“You keep clenching around me, baby,” he murmured into my ear. “You close like that again, I won’t last.”
“Then don’t—don’t hold back?—”
He didn’t.
His rhythm changed, rougher now, each thrust slamming me against the cold tile with a slap. His hand slipped between my legs, fingers finding my clit again and circling in a tortuous pace.
“Come again,” he ordered. “I want to feel you fall apart.”
My knees nearly gave out.
“Say it,” he growled. “Tell me who’s fucking you.”
“You—you are—” I gasped, crying out as the heat coiled in my stomach snapped.
I shattered around him, sobbing his name, and that was all it took. Matteo groaned deep in his throat, slamming into me once, twice more before he spilled inside me with a ragged curse. He collapsed forward, both of us barely staying upright under the stream of water. For a long, breathless second, we didn’t move.
Then he laughed softly, brushing my wet hair from my face.
“Feel better?” he asked, voice smug.
“I hate you.”
“Debatable.”
“Shut up.”
He kissed my temple.
11
MATTEO
Islipped out of Nicola’s room in the afternoon. Her sheets still smelled like us—salted skin and sweat, and her perfume that I was starting to associate with sin. With addiction.
I left her sleeping, tangled up and flushed, like something I didn’t deserve to touch in the daylight.
The hallway was quiet, and I moved like a thief. Because that’s what this was, wasn’t it? Stealing moments. Stealing touches. Kisses. Time. The day passed like that: a workout did nothing to clear my head, I ate dinner alone in my room, too stuck in my head about wanting to walk across the hall to Nicola’s room. By the time the moon was high in the sky, I stared blankly at the ceiling, sleep evading me.
I should’ve started packing, done anything productive at all, but I just sat there in a trance. We had a flight to Portofino in four hours. But instead, I stared at my suitcase like it might bite me and tried to pack avoiding the thudding in my chest.
Every time I looked at my hands, I could still see them on her—bruising her hips, threading through her hair, holding herdown while she screamed my name. She was fire and ice, and every single thing I wasn’t supposed to want.
But fuck, Iwantedher.
I threw off the covers, giving up on sleep and began packing up my things around the room. I was halfway through folding a shirt I definitely wasn’t going to wear when the knock came.
Three soft taps.
Not urgent. Not impatient. But deliberate.
Nicola stood in the hallway in nothing but a coat—open at the front, revealing midnight-blue lace and sheer panels that made my throat go dry. Her hair was tousled. Lips swollen. Her expression? Dangerous.
“Nic—” My voice caught. I swallowed it down. “What’re you doing?”
She tilted her head, eyes raking over me like she owned every inch. “I couldn’t sleep.”
My hand gripped the doorknob like it might anchor me.
