Page 63 of Matteo

He chuckles. “It's just a car.”

I run my hand over the stitched leather dashboard. “This is definitely not just a car.”

“It does its job,” he says, like he's driving a battered-up tin can.

I tell him where I live, and we spend most of the journey in silence. He seems deep in thought, which throws me a little. I'd expected us to talk more, but there's something oddly intimate about being alone with him like this. Just the two of us in a confined space, the silence stretching between us, making me far too aware of his presence beside me.

I watch his hands on the steering wheel, gripping tight, knuckles white, his tattoos visible. To my dismay, the journey is over just as I was starting to get comfortable enough to start a conversation. Matteo pulls into the parking lot outside my apartment complex, cuts the engine off and turns to me.

I'm about to ask him if everything’s okay when my gaze falls to his tattoos again.

He catches me staring. “You can touch them if you want.”

“Touch what?” I cry in exasperation.

“My tattoos. You know you want to.”

I fold my arms, defiant that I will do no such thing.

His mouth turns up at the corners. “Don’t be shy, Elizabeth. Touch me.”

He splays out his wrists for me to look at. There's no point in me even denying it because this man knows me too well.

Every cell in my body vibrates. He’s doing this deliberately. Turning me on. Setting my insides on fire. My mind is in full turmoil. It’s the way he says it, and how his voice reverberates inside my chest. When he says my name like that, soft, teasing and seductive, my breasts turn heavy, and a throbbing starts between my thighs. I press them together, and obey him, anyway, lightly running my fingers along his wrists.

“Family and truth,” I croak out, my fingers lightly tracing the inked inscription.

“Hmmm.” He murmurs. “That feels nice.”

I look up to find his eyes dark and glistening, on me. It's so intimate here, shut away from the world, but not trapped. Just sitting, inches away from him while light rain trickles down the windscreen, blurring the outside world away.

“How did you get that?” he asks. He reaches out with his hand, as if he’s about to touch the scar just above my eyebrow, but he doesn’t lay a finger on me.

I wish he had.

“This?” I lightly brush my finger over it. “I got it when I was climbing onto a garage roof to steal a better Wi-Fi signal from a neighbor. I had to finish a coding assignment for school, but I slipped and hit the gutter, and split my eyebrow open.” I wince just thinking about it.

“It must have hurt real bad.” This time his finger lightly touches it, and my breath stills.

“I-it could have been worse,” I say, while my insides suddenly ignite at his brief touch.

He quickly moves his hand back to the safety of the steering wheel. “You nearly cracked your skull for homework?”

“I got top marks, so I have no regrets.”

He has a curious grin on his face. “You’re something else, you know that?”

I smile, but it fades when I catch his expression. For a second, he's not laughing anymore. His gaze lingers on me, intense and unreadable, and my pulse stutters. I wonder if he's seeing me the same way I've started seeing him.

I'm not panicked or scared now, cocooned in the intimacy of the moment. In him. His scent. His warmth. My lips part, and I exhale a shaky breath.

“You might want to get inside your apartment,” he says, his voice rougher now, as if he's having problems getting his words out.

But I don't want to move from here, and I can't believe he wants me to. So I stay exactly where I am, suspended between hope and uncertainty, my pulse thundering in my ears. Every fiber in my body pushing me toward him.

“Elizabeth,” his voice is so husky now, I feel a throb between my thighs. “If you stay in my car, I can't guarantee that I won't touch you back.”

I hear a sound, I think it came from me. A soft mewl. My name sounds different on his lips. A warning. A plea. A last shred of restraint. The look in his eyes steals what little common sense I have left.