by Maisey Yates
That she had longed for, craved, desired this very thing for what felt like an eternity.
Luca. Her stepbrother. The man who seemed for all the world to find her utterly and completely beneath his notice, was kissing her. And she could not deny him anything that he wanted.
She could not deny herself what she wanted.
Luca’s large, warm hands slid down the shape of her body as if he was taking her measurements with those strong fingers. Then they moved down farther, to her thighs, finding the hem of her dress, already pushed up partway, and shoving it up farther, exposing her even more.
He made a low, feral sound. Hungry. Untamed. Perhaps he was like this with all women; that was a possibility. One that she didn’t want to think about. At least not too much. She would like to be special. But she had no idea how she could be. Anything between them was impossible, and she knew it. She had always known it. That didn’t mean her feelings disappeared.
“I have wanted you,” he said, his voice rough, as rough as the scrape of his whiskers against the side of her neck as he dragged a kiss down her throat. “It is a madness. It is like a sickness. And nothing...nothing has ever come close to banishing it from me. You are like a poison in my blood.”
The words sounded tortured. Tormented. And for a moment she wondered if he felt even the slightest bit of what she had felt over the past years. And if he did... Then whatever this could be, and she had no illusions that it could be anything remotely close to permanent, she knew it was the right thing.
Madness. Sickness. Poison.
Those words described what she felt for Luca far too closely. They resonated inside her. They were her truth. And if they were his...how could she deny it?
She was no longer content to simply sit on his lap and be kissed. No. She wanted him. She wanted this. And she was going to have him.
She returned volley with a growl of her own, biting his lower lip as she moved her hands to that black tie that held his crisp, white shirt shut. With trembling fingers she undid the knot and pulled it open, then made quick work of the top button of that shirt. Followed by the next. And the next. She pushed the fabric apart, exposing muscles, chest hair and hot, delicious skin to her touch.
She had heard people talk about desire. But they had never said that it was so close to feeling ill. So close to feeling like you might die if you couldn’t have what you wanted.
So close to pain.
There was a hollow ache between her legs, running through her entire body, and she felt that if it was not filled by him she wouldn’t be able to go on. It was as simple as that.
She traced her fingertips over his chest, across his nipple, gratified by the rough sound of pleasure that exited his mouth as she did so. He wrapped his arms around her tightly, lowering his head again, tasting and teasing her breasts as he did. She had never imagined that insanity could be blissful. But hers certainly was. Magical in a way that she had not imagined it could be. She had not thought that there could be beauty in torment. But there was. In this moment.
In this world they had created in the rose garden, separate from the concerns happening in the ballroom. The concerns of their lives, real lives, and not this stolen moment.
There were men in there that she was expected to consider seriously as husbands. A whole raft of duties and responsibilities waiting for both of them that had nothing to do with satisfying their pleasure under a starry sky with only the moon as witness.
But she was glad they had found this. This quiet space. The space where only they belonged. Where their parents’ marriage didn’t matter. Where their titles didn’t matter. Where—whatever that could possibly mean to a man like Luca—they simply were Luca and Sophia, with nothing else to concern them.
He kept on saying things. Rough. Broken. Words in Italian and English. Some of which she couldn’t understand, not so much because of the language barrier but because of the intensity in his words, the depth of them. The kinds of things he said, talking about doing things she had never imagined, much less spoken about.
But they washed over her in a wave, and she found she wanted them all. That she wanted this.
Him.
Broken, and out of control in a way that she had never imagined it was possible for Luca to be. At all other moments he was the picture of control. Of absolute and total certainty. And in this moment he did not seem as though he had the power to be that man.
It made her feel powerful. Desired.
His hands moved between her thighs, sliding between the waistband of her panties and teasing her where she was wet and ready for him. For a moment she felt a fleeting sense of embarrassment, a scalding heat in her cheeks. Because certainly now he would know how much she wanted him. How much she felt for him. What woman would be like this if she didn’t? And there, he found the incontrovertible evidence. But if it bothered him, he didn’t show it. Instead, he seemed inflamed by it. Seemed to want her all the more.
“Perhaps later,” he rasped, kissing her neck, her cheek, making his way back to her lips. “Perhaps later I will take my time. Will be able to savor you as you should be. But now...I find there is not enough time, and I must have you.”
She wanted him to have her. Whatever that might mean. She needed it.
He shifted, undid the closure on his pants and wrapped his arms tightly around her, angling her hips so that she was seated above him, the head of his arousal pressing against the entrance to her body.
And then he thrust up into her, deep and savage, giving no quarter to her innocence at all. It hurt. But Luca didn’t seem to notice. Instead, he began to move inside her in hard, decisive thrusts. She couldn’t catch her breath. But then, she didn’t want to. Even as she felt like she was being invaded, conquered, she didn’t want him to stop. Even as it hurt, she didn’t want him to stop. Gradually, the pain gave way to pleasure, an overwhelming, gripping sense of it that built inside her until she thought she wouldn’t be able to take it much longer.
