The Twelve Vitali Ch. 08

"I'm not going to make love to you standing against the wall again," Matteo muttered against her red, swollen mouth.

"Wh-What?" Cat stuttered, dazed and confused. She knew he'd meant to say fuck her, but he had said 'make love', and the words stuck in her head and rolled around, giving off the faint of hope that maybe he could care about her eventually, despite what his family believed. He cursed, gripping her tightly to him and began walking, stopping every few moments to pause and kiss her again.

"What are you going to do?" she asked, as he adjusted his grip on her and her senses finally seemed to come back to her. This wasn't the confident in control man she was used to. This was a different Matteo, and she wasn't sure what to do or say. "What are you doing?"

Matteo dumped her on the bed. As if the answer to her question wasn't obvious! He merely grunted in reply, stripping off his shirt and trousers. She stared in fascination at the beautiful body of the man who had the power to render her a needy, trembling, sex crazy woman, but somehow seemed different tonight. She felt a strange compulsion to touch him, to stroke and caress. She wanted to taste him.

As if reading her mind he crawled over her, his mouth hungrily seeking hers. Instinctively her lips parted, and he slid inside, plundering her mouth, hot and wet. He rolled and she found herself on top of him, her dress gaping open as he pulled the zipper down, her bra tugged away and the last of the material between them pulled over her head. His hands gripped her waist, bent her forward, and his mouth captured her nipple to torment her as he literally ripped the fragile lacey panties from her body.

She let out a gasp of agonising pleasure. She wanted this. She wanted him. She wanted all of it, all of him, but she also wanted more than he could ever give her. She shook her head, banishing the thought and enjoying the sensations rolling through her body. Tugging herself away from his forceful kisses and grappling arms, she bent down, pressing her mouth against his bronzed, sculpted torso. He was always so dominant in their lovemaking that she wanted to take advantage of the uncertainty and simmering anger that radiated from him tonight.

Her tongue touched his nipple and he groaned, closed his eyes and let his head drop back. "Oh, God, Cat," he rasped. "What are you doing to me?"

She didn't answer, merely moved to the other nipple, tonguing, then sucking at it. Matteo' hands crept into her hair, his fingers alternately caressing and twisting.

She moved down to his stomach and he tensed. "Cat..." he began in a warning voice. "Do you..."

The rest of the sentence was cut off in a strangled gasp as she took his cock into her mouth, and he seemed to pull his hips back from her. His fingers clenched in her hair, holding her head in place with just the head of his cock held on her soft fluttering tongue. He uttered a weak moan, then dropped back, his entire body stiff with the strain of keeping himself from thrusting into her mouth and choking her with his need.

The taste and the scent of him filled her senses. She could feel the strain he was putting into remaining docile beneath her teasing and tormenting hands and mouth in opposition to his usual and, she assumed, preferred dominating torment of her body.

"Oh fuck, yes, suck me, baby...!" Matteo groaned.

Cat complied, stroking his balls and thighs as she took as much of him into her mouth as she could, making soft gagging sounds. He growled low in his throat, his fingers clenching even tighter in her hair. Cat winced but continued to caress him, wrapping her tongue around him. She sucked, and he let out a yell of pleasure. His body became rigid and he grew larger in her mouth.

"Cat..." Matteo growled in warning. His hips bucked, thrusting involuntarily into her mouth and choking her. "Fuck! Yes! Cat!" he thrust on each word.

She felt him before she tasted him, shooting into the back of her mouth. Instinctively she swallowed. His eyes never left her face.

"I'm sorry," Matteo said at last. "I shouldn't have done that, but you seemed on a mission, and I couldn't... didn't want to hold back." There was a satisfaction in his eyes that went with a strange bittersweet expression.

Silently, Cat crawled back up the bed. Matteo reached out and drew her tightly to his side. There was a strange feeling of tightness in his chest, even after everything, after he'd believed he'd found the right woman to be his partner. She would ask him to leave as soon as he gave her the chance to speak. He was surprised to find that he dreaded it more than he could put into words and wasn't sure what he could say to forestall the conversation that he knew was coming. Perhaps it was because he knew that she would ask him to leave, not because of any machinations on her part, like every other woman he had loved, but because of his family's treatment of her and his own unwillingness to put himself on the line with her.

Cat curled into his body and simply lay there. She didn't speak, she had seen the bittersweet look on his face and knew that he had come to the same conclusion she had. This agreement between them was never going to work beyond these few weeks, and they should end it before it gets messy.

She didn't sleep at all that night. Each time she tried to talk to Matteo, he would begin to stroke her, tease her, and inevitably move on top of her and inside her until she forgot everything but the feel of him again. He made love to her almost constantly, sometimes rapid, hard, and explosive, sometimes slow and sweet and tender. She clawed at him, bit him, leaving angry, passionate marks on him, and he, in turn, marked her, his teeth sinking, it seemed, into every part of her body, even those she wouldn't even have imagined it possible to bite.

Cat woke from a brief doze to the sensation of something hot, wet and probing between her legs. She sat up with a gasp, lifting the bedcovers and finding Matteo's head of dark silky hair between her thighs. "Matteo," she murmured weakly, before collapsing back onto the bed.

