by Tara Pammi
Back down, a voice whispered. Back down and walk away.
Sophia smothered that voice and shoved it out of her head. No force on earth could make her leave the room now. Not now, when maybe, there was a chance she could understand why she was so drawn to him. Why this...madness claimed her so easily when it was Luca Conti.
“I’m a novelty to you right now. But you can’t help it, can you?” She couldn’t let him bespell her with such words. “You attract women like you were honey and they bees. It’s probably coded into your DNA—”
“She. Followed. Me.” His nostrils flared. A pulse flickered in his sculpted jaw. Dark fire leaped in his eyes, a lethal warning. “It’s a little disconcerting how much the idea of a quick screw with another faceless woman holds no appeal right now.”
A sense of coiled danger radiated from him and the woman in her, instead of being terrified, wanted to court that danger. Wanted to sink under his skin and burrow there. Wanted to leave a mark on him this time, like he’d done on her.
Like a moth called toward a column of fire, she went to him. She straddled the bench, uncaring that it pulled the dress to her thighs. That it signaled so many things that she hadn’t even realized she was ready for.
The air around them thickened. The party outside melted away. Slowly he moved closer. The masculine scent of him filled her lungs.
“You didn’t discourage her. You didn’t push her away. You sat there and let her paw you. You didn’t act like a man who wants another.”
Something gleamed in his eyes, a sudden, violent energy radiating from his frame. His hands curled around her nape and pressed none too gently. The rough scrape of his fingers against her tender skin zinged through her entire body like an electric charge. He dipped his head, and licked the rim of her ear. Arching her back, Sophia closed her eyes.
Deft fingers pulled away her chandelier earrings. Teeth nipped at her earlobe. A surge of liquid desire went straight to the place between her thighs.
Lights and stars behind her eyelids.
The soft tinkle of the earrings as they hit the marble floor threw her a rope toward sanity.
The devil was distracting her and how well. For now, his tongue was licking inside her ear. “You want a claim on me yet you refuse to even wade in?”
“If you’re going to make a fool of me again, look into my eyes and admit it.”
Her scalp tingled as long fingers sank into her hair and tugged hard. Exposing the curve of her throat to his mouth. Hot and open, he breathed the words against her skin. “You’ll not make me feel guilty for something I haven’t done.”
His fingers were over her bare shoulders now. Stroking back and forth, up and down, reaching lower and lower over her neckline. Her nipples puckered when he almost touched one on the downward trajectory.
He didn’t.
She gritted her jaw hard to keep from crying out. From begging. She was sure that was what he wanted of her. Utter surrender. “Then why can’t you just say ‘I wasn’t going to touch her’?”
She was desperate for him to say he had no intention. But he didn’t. Because Luca never lied. The thought of his mouth on that blonde let out a feral anger in Sophia.
“Why set the rules for a game you’re too cowardly to play?”
“It’s not enough they chase you day in, day out? You can’t let one go even when you’re not interested?” His hands stilled.
Why couldn’t he, for one evening, be hers and hers alone? “Is your self-worth that low? Is it their adulation you crave?”
His arms returned to his sides, abandoning her aroused flesh. He stood up from the bench and walked away. Panic bloomed in her stomach. “I think I’ve had enough of this drama, this marriage business, for one day.”
Denigration, disinterest; it was a slap to her face. Carefully orchestrated to hurt her, to push her away.
There had been such amusement in his eyes that day at the board meeting. But underneath it, Sophia had also felt something else. And when she’d asked him about it, he’d distracted her.
It had definitely short-circuited her brain and stopped her from pestering him. But she now saw it all clearly.
Like an expert writer, he’d controlled the narrative at the board meeting—from their open shock and fear that he might start taking part in the Conti board politics, to suspense for his own shockingly deep reasons, and then, finally, to relief that it would be Sophia who would take his place.
