by Maisey Yates
It was the breaking point. Because if the name didn’t matter, then what he had endured, then the lack of action his mother had taken to defend him, would be null and void, and that was unfathomable to him in many ways. This was where the corner turned. Where it became far too close to what had been done to him. And that, he could not allow.
“What are we going to do today?” The question was open, honest, and it made him feel strange.
“I had not given it much thought.”
That was a lie. What he wanted, what he wanted more than anything, was to strip her completely naked, rip that sheet right off her as he had done last night, and keep her that way for the entire day.
“Your wardrobe should arrive soon,” he said instead of that. “And then of course, there is the beach, and the pool.”
“Badminton,” she pointed out. “We used to play badminton.”
“You cannot be serious.”
“We’re rather cut off here, Luca,” she said. “I was thinking of all the things we used to do to entertain ourselves.”
He treated her to a scorching look, and he watched as her face turned scarlet all the way up to the roots of her hair.
“We can’t do that the entire time,” she protested, her hand flinging out wide like an indignant windmill.
He leaned forward, gripping her chin with his thumb and forefinger. “Why not?”
Her eyes widened. “Because... Because... We can’t.” Her protest was beginning to sound weak.
“I’m going to need a better reason than that, Sophia. As we have spent years not doing it, and I feel that we have much time to make up for.”
“Well,” she said, sniffing piously. “It’s not done.”
“I assure you, cara, that it is done quite frequently.”
“You would die.” She sounded entirely certain of this assessment.
He couldn’t help himself. He laughed. “That’s a bit overdramatic, don’t you think?”
“No,” she protested. “There is nothing dramatic about it. You’ve been there both times we’ve, well, you know. I can’t breathe for nearly an hour afterward. If we did it all day...”
“It would be different,” he said. “But no less impacting.”
“Is it always like this, then? Does it just naturally shatter you less and less each time? Is this how it’s been with all your lovers?”
He could lie to her. But then, a lie would neither bring him joy nor accomplish anything. Truth was the best option.
“It has never been like this with any of my previous lovers,” he said. “I already told you that you have been my obsession for far too long. And there has been nothing that I could do to put a dent in that hunger. And before you...I didn’t know such hunger at all.”
“Oh,” she said, sounding subdued.
“I wished often that it was simple enough to just want another woman,” he said. “But it is not.”
He shook his head. “There is no way around it. We must go through.”
“Perhaps after badminton.”
“If you get out a badminton racket, I will break it over my knee.” Possibly, he could break it over another part of his body, given how hard he was at the moment.
It didn’t take much. He was held in thrall, just for a moment, as the sunlight broke through a crack in the curtains, streamed onto Sophia’s lovely upturned face, catching the light behind her wild curls. Sophia was naked in his bed. After so many years of lust.
She was his. There was triumph in that, to be certain.
He was Nero. Fiddling while Rome burned, he supposed. But Rome was going to burn no matter what at this point. He supposed he might as well play away.
“There is one thing I’m curious about.”
“Whether or not I take cream in my coffee?”
“No. Why were you a virgin, Sophia?”
She drew back, pressing her hand to the center of her chest, the expression almost comically missish. “Does it matter?”
“The very fact that you would ask that question says to me that it must.”
“I never found anyone that I felt... Luca, if no other man could make me feel what I felt just looking at you, if he kissed me, if he touched me, what was the point of going to bed with him? I would be thinking of you.”
He was humbled by that. Shame. A familiar, black fog rolling over his shoulders and down his spine. Yes, shame was his constant companion. And sex was...
It never occurred to him to deprive himself of sex. His introduction to it—such as it was—had not been his choice. And he had set out to make a choice after that, and every time thereafter.
It had become a way of putting distance and bodies between that first encounter.
To prove to himself that in truth, the two experiences were not even the same. But what had been done to him against his will that night was something dark. Something ugly.
Control. A deep contempt for another person’s autonomy.
“I was with other people and thought of you,” he pointed out. “Unless I made it a point not to. And then, I made sure it was someone who was quite different to you.”
“I suppose that’s the difference between men and women, then,” she said.
“Or simply the difference between you and me,” he responded. “Sophia... There are many reasons that I never allowed myself to touch you for all that time.”
“Your reputation.”
“My reputation, the reputation of San Gennaro, is only a piece of the puzzle.”
“Then tell me what the puzzle is, Luca. I feel like I should understand since we are supposed to be married. I feel like I need to understand you.”
