King of Stars (The Next Generation #2)

37. Stella

Chapter 37

Stella

L os Angeles.

What did I think about it?

I wasn’t sure yet. After a long-ass flight, we took a helicopter to a house in the hills. The sun had started to sink when we were on the plane, but by the time the helicopter landed on the private pad, it had totally disappeared and left behind a sky void of stars.

It stirred something inside of me. Something that felt like longing after being spoiled by the stars in Tuscany, even Sicily. Matteo had been quiet, but that didn’t mean he had gone silent. He was more attentive to me, watching me more closely, tender touches that resonated down to the brittle feel of my bones.

I knew in Sicily that I needed to go home—to Louisiana. As much fun as I was having with my husband, on the opposite side of the coin, guilt was eating me alive.

How could I go on having all this fun when I had no idea where my mom was?

Wasn’t it so unfair to her for me to go on with life burying the hurt down? The hurt that should honor her?

Deep down, I knew she would want me to be happy. She’d told me once that was all she wanted for me. To live a healthy and happy life. Matteo made me so happy that I could hardly see straight, and it never felt like I was walking, always floating. But the other side to me, the dark side, was slowly spreading through me. It was taking over. And I knew if I didn’t face it, it would consume me.

It felt like the sadness (and that was a lesser term for what it was) was made of barbed wire, and it was shredding me on the inside, slowly leaking all the hurt and ghosts, letting them loose inside of me. They had nowhere to go, so they were taking control, causing havoc.

Even if Matteo could never understand, fully, what I’d been through, something told me he was feeling the pain I was. Even though we hadn’t even known each other long, it felt like time didn’t mean anything. Not when it came to a love that had been written in the stars.

I liked to think that Matteo was my blessing that came from an awful punishment.

Not even that amazing gift, though, could steal away the memories and hide them from me. I knew better. I’d buried them for so long, deep, deep, deep inside of me, and they were rising like a threatening tide.

When I was in that gorgeous water in Sicily, sometimes I would look up and think, are the stars at the bottom of the sky, and whoever’s on the opposite side doesn’t get to see them, just like we don’t get to see what’s at the bottom of the sea?

Only Matteo Fausti, and maybe his mamma and sister, could see all the things I hid at the bottom of my own ocean of secrets. More than that, they seemed to feel them with me. Maybe that was how I was surviving this. They were taking some of the hurt for their own.

I tried to ignore the barbs stabbing me where no one could see, but I could feel them as we entered the house from the helipad. The So Cal house overlooked the ocean and was fit for any star. When I’d asked Matteo on the plane where we were staying, and he told me here, I’d asked him if the house was a rental. He’d told me no, and the meeting Noemi had set up was going to take place in a hotel in Hollywood.

Matteo squeezed my hand, his eyes searching mine as his men did another sweep of the house. He pulled me so fast into him that I gasped. But it was a tender move, one that brought me closer to him. He kissed me all the way to my ear and then whispered four words, “You tell me when.”

You tell me when.

Tell him when it was time for me to turn around and fully face my past.

I nodded, then shook my head, then nodded again. “Will you tell me when it’s time?”

He sighed, and it was the heaviest sound I’d ever heard come from his chest. He rested his chin on my head, pressing it against his heart. “I can’t do this for you, baby,” he whispered. “I would in a fucking heartbeat, but I can’t.” His voice sounded as torn up as my insides.

I knew that, and I wasn’t even sure why I’d said it, but it didn’t matter. I was just glad I wasn’t talking nonsense or screaming and crying.

“What if I can’t say it?” I whispered.

“I’ll know.”

That was all I needed to know.

After the men swept the house and Armando gave the all-clear, Matteo picked me up and carried me to the bathroom. He ran a hot bath, undressed me, and slowly set me in it. I sighed as I eased into the water, and I sighed even harder when he eased in behind me.

He just held me, and I fell asleep in his arms, barely stirring when he lifted me out, then dried and dressed me. I twisted and turned in his arms all night long, and when I started to whimper in my sleep, he held me close, whispering soft words in my ear, giving me kisses that were even softer. His arms felt like they were keeping me together and protecting me from more harm. Like iron bars that kept me in and the world out.