Presented without that convoluted act, they wouldn’t have tolerated her presence in their midst, much less welcomed her opinion. But by presenting her as an alternative to him and the mischief he could wreak, he’d forced them to accept her.
Luca was not without control.
Luca was control. He walked it like a tightrope. Every breath, every smile, every word, every gesture, it was all done with a purpose.
“You control what everyone thinks about you.” But why?
CHAPTER EIGHT
HE GROWLED FROM across the room. This horrible noise that came from his throat, as if he were a ferocious but wounded animal and she the hunter.
She got off the bench and moved toward him.
“Your affairs are always splashed about. There’s always some drama at some big party where you behave abominably. The only time one of your affairs wasn’t splashed about was with me.”
Now his hands were fisted by his sides.
Somehow, that disgusting bet had never reached anyone’s ears. Of course, she saw the knowledge of it in those friends of his over the years, taunting and offensive, but no one had actually dared say a word about it to her face. Or spread it around that the chubby geek, Sophia Rossi, had fallen for the devilish Luca Conti.
“Will you give me sainthood now for not making a public spectacle of you, Sophia? Are you that desperate to justify this?” The sneer in his voice struck her like a stinging slap.
She bucked against his tone. But she didn’t break and run away as he intended. She reached for him and leaned her forehead against his back.
Warmth from his skin radiated through his shirt. Hands shaking, she pulled his shirt out of his trousers. She sank them under it, frantic in her search for bare skin.
Skin like hot velvet, the muscles bunching under her touch. She moved her questing hands around to his abdomen. Up and down, like he’d done with her. Ropes of lean muscles. And his heart thundering like a ram under her palm.
He was a study in stillness, in tension, in rejection. Every inch of him was locked tight. Another push and he would lash back at her, would break her.
But how could she back down now?
She’d always thought of his looks as the gateway to his arrogance, to his indulgent lifestyle, but now she wondered if they weren’t just a mask, hiding so much more than they revealed. Every woman was blinded by his smile; every man wanted to have that natural, effortless charm he possessed; everyone willingly bought into the role he played.
She’d bought it, too, all these years. “You...you perform, Luca. For Antonio, for Leandro, for Tina, for the entire world. You have created this specter of you and you use it to keep everyone at a distance.”
He turned and Sophia braced herself for his attack. She was learning him now, learning when there was a hint of the real Luca and when it was the abhorred playboy.
Something changed in his face, then. An infinitesimal tightening of those razor-sharp cheekbones. A thinning of those lush lips. A glitter in those eyes that were always quick with a smile and a comeback, usually laden with sexual innuendo.
He seemed to see straight through to the heart of her—the fears and desires, everything she kept locked away to get through hard life. “You want to have sex with me. Desperately. You crave it and yet, you can’t give in to the inevitable. So you look for some redeeming quality in me.
“I shall never be the man for you, Sophia. So, if you are not going to screw me, at least stop pretending.”
She blinked, dazed by how much he saw. How accurate he was.
/>
Both of them were right. Both of them saw far too much of the other that no one else saw. And both of them were far too gone to back out now.
He was hers in that moment, Sophia knew. Against his own better judgment perhaps. And the fighter in her reveled in this victory, in wrenching a part of him away that no other possessed.
He could have been with a million women but it didn’t matter. Not anymore. She had a piece of him no one else had.
She vined her arms around his waist. Tension thrummed in every line and sinew of his body. His fingers gripped her wrists tight enough to leave marks, intent on pushing her away. And she was the one who calmed now; she was the stronger one in this moment.
“What do you want, Sophia?”
She let her body slowly mold itself against his. “I want you to make love to me, Luca.”
His thigh shoved in between her legs, his hands on her hips, pulling her tight and flush against him. He was long and hard and unbearably good against her throbbing sex. The jolt of heat that went through her was instantaneous, all-consuming.
Their eyes met and held. No challenges were issued. No deals were made. There was nothing but will and heat and the desire to burn together.