“We have a history,” he said slowly. “One that has been difficult. I cannot... I cannot adequately express to you the way it was when I first noticed you as a woman. The way that it hit me. You were always...reckless and wild in a way that I could not fathom, Sophia, and yet the fact that it bothered me as it did never made any sense. Until you turned seventeen. And suddenly...everything that you were, this vivacious, irrepressible girl, crashed into what you had become. I knew I couldn’t have you. I knew that it was impossible. And so, as much as there was never closeness between us, I pushed you away. I don’t regret that. It was my attempt at doing what was right. I failed, in the end. And so, those years, that history, is useless to us. Let us forget who we were in the past and why. We have to make a way forward, and I don’t think there are answers lurking behind.”
She narrowed her eyes, looking at him with total skepticism. He could see that she did not agree with him, not remotely.
But there was no point talking about the shadows in the past. He didn’t want her to know him. He didn’t want anyone to know him. They could have a life, like this. One where they made love and she teased him. Frankly, it was a better life than he had ever imagined for himself.
He had not ever fathomed that his duty could be quite so pleasurable.
He had resolved himself to a life without the woman that he wanted most. Now he had her. There was no point dragging skeletons out of the closet.
“You have an objection, cara?”
“You want to act as though we haven’t known each other for most of our lives? You don’t want to go back and try to understand who I was?”
“Isn’t it most important that we understand who each other is now?”
“Can we do that? Can it be accomplished if we don’t actually know what each other was built with?”
“There are no surprises in my story. I was born into royalty.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Here I remain.”
“You lost your mother when you were sixteen. I suppose that was very painful for you.”
“Yes,” he responded, the word sharp like a blade.
It was painful. But perhaps not in the way she meant. Not in any way he could put into words.
&
nbsp; Losing someone you were meant to love, someone you had grown to hate, was its own particular kind of pain. There had been guilt. Such guilt. As if it were the hatred in his heart that had poisoned her to death. As if he had somehow caused her car to go off the road that day.
He knew better than that now.
But that, too, was a discussion they would not have.
“Today I thought we might have a walk on the beach,” he said. “What do you think of that?”
She nodded slowly. “That sounds nice.”
Though she still didn’t sound convinced.
She would see. It would be better his way.
And if Sophia wanted to share herself with him, he was more than happy to allow it. In fact, he found he was quite hungry for it.
But he would not poison her with the stories of his past.
The poison in his own veins was quite enough. He refused to spread it.
On the score of protecting the family reputation, of protecting her from a life with him, he had failed.
He did not have to fail when it came to everything else.
* * *
Sophia was hot and sweaty after spending an afternoon combing through the white sand beaches, finding seashells and taking breaks from the sun to soak her feet in the water.
True to his word, her clothing had eventually arrived, and she had found a lovely white dress that seemed suited to the surroundings. They had walked together, and he hadn’t touched her.
It occurred to her that Luca had never touched her without sexual intent. Nothing intentional anyway.
There had been no casual handholding. He’d never moved to touch her with affection, only to strip her of her clothes.
Which was why when they had been on their return trip to the estate she had looped her fingers through his and taken control of that situation.
She had almost immediately wished that she hadn’t. It had been so impacting. So very strange. To hold Luca’s hand. Like they were a couple. Not just secret, torrid lovers, but something much gentler and sweeter, too.
Strange, because there was no real gentleness in their interaction.
Although, it had been quite a nice thing he’d done this morning with the fruit. The herbal tea notwithstanding.
When they returned to the villa, dinner had been laid out for them on the deck that overlooked the sea. A lovely spread of fresh seafood and crisp, bright vegetables.
All a little bit healthy for her taste. Though that concern was answered at the end of the meal when Luca went into the kitchen and returned a moment later with the truly sinful-looking dessert made of layers of cream, meringue and raspberry.
Sophia took a bite of the decadent dessert and closed her eyes, listening to the sound of the ocean below, the sun still creating warmth, even as it sank down into the sea. A breeze blew gently through her hair, lifting the heavy curls off the back of her neck, cooling her.
For a moment she had the horrible feeling that if she opened her eyes she would find that Luca wasn’t really there. That she had somehow hallucinated all of this in order to survive the wedding.
That in reality she was on her honeymoon with Erik. Because of course it had to be a fantasy that Luca had come to claim her. That he had whisked her out of that waiting room in the back of the chapel and spirited her off to a private island.
But no. When she opened her eyes there he was. Regarding her closely, his dark, unfathomable eyes assessing her. The remaining light of the sun shone brilliantly on his razor-sharp cheekbones, highlighting the rough, dark whiskers that had grown over his square jaw. She did not think he had shaved since they had arrived.
She suddenly had the urge to watch him shave. To watch him brush his teeth.
To claim all those little intimate moments for herself. Those routine things that were so easy to take for granted. She wanted to be close to him.
That was the sad thing. She had made love to him a few times now, and still, she didn’t feel...like they were close.
