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“Hold it there gently,” she gasped. “It’s…” She swallowed. “Very sensitive.”

With a concentration more intense than when he’d tried to blur out her naked body in the shower, he lapped gently at the swollen bud, letting her body and reactions guide him.

Where all their couplings had been hot and frenzied, their climaxes uncontrollable, this felt altogether different, and not just because of the deep intimacy of it. It was like the whole world had slowed down and shrunk to just them and this beautiful moment. Elvira’s climax seemed to grow like a wave building far out in the ocean, the rhythmic motions of her writhing body increasing slowly, fingers reaching again for his hair and curling into it as her back arched and an almost silent o escaped like the longest breath from her lips.

So enraptured was he that his own arousal seemed like a distant memory until he kissed his way back up her body and found himself caught in a silver stare shining with something so impossible that all he could do to answer it was kiss her gently and slowly drive his hardness inside her.

Buried in her exquisite velvet heat, Mattia made love to her with the same reverence he’d brought her to a climax with his tongue, and when he felt her contract around him and her arms tightened around him, he held the lock of their stares as his own orgasm carried him with her to a place he knew he’d never see again.

Chapter Fifteen

Elvira’s clothes had finally dried. She dressed in them mechanically, then set about tackling her hair. It was a mass of tangles and knots, and all she had to try and tame it was Mattia’s comb.

The separation between them had already started. They’d showered separately, and when, wrapped only in a towel, she’d asked if he had anything she could brush her hair with, it had been with a forced politeness she’d had no control over. He’d dug a comb out of his jacket and handed it to her with matching politeness. His eyes had barely glanced hers.

The last time they’d made love had been with the rising sun. Their last kiss had been the moment before they’d got out of bed.

There had been no more affection or physical contact of any kind since.

She couldn’t stop herself from continually looking at her watch. Time seemed to have come to a halt. In fifty-five minutes, Mattia’s men would be here. In one hour and fifty-five minutes, Elio and whoever he was bringing with him would be here. Bruno for sure. Her oldest brother didn’t really have a henchman like Mattia had had with Stefano. He would choose whoever he trusted to be most effective for whatever he had planned for the transfer.

Working the comb through her hair was painstaking work, but she was glad of the distraction it afforded her from the sickness she’d woken with and which was getting steadily more violent.

Anything could happen in the next two hours, and that was terrifying. So many permutations. So many outcomes. So much potential for pain, physical and emotional.

She needed to keep it together. She couldn’t let what had developed between her and Mattia in their seclusion cloud what needed to be done.

She wished she knew what Elio had planned, but would it make her feel better to know? Elio was cool and strategic and thought of the long game, but had Mattia’s actions pushed him over the edge? More even than the shadowed world, it was the Esposito Group Elio had wanted, just so he could rip it into ruins and destroy the last of Lorenzo’s name.

If everyone walked away from the handover, the chances of them all living longer than another twenty-four hours were tiny. Vengeance would be declared. A new war would be fought.

Is that what this was going to be for the rest of her life? A cycle of vengeance upon vengeance until there was no one left who even knew where the original sin had come from?

The only person Elvira had watched die was her grandmother. Her grandmother had raised her four orphaned grandchildren into adulthood, then passed away in hospital, her bereaved heart no longer able to bear the agony of all she’d lost. Elvira had been sixteen, not technically an adult, but with all the tools she needed to be one. That had been her grandmother’s gift to her.

Everything she knew about her parents was other people’s memories. All she had of her mother was her smell. She didn’t even know what the scent was, just that sometimes, she could be out somewhere and get a whiff of something that made her heart pang and immediately brought to mind the image of the photo of the woman holding baby Elvira in her arms.

She remembered nothing of the bloodshed, but the ramifications had splintered through the whole of her life. As much as it pained her to admit it, even to herself, it was the loss of her forgotten mother she felt the most deeply. A tough but loving grandmother had been a wonderful substitute, but ultimately a substitute. Though she hadn’t felt the loss of her father to the same bone-deep level as her mother, she’d still felt it. Elio had done his best to be a father figure to her, but he was her brother. If anyone had needed their father, it had been him.

She had no way of knowing if her parents were looking down at her from heaven, horrified that their daughter had given herself so willingly to their murderer’s son.

Elvira could only pray they couldn’t see into her heart, and if they could, that they could forgive her.

If she’d thought it would be hard to forgive herself for having sex with him, combing her hair with a pounding, aching heart and grief spreading like a sickness would be impossible to forgive.

She didn’t even know what she was grieving. A future she could never have? With him?

Her hair detangled, Elvira stood in front of the bathroom mirror and looked at the traitor staring back at her.

Had Mattia stood in front of this same mirror and asked himself that same question?

They’d revealed too much of themselves, she thought painfully. Given too much.

Now she had to forget everything they’d shared and do what needed to be done. Her heart might be yearning for him, but that didn’t mean the rest of her had to. Her heart was hers alone, and no one had to know what was contained in it. It was her actions in the next few hours that would define her. She was a Ranieri, and she would never be a traitor to that name, no more than Mattia would be a traitor to the Esposito name. Not where it counted. Not where it mattered.

All that was left was for the grand finale to play out.

However it played, they were over.