The neckline of her dress was tugged and pulled, her nipples left knotted and needy. Fingers busied themselves with the zipper at her side now. Breath was fire in her throat. Fever in her blood. The ripping sound of the zipper scraped against her nerves. Cool air touched her breasts and she gasped. Still no fingers where she needed them.
“Interesting.” Hoarse voice. Clipped words through a gritted jaw. Muscles under her fingers clenched. Lean body pressing against her suddenly became tense. “No bra.”
“Backless dress.” Cool as a cucumber she sounded, while she was incinerating on the inside. A breeze touched her skin and she shivered.
“You are like hot silk. I’m going to lick every inch of you.”
She closed her eyes and heard him shed his shirt.
Long fingers on her back—gentle, kneading, almost possessive as they pressed her toward him.
Breasts flattened against skin, hot and velvet-soft stretched taut over tight muscles. Nipples rasped.
Hands in her hair held her like that, their torsos flushed tight against each other. His shaft lengthened and hardened against her belly. Her sex clenched and released, hungry for his hard weight. Their breaths rattled in the silence. He took her mouth then.
Soft and slow, his kisses were like honey spreading through her limbs. Roaming hands touched her everywhere, restless and urgent, belying his tender kisses. “Sophia?”
“Hmmm?”
“I should very much like to be inside you now, cara mia.”
Only now did she focus again on the people a little distance away. Music and laughter. She stilled at the prospect, her pulse in her throat. “Here? Now? They are all...right there.”
Fingers tightened in her hair. “Now, Sophia.”
It was his way or not. He did this to her on purpose. Pushed her into this corner where she realized how desperately she wanted him. Pushed her past her own boundaries into new territory. Like she had done with him.
He expected her to back off. He expected her to shrivel and hide and ask for the cloak of a bedroom and the dark night.
“Yes,” she whispered, pressing little kisses to his chest. Flicking her tongue out, she licked the flat nipple and tugged it between her teeth. She pressed a trail upward to his throat and then closed her lips over his skin. “Here, now.”
She felt the shudder in him then. And it was another small victory.
When he turned her, she went. Her will was not her own now. Her body was his to do with as he wanted. “Look at us, bella mia,” he whispered at her ear.
Sophia looked. They stood in front of a gilt-framed mirror, below which stood an antique writing desk. Two chandeliers cast enough light to illuminate every inch of the huge room.
Light and dark, soft and hard, he lean and wiry and she...voluptuous and flushed, they were different in every way. Skin pulled taut against those sharp features, he was a study in male need.
But she was...she was the one who looked utterly erotic.
No rouge could make her cheeks that pink. Her pupils were large, almost black. Her mouth was swollen, unashamedly wide and seductive. The pulse at her neck throbbed as if someone had pulled at it like a string.
The turquoise silk hung around her hips, baring her breasts. Her nipples were plump, distended and meeting his gaze in the mirror, Sophia felt like she was scorched to the very core of her.
“What do you see, Sophia?”
She closed her eyes, her breath coming in short puffs. “I look indecent. Like everything I want is written all over my face.”
“I see a woman whose curves and valleys are as complex as her mind. I see a warrior, a seductress, and I see a woman who hides her heart from even herself.”
His words were just as powerful as his caresses. His fingers moved restlessly over her flesh, stopping here and there, pressing and kneading, but never staying. Learning and pressing all over—the rim of her ear, the line of her spine, the demarcation from her waist to her flaring hips, the crease of her thigh, the fold of her elbow...
There were so many other places crying for touch but he didn’t touch her there. Her dress slithered to the ground and she stood in just her wispy lace panties. Then those were pushed down, too.
Sophia barely processed it when he turned her and then lifted her onto the table, as easily as if she were a china doll. The wood surface was cold against her bare buttocks as was the wall at her back. Yet, she was burning up all over.