The next morning, we woke up to the smell of coffee and baked goods. Placido made them all for us. Matteo didn’t trust anyone from the outside world to handle our drinks or food. I drank a few sips of coffee and picked at my cornetto , not really having an appetite. I could tell it bothered Matteo that I refused to drink or eat. But, maybe because of how controlling Régine had been with my food, he let it go.

Right then.

I could tell by the stern set of his face that, if my appetite refused to make a comeback by a certain amount of time, he was going to get creative with me. This made me smile a little, and he caught it and gave me a grin back.

I yawned, not able to help it. It felt like I hadn’t slept in ages, like my soul weighed too much for my body to carry, so I decided to slip back in bed. We were having dinner with the man Noemi called Damon Carter, but it wasn’t until later that evening. I had plenty of time.

Matteo leaned against the doorframe, watching me. “I refuse to let you dim, la mia stella .”

“I know,” I whispered. “That’s why I can sleep. I know you have this.”

He did have this.

He woke me up for lunch, fed it to me, and then let me go back to sleep until it was time to get up and get ready. We showered together, and he washed me like he was cleaning the most delicate piece of treasure in history. When it came to my makeup, though, I told him I had it. I just wasn’t sure what to wear.

“Anything,” he said. “You’re fucking gorgeous in anything.”

I looked down at the makeup spread on the vanity and whispered, “Thank you.”

“It wasn’t me who designed you, but fuck if you weren’t designed for me.” He kissed my shoulder and then left me, going into the closet.

When he came back out, he was holding a shimmering gold dress, and I knew it would make a statement. I curled my hair, which had grown much longer, the color still just like my mom’s—a reddish blonde that seemed to pick up on the gold in the dress. My skin had been touched by the sun, and even if I could never be as dark as Matteo, it made me glow. I still had the freckles dotting my nose, but my eyes were the color of a storm.

Maybe reflecting what was going on inside of me.

Right as I spritzed some perfume on, Matteo walked out of the closet, fixing his suit jacket. He was dressed in all black, and he was making a fucking statement too.

Even if I had no name, I was still born to rule this bitch.

His good shirt wasn’t buttoned all the way up, and from the side, I could see the star tattoo. My name inked on his body. The Fausti insignia tattoo moved when his hand went to fix his tie. He wore a signet ring, just like the one he’d slipped in the pocket of his coat for me that night in the underground club. I stood, smoothing down my dress, and stopped him.

“My job.” I grinned, then looked up into his eyes. “You’re gorgeous, Matteo. And not only on the outside. I know why I chose you. Because of…the entirety of you.”

He pulled me into him so hard, I gasped. I loved when he did that. It sent blood rushing through my heart and made butterflies flitter around in my stomach like mad.

“You break my heart with your words, la mia stella .” He set my hand over his heart, like I was the disease and the cure.

He kept my hand in his while we navigated through all the thick traffic of southern California, and he seemed to hold it even tighter when we entered the lobby of the fancy Hollywood hotel. There was a man at the door waiting, and when he spotted us, he rushed over and escorted us to the dining area. We had a private table in the back.

It didn’t matter that the place was dark, and Matteo was a part of the darkness—every eye seemed to land on him at some point. Most of the men with women were sizing him up. The women, single or not, were blatantly staring.

Rosaria coming onto him.

The Russian woman with the cutting eyes.

Too many women to count in France and Sicily.

All those eyes devouring what was mine.

And the same within this room.

It lit a fire inside of me that was hiding my other hurts in smoke. And the stares were starting to grate on my last fucking nerve. Even Carter’s girlfriend, or whoever the fuck she was, wouldn’t stop staring at Matteo. When she would take a drink, she kept her intense gaze on him over the rim of her glass, her blood red lips staining the crystal while her long-ass lashes kept fluttering like butterfly wings attached to her eyelids.

Noemi kept giving me sly looks, nodding toward Carter, as if to say, pay attention to what he has to say , but it was hard when the woman next to him kept making flirty eyes at my husband.

My husband’s temperature was rising, and I wasn’t sure why. I wasn’t the one getting eye fucked by Damon Carter. Matteo could win a gold medal for keeping his temper in check, but when it reached a limit, he turned into a dangerous creature. I called him a shark, but it was a playful term for what he could be.