When it broke over her it was like a wave containing a revelation, pleasure like she had never known bursting through her. If she had looked up to find fireworks in the sky she wouldn’t have been surprised. But the only thing above her was stars. The fireworks were in her.
They were the fireworks.
She and Luca together.
She held on to him tightly as she rode out her release, pulsing waves that seemed to go on and on crashing inside her endlessly. Then he gripped her hips hard, driving himself up into her with brute force as he found his own release, a growl vibrating through his chest as he did.
And then somehow, it was over. Nothing but the sound of their breathing, the feel of his heart pounding heavily against her hand, where it rested against his sweat-slicked chest.
The night sky no longer seemed endless. Instead, it pressed down on them, the reality of what had just occurred lowering the blackness but leaving the stars out of reach.
She felt dark. Cold.
She was cold. Because she was naked in a garden.
Luca moved her away from him, beginning to straighten his clothing. “We must go back,” he said, his tone remote and stiff.
“How?” she asked. Because she had a feeling he did not just mean to the ball, but to the way things had been before he had touched her. Before that rock wall had broken between them and revealed what they had both desired for so long.
“It doesn’t matter how. Only that it must be.”
She looked at him, searching his face in the darkness. “I don’t know if I can.”
“But you must,” he said, uncompromising.
The light from the moon cast hollows of his face into light and shadow, making it look as though he was carved out of the very granite his voice seemed to be made of.
“You will go back into that ballroom and you will dance with the rest of the men you said you would dance with. Then you will choose a husband,” he continued.
“Luca,” she said, her voice breaking. “I can’t do that. Not afte
r I was just...”
“It is only sex, sorellina,” he said, the endearment landing with a particular sharpness just now. “You will find a way to cope.”
Panic attacked her, its sharp, grasping claws digging into her. “I was a virgin, you idiot.”
That stopped him. He drew back as though he had been slapped.
“You said...you said you wanted a man.”
She looked away, her shame complete now, her face so hot she was sure she was about to burst into flame. “Who do you think I wanted, you fool?”
The silence that fell between them was heavy. As if the velvet sky had fallen over the top of them.
“Not the choice I would have made my first time. But the choice was yours. You had every chance to say no. You did not.” Suddenly his tone turned fierce. “Am I to assume you didn’t want to? Are you trying to imply that you didn’t know what you were doing?”
“No,” she said. “I knew what I was doing.”
“Then I fail to see what your virginity has to do with any of it. This is hardly Medieval times. No one will expect a virgin princess on their wedding night anyway.”
“I suppose not.”
“I must go back. I am the host, after all. Take all the time you need to gather yourself.”
He said that as though she should be impressed with his softness. With his kindness. She was about to tell him how ludicrous that was, but then he turned and walked away, leaving her there, half-naked on a stone bench, having just lost her virginity to her stepbrother. To her king.
Her lungs were going to cave in on themselves. Collapse completely, along with her heart. It was shattered anyway, so it didn’t matter where the pieces landed.
This was her fantasy. That bright little spot of hope that had existed somewhere inside her, a glimmer of what could be that kept her warm on the darkest of nights.
Now it was gone. Snuffed out. As dark as the night around her.
When she went to bed at night, she would no longer wonder. Because she knew. It had been better than she had imagined. Had transformed her. In more ways than the physical. He had been inside her. Joined to her. This man that had held her emotions captive for half of her life.
This man she’d spent nights weaving beautiful, gilded stories about in her head before she fell asleep. If only. If maybe. If someday.
But it had happened. And now there was no more rest in if only.
Nothing remained but shattered dreams.
He acted as though they would be able to go back to normal. But Sophia knew she would never be the same again.
CHAPTER SIX
SOPHIA HAD AVOIDED him for the past few weeks. Ever since she had gone back into the ballroom and proceeded to dance with every man he had commanded her to.
She had been pale-faced and angry-looking, but gradually, it had all settled into something serene, though no less upset.
But he did not approach her. Not again. And she moved around the palace as if she were a ghost.
He had failed her. Had failed them both. But there was nothing to be done. There was no use engaging in a postmortem. His control had failed him at the worst possible moment.
He had done the one thing he had purposed he would never do. And it had been all much more a spectacular failure than he had initially imagined it would be.
A virgin.
He had not thought she would be that.
She had gone to university. Had moved out in the world for quite some time, and she was beautiful. In his mind, irresistible. Hell, in practice she was irresistible. Had he been able to resist her, then he surely would have.
No man could possibly resist her. If his own ironclad control had failed...
So perhaps that was his pride. Because clearly she had somehow remained untouched all this time.
And he had failed at maintaining that particular status quo.