Physically, they had been as close as two people could be. But there was still a gulf between them. She wanted to know what had created him. This good, hard man who clung to his principles like a mountain climber holding on to the face of a rock.
He fascinated her, this man. Who only ever let his passion unleash itself in the bedroom. Who was otherwise all things reserved and restrained.
That he had been hiding his desire for her for so many years was a revelation.
But he didn’t want her to know him. He had made that clear.
She understood now why her mother had sounded so upset on the phone. It wasn’t simply the issues that they would have with the press. But the pain she would experience, having feelings for her husband that far outweighed the feelings he had for her. Of wanting more of him than he would ever share. Luca desired her. He wanted her body. He’d had it. But sex and intimacy were not the same things.
That fact had become clear when they held hands on the beach and it had rocked her world in a wholly different fashion than being naked with him had.
One thing was clear: sex was certainly the way to reach him.
Because it was the only time when his guard was down. Of course, hers was equally reduced when they were making love. He did things to her... Made her feel things... Things she had not imagined were possible. And she wanted more. She had never thought of herself as greedy, not really.
How could a woman who had been born into poverty and become a princess overnight ever ask for more out of life? And yet...she wanted more. Being with him, finally having what she had held herself back from for all that time, had only made her more greedy.
There was something about today, about the beautiful afternoon spent walking on the beach that ended with holding hands, and this magical dinner, that made her feel a sense of urgency. Or maybe it wasn’t the dinner, or the handholding. Maybe it was simply the fact that they were to be married. And if they were going to get married then it meant this was forever. And if this was going to be her forever...
It had been a certain kind of torture, wanting Luca and not having him. But having him in some ways, but never in others, was worse.
Or if not worse, it was simply that it was closer. She couldn’t pretend that there was nothing between them, not when she was sharing his bed.
He was beautiful. And physically, he made her feel so very much. It wasn’t enough.
And maybe she was so perfectly aware of how not enough it was in part because she knew full well that it could be more.
She had seen that passion. She had felt it. Had been over him, beneath him, as he had cried out her name and lost himself completely in their lovemaking.
She wanted that man out of bed, too.
But in order to reach him, she imagined she had to appeal to him first in bed.
Not a hardship as far as she was concerned.
But it would perhaps require her to be a bit more bold than she had been previously.
After all, she had been a virgin until only recently. But the fact remained that what she had told Luca earlier was true. She had been a virgin because of him. Because of the way he had made her feel.
That meant he could have any of her. All of her. Because he was the one her body had been waiting for, so truly, there was no reason for her to be timid. Not where he was concerned.
“Just have some business to attend to,” Luca said, rising from his chair. “I will meet you in our room.”
The meaning behind his words was clear. But if Luca thought he was going to be in control of every interaction between them...well, she was about to prove to him otherwise.
CHAPTER TEN
LUCA WAS QUESTIONING the wisdom of checking the way their story was being played out in the headlines before he and Sophia left the island. What was the point? He could have simply left it all a mystery. Could have
spent this time focused on her.
But no, the ugly weight of reality had pulled on him, and he had answered. So he had done some cursory searches to see if they had been splashed all over the tabloids yet.
He had underestimated the intensity of the reaction.
The headlines were lurid. Bold. Scandal in the palace. A borderline incestuous love affair between stepsiblings that had been going on for...God knew how long.
A good and handsome groom had been left at the altar, the King of San Gennaro finally snapping and claiming his illicit lover before she could marry someone else.
There were one, maybe two, stories that shed a more romantic light on the situation. Forbidden lovers who had been in crisis. Who had not been able to choose to be together until it had been decided for them by fate. By a pregnancy.
The truth was somewhere in the middle. He and Sophia certainly weren’t in love.
He looked out the window, at the clear night sky, the stars punching through the blackness. It reminded him of being with Sophia. Little spots of brightness that managed to bring something into those dark spaces.
There was so much more darkness than light. And it was amazing that the blackness did not consume it.
For a brief moment he felt something like hope. Like perhaps it would be the same with her. That his blackness would not cover her light, but that her light would do something to brighten that darkness.
But no.
It could not be. Not really. He was not fool enough to believe it. Hope, in his experience, was a twisted thing.
Was for better men than him.
Suddenly, he was acutely aware of the pitch-dark. Of the way that it stretched out inside him. Yawning endlessly.
He needed to get back to her. Needed to have her hold him in her arms.
A wretched thing. Because he should be the one carrying her.
It was amazing, but somewhere, amidst all the granite inside his chest, there was softness for her. A softness he had never allowed himself to truly focus on before. He had been too obsessed with pushing her away. With keeping his feelings for her limited.
It was over now.
