot, uneven, trembling with everything we’ve been pretending not to feel. The space between us tightens, tightens, tightens… until it feels like one more heartbeat will break it.
She finally pulls back, barely an inch, eyes flicking away. “Make me forget.”
My pulse slams into my ribs. “What?”
She swallows hard, voice cracking. “I want to forget what happened tonight. Even for a moment. Help me forget, Matteo.”
The words detonate inside me.
She tries to retreat, but I catch her wrist—not to keep her, but to stop her from disappearing from me.
“No.”
Her lips part, and my restraint—weeks of it—hangs suspended by a single, fraying thread. Everything I’ve held back threatens to rush forward at once. If this is what she wants—if she’s choosingme—then I will give her every escape she needs.
The tension collapses around us, heavy, electric. Inch by inch, the air dissolves until there’s nothing left but her pulse and mine.
“Lie down on the bed, bella,” I murmur, my voice so strained it barely sounds like my own.
Her breath catches. “What?”
“Lie down,” I say again, softer but deeper, a promise woven inside every syllable. “Let me help you forget. That’s what you want… isn’t it?”
Her answer isn’t spoken—it’s the way she moves.
She pushes herself upward,settling against the headboard with a shaky inhale, her eyes tracking every step I take as I circle the bed and come to her side.
Weeks. Weeks of fighting the pull of her. Weeks of trying to bury her in the parts of my mind untouched by danger, untouched by longing, untouched by the truth that she has become my favorite ache.
The more Itold myself she was trouble, the deeper I sank into wanting her anyway.
I reach for her chin. She doesn’t flinch. Sheleansinto me.
I stroke her lower lip with my thumb, slow enough to feel the tremor she tries to hide. Her mouth parts beneath the touch—soft, inviting, trembling with intent.
And when I slip my thumb past her lips, she closes around it and sucks, eyes locked on mine like she’s daring me to lose every last boundary.
Holy. Fucking. Hell.
Everything I’ve restrained snaps at once.
“Take off the shorts,” I say, my voice ragged with hunger I’m barely keeping in check.
She closes her lips around my thumb one last time, slow and deliberate, before letting it slip free with a soft pop. Heat knifesthrough me, straight to my core, and my cock thickens in an instant.