But that other man had been touching her. Holding her in his arms.
Perversely, he was satisfied by the fact that he had been the first man to touch her. It was wrong. And he should feel a deep sense of regret over it. Part of him did. But another part of him gloried in it.
As with all things Sophia, there was no consensus between desire and morality.
The only contact he’d had with Sophia had been for her to tell him that she wanted to speak with him today. And so he sat in his office, his hands curled into fists, resting on the top of his desk while he waited for her to appear.
The fact that she never failed to put him on edge irked him even now.
There’d never been a more pointless and futile attraction in the history of the world. Or, perhaps there had been, but it had not bedeviled him, and so, it didn’t concern him now. No, it was Sophia who had that power over him.
And she was not for him.
There was no way he could reconfigure their fates to make it so. No way that he could switch around their circumstances. Even if she weren’t his stepsister...
He was not the man for her.
The door to his office cracked slightly, and she slipped inside, not knocking. Not waiting for an announcement. Because of course she wouldn’t. Of course she would break with protocol, even now. Not allowing the blessed formality inherent in royal life to put some distance between them when it was much needed.
“You wished to come and speak to me?”
“Yes,” she said. “But I should think that was self-evident. Considering that I made an arrangement to come and speak to you, and now I am here doing it.”
“There is no need to be sarcastic, Sophia.”
“I’m surprised you recognized it, Luca.”
For a moment their eyes caught and held, the sensation of that connection sending a zap of electricity down through his body.
She looked away as though she had felt that same sensation. As though it had burned.
“I recognize it easily enough. What did you wish to speak to me about?”
“I wanted to tell you that I’ve made my selection. I’ve decided who I will marry.”
That was the last thing he had expected, and her words hit him with the force of a punch squared to the chest. So intense, so hard, he thought it might have stopped his heart from beating altogether.
“You have?”
“Yes. I hope that you value an alliance with Sweden.”
He had not been aware that he possessed the ability to feel finer emotions. Until he felt a last remaining piece of himself—one he had not realized existed—turn to stone. “I’m surprised to hear you say that.”
“That I selected him specifically? Or that I have selected anyone at all?”
“That you have complied at all. Rather than making this incredibly difficult.”
She clasped her hands in front of her, her dark hair falling down into her face. The outfit she was wearing was much more suited to her than her usual fare. Tight, as that ball gown on the night he had first kissed her had been. A tangerine-colored top that shaped exquisitely to her curves, and a skirt with a white and blue pattern.
But the pattern was secondary to the fact that it hugged her body like a second skin. As he wished he could hug her even now. What he wouldn’t give to span that glorious waist again, to slide his palms down to those generous hips.
Having her once had done nothing to eradicate the sickness inside him.
But this marriage... Perhaps it would accomplish what he had hoped it would.
And in the end, he would still have been the one to have her first.
Yes. But he will have her second, if he hasn’t had her already, and you will have to watch the two of them together.
He had always known that would be his fate. There was no fighting against it.
“I had some very important questions answered the night of the ball,” she said, making bold eye contact with him. “I have no reason to fight against this marriage. Not now.”
There was an unspoken entreaty in those words, and it was one he could not answer.
He would ha
ve to marry, yes, that was certain. But it would never be a woman like her. It would be a woman who understood. One who didn’t look at him with hope in her eyes.
One who wouldn’t mind that the part of him that could care for another person, the part of him that loved, had been excised with a scalpel long ago.
That he was a man who ruled with his head because he knew a heart was no compass at all. Least of all his.
It felt nothing. Nothing at all.
“Excellent,” he said. “I’m glad there’s no longer a barrier.”
Color flew to her cheeks, and he did nothing to correct her assumption that he had made an intentional double entendre. He had not. But if it made her angry, all the better.
“Let me know how soon you wish for the wedding to be, and I will arrange it.”
“In a month,” she said quickly. “We are to be married in a month.”
“Then I will prepare an announcement.”
* * *
Sophia’s head hurt. Her heart hurt. Everything hurt. The depression that she had fallen under since the ball was pronounced. It made everything she did feel heavy. Weighted down.
The engagement to Erik hadn’t helped matters. The courtship in general hadn’t helped at all. And she felt like a terrible person. He was solicitous, kind. Their interactions had not been physical at all. The idea of letting him touch her so closely to when she and Luca had...
Though part of her wondered if she should. Like ripping off a Band-Aid.
The mystery was gone from sex anyway.
A tear slid down her cheek and she blinked, shocked, because she hadn’t realized she had been so close to crying. She wiped it away and swallowed hard, attempting to gather herself.
She was currently getting a wedding gown fitted. That meant she had to look a little bit less morose. Though, right now, she was sitting in the room alone, wearing nothing but a crinoline.
Both the seamstress and her mother would be in the room soon, and she really needed to find a way to look as if she was engaged in the process.
