by Maisey Yates
“I see,” she said.
“You do not approve?”
“I married your father because I loved him. And one of the wonderful things that came with that marriage was money. With money came the kind of freedom that I never could have hoped Sophia to have if we had remained impoverished. I hate to see it curtailed.”
“This is not curtailing her freedom. It is simply keeping with what is expected of those in our station. I have explained this to Sophia already.”
“Yes, Luca. I have no doubt you have. You are very like your father in that you are confident that your way is always correct.”
“My way is the best for a woman in her position. You must trust that I am the authority on this.”
“You forget,” his stepmother said, “I have been queen for a sizable amount of time. I did not just leave the village. So to speak.”
“Perhaps not. But I was born into this. And you must understand that it is difficult to marry so far above your station. That is not an insult. But I know that it took a great deal for yourself and Sophia to adjust to the change. I know that Sophia still finds it difficult. Can you imagine if she married someone for whom this was foreign?”
“You make a very good point.”
“This ball, this marriage, is not for my own amusement.” It was for his salvation. However, he would leave that part unspoken.
Suddenly, the double doors to the ballroom opened, and all eyes turned to the entryway. There she was, a brilliant flash of fuchsia, her dark hair tumbling around her shoulders. She was even more beautiful than he had remembered. Golden curves on brilliant display, her skin gleaming in the light.
“Oh, my,” her mother said.
“She got a new stylist,” he said stiffly.
“Apparently.”
Sophia descended the staircase slowly, and the moment one foot hit the bottom of the stair, her first suitor had already approached her. The Swede.
Sophia would probably be disappointed he didn’t have a sheep on a leash to entertain her. Or a sweater.
“You do not approve of him?” his stepmother asked.
“Of course I approve of him. I approve of every man that I asked to come and be considered as a potential husband for Sophia.”
“Then you might want to look less like you wish to dismember him.”
“I am protective of her,” he said, straightening and curling his hands into fists.
“If you say so.”
He gritted his teeth. He did not like the idea that his stepmother of all people would find him transparent. He prided himself on his control, but Sophia tested it at every turn.
And so he told himself that the feeling roaring through him now was relief when the man took hold of Sophia and swept her around the dance floor.
The other man’s hand rested perilously low on her waist, on the curve of her hip, and if he was to move his hand down and around her back he would be cupping that lovely ass of hers. And that, Luca found unacceptable.
He will not stop there if he marries her. He will touch her everywhere. Taste her everywhere. She will belong to him.
He gritted his teeth. That was the point. The point was that she needed to belong to another man, so that he could no longer harbor any fantasies of her.
As the song ended, another man approached Sophia, and she began to dance with him. Another of her selections.
Luca approached a woman wearing royal blue, and asked her to dance. Kept himself busy, tried to focus on the feel of her soft, feminine curves beneath his hands. Because what did it matter if it was this woman, or another. What did it matter. Sex was sex. A woman’s body was a woman’s body. He should be able to find enjoyment in it. He should not long for the woman in pink across the room. The woman who was tacitly forbidden to him. But he did.
The woman he held in his arms now might well have been a cardboard cutout for all that she affected him.
But still, he continued to dance with her, knowing that he should not. Knowing that dancing with any single woman this long would create gossip. He didn’t even know her name. He wouldn’t ask for it. And tomorrow he would not remember her face until he saw it printed in the paper. She didn’t matter.
Suddenly, Sophia extricated herself from her dance partner’s hold, excusing herself with a broad gesture as she scurried across the ballroom.
“Excuse me,” he said, releasing hold of his dance partner, following after his stepsister.
Sophia wove through the crowd and made her way outside. He followed. But by the time he got out to the balcony, she was gone. He looked over the edge and saw a dark shape moving across the grass below. He could only barely make her out, the glow from the ballroom lights casting just enough gold onto the ground to highlight her moving shape. He swung his leg over the edge of the balcony and lowered himself down to the grass below, following the path that Sophia had no doubt taken.
He said nothing, his movements silent as he went after her. To what end, he didn’t know. But then, he had no idea what she thought she was doing, either. It was foolish for her to leave the ball. And it was foolish for him to go after her. All of this was foolish. Everything with her. Always.
And yet, he couldn’t escape her. That was the essential problem. She was unsuitable because of their connection. She was inescapable because of their connection. And for that reason, he had never been able to master it.
He could not have her; neither could he banish her from his life.
And here he was, chasing after her in a suit.
He was the king of a nation, stumbling in the dark after a woman.
Finally, she stopped, her pale shoulders shaking, highlighted by the light of the moon. He reached out, placing his hand on her bare skin. She jumped, turning to face him, her eyes glistening in the light. “Luca.”
And suddenly, he knew exactly why he had gone after her. He knew exactly what the endgame was. Exactly why he was here.
“Sophia.”
And then he wrapped her in his arms and finally did the one thing he had expressly forbidden himself from doing. He claimed her lips with his own.
