Breakfast the next morning feels different.
I enter the dining room carrying the ghost of Santo's tenderness on my skin, in my muscles, between my thighs.
There's a lightness in my step I haven't felt since before the auction. A softness in my chest that makes me want to smile at nothing.
I don't realize it shows until I catch Matteo staring at me across the table.
His amber eyes narrow. Track from my face to my neck, where Santo left a mark I completely forgot to cover, down to the way I'm moving.
Something clicks behind his gaze. His jaw tightens so hard I can see the muscle jump.
"Sleep well, piccola?" His voice is silk wrapped around a blade. "You look... rested."
"I slept fine," I manage, reaching for the coffee with hands that aren't quite steady.
"Did you?"
He leans back in his chair, that predatory smile sharpening into something dangerous.
"Interesting. I thought I heard noises from your wing last night. Sounded like you were having trouble sleeping."
My face flames. Before I can formulate a response, Santo enters the dining room. The moment the brothers' eyes meet, the temperature drops twenty degrees.
Santo's expression stays carefully neutral, but there's a quiet satisfaction there he can't quite hide. A looseness in his shoulders. A softness around his mouth when his gaze flicks briefly to mine.
Matteo sees all of it.
His coffee cup hits the saucer too hard, ceramic ringing against ceramic. "Well. Isn't this cozy."
"Matteo." Luca's voice cuts from the head of the table—sharp, commanding, a warning wrapped in his brother's name.
He's tracked Santo's relaxed posture, my flushed cheeks, the mark on my throat. But his face remains impassive. "Not at breakfast."
"Our little saint couldn't wait, could he?" Matteo’s smile is sharp enough to draw blood, amber eyes burning as they fix on Santo. "Had to be first. Had to prove something to the rest of us."
Matteo stands up abruptly and storms out. The door slams behind him hard enough to rattle the paintings on the walls.
The silence left behind is suffocating.
I stare at my plate, appetite gone, guilt churning in my stomach.
"The deal's been fulfilled."
Luca's voice cuts through the tension like a blade. I look up to find those steel-gray eyes fixed on me—cold, calculating, utterly unreadable.
"What?"
"The arrangement." He sets down his fork with precise deliberation. "Your virginity for your family's debts. The terms have been met." A pause. "You're free to leave whenever you wish."
The words hit me like ice water.
"That's not a conversation for right now," Santo says, an edge to his voice I've never heard before.
"We can discuss it later." Luca returns to his breakfast like nothing happened, like he hasn't just dropped a grenade into my chest. "When everyone's had time to... cool down."
***
Later that evening, I'm in the library, trying to read.
The words blur on the page. I keep replaying breakfast—Matteo's wounded fury, Santo's quiet victory, Luca's impenetrable silence. The agreement…
The door opens and closes behind me. The lock clicks.
I don't need to turn around to know who it is. The air itself changes when Matteo enters a room—charged, electric, dangerous.
"Put the book down, piccola."
I set it aside with trembling hands.
He stalks toward me, all coiled fury and wounded pride.
White shirt untucked now, sleeves rolled to his elbows, dark curls disheveled like he's been running his hands through them for hours. His amber eyes burn in the low lamplight.
"You let him have you first."
"Matteo, let’s not…."
"I've been patient."
He crowds me against the bookshelf, hands slamming on either side of my head, caging me in. His body radiates heat, cologne and whiskey and barely contained rage.
"I've played your little games. Followed the rules. Tasted you without taking more, even though it nearly killed me to walk away."
His face is inches from mine, breath hot against my lips.
"I made you come so hard. And you gave your first time to him?" His voice cracks on the last word—and suddenly I understand. This isn't just anger. It's pain.
Matteo Moretti, the charming one, the one who takes what he wants without asking, who wraps women around his finger with a smile... is pain that I didn't choose him.
Deep inside, beneath the outrage and the guilt and the confusion—I want him. I want to know what it feels like when Matteo Moretti stops playing games. I want to feel that barely-leashed violence unleashed on my body.
His mouth suddenly crashes into mine. The kiss is nothing like Santo's. It's punishment and possession, his tongue forcing past my lips, claiming every inch of my mouth like he's branding me from the inside out.
His teeth catch my bottom lip, biting hard enough to sting, and I gasp into his mouth.
He swallows the sound with a growl of satisfaction.
"You want rough, piccola?"
His hands are already tearing at my clothes—buttons scattering across the floor, fabric ripping, his fingers rough and demanding.
"You want to know what it feels like when I stop being a gentleman?"
He spins me around before I can answer, slamming my chest against the bookshelf. Books topple around us as he yanks my hips back, grinding his hard cock against my ass through his trousers.
His other hand shoves my skirt up around my waist, then rips my underwear clean off—the fabric tearing like paper in his grip. I gasp at the violence of it, at the cool air hitting my exposed flesh.
His fingers slide through my folds, rough and proprietary. "Your body knows what it wants, even if you won't admit it."
He thrusts two fingers inside me without warning, and I cry out—not from pain, but from the sudden, overwhelming fullness.
He pumps them hard, stretching me, his palm grinding against my clit with every stroke. I push back against his hand, desperate for more.
"That's my good girl," he groans. "You want my cock that badly?"
"Yes," I hear myself moan.
He notches himself at my entrance, impossibly hard, and slams home in one brutal thrust.
I scream.
The stretch is intense, bordering on painful, but God, the fullness—I've never felt anything like it. He's bigger than Santo, or maybe it's just the angle, but I feel him everywhere.
"Fuck," Matteo groans, holding himself deep. "So fucking tight. Even tighter than I imagined."
He doesn't give me time to adjust.
He pulls out and drives back in with punishing force, setting a rhythm that has the bookshelf rattling, books crashing to the floor around us.
"Yes," I gasp, shocking myself with how much I mean it. "God, yes… Don't stop…"
He answers by fucking me harder.
"Touch yourself," Matteo commands. "I want to feel you come on my cock."
My hand flies between my legs, fingers finding my swollen clit, and the added sensation is almost too much.
"That's it, piccola. Come for me. Let the whole fucking house hear who makes you feel this good."
I shatter with a scream that echoes off the walls. It's more intense than anything I've felt before, rough and raw and devastating.
Matteo follows moments later with a hoarse roar, slamming deep and holding himself there as he spills inside me.
His teeth sink into my shoulder, and the bite of pain extends my orgasm until I'm sobbing from the intensity.
We stay there for a long moment, both of us panting, trembling. His cock is still inside me, still half-hard, and I can feel our mixed release starting to drip down my thighs.
Finally, his lips brush my ear, voice rough and satisfied.
"Don't forget who made you scream louder, piccola."