by Tara Pammi
“I do.” Something like pride glittered in his eyes. “And to show my appreciation for it, I’m going to kiss that lush mouth of yours.”
She raised a brow. “First, tell me what that was about.”
“Is it only me that finds this bossiness of yours hot?”
Another flicker of warmth. Another pocket of heat. “Luca...”
“They had the particular pleasure of seeing my father go off the rails. Now they look at me and wonder if I will do the same.”
“Why you?”
“Because I’m the mirror image of him, a carbon copy. The man embezzled from his own company, used his power to prey on women and generally blazed a destructive path through every life he touched. He almost brought CLG to its knees and only then Antonio interfered. He brought Leandro into the company, and together, they ousted him in two years.” There was no intonation to that statement. Yet the very bald way he said it sent a shiver through Sophia.
“What happened to him? Your father?”
“He died in jail.” A vicious gleam, a dark fire in his eyes that transformed his face. To that of a disconcertingly cruel stranger. “So Antonio waits and watches, as he’s been doing for years, to see if I will self-destruct like that, too. He tries to do a course adjust every few years.”
Which was why he’d stalked and cornered Sophia. After Luca’s latest debacle with a minister’s wife, Antonio had been desperate.
But how could anyone think Luca would turn out like his father?
She couldn’t imagine Luca ever preying on anyone’s weakness. Couldn’t imagine Luca destroying anyone’s life with such malicious...
What do you call what he did to you ten years ago? the rational part of her whispered. What he does every day with his life? How much do you really know him? “You—”
“I think we have had enough talk about bloodthirsty wolves.”
Trying to calm her ratcheting heartbeat, Sophia focused her gaze everywhere else but him. “Why are we here?”
“To have a celebratory drink, why else?” He made a show of glancing at his watch, as if he hadn’t timed all this with precision. “We have been successfully married for a whole morning.”
That was when Sophia noticed the ice bucket with a champagne bottle and next to the bucket, in a cardboard box with a little bow that looked very familiar and dear to her heart, chocolate truffles.
He was seducing her; another warning from that increasingly annoying voice.
She groaned, her mouth already watering as she imagined the dark, rich taste on her mouth. Other disturbing sensations floated beneath. She had told him once that she would sell her soul for truffles.
Countless women he’d seduced and countless little nothings they would have whispered in his ears, flushed from the good sex he gave...did he remember all those details? she wanted to ask. “Keep those away from me, Luca. They are the very devil for my diet.”
His mouth pursed tight, as if he was trying to stop himself from bursting into laughter. Which in turn animated the rest of his face.
Mouthwatering chocolate, knee-melting Luca and she—locked behind a closed door.
Ignoring her plea, he tugged her toward him and raised a truffle to her mouth. “A wedding like ours, that sets at least some things to right, deserves a little celebration, si?”
Caught in the startlingly deep conviction in his words, his gaze intent on her mouth, Sophia licked her lips.
He groaned then, a deep, husky sound that pinged through her, leaving pockets of heat all over. “Open up, cara mia.”
The taste of that melting chocolate exploded on her tongue. A moan she couldn’t stop escaped her throat, while his fingers lingered on her lips. Pressed at the soft cushion of her lower lip.
His gaze was hot, hungry. His mouth even hotter as he bent and swiped at her lower lip. A jolt of pleasure traveled through her, so acute that Sophia jerked.
Sinewed arms came around her, pulling her closer. The muscles in his arms clenched under her questing fingers. Air became short in supply. And what was there was coated with the scent of him. She felt dizzy, like she was high. On him.
She licked her lips again.
He bent and dug his teeth into her lower lip. And then stroked the nip with his tongue. Liquid heat rushed between Sophia’s legs. His fingers tightened over her hips. “You lick your lips like that, I will think it a call to action.”
She tried to wiggle out of his hold. Only managing to press herself tighter against him. “I’m not doing it on purpose.”
