It had been only a few weeks since the last time I had begged Matthew to see me one last time, but it felt like years. In this room. Where it all started. For one final night.
We can’t do this again.
So wrong.
The last time.
He had said them over and over again as he peeled the garments from my worn body like he was unwrapping a gift. Breathed the words as he set my skin alight with his touch. Whispered them against my lips before taking kiss after torrid kiss.
Still, he had meant them, and so had I.
Still, we were here.
He looked as dapper as ever. A man straight out of any woman’s fantasies, somehow belonging as much to an older time as his own. I’d seen this light gray Ferragamo suit before. It was the sleek, almost mod Italian cut he generally preferred, immaculately tailored to make his waist trim and his shoulders impossibly broad. A straw fedora—always a fedora—was tipped rakishly to one side as he looked me over with sooty, dark green eyes.
Matthew Zola, assistant district attorney.
Zola to friends, Mattie to his family.
But to me, he was just my Matthew.
I frowned.
His smile immediately morphed into a mirror image of my own. “Not exactly the welcome I was expecting, doll.”
“What’s your middle name?” I asked. “I just realized I don’t know.”
For some reason, I hated that I didn’t know. I wanted to know everything about this man who had somehow taken one half of my heart for his own.
The smile reappeared, roguish and slightly crooked over gleaming white teeth. Matthew resembled a pirate in many ways, most particularly because of the chiseled jaw and the graze of black over cheeks that he usually kept clean. He was also very observant, seeming to catch every stray glance of mine.
No one could read me like this man. Considering how trained I was to be unreadable, he might have been the only one to do it at all.
Or perhaps he just undid that training.
“I…well, I don’t have one, actually.”
I frowned more. He chuckled.
“Truly?” I asked.
“I have two first names, though.” He tipped his head. “Italian custom, according to Nonna. They get two first names, but no middle name. If this were Italy, you’d see them marked on the census with a comma. Matthew, comma, Luca Zola. But here it just looks like a middle name on my birth certificate.”
I reached out and fingered his lapel, then ran my touch over the collar of his polka-dotted shirt, the bright red tie. Matthew wasn’t the most well-dressed man in the city—not on a civil servant’s salary, and not with secondhand suits like this from his sister’s consignment shop. But he might have been the most stylish. Unlike most men I knew, for whom clothes were perfunctory uniforms, Matthew was like a character from one of the old movies he loved so much. With a good tailor and interesting textiles, he managed to blend quality and fashion together in a way that was anything but cookie-cutter.
“So.” His voice lowered in a way that made my toes curl. “You going to invite me in, doll? Or do I need to toss you over my shoulder?”
Suddenly, I had a hard time swallowing. Nearly six months I had known this man, and that particular growl never failed to have the same effect. Undoing each one of my careful reserves. Unweaving my—
Control yourself. It was a mantra I’d practiced my entire life. The creed of the de Vrieses and their ilk. Never show emotion. Never show vulnerability. Never lose control.
That was the problem with Matthew. He undid those knots with a single word and had since the moment we met.
So, I realized with sudden clarity, why fight it?
That’s right. I didn’t have to. Not here. Not with him. For a fraction of time, I could just let go.
So I did. The hand around his lapel tightened, and I yanked him to me with an ardor that knocked his hat to the ground as the door slammed shut behind him.
He didn’t even seem to notice. As my fingers slid into the shining thickets of his dark hair, his lips found mine with similar force. He walked me backward into the suite, hands sliding up and down my body. It was always the same with him, the way he explored me each time like he’d never seen me before. Never touched me.
“God,” he breathed after he took one kiss, then another, and allowed me to take the same. “I thought this would never come.”
Our tongues warred with each other like this was the first time we’d ever given in. Six months after we had started our affair, it was still like this. It didn’t matter how many times he took me, in how many ways. As soon as he was done, that craving came right back again.
A pirate indeed. I was a new world, and he was here to pillage it.
“How long do we have?” I wondered as I pushed his jacket from his shoulders.
He was hot, like his skin was burning up. His shirt was slightly dewy, an effect of the heatwave ravaging the city. But it only made his scent—something musky mixed with the subtle cologne he used and the more typical odors of coffee and paper—that much more alluring.
“Ninety minutes, maybe. I have to be in court by four, and the trains are running late again. God, get this thing off,” he snarled, more at the jacket than at me as he shook it off with a snap onto one of the chairs. “The city is an absolute fuckin’ sauna. Ninety-eight degrees this afternoon, and they say it will get up to a hundred tomorrow. In June, do you believe that?”
With reluctance, he stepped away to continue undressing on his own. I used the opportunity to catch my breath and get us both glasses of water from the bureau. The cool glass pressed to my lips, I watched him pull off his tie, then his button-down shirt, shoes, and socks with neat precision until he was standing in just his gray pants and a white tank undershirt.
I licked my lips. I knew very well what treasures were underneath that thin layer of cotton, but the in-between was nearly as enjoyable. The man made simple undergarments look like couture. Especially when sweat caused them to cling to his sculpted body just…like…that…
“Nina.”
I continued to stare. The tight muscles flexed, guiding my gaze over his flat belly, down to the waistband, then to the—
“Nina.”
I blinked and colored. Lord, he had caught me again. “Yes?”
He raised one dark, rakish brow. My cheeks heated even more as his fiery gaze slid up and down my body. After spinning class, I’d slipped on a demure white sundress appropriate for the heat and a pair of nude sandals that wrapped around my ankles. My hair was blown out and tossed around my shoulders, but with a bit more volume than usual from the humidity. It was even starting to curl a little at the ends.
Nothing special. But the fire in Matthew’s dark gaze made me feel like I was practically naked.
“Well, you got me here, beautiful,” he said. “Now what are you going to do with me?”
I couldn’t reply. I could barely remember my own name when he looked at me like that.
“Thirsty?” he asked as he spied the water in my hand.
I looked down at the glass and back at him. “Like you said, it’s very warm.”
He closed the space between us, and for a moment I fought the urge to run. I had tried it before, and to my delight, he had stalked me across the room like a panther tracking its prey. When he pounced, I had forgotten my name completely.