CHAPTER FIVE
LUCA WAS KISSING HER. It was impossible. Utterly and completely impossible that this was happening. She was delusional. Dreaming. She had to be.
Luca hated her.
Luca saw himself as being so far above her that he would hardly deign to speak to her if they weren’t related by marriage.
He didn’t want to kiss her. He didn’t.
Except, with the little bit of brainpower that she had, she recalled that moment in the halls of the castle days ago. When she had gotten her makeover. He had grabbed hold of her arm and had told her he could not tell her how beautiful she was because it was pointless. Because nothing could come of it.
Did that mean he wished it could?
It had all felt like something too bright and too close then. Something she couldn’t parse and didn’t want to. Not when the end result would only be her own humiliation. Even if he didn’t know what she was thinking, entertaining the notion that Luca might want her had always seemed horrific, even if no one ever found out.
It was so surreal a thought that she was still asking it even as those firm, powerful lips thrust hers apart, his tongue invading her mouth.
She had never been kissed like this before. Had never received anything beyond polite kisses that had seemed to be a testing of her interest.
Luca, true to form, was not testing her interest. He was assuming it. And she imagined that if he found her disinterested, he would work with all that he had to change her mind.
Except, his assumption was correct. And she did not possess the strength to deny that. Not now.
Not when her most cherished fantasy was coming to life, right here in the darkened garden of the palace.
Luca cupped her face, large, hot hands holding her steady as he angled his face and took her deeper.
He kissed exactly like what he was. An autocratic conqueror. A man who had
never been denied a single thing in his life.
A man who would not be denied now.
“I cannot watch this,” he rasped. “I cannot watch other men dance with you. Put their hands on you.”
“You said... You said you had to find me a husband.” Her voice was wobbly, tremulous, and she hated that. She wished—very much—that she could be more confident. That she could sound sophisticated. As if this was simply another garden tryst of many in a long line of them. Rather than the first time she had truly, honestly been kissed by a man.
Rather than a girl on the receiving end of something she had desired all of her life.
She didn’t want him to know that. She didn’t want him to know how she felt.
But then she imagined that she betrayed herself with each breath, with each moment that passed when she didn’t slap his face and call him ten kinds of scoundrel for daring to touch her in that way.
Of course she betrayed herself. Because, though he had been the one to instigate, she had kissed him back.
She had been powerless to do anything else. She had been far too caught up in it, consumed by it. By him.
The story of her life.
Things went well, and then Luca. And it all went to hell. It all belonged to him.
“I am going to find you a husband,” he said. “I swore it to my father.” He dragged his thumb along the edge of her lip. “But I cannot pretend I don’t want you. Not any longer.”
“You... You want me?”
“It is like a disease,” he ground out. “To want my sister as I do.”
“I’m not your sister,” she said, her lips numb. “We don’t have the same parents. We don’t share blood at all.”
“But don’t you see? To my father you were. And you would be to the nation. An affair between the two of us would have disastrous consequences.”
She closed her eyes, swallowing hard. “How?”
“Think of the headlines. About how our parents were married, and I debauched you likely from the moment you were beneath my roof. As a child. Or, you seduced me to try and hold on to your place. The nation has accepted you as a princess, without a blood relation, but reminding them so starkly that you do not carry royal blood is only a mistake. Can you imagine? An affair between two people who must thereafter remain family? It would be a disaster,” he reiterated.
“Then why did you kiss me?”
“Because I no longer possess the power to not kiss you. He had his hands on you,” he growled, grabbing hold of her hips and drawing her up against his body. “You may have only ever wanted one man before me. But I will make you forget him.”
She gasped. She could feel the aggressive jut of his arousal against her stomach, could feel the intensity in the way he held her. His blunt fingertips dug into her skin, and she was certain that he would leave bruises behind. But she didn’t care. She would be happy to bear bruises from Luca’s touch. Whatever that said about her.
And then, he stopped talking. Then, that infuriating, arrogant mouth was back on hers, kissing, sucking and tasting. He angled his head, dragging his teeth along her tender lower lip before nipping her, growling as he consumed her yet again.
Sophia didn’t know this game. She didn’t know what to do next. Didn’t know how to use her lips and tongue just so as Luca seemed to do.
So she battled against inexperience with enthusiasm, clinging to the front of his jacket with one hand, the other wrapped around his tie as she raised herself up on her toes and kissed him with all the needs she had inside her. She found herself being propelled backward, deeper into the garden. There was a stone bench there, and Luca gripped her hips, sliding his large, warm hands down her thighs, holding on to her hard as he lifted her so that her legs were wrapped around his waist. Then he brought both of them down onto the stone bench, with her sitting on his lap.
Her thighs were spread wide, the quivering, needy heart of her pressed hard against that telltale ridge that shouted loudly to her that this wasn’t a hallucination. That Luca did want her. That no matter it didn’t make any sense, that no matter it went against everything she had always believed about him, about herself, about who they were, it was happening.