Eyes wide, she watched as he kicked off his leather shoes and socks and then those trousers and black boxer shorts.
He hardly gave her a breath to savor the tall, darkly gorgeous form of his before he stood between her legs. Rock-hard thighs pushed her own wide, baring the heart of her to his wicked gaze. He took her hand in his, kissed the underside of her wrist and he pushed her palm against the heat of her.
Sophia jerked at her own touch.
“Are you wet for me, Sophia?”
* * *
Brown eyes widened into molten pools in her face, she looked so innocent.
So pure. So hot. So perfect.
The equation between them was changing and morphing, and all because he had oh so cleverly thought he could control himself. So full of himself, he’d forgotten Sophia was an explosive variable... Joke was on him. Rarely had anyone ever surprised him like Sophia did.
She saw far too much. She didn’t tread lightly even in this; she marched in, banners raised, breaking walls down, determined to reach the part he hid from everyone.
It should have sent him running. Instead, here he was.
He was alone, always, where it mattered. It was the only way he could live. But that she saw him, even such a small part, in this moment, he didn’t feel alone.
He felt a connection. He felt like someone knew the true him. He was weak enough to want to hold on to that for a little longer. Human enough to want to protect this. Just a little longer, he promised himself. No lasting damage this time, he’d make sure. Only pleasure for him and her.
“What?” she said, all spikes and thorns.
“Take your lovely fingers and dip them into your—”
She kissed him then and swallowed his filthily provocative words. Hard and fast, desperate and a little fierce, until he was deluged in sensation. “If my fingers would do just as well as yours, I wouldn’t be here, now, would I?”
Acres of glowing skin, pouty, lush breasts, plump nipples begging to be sucked into his mouth, soft belly and a cloud of brown curls hiding the velvet heat of her. Wide eyes sparkling with desire and curiosity and possession. Such an irresistible combination of strength and vulnerability. So strict even with herself.
She was the most real thing Luca had ever seen.
His lovely Sophia. His lioness, his warrior, simply his in this moment.
/>
He wanted to stay in that moment forever. But it could not last. Whatever it was that tugged at them relentlessly could not last. Because he was Luca Conti.
So he did what he did best. He reduced this moment of excruciating intimacy to nothing but animalistic sex. Into nothing but raw heat and primal possession.
“Is it not enough that I’m here, now, Luca?” she finally murmured. Her breath was stuttering. The pulse at her neck throbbed.
“No, I want more, I want everything, Sophia,” he whispered, and felt her name move through him like a powerful invocation. “Tell me, did you touch yourself the night of our wedding?”
“Yes,” she answered tightly.
“Did you finish?”
“No. It wasn’t... I’ve never before...”
He bent and pressed his mouth to the upper curve of one breast. Her nipple rasped against his chest, taunting him. He gripped the table until his knuckles turned white, his erection pulling up tight against his abdomen.
But there was a keening pleasure in the need riding him hard.
Every inch of him felt alive. Every inch of him felt like a pulse. Denial, even for a few moments, was an alien concept for him. He had so very little, so he reveled in what he could have. He glutted himself on it.
Sexual gratification, once he’d stopped whoring it out for other things he’d needed desperately, was the most uncomplicated thing in his life. But now anticipation was like a drug, heightening every sense, a fever in his blood.
He opened his mouth and sucked on the tender skin. Hard. She was salt and desire and delicious on his tongue.
Nails digging into his shoulders, she convulsed against him. Not pulling away but pushing into his touch. So he did it harder. Her moan reverberated around them. “Touch yourself and tell me if you’re already swollen. Take the edge off.”
“No.” Defiant chin lifted. Demand sparkled in her eyes. And a challenge. His erection lay stretched up against his belly now, engorged and ready. She moved her hands down the slopes of his shoulders to his chest. A pink nail scraped against his nipple. A finger traced the line between his pectorals.
He waited on a knife’s edge, his breath bellowing through his throat.
