Page 23 of His Savage Ruin
"Once," I whisper. "Early on, maybe two months into the marriage. I made it as far as the train station."
"What happened?"
"Lorenzo found me. Dragged me home." I touch the spot on my ribs where the worst bruise used to be, the one that took three weeks to fade completely. "He made it very clear what would happen if I tried again."
Silence falls between us again, but it's different now. Less charged, more... understanding? I can't tell what he's thinking, but something in the quality of his breathing suggests I've given him information he didn't expect.
I roll onto my back, staring up at the ceiling, and find myself studying his profile in the dim light. Even in the darkness, he's handsome—all sharp angles and contained strength, the kind of masculine perfection that belongs in museums or medieval poetry.
But it's the scar along his jaw that draws my attention. The thin line of raised tissue that mars his otherwise perfect features, telling a story of violence and survival that matches my own in its brutality. I trace the memory of it in my mind, wondering what violence left that mark, as if the scar itself holds a secret he refuses to give away. Without thinking, I reach toward him. My fingers extend past the pillow wall, seeking the damaged skin, wanting to trace the evidence of whatever pain carved that mark into his flesh.
His hand closes around my wrist like a vice, stopping my fingers inches from his face. The grip is firm enough to bruise, sharp enough to make me gasp.
"Don't." The word is deadly quiet, carrying a weight of warning that makes my blood run cold.
"I was just?—"
"I know what you were doing." His fingers tighten fractionally around my wrist, and I can feel the strength in his grip, the violence he's holding back through sheer force of will. "And I'm telling you not to."
"It's just a scar."
"It's off-limits." He moves my hand back to my side of the bed with deliberate precision, his touch impersonal now, clinical. "Don't ever reach for it again."
The command settles between us like a physical barrier, more effective than any wall of pillows. I've found his boundary, the one line I'm not allowed to cross. Whatever story that scar tells, it's not one he's willing to share.
"Understood," I say.
"Good." His voice is normal again, the dangerous edge contained once more. "Now sleep. Tomorrow will bring its own complications."
I close my eyes and try to follow his command, but sleep feels impossible with the memory of his grip still burning around my wrist and the weight of all his secrets pressing down on me.
Eventually, exhaustion wins out over anxiety, and I drift into restless sleep filled with dreams of coffee and scars and hands that could kill or caress with equal skill.
I wake to the sound of running water and pale morning light filtering through heavy curtains. For a moment, I'm disoriented—this isn't my bedroom in the Moretti house, with its cream walls and carefully chosen artwork designed to make me feel like a guest in my own life.
This is Matteo's domain. Dark wood and masculine luxury. The pillow wall I built last night is still intact, though it looks even more pathetic in the daylight.
The shower is running, which means he's awake and probably has been for some time. I stretch carefully, working feeling back into muscles that aren't used to sharing space with a predator, and try to ignore the way my body still hums with the memory of last night's almost-encounter.
I'm still trying to fully wake up when the bathroom door opens and Matteo emerges in a cloud of steam.
He's naked.
Completely, utterly, gloriously naked.
Even now, water beads along the scar at his jawline, drawing a thin dark line down to his collarbone — a map I still want to trace with my fingertips, to know the route of his pain and survival.
My breath catches in my throat as I take in the sight of him—broad shoulders that taper to a narrow waist, the kind of muscle definition that speaks of serious gym time and life-or-death struggles. His skin is olive-gold, marked with scars that tell stories I don't want to know and tattoos that wind around his arms and across his chest like dark poetry.
But it's not just his body that stops my heart—it's the casual confidence with which he moves, the way he reaches for a towelwithout any self-consciousness whatsoever, as if being naked in front of me is the most natural thing in the world.
Heat floods through me—sudden, overwhelming, completely unexpected. This isn't the clinical awareness I had of Lorenzo's body during the few times I was forced to see it. This is something else entirely. Something hungry and desperate and alive that I didn't even know I was capable of feeling.
I want him.
The realization hits me. I want to touch that golden skin, to trace those tattoos with my fingers, to find out if he tastes as dangerous as he looks.
Matteo turns at the sound of my sharply indrawn breath, his storm-gray eyes finding mine across the room, and the slow smile that spreads across his face is absolutely predatory.