He moved his hands back to cup her rear, drawing her even more firmly against his arousal. Heat streaked through her veins, lightning shooting through her body. She had never felt anything like this. Like the all-consuming intensity of Luca. That sure and certain mouth tasting her, the friction slick and undeniably intoxicating. Like those big, hot hands all over her curves. His length between her thighs. He was everywhere. All around her. Flooding her senses. It wasn’t just his touch. It was his flavor. His scent.
Familiar and so unfamiliar all at the same time. She knew Luca. From a distance. He had been in her life for so many years. Part of so many formative feelings that she’d had. He had most definitely been her very first fantasy. But those fantasies had been muted. They had not come close to the reality of the man himself. Of what it meant to be held by him, kissed by him, consumed by him.
This was no gauzy fantasy. This was something else entirely. It was harsh, and it was far too sharp. She was afraid it was going to slice her in two. The feelings of pleasure that she felt were nothing like the fluttery sensations that had built low in her stomach when he used to look at her across a crowded room. Were nothing compared to the swooping feeling she would get in her stomach when she would allow herself to imagine something half as racy as him kissing her on the mouth.
No. This was pain. Sharp between her legs. A hollow sensation at her core that terrified her, because she didn’t feel as though he had created it just now so much as uncovered it. That she was hollow until she could be filled by him. That if he didn’t, she would always remain this way.
Luca.
This was a raw, savage uncovering of desire. Desire that she had always known was there, but that had been muted, blunted, by her innocence. By the sure certainty that nothing could ever happen between them.
But now he wanted her. And she didn’t know if she was strong enough to bear it.
Because it wasn’t just what might happen next. No. It was what would happen when it ended. Then it would end. He had said as much.
He might have confessed his desire for her, but there were no other feelings involved. He had spoken of nothing tender. No. It was nothing but anger in Luca’s eyes. Anger and lust.
That was what had been on his face when he had chased her down in the corridor days ago. Anger. Rage. And lust. The unidentified emotion in his eyes. The one she had not been brave enough to identify.
He moved his hand up the back of her head, cupping her skull, then he plunged his fingers deep into her locks, curling his hand into a fist and tugging hard, forcing her head backward, pressing his lips to the curve of her throat. And she felt like wounded prey at the mercy of a predator. Her most vulnerable parts exposed to him.
And yet she allowed it. Didn’t fight against it. Wanted it.
Needed it.
That was the worst part. This was something more than want. This was part of her essential makeup.
She had been exposed to Luca at such an early age that he had been formative to her. That he was part of her journey to womanhood. So maybe this was apt. Terrifying though it might be, maybe this was something that needed to happen.
This wasn’t the Middle Ages. None of those men out in the ballroom had been promised a virgin princess.
She owed them nothing, for now. For now, it was only Luca.
For now.
And that would have to be enough.
“Dear God,” he rasped, dragging his tongue along the edge of her collarbone, down lower to where the plump curve of her breasts met the neckline of her dress. “I’ve lost my mind.”
“I...” She was going to say something witty. Something about the fact that she had lost hers right along with him. But she couldn’t speak. Instead, she heaved in a sharp breath, bringing that wicked mouth into deeper contact with her breast.
He growled, jerking the top of her dress down, exposing her to him.
She had never been naked in front of a man before. She found she wasn’t embarrassed. Certainly, the darkness out in the garden helped, but she knew that with the aid of the moonlight he could still see plenty. But it was Luca. The only man that she had ever been prepared to have seen her naked body. The only man she had ever fantasized about. This was terrifying. It went far beyond anything she had imagined. But it was with him.
And that made all the difference. It made every difference.
He said some words in Italian that she didn’t understand. She was fluent enough, having lived in San Gennaro for so much of her life, but she didn’t know these words. Hot and filthy-sounding, even without the translation. He scraped his cheek along that tender skin, his whiskers abrading her skin. And then he drew one aching, tightened nipple deep into his mouth, sucking hard.
She arched her back, crying out as pleasure pierced her core like an arrow.
He brought one hand up to cup her breast, rough and hot. She wanted to ask him why his hands were so rough. Wanted to ask him what he did to keep his body so finely honed. Why a man who should have the body of any man with a desk job looked as he did.
But she couldn’t ask. All of her words, all of her questions, were bottled up in her throat, and the only thing that could escape was one hoarse cry as he moved from one breast to the next with his mouth, sucking the other nipple in deep, teasing her and tormenting her as he did.
For a moment she had the thought that this was too much too soon. She wasn’t ready for this. How could she be? She had never even kissed a man before, and now she was in the arms of King Luca, her top pulled down, her breasts exposed. Riding the hard ridge of his arousal. How could that not be too much? How could she possibly withstand such a thing?
But suddenly, perhaps in time with the flex of his hips upward—that iron part of him making contact with the place where she was softest, most pliant and most sensitive—perhaps it was that that crystallized everything for her. It wasn’t enough. And she had waited a lifetime for it. It didn’t matter what experience or lack of it she’d had before. Not in the least. What mattered was that it was him.
