Page 105 of Ache for You (Slow Burn 3)
The weird challenging stare is starting to freak me out. It’s like he’s waiting for me to do something or say something, but I don’t know what it is.
“So our deal is off?”
“I’m not going to use your designs and claim they’re mine,” he says with an edge to his voice.
I was talking about the kissing part, but I suppose it’s obvious enough. If he doesn’t have the sketches to withhold, he’s got no bargaining chips. And the sketches are the important part, not the kissing.
I think.
/> “What brought about this sudden change of heart?”
“As if you don’t know. It doesn’t matter anyway.” His eyes burn. “Right?”
I hurt him the other night. The thought stuns me. I accused him of manipulating me, and it hurt his feelings.
The little red devil taps me on the shoulder and reminds me that Matteo decided not to answer my questions, to turn them back on me, so he’s not the only one with hurt feelings.
I moisten my lips, caught between anger and an apology. “It might matter.”
“Might doesn’t cut it,” he says. When I bite my lip, his jaw hardens. “Don’t do that.”
He’s got the hungry look in his eyes. Combined with the angry look, it’s incredibly sexy.
I decide to venture into uncharted waters. “It does matter,” I admit. “I’m just not sure what that means.”
We stare at each other. Finally he says, “I understand. You have a lot to deal with right now. I’m making your life more complicated. The last thing I want is to be a problem for you.”
Why does this feel like a breakup? And why do I care if it is?
“I don’t want to be a problem for you, either.”
He says, “You’re not a problem. You’re the best thing that’s happened to me since I was ten years old.”
The breath leaves my lungs in a whoosh that feels like two giant invisible hands clasped me front and back and squeezed. “Oh,” I say, trying not to fall over. “Um. What happened when you were ten years old?”
“My mother finally bought me the puppy I’d been begging for. A Great Dane, like Cornelia. I named her Maria, after my favorite opera singer. I loved her with all my heart. She slept in my bed every night, even when she grew too big for it. I’d scoot all the way to the edge so she’d have room.”
His voice is raw and his eyes are shining, and my heart is bursting at the seams. I think of how Cornelia spooned me, and imagine Matteo as a little boy cuddling with his dog in his bed in that soulless drafty castle he grew up in.
I’m in so much danger of falling in love with him right now that I bite the inside of my cheek in fear.
“You had a favorite opera singer when you were little?”
“Opera was all I was allowed to listen to. My parents wanted me to be cultured.”
At ten. Dear God. Between that and the Wall of Death, he should’ve been taken away by social services.
“Maria got cancer and died, though,” says Matteo forlornly, looking lost, and I have to bite my cheek harder.
“That’s awful.”
“Yes. She was my best friend. I was outside playing with her when my father died. My mother sent the nanny to get me, but I wouldn’t come in. I didn’t want to be inside his room, where it smelled like sickness and was dark all the time. So I refused to come in, and my father died, and my mother never forgave me. She sent me away to boarding school after that, but from then on she always had a Great Dane in the house.”
His voice grows faint. “It was her way of making sure I never forgot what I did.”
I’m devastated. He’s struck me with a thunderbolt and burned my soul to a cinder. He’s never been vulnerable like this with me before. It’s always some variation of arrogant or smug, testy or sexy, teasing or bossy as hell. Even when he was tenderly massaging my shoulders when I was hung over, he was still in Big Cheese mode. He still had all his armor on. He was still in complete control.
But this.