“I know.”
His chest pushed against her breasts. Muscle and sinew, he was rock hard everywhere she touched. What the hell did the man do to have a body like that? With his lazy lifestyle, he should have had a paunch. At least a small belly. Not this washboard abdomen that she wanted to touch and lick and scrape with her teeth.
But she didn’t want to let go of him. Not just yet, she promised herself. She didn’t want to give up this intimacy with him. This easy familiarity that they were slipping into. The laughter they shared. The way he made her see things about herself she didn’t know. She hadn’t realized how deprived she’d been of this kind of companionship, how monotonous her life had become.
Maybe there were other advantages to this short marriage of theirs. The zing in her blood, the ache between her thighs, begged her to consider them. She traced the shadows under his eyes, something she’d always wanted to do. “Do you not sleep at all?”
He held her wrist and pressed his face into her hand. Leaned into her touch as if he needed it. Breath whispering like a whistle, Sophia traced the sharp angles of his face. The pad of her forefinger reached his mouth. That mouth, God, that mouth... She had such hot dreams about it.
With no warning, he turned his head, opened his mouth and closed it over her finger. And then sucked it. A hungry, stringent pulse began at her sex, in tune with the pulls of his mouth.
Her skin felt too tight to hold her. The silk of her panties was wet. Rubbed against her inner thighs as she shifted restlessly.
He released her finger. Sophia clenched her thighs closed instinctually, needing friction there.
A dark flush dusted his cheekbones. He knew, oh, God, he knew. He knew where she was burning to be touched.
“I’m an insomniac.”
It took her several long seconds to realize he was answering her question.
He was an insomniac? “How bad is it?”
“I sleep a few hours every few days.”
“That’s it? I need at least eight hours every day to feel remotely human. Doesn’t that have side effects?”
“It does. But I have learned to live with them.”
It made him more three dimensional, more...human. As strange as that sounded. “What do you do, then? In all that time?”
Fingers busily shifted the collar of her dress. His mouth landed on the skin he bared. His tongue licked that juncture, sending hot shafts of pleasure down her spine. “Do you taste like silk all over, Sophia?”
“Yes,” she said, completely lost in the magic he wove. She tried to recall some warning, some common sense as to why she shouldn’t be in his arms, pressed up snugly against him. With him sucking on random parts of her.
Zilch. Nada. Nothing came up.
Then the diamond on her ring finger glinted, a twinkling ray of common sense. She ordered her body to stiffen, to move away, but it had different ideas. “We can’t be doing this. We can’t... If you gave me that power over your stock thinking that will make me grateful, thinking I’ll happily—”
“Spread your legs and take me inside you?” He was the one who pulled back. “You really think I’d have to pay for sex? I’m not sure who it reflects badly on that you think that, you or me. Or have you truly become as cynical as they call you?”
He castigated her so softly and yet Sophia felt his words like tiny pricks. “Then why?”
In response, he dipped his mouth and took hers again. This kiss was not an invitation or a t
ease. It was full-on assault, demanding surrender. Almost brutally efficient in the way he slowly but surely made her into a mass of shuddering sensation.
She’d made him angry, Sophia realized beneath the avalanche of sensations. His tongue laved the interior of her mouth, while his hands moved up and down her body, inciting her into a frenzy.
Expert strokes, here and there, perfect pressure, a master of seduction at work. A routine.
His heart wasn’t in it. He was seducing her with technique and experience. He was proving a point. She could be a tall, blonde model for all that it mattered to him.
The difference, even as heat drenched her, sent bile up her throat.
“No, Luca, please.” She sank her hands into his hair and tugged his face down. “That was moronic. What I said,” she finally whispered, her hands molding and tracing the line of his shoulders. “I...have never been able to believe that someone like you could want someone like me.”
She didn’t want to mention the bet again. It was in the past. But she saw his understanding of it, saw those same shutters come down.