He carried the spirt of a lion within him.

I just wasn’t sure why he was looking at Damon Carter the way he was. Like he might go in for the kill at any second, though on the surface, it seemed like he was casually drinking a glass of bourbon. I was about to fling it in red lip’s face when she licked them as Matteo stood, pulling out my seat for me.

The entire meeting was a blur to me. Carter had done all the talking, but I honestly couldn’t focus on what he was saying, not when my focus was on blocking the flirt darts from across the table aimed at my husband.

“Tomorrow?” Noemi asked, looking hopeful.

“What?” I asked.

“Tomorrow,” she repeated. “For the meeting? Carter has some ideas.”

Before I could answer, Matteo nodded. “Tomorrow. Here. We’ll have a room. Though my wife hasn’t agreed to anything.”

Carter looked at me and smiled. “Of course she has. Who wouldn’t want this opportunity, right, Stella?”

“Mrs. Fausti,” Matteo corrected, finishing the last sip of his bourbon.

“Right,” Carter said.

Matteo rolled his lips, like he was rubbing the leftover alcohol in, but I didn’t think that was the entire purpose of it. It was a mad thing, like something no one would catch unless they knew him.

Other than that, though, I had no idea what the fuck was going on, but apparently, we were having another meeting the next day in the hotel. Whatever. As long as red lip wasn’t going to be there. But I also got a weird feeling about why Matteo had agreed to it. I was too incensed to even care, though. I didn’t get a warm feeling from Carter when we first arrived, and I didn’t care to work with him.

I wasn’t even sure about the entire situation. Becoming an actress in America, a well-known face all over the world, was what Noemi thought I should want. I liked the idea of being an actress in Italy, but this felt…not right. Like Uncle Tito had said, the weight of it was felt in my soul.

My husband and I were quiet the entire ride back to the house, even though we were stuck in traffic for what felt like hours. We held hands as we walked inside, but then separated to get undressed. He seemed to have an attitude, or I wasn’t sure what to call it. I know I had one. I couldn’t get the looks that woman kept sending my husband out of my mind. How blatant she was. How fucking disrespectful.

Matteo wasn’t looking back, but he had to have noticed. He missed nothing.

It wasn’t his fault—logic told me that—but I still couldn’t help how I felt. I wasn’t sure how to put the fire out. For the first time in days, I was feeling something other than a sense of sorrow so deep, it had a pulse.

I was at my vanity again, rubbing night cream on my face. Then I started on my body. It took me a second to realize Matteo had stuck his phone near my face. I pushed back from it and squinted at the screen.

“Is that our pool?”

He nodded, his face hard. His sharp features seemed even tighter, like they could cut glass. And those eyes? Deep, dark pools that had no depth, if I didn’t know better. When he got like this, his eyes were like an illusion.

“Why is there glass around it?” I asked.

“Thought it would be nice to be able to swim all year long.”

“We didn’t agree on that!” I stood in a rush and flung the cream down.

He stared at me before he flung the phone at the wall, shattering it. “Consider the glass around the pool fucking shattered like the glass on the phone,” he said.

It was so stupid, because the glass was a nice touch, but I couldn’t stop. It was like I was a starved animal with a bone.

“Good!” I shouted. “Because we didn’t agree on that!”

He went to walk away from me, but I ran in front of him, stopping him.

“Why did you make that decision without me?”

He shrugged. “Thought it would be nice and you wouldn’t mind.”

“You didn’t talk to me first!”

“We’ve established that.”

“Don’t patronize me, Matteo.”

“You don’t need to keep repeating yourself, Stella.” He touched his temple. “I have an excellent memory.”

“Do you also have eyes?”

“Eyes. Nose. Fingers. Toes. An entire body you can touch, if you believe I’m patronizing you.”

I clenched my fists, wishing I would have saved the cream and chucked it at his head. “If I touched you right now, I’d do bodily harm, and I don’t want to ruin a perfect canvas!” I went to walk away from him, but he grabbed me by the arm.

