AllFreeNovel
Share Us
With her belief about her biggest failure turned upside down, she stood at Thomas Golding’s side as they announced the winner of the chef’s challenge. Paradis, to no one’s surprise, won, François’s lamb dish and outrageously eclectic-green banana pie outclassing the competition by a landslide.
Catrina James presented François with the winner’s trophy and gave each of the chefs a kiss on the cheek as she posed with them for photographs. Her one for Matteo was extra enthusiastic. Of course.
Champagne bottles were popped and the night dissolved into a big party. It was impossible not to get caught up in the exuberant celebrations, but as she watched, as the clock slipped closer to midnight, Matteo’s easy smile faded. His face shuttered and the darkness descended. It was like watching a curtain fall and she knew he’d been hiding his pain under that charming, devil-may-care demeanor.
Tonight was the anniversary of Giancarlo’s death.
It did not surprise her to turn around sometime after midnight to find Catrina James attached to another male and Matteo gone. She stood at Thomas Golding’s side, the ground feeling unsteady under her feet. She should go back to her room and work. She had enough of it for an army.
Matteo was a conflict of interest in the most important assignment of her career. She should be running in the opposite direction. But some things in life were more important than work. Funny how she’d realized that now of all moments.
Quinn looked down at the golden shimmer of the Riesling in her glass, the sparkling liquid reflecting the light of the moon. I know you would blow my mind enough to pull me out of this....
Her heartbeat picked up into an insistent rhythm that made the blood whish in her ears. How could any deal matter when a person was in agony? She could not leave Matteo alone. She would not.
She could not spend another minute of her life wondering about the truth of herself.
“Excuse me,” she murmured to Thomas. “I have some work to do.”
Crossing the terrace, she took the path to the upper level of luxury suites. Saw the light burning in Matteo’s living room. She climbed the steps to the door and was about to rap on it when she heard music. A haunting piano score played so beautifully it froze her in her tracks.
Matteo.
Her heart pounded so loud in her chest she thought it might break through. She knew she was invading his privacy. Knew she should walk away. But the melody reached out and wrapped itself around her heart. The blackness of it.
Quinn walked around to the back of the suite and took the stairs up to the patio. Leaned back against the wall in the shadows and listened to every heartrending note. She did not recognize the piece, but there was no doubt in her mind Matteo had written it for Giancarlo. It was poignant, stunning and full of grief.
Her knees shook, her eyes burned. She was not someone made of emotion. But this was breaking her heart.
She wasn’t sure how long she stood there, pressed against the wall, listening to him play. When he finally stopped, she took a deep breath, steadied herself and stepped into the light. He sat at the piano staring at the keys. He looked up as she appeared, as if he wasn’t at all surprised to find her there. His bloodshot eyes were nearly her undoing.
“I told you last night you can’t help.” His voice was gritty, broken. “This is my personal forty-eight hours of hell, Quinn. Leave me to it.”
She shook her head. “Whatever this is, whatever happened to Giancarlo, you have to let it go. You can’t keep doing this to yourself.”
He looked down at the keys, his back ramrod straight. “You should go.”
Her stomach convulsed in a long pull. She looked down at the threshold that divided the patio from the inside space. Made her choice.
He looked up as she walked into the room. “Quinn—”
She sat down on the stool beside him and took his face in her hands. “You have to make it stop,” she told him huskily. “I know what it’s like to keep your demons inside. To let them torture you. You will destroy yourself.”
He pulled her hands away, the desperate, hopeless look in his eyes of a man who’d suffered too much. “I can’t. Dammit, I can’t.”
She sank her palms into the hard line of his jaw. “Then help me chase our demons away together.”
He went completely still, his gaze holding hers. “What are you saying?”
She swallowed hard, fighting the part of her that wanted to run because that was what she always did. “I need to know what you said to me earlier is true. That Julian was wrong about me.”
The color seemed to leech from his skin. “You must know it’s true.”
“I don’t,” she said quietly. “I don’t know anything. You said the other night that I could knock you out of this. Then use me. And let me prove him wrong about me.”
Matteo shook his head, a desperate glitter in his eyes. “This is way over the line.”
“I know. I just walked over it.”
He rubbed his hands over his face. “The deal... I...”
“The deal doesn’t exist tonight,” she said harshly. “I am here and I am not leaving you.”
He squeezed his eyes shut. “Cristo. Quinn...”
She sat there, heart slamming against her chest, terrified that he would reject her, that once again she would be deemed unacceptable. The silence hung between them like a loaded missile. When he opened his eyes, the anguish she saw there made her draw in a breath.
“I told you last night this is about numbing my mind. You have to know that.”
She wanted someone to numb hers. To make her forget she was Quinn Davis for just a few minutes. Make her feel alive again like she had on that mountainside.
His big body tensed beneath her hands, his breathing changed and became rough, fractured. “You’re sure?”
She nodded. “One night. One night to make it go away for both of us.”
Something shifted in his expression. A dark wildness moved within him. She drew in a breath as he slid a hand against her nape and brought his mouth down on hers. Her softness met his hardness in a caress that blew her mind right from the very first second. But unlike his kiss on the mountain, this one was hotter, all-consuming. Devouring and needy, it quickly descended into an urgent quest to pull her into the fire with him. Her fingers fisted against his chest in an involuntary reaction to a dominant male exerting his power over her. She flexed them against him. Forced herself to relax. Dammit, Julian. You are not doing this to me. Not anymore.
Matteo’s scorching, openmouthed kisses drove the past from Quinn’s head. He tasted her, licked into her until she could do nothing but focus on the heat they were generating. She pushed closer, met him kiss for kiss. And when that wasn’t enough, he sank his hands into her waist, lifted her up and wrapped her legs around him, her bare skin sliding against the rough material of his trousers. The feel of his hard flesh beneath her made her heart slam against her chest. He was already aroused. Potently, highly aroused.
She wasn’t sure she knew how to handle him.
Matteo pushed her back so he could look at her. Ran his fingertips up her bare arms to her shoulders, his heated gaze sending goose bumps to every inch of her skin. Got her so caught up in him that was all she could think about. “You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen,” he murmured, sinking his teeth into her shoulder. “If you knew how close I was to breaking all the rules that night at the castello...”
She sucked in a breath. “You walked away...”
“I was one step away, Quinn. One.”
She watched, hypnotized, as he slid his fingers under the straps of her dress and pulled them down. His muttered oath told her he appreciated the fact she’d had to lose her bra. His gaze as he cupped her hot, ultrasensitive flesh was reverent. “I’m a chest man,” he murmured. “And yours...” he said, sliding his callused fingertips against the tips of her breasts, “is magnificent.”
He held her gaze as his thumbs covered her nipples, circled them into erect, aching points. Her soft moan of pleasure made him take her mouth again in approval. “Talk to me, Quinn. Tell me what you like.”
“More,” she muttered. “Just...more.”
He turned her around, pressed her back against the piano. The hard wood dug into her back, made her arch against it, but when he lowered his head and took her nipple into the heat of his mouth, she stopped caring. She dug her fingernails into his biceps and let out another low moan. He tugged, sucked and laved her until she was half-crazy with the pleasure of it. Feeling it deep down inside of her.
“You like that?”
“Yes.”
He cupped her other breast in his hand and lavished the same treatment on it, tortured her with his swirling tongue until her insides collapsed and everything went liquid. She had never felt so needy, so desperate. So lost in something. In him. Too shy to put it into words, she clamped her legs harder around him and begged with her body for more.