He sighed and instantly gentled. A devil so easily calmed with honesty? A man whose feelings could hurt under that almost impenetrable mask he wore? She wasn’t so sure anymore that she knew him.
Across her temple, then over her nose, and then her jaw, he placed soft kisses. “I kiss you because you’re thoroughly kissable, Sophia. I kiss you because I can’t bear the thought of those lush lips not quivering under mine, of that stout will not surrendering to me. I kiss you because I want to hear that sigh you release when you realize this fire between us is too hot to fight. I kiss you for that moment when your shoulders lose that stiff line, when you melt into willing softness. I kiss you for that moment when you make that little growly sound in the back of your throat, as though you’ve just realized that you’ve been a passive spectator. I kiss you because then you take over the kiss, you forget why you should resist me and you devour me as if I was your favorite dessert in the world.”
He whispered the last words against her mouth. As if he was infusing her very blood with those tender words.
She sighed.
Then she groaned.
Then she kissed him back with a ravenous hunger. All things he’d predicted. He knew her so well, even in this... It was a faint warning at the back of her mind that dissolved under the influx of such delirious pleasure.
His lush mouth delivered on the fantasies it promised. Hard and soft, sometimes masculine demand, sometimes a tender entreaty.
Vining her arms around his nape, she stretched to reach more of him. He was right; she hated being a spectator. One hard thigh pushed in between her legs, but didn’t quite hit the spot.
When she shifted, one hand landed on her thigh, pushed up her dress and then pulled her leg up and around his buttocks.
His thigh moved even farther between her legs. And up. Right against the hungry core of her.
Shamelessly, Sophia clenched her thighs and then moved on his leg, back and forth. Up and down. Pleasure spiraled through her pelvis, building to an unbearable rhythm.
Teeth banged, tongues sucked. Clasping his jaw with her hands, she held him for her delectation. Then she dug her teeth into that carnal lower lip, hard, and sucked it into her mouth.
A growl rumbled from his chest. A wild beat danced in her blood as she realized something had changed between them. Tension radiated from his lean frame. His fingers became more urgent, his mouth harder and hotter.
Playtime was over.
His fingers crawled into her hair, tugged at the clip she’d used to pull it back into a tight knot. The clatter of the clip against the wall where he threw it was a bang in the hoarse silence. Fingers pulled and plumped her hair until it fell in unruly waves around her face.
She forgot what she’d meant to ask him. She forgot what had disconcerted her so much about the scene in the conference room. She forgot why she shouldn’t kiss him like this. Only sensation mattered. Only the heat building inside her mattered.
He moved his thigh away and she whimpered. She’d melt into a puddle if he didn’t hold her up. Her mouth was stinging, her blood singing; Sophia was so aroused she was ready to beg him to finish it.
He lifted her leg again, pushing away at the ugly dress. Up and up. Until the lace of her garters was visible and then a strip of her thighs. “Sophia.” He was panting against her cheek. “This is where you put a stop to it if you don’t want to be bent over that table and have me thrusting inside you in three seconds.”
Reality came crashing with that crudely worded statement. He’d put it like that on purpose. She growled, a demand and a plea twisted in that animal sound. He laughed, took her mouth with his again.
She jerked away from him, stumbled on jelly-like legs and then reached for him again to steady herself. “No,” she said, running a hand over her mouth.
All she wanted was to cry. Her mind felt soaked in desire, frustration. “God, I came looking for you because I wanted to talk.” His pupils were dilated, his chest still falling and rising. But he didn’t look the least bit put out for being denied the same satisfaction. “I didn’t mean to hump you like a dog in heat. You’re not angry?”
“I’m in considerable pain, yes...” He sighed “I’m not angry. I know you’d like to believe the worst about me but I do have a little self-control.”
“Oh, is there anything I can do to—”
“You can fix your dress and stop offering to help. Next time you offer, I’ll ask you to go down on your knees.”