“Don’t touch me!” I flung my arm out of his hold, but when I went to walk away, he grabbed me again. I turned on him so fast, I almost spun, but he kept me on my feet, which pissed me off even more.

“Give me your best shots, baby.” He released me, opening his arms, inviting me to go off on him, if I wanted.

“No.” I crossed my arms, like not going after him with my fists held high was something he would be so disappointed about. Maybe he would be. It seemed like he wanted me to. “That would mean I would have to touch you.”

Silence seemed to stretch, and with it, a frigid wind felt like it was coming between us.

He became frozen, like ice, and in that moment, I wanted to say that I was acting stupid, that I was just jealous, and he wasn’t even the reason for it. He had ignored that women, but for some reason, I couldn’t.

“You don’t want to touch me.” His voice was even, so cool, and there was no question in it. It was a repeat of what I’d said, but in his own words, like it was something he was repeating inside his head.

“You don’t want to touch me,” I said almost childishly, not even sure why. No. I knew. I was in this mess because of that fucking flirty woman, and because I was a fucking mess. “You’ve been pissed off since the meeting with what’s his name!”

“Oh,” he said. “I want to do more than touch you.”

I lifted my arms in a go ahead sign and leaned dangerously close to his mouth. “Take your best shot then, baby .”

His eyes focused on my lips, and after he licked his once, he grabbed me in a hold that stole my breath. He bent me over the counter, and in a voice he’d never used with me before, ordered me to steady my hands. It wasn’t the voice he used with his soldiers, but it held authority. And I did as he’d said. He spread my legs with his knee and ran his hand up my leg, over my ass. I shivered. My skin felt so cold to the hot touch of his massive palm.

He didn’t have to order me to look him in the eye, though. Through the mirror, I kept my eyes on his, my entire body trembling. Not because of fear. Anticipation had me in a chokehold.

And he almost had me closing my eyes when his took a slow perusal of my body. The best I could do was keep them cracked. His eyes made me feel as warm as the sun, maybe because I was always the brightest thing in them.

“Take my best shot, ah, baby?”

“Take it,” I barely got out.

His eyes went to my ass, and he licked his lips before each hand disappeared underneath my silk robe, each fist taking a handful of soft flesh. He squeezed, and the tension went straight between my legs like a shock. I hissed out a breath and his eyes lowered. The silk flew to the ground from the toss of his hand.

He’d taken his jacket and undershirt off, along with his shoes, and his pants were hanging from his hips. His cock created a huge bulge that seemed close to tearing through his boxers. He lowered them, setting the enormous monster free, and keeping eye contact, took it in his fist and rubbed it against my ass.

My next breath caught in my throat, and if this was a game to see who was going to close his or her eyes first, he was fucking winning. I could barely stand it.

The look in his eyes.

What he was doing to me.

Especially when he rubbed his cock against my soaked entrance, only to rub it between the folds of my ass, then back down again. He took a fistful of my hair, pulled my face back, and entered me in a thrust so hard, so deep, I lost my breath.

He said something in low, sharp Italian. I only understood the last word. Wife. He repeated it in English. “Open your eyes, my wife.”

Crown me as the loser, because I lost. I was so fucking lost when he was inside me. I wasn’t a star in the sky, but a starfish drifting aimlessly in the sea, Matteo Fausti the tide directing me.

My eyes slowly opened to his.

His irises were dilated, all the brown run out by black. I couldn’t have burned any brighter in his eyes if I was an actual star in the night sky, no electricity around for miles and miles and miles.

He pulled my hair a little harder. “My patience was fucking tested.” He pulled out of me slowly, touching every sensitive nerve inside of me, only to come back harder, go even deeper.

I screamed out, reaching for something to hold on to on the counter, but only found smooth, cool marble. I wasn’t sure how he did it, but whatever he was doing, he was going so deep, I wondered if he had hit something vital. But after the pain faded, a warmth, a pleasure, like I’d never felt before filled me up like his cock did.

He moved inside of me, and even though I was stretching to accommodate him, it took me a minute. My body was trying to expand, and I was trying to catch my breath.

