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