O went her mouth again. An instant image fluttered through her brain. Did he ask it of all his lovers? Did they do it because they didn’t want to lose his interest?
Personally, Sophia had always thought the act a little subjugating, undignified and maybe even a little painful to the participating woman’s mouth. “Do you ask it of all your lovers or—”
“Stop talking, Sophia,” he growled again.
Sophia dashed into the attached bathroom. She splashed water over her heated cheeks. His fingers had built her hair into a cloud around her face. She looked soft and feminine and like a woman who lost her mind after two kisses.
Damn it, she had the most important meeting of her life in a few minutes and here she was, climbing all over Luca. He was like her craving for that chocolate truffle. A bad habit she thought she’d beat only to succumb again and again.
He’d suggested she fall. And she was falling gloriously. She thought herself above all those women who threw themselves at him. How bitchily righteous she’d been... If anything, she was even more foolish because she’d already had a taste of him ten years ago.
She’d thought herself beautiful, special to have attracted his attention. And it had been nothing but a bet. “Maybe deprivation will build a little character,” she said, coming out of the bathroom.
Could she sound any more naively hopeful, any more sanctimoniously righteous? She couldn’t, absolutely couldn’t care if he satisfied himself with another woman that night.
He was scowling. “We’re both consenting adults and have been joined in the holiest of bonds in front of God and man just this morning. You’re making us both walk back out like horny dogs. You have enough character, don’t you think?”
He sounded so pained, so disgruntled, that Sophia burst out laughing.
It was easy, far too easy, to be mesmerized by Luca’s easy charm. As long as she remembered that there was nothing of substance beneath. “I scheduled a meeting with you and Leandro in an hour.”
“Your plans for Rossi Leather are ready for Leandro?”
She nodded, barely bracing herself against the admiration in his eyes. “I want to run them by you and Leandro first before I present them to Salvatore. That way, we’re all in the loop.”
How was it that with of all the men she’d dealt with—CEOs and ruthless businessmen and millionaires—it was this wastrel playboy that was never intimidated by her? Who only showed respect for her accompl
ishments and her ambition.
Could that easy confidence come from just his looks? Or was there more to Luca than met the eye?
He uncorked the champagne bottle and poured it into two flutes. Handing her one, he clinked his against hers. The bubbles kissed her throat on the way down. She looked up to find his gaze on her. Rattled by the line of her thoughts, she said nothing.
They talked of a varied range of topics, sometimes agreeing and more than once, getting into a heated argument. Only when her watch pinged did Sophia realize how invigorating and informative their discussion had been.
And how enjoyable.
Throughout the meeting with Leandro and Luca, all Sophia could think of was how jarringly discordant, how disconcertingly different this side of Luca was from the man she’d despised for so long.
CHAPTER SIX
THE LAST THING Sophia wanted, after the events of the last week, was a party.
A party thrown specially in honor of Luca and her.
A party to which every member of the high society of Milan was invited, including men who’d known of her humiliation ten years ago.
A party thrown by her in-laws, the Conti family, which was a minefield of dysfunction—her family seemed so normal even with her differences with Salvatore—she couldn’t imagine navigating without setting off an explosion.
The last she’d seen of Luca had been outside the Conti building, six days ago. He’d called a taxi for her after her meeting with Leandro and him and then driven off. The invite for the party came later that night, in the form of a phone call from Leandro’s wife, Alexis, her new sister-in-law.
When she’d moaned about attending, Salvatore had warned her that she couldn’t alienate her husband’s family. Her new family, in fact.
To which, she had, quite forcefully and uncharacteristically, asked him if he was that happy to be rid of her. Only silence had remained then. Full of guilt and shame, Sophia had apologized to him and left.
She’d never confronted Salvatore like that. There had never been any need. Since he had married her mother, he’d been kindness itself to her. He’d paid for her to go to University, given her a job at Rossi Leather, provided her with everything she could have ever asked for.
