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"I don't know! Okay. I don't know who he is." My voice trailed off, unable to meet Matteo's gaze.
"Tell me what happened. Every time he bothers you at night, you bring another man into our bed." I turned furious eyes to him, finding him looking at me apologetically. "I didn't mean that the way it sounded. Our bed is ours. Just you and me, Ivory. Let me help you erase whoever he is."
"It's your bed, not ours," I snarled instead, determined to hold on to my anger over being moved in without permission.
"Are your clothes in the closet? Your toothbrush at the sink?" His face turned to stone as he spoke.
"Teo," I whispered.
"Am I inside you every night and wake up with you in my arms?"
"Teo, that's not—"
"Answer me, Angel."
I grimaced. "Yes."
"Then this is our bed. That will not change."
I sighed, finally relenting. I so did not want to have a discussion with Matteo about his lack of boundaries and his ability to lie. We both knew it was only a matter of time before he kicked me out of his home when he got bored. Maybe the reality of cracking me wide open would prove I wasn't worth all the intrigue he seemed to think I was. "You know that moment when you first fall asleep? Where you're still aware, but everything is fuzzy and warm. Little bits of reality filter through the fog, but most everything is lost."
He tensed above me, staring at the side of my face since I refused to look at him. "Yes," he whispered.
"That's the best way I can describe what being drugged felt like. It reminds me of how that felt and what happened, so when I hit that part of sleep, it makes me panic, but I'm just so used to it that I guess I don't wake up anymore," I admitted.
His forehead touched my temple, and from the corner of my eye I saw his eyes slide closed. "Drugged?" His voice was a hoarse whisper along my skin. I nodded. He couldn't possibly mean to make me discuss the gritty details. "What happened?"
The breath that rattled out of my chest was rough, filled with disbelief and fear. "I went to a club alone. Sadie hadn't turned twenty-one yet, and Duke just hated the whole club scene. One minute I was fine, drinking and dancing, enjoying myself. The next thing I knew I was stumbling and fuzzy. Someone caught me, said he'd find me a place to rest it off. I was too out of it to protest. I just didn't understand what was happening."
"Jesus. Fuck," Matteo groaned, his face contorting in pain.
"He didn't rape me. He didn't have a chance. He propped me up against one of the walls in a darker corner of the club and supported my weight. I was in and out of consciousness, but I know he moved my underwear aside. Touched me. Someone caught on to what he was doing and chased him off, she said he had his pants undone when he ran off, and I just fell to the floor. She and one of her friends who was a bartender set me up in a back room and saw me through it. I didn't want to involve the cops, not when I'd been so stupid, and they respected that."
"He touched you," Matteo growled. "Drugged you and planned to rape you."
"It wasn't that bad. It's silly. I just, that feeling of losing control over my body was the worst thing. I couldn't even fight him. People surrounded me, and I still had no way of making anyone know that I was in trouble. Falling asleep reminds me of that, and I know that's a ridiculous association. But it's never gone away," I explained with a shrug.
"What did he look like? What club?"
"It doesn't matter, Teo. It was a long time ago, and I remember nothing about him. Everything was blurry. I barely even remember what Verona or Evie looked like if I'm honest." That was one reason it would have been so stupid to involve the police. There was nothing to go on. Even Evie hadn't gotten a very good look at the guy, and it wasn't like a rape kit would have been productive. Just traumatizing.
I hadn't dated for over a year after that. Hadn't gone to my gynecologist. I'd only touched myself when necessary for hygiene.
"No one will ever touch you again," Matteo promised. I smiled at him sadly even though I believed him.
Matteo would let no one else touch me as long as I was his.
We'd been here before.
And one day soon, I'd have to relearn how to live life without him.
???
Several times over the two days since Matteo had moved me in, he'd suggested I do my blog posts and such from the couch of his office. Apparently it was the purpose for it, but he also clarified that there may be meetings where I needed to vacate when he and Don or Lino or when one of the countless other guys who worked for him needed to have private conversations about the business.
I wasn't the type to be forced to move once I'd settled in for the more tedious back end stuff of my business. I hated doing it to begin with, so I wasn't about to move once I motivated myself to do it. Because of that, I'd neglected to join Matteo in his office while I worked, preferring to sit in the kitchen with Don for company. I was coming to associate Matteo's office with bad news anyway, between the day I stupidly strolled in there like I had any control and the day he told me he was moving me in.
I was happy to avoid the misfortune that happened in there, thanks.