“My patience,” he said, his words clipped and hot. He bit his lip, like he had to control the pleasure rushing through him too. “My patience was fucking tested when it came to my wife tonight. And every other fucking day and night when greedy eyes keep taking in what belongs to me .” He spread my ass cheeks, his eyes starving for what he was seeing.

All I could see was him .

His body hard, a tool to get me to surrender.

All I could feel was him .

His possessiveness covering me like desire to an unlawful degree.

Why was I even mad at him earlier?

I couldn’t even fucking remember.

All I could feel was how he felt—fucking mad with something that was driving him, possessing him, with the need to claim me. To claim me in a way he’d never claimed me before. A need to bruise me down to the bone and leave his scent all over my flesh.

He slid almost all the way out, and just when I thought I’d go mad with need, he thrust his hips forward and started fucking me like he’d never fucked me before. When I started to moan and cry out, he growled low in his throat, and the noise took control of my hips. I started to meet him thrust for thrust, the sweat from my body making it so easy to move against the marble. My breasts were pressed against it, and it was causing cold friction against my nipples.

He growled, this time louder, and lifted me up by the hair. My body was in full view through the mirror, and though we were connected from behind, my breasts were jiggling to the frantic and wild rhythm of our sex.

“Fuck!” he roared. “Fuck!”

Sweat poured down my body, my hair stuck to my face and neck. My breaths came in pants, and my lungs burned.

But.

He kept fucking me.

Fucking me hard and deep.

So deep, my eyes rolled from the extreme contrast between pain and pleasure, and the short time in which he’d take me back and forth.

I wanted to let go but hold on to it for as long as possible. But my body seemed to know.

We weren’t winning this one.

He was too possessed.

Too obsessed with me feeling this form of exquisite pleasure and aching pain.

My body had no choice but to surrender to his, and when it did, a scream tore out of my mouth as an orgasm seemed to rip through me. Even though my entire body trembled, and I’d be bruised on my thighs, he kept pounding into me, striking every sensitive nerve with his rock-hard cock. It only took seconds, but I started to orgasm again, this time longer and harder.

My chest and lungs were on fire. And I wasn’t even sure if my eyes could open. They felt glued shut.

He was still inside of me, and when he spread my ass cheeks even further, a dangerous sound rumbled through his chest, and he moved faster, harder again—this time, exploding inside of me with a curse that echoed in the cavernous bathroom. His seed dripped down my legs, and he watched it, a satisfied look in his dark eyes.

A minute or two later, instead of cleaning me up, like usual, he helped me into my robe. Then he turned me around and set me on the counter. He grabbed my toothbrush and added toothpaste to it. He made a motion for me to open my mouth, and when I did, he stared at it for a second before he started to brush my teeth for me.

It was a running joke in the family that Scarlett was obsessed with dental hygiene, but she was, and she’d imparted that same obsession on her children. Matteo was almost fanatical about it. No shit, though, he had the most gorgeous teeth, so I wasn’t mad at it. Especially when he dazzled me with them by smiling.

A whimper almost left my chest when I thought about his smile being lost to this version of him. It was dangerous enough to kill that other part and take him away from me forever.

He was still pissed, or maybe he was just hurt by the things I’d said. I’d picked a fight with him over fucking glass that would only give us the use of the pool all year long. I wanted to say something so bad, and I tried over and over to think of a way to start the conversation. I really did, but every time I went to open my mouth, my mind reminded me that it all sounded like excuses, and that was so lame.

I’m sorry , I really didn’t mean it, and I have no idea why I even started the fight seemed like a good direction to go in, but by the time I decided on it, he’d finished brushing his teeth and had picked me up. I practically melted into his arms, my eyes so heavy I could barely keep them open.

I didn’t even care that my thighs were saturated with his seed, and I was going to sleep with it on me. He wanted his scent on me, and that was what he was going to get. He’d drained me of energy.

I wanted to snuggle up to my pillow, but even that was too much. I felt the dip in the bed when he eased in behind me. “I love you, Matteo,” I whispered. “Thank you…for not leaving me, even if I did say things I didn’t mean and hurt you.”

He didn’t make a sound, just pulled my body tight to his, setting his mouth against the still thumping pulse in my neck. I fell into a dreamless sleep seconds later.