"Wider, baby," Matteo's voice, muffled, came from under the covers. Mindlessly, she did as he commanded. He licked, lapped, and probed deep inside her some more, and she was soon orgasming around his tongue, not bothering to even muffle her cries of pleasure.

He crawled up her body, stopping as his face was level with her breasts. He took a nipple into his mouth, sucked and nipped at it, pulling out from her chest with his teeth, and Cat whimpered. His lips travelled upwards, lingering in the curve of her throat. He licked the length of her neck before he sank his teeth into her again. She moaned.

"You're so delicious," he murmured. His mouth sealed over hers, his tongue filled her mouth with the taste of her. His hips settled into the cradle of hers. She felt him probing at her entrance, and then he was inside her, full and thick and heavy, pulsing with arousal. She was so swollen from her orgasm and the night of unrelenting sex that he felt impossibly huge inside her, stroking in and out, his hips grinding against her with slick and frantic lunges. She whimpered, her arms coming up to wrap around his neck. He let out a low growl, digging his fingers into her hips as he lifted her, forced her up to meet his thrusts, to take him deeper.

"Matteo!" Cat gasped, writhing, yet unable to move in his iron grip.

"Say it again," Matteo ground out. "Say my name!"

"Matteo. Matteo. Oh, God, Matteo!" Cat cried.

He stilled, suddenly, his impossibly dark eyes blazing into hers. Then he growled again, low, reverberating in his throat, and quickened his thrusts, clasping Cat closer against him so that her breasts were crushed against his chest, her face buried against his throat.

He pumped rapidly, ever harder inside her, their two bodies joined as if one, and, quite suddenly, the moment came. He let out an exultant roar of ecstasy, his eyes rolling into the back of his head. It had never been like this. Never before. He recovered in time to feel her pulsing against him, clenching around his cock. He smiled, his eyes closed, and collapsed over her. He did not care at that moment that he was too heavy for her. What mattered was the fact that she was his, that he was inside and on top of her, and that was where he wanted to be.

"Be mine," he said softly into her ear. "Say yes to the proposal and be mine forever."

"No, I can't," she whispered, feeling her heart break and tears well in her eyes.

"I will keep my family away from you. You can travel the world with me, paint in Paris on the bank of the Seine!" He said, trying to problem-solve all of her concerns about their partnership. "We can have a house in the country, you won't have to deal with them at all."

"That's not why I have to say no," she said softly, and he leaned up on an elbow to look at her in confusion. "I can deal with Ricco and Trista and the fact that your family doesn't like me. That isn't the problem. The problem is mine and mine alone, and I can't be yours even temporarily anymore." She knew this morning more than ever that her heart would be the problem between them.

"You can't tell me why?" his eyes searched hers. "I need to know why the most perfect woman in the world for me would want to leave me, now, of all times."

"I'm falling in love with you," she said, her voice scarcely above a whisper. She reached up and cupped his cheek. "You were honest with me from the start, Matteo. I have always known you couldn't love me, and I tried to stick to the agreement, I did. I truly believed I could in the beginning, but living in each other's skin so intensely for the last few weeks since we met, I feel like..." her words faltered, and a tear ran down her cheek.

"You can't love me," he said woodenly. "You can't!" He stopped short of telling her that he was unloveable, she just hadn't discovered that yet.

"I know that was your number one rule, but," she took a deep shuddering breath. "Night's like last night and this morning, that wasn't about fucking, that was about possession, marking me as yours," she turned, exposing the most recent bite mark on her neck. "Not just physically, but in here," she touched her chest. "Even with the best of intentions, I could only withstand the assault so long."

"No," he said. "That's not true. We're good together, we could be a real team, honest and trustworthy and good, like this," he reached out to stroke the bite mark on her neck, but she pulled away.

"I think you should go now, Matteo," she said softly. "I need you to leave before I ask you to stay for all of the wrong reasons and get even more hurt in the future or ending up hurting you. I don't want to do that, not when you've already been so hurt in the past."

"You think this doesn't hurt?" he let his anger build. All of the anger he felt at his family and the unfairness of the situation he had felt the night before building in him again. "You think I don't care at all?"

"That was the point of your rules, wasn't it? To protect yourself from any scenes like this?" she asked reasonably. "The longer we prolong this, the worse it's going to feel, because I am falling in love with you, and no matter how I try to ignore it or rationalise what we have here, like this, I can't. So just go, now, please!"

"No! This isn't over!" he yelled at her.

Cat had nothing left to say. She didn't want him to see her crying and think she was trying to emotionally blackmail him, so she got up and went to the bathroom, turning to him as she got to the door. "I'll be out of the apartment by the end of the week, I hope you can break the lease and get your money back. Goodbye, Matteo." She stepped inside and closed and locked the door and ran the shower to hide her sobs.

Matteo was lost. He didn't know whether to feel relieved that she had called it off before love had become a factor in their relationship or whether to stay and fight for the first woman he had cared about in the three years since Nik had left him holding a ring box and the shreds of his dignity. Thoughts of Nik, as always, hardened his heart, and he got dressed and left the studio apartment. If this was how Cat wanted it, then that was how it would be. Far be it for him to beg her to reconsider. He was never going to look that weak in front of a woman again.

*****