known that he possessed, until she relaxed a touch around him.
Her thighs loosened, her head cleared and she opened her eyes to his.
She gave a small nod, she sought his lips and thanked him with a kiss, and now when he started to move her fingers, which had dug into his shoulders, loosened their grip and she let him take over and take her to places she had not known existed.
He was incredibly diligent. When she tensed he slowed, when she moaned he persisted, and persisted at the very point where her pleasure seemed to gather towards the most exquisite peak.
Bella tasted his neck and the salt of his shoulder and when still he carried on she could taste no more because her mouth was gasping in air. As she started to come, as her body turned rigid, her breath shallow on his cheek, she was shocked at the intensity of the peak and was just falling into pleasure when he forced her higher. To feel the very controlled Matteo so unleashed and relentless made Bella shout out.
She loved this side to him, the slight roughness, the pursuit of his pleasure, and then the shudder as he shot into her and she came again. She simply slipped into the next falling, holding onto him, tumbling with him so they hit back to earth together, kissing on a soft mattress, lost with each other, having escaped from the world.
Through the night they made love and then both lay there silently dreading the morning, talking to each other, getting to know each other as the moments counted down.
He told her how he wished he’d seen her in the ginger dress she’d made.
‘I’ve still got it,’ she said, and she wished, how she wished that he would suggest that soon he see it.
That maybe later, when she wasn’t working, he might suggest they go out, that she might wear the same dress for him...
But Matteo said nothing and Bella was starting to understand her mother’s words when finally he spoke.
‘I bet you would have looked beautiful,’ he said.
She belonged in the bedroom now, Bella thought.
She shrugged away the hurt with casual words. ‘Cut the cloth right and any figure can be beautiful,’ she said. ‘I tried to get into some design courses but...’ She shook her head. ‘Maybe I’m not as good as I think I am.’
‘You’re probably better,’ he said.
‘What would you do if you could do anything?’
He was about to find out, Matteo knew. In a few short hours he’d be away from here for ever.
The light was starting to filter in. Morning, whether they were ready or not, was arriving and Matteo climbed out of the bed and opened the French windows.
The party below was over. Bordo Del Cielo lay silent and the only sound was the ocean.
‘I love this place,’ Bella said. ‘I know there are so many bad things that go on here but there is so much beauty too.’
She told him about the ancient baths, which was her favourite place in the world. ‘Sometimes I pretend that I was born then, that I lived then, that the baths are still alive.’
‘I’ve never been,’ he admitted.
‘We could go there,’ Bella pushed, trying to pretend that all they had found last night existed, that it didn’t end here and now. ‘We could take a picnic, just spend the day exploring...’
‘A picnic?’ His voice was scathing. It was not the sort of thing he would do or had ever done.
‘Some wine,’ Bella said. ‘We could pretend...’
He glanced over but she was staring out at the scenery and his head tightened because he was picturing himself in a place he had never been—exploring with Bella, spending a day doing nothing but being with her.
‘Is there any better view?’ she asked, but he didn’t answer as he headed to the shower.
It wasn’t a view to die for, Matteo thought.
Or kill for.
He showered, his intention to dress and go. He didn’t know how to leave her, yet there was no way that he could stay.
Matteo wanted to make something of himself. He was sick of the crime and depravity and knew that as of today his role became more serious. He wanted a future, a perfect one, a clean one, to remove himself completely from his past.
Instead of dressing, though, he wrapped a towel around his hips and went into the bedroom, where Bella was still gazing out at the view.
Her hair, which was usually straight, was knotted and wavy, there a touch of mascara that he must have missed smudged beneath her eyes and her smile was waiting for him.
If ever there was a moment he might regret, this wasn’t one of them. It was one Matteo might later question—because instead of dressing and leaving he dropped the towel and got into the bed and took her in his arms and she rested her head on his chest.
It would be his last day here for ever, perhaps—if he returned there would be a bullet waiting with his name on it.
He lay there thinking for a long time and so too did Bella.
All she had wanted was one perfect night and now that she had known one, it made her future somehow worse. She knew she was breaking the deal she had pushed for—one night of making love.
He had given her more than she had asked for and she knew she had to play fair and accept things when he walked away.
Her hand was idly exploring him, stroking his flat stomach and moving the snake of hair in the wrong direction, and the sensation for Matteo must be just right because she could see him hardening and her mouth started to kiss his chest as her hand moved down.
‘Bella,’ he said finally, ‘I have to go soon but first we need to speak.’
‘I know that you have to go,’ she said. ‘But before you do...’
It was her acceptance of him, her lack of demands, that she would kiss him so readily even as he prepared to walk away, that sealed things for Matteo.
He didn’t care if it was illogical to feel like this after only one night. All he knew was that he could no more leave her behind than Bella could leave her mother.
Her mouth moved further down and met with his growing erection.
‘Bella,’ Matteo said, ‘you’re coming with me.’
She laughed, her mind not really on the conversation. Certainly she had not known that Matteo had plans to leave and so she corrected the brief miscommunication as she continued her brave kiss, felt his hand move to her head and whispered words that had made him moan.
‘No, you’re the one who will be coming.’
He tasted soapy and clean and he remained patient. Bella looked up once to find him watching as she took him deeper into her mouth.
Tentatively her tongue explored him, scared of her teeth, that she was doing it wrong, but his fingers tightened in her hair.
‘That’s it...’ he said, when she did not dare go deeper, so she stroked his base with her hand as her tongue continued its exploration.
She remembered how last night he had simply devoured her and growing bolder she started to do the same.
She knelt up and he played with one small breast, delivering gentle twists and pinches as her mouth did the same. The hand on her head exerted just a touch more pressure and yet she resisted and he gave up trying to guide things, to rush things, he just accepted the rare pleasure of an unskilled yet willing mouth.
When he started to come it took him by surprise, and the thrusts and moans from him served as only the briefest of warning. Bella held him alive in her hand, tasting and licking, and that it wasn’t enough pressure for him only made his orgasm all the more intense.
‘Bella,’