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‘Sophie, before we discuss Bella I need to speak first with you.’
‘I get that you do,’ she said, ‘but I would like to speak about this first’. Sophie persisted because she knew she might lose her temper about five minutes from now. Yes, she didn’t want to be forced into a marriage but, no, she didn’t want to be left here either.
It wasn’t just her pride that was going to hurt when he ended things—now that he was back her heart remembered him.
Standing before her was the man she had cried herself to sleep over when he had left last time.
It had been a childish crush, a schoolgirl’s dream, a teenage fantasy, Sophie’s head knew that but, having him back, feeling him close, her heart was racing again and her body wanted to taste first-hand her forbidden dreams. Yes, soon that Sicilian temper might get the best of her, so she would speak with him now, about the things that possibly could be sorted, while there was relative calm.
Relative, for her legs ached to wrap around him and the tongue that went over her lips now was inadvertently preparing herself for him. ‘Bella doesn’t want to work in the bar.’
She could sense his discomfort and guessed that it had little to do with the pain from the cut, more the subject matter.
‘I’ll speak to him,’ Luka offered, ‘but first I need to speak with you. I was going to go and see Paulo—’
‘Luka...’ Her hand was on his cheek and she wanted to halt him, wanted to kiss him, to make love and then deal with the rest.
Please, don’t say it, she wanted to beg.
Not yet, not until I have finally tasted you.
‘Luka, I know this is difficult but...’
She was right. Luka was not looking forward to this conversation one bit. He wondered how best he could tell her his reasoning without destroying her belief in her father.
It was also difficult for other reasons.
Yes, Malvolio was a manipulative bastard and Luka knew that he wasn’t shallow enough to change his mind just because Sophie looked sensational. Still, it was rather hard to stand there at eye level with the ripe swell of her breasts, with the warm, musky scent of her reaching into him and then to look into eyes that, Luka realised, knew him.
Perhaps their fathers had chosen more wisely than he had given them credit for, because the ache in his groin and the surprising pleasure of talking to her had momentarily upended his plans.
He had to go through with it, Luka knew.
He had to deny the attraction, the want that was there between them.
Her pupils were large with lust, and he was sure that so too were his as they stared back to her. How the hell did you tell someone it was over when you were hard for them? When you knew, just knew, that with one slip of your hand those gorgeous thighs would part?
He needed to tell her they were over now, right now, before he gave in to the kiss they both wanted, and so he spoke on. ‘My father was angry because I told him I wouldn’t be coming back to Bordo Del Cielo and instead I would be living permanently in London. I told him I wanted no part of his life. I said that I won’t have him choose where I live, how I work—’
‘Don’t I get a say in where we live?’ Sophie said, refusing to make this easy for him.
She wanted to slap him.
Now that he was here, she wanted not just her dreams of freedom and working on the ships, she wanted him too.
Luka, who had swum in the river with her, Luka, who had told her the night he’d left her aching to be kissed by him that she must wait. He had been twenty years old when he had prised her off his lap and she had clung to him like glue.
She wanted the kiss that he had promised her then.
Instead, she finished closing his wound and then put a large plaster over the top as she spoke. ‘My father will be upset. He always thought that I would live close to him and that our children would grow up in Bordo Del Cielo.’
Don’t do this, she wanted to warn, though she knew that he was right to.
‘In my time away, I’ve come to understand things.’ Luka ran a tongue over tense lips as he reminded himself that he was going to do this without criticising her father. ‘The way my father conducts business, the way my mother used to turn a blind eye to terrible deeds...’ She looked at that beautiful mouth in his unshaven jaw and he confirmed her darkest thoughts. Malvolio was pure evil. ‘I don’t want any part of it,’ Luka said.
‘I don’t like the hold he has on my father,’ Sophie admitted. ‘I don’t think my father...’ She couldn’t bring herself to say it but she tried. ‘I think some of my father’s dealings are also wrong.’
‘That’s his choice,’ Luka said. ‘And I am making my own. I don’t think that a promise our fathers made on our behalf should be something we feel we have to adhere to. I think we should be able to date and fall in love with whoever we choose.’
‘And have you been dating?’ Sophie asked, and Luka said nothing. ‘Because if you have then it doesn’t seem very fair when I have kept myself for you. I haven’t so much as kissed another man, even though I have wanted to.’ That was a lie, she’d never want another man. She had only ever wanted him. ‘I have been to dances and parties and nothing, nothing has ever happened.’
Luka remained silent and Sophie assumed then that he was serious about someone.
‘Is she insisting we break up?’ The jealousy in her voice was not faked. Sophie’s skin prickled at the thought of him with another woman.
‘There is no one she,’ Luka said. ‘I have not been serious about any one person in particular, but...’
‘You have been dating?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’ve kissed, made love...’ all the things she had guessed he would be doing, all the things she had wanted Luka to do with her ‘...while all the time you were promised to me.’
Her hand came up then and he would have accepted a slap to the cheek but, hell, he’d just got the wound closed so he caught her wrist.
‘You still have good reflexes,’ Sophie said, because she had watched him play sport, catch a fork, grab her arm before she fell...
Luka frowned at the light tone to her voice and turned his attention from the wrist he was still holding and then saw that she was smiling.
‘Sophie?’
‘Perhaps I am not best pleased that you have been having fun while I keep myself pure for you, but maybe I am a little relieved too...’
He had never expected this reaction but, then, Luka remembered, she had always surprised him. Sophie had always made him either smile or want to tear his hair out in frustration. He’d never known what to expect from her.
‘I thought—’
‘You thought that I would cry and plead and say that you have shamed me. Well, I guess that in the eyes of everyone here you will have shamed me, but I don’t care what they all think. I am nineteen tomorrow, Luka, and I want a life. I want more fun than I could have as your wife.’
‘Were you ever going to tell me this?’
‘I was.’ Sophie smiled. ‘But after we had made love. I went and got the Pill...’
‘What, did you think I’d be more open to suggestion then?’
‘That had crossed my mind.’ She smiled again.
‘You’re really okay with it?’ Luka frowned because this reaction had been far from the one he had been expecting.
‘Of course,’ she said, and then her voice dropped. ‘Apart from one thing.’
Yes, she always surprised him.
‘You still owe me that kiss.’
‘Sophie, you don’t end a relationship with a kiss.’
‘Why not?’ she said. ‘I want you to be my first kiss.’
‘Sophie—’
‘It has to be you,’ Sophie said, because quite simply it had to be. She sat on the kitchen bench and her hands went up and linked loosely behind his neck.
‘Remember the party, the night you left for London?’
‘Of course I remember.’
‘Did you want to kiss me then?’
‘No,’ Luka said. Then she had been a girl, a teary teenager, now there was no doubt that a woman sat before him—and one who knew what she wanted.
‘Do you want to kiss me now?’ Sophie asked.
He answered with his lips. She felt the soft weight of his mouth and though she did not want to marry Luka, it did not mean she did not find him beautiful. Every kiss that Sophie had ever missed out on was made up for by this.
He held her face and his mouth was gentle. The last seconds of her lip glaze ensured their soft passage and his kiss was exactly as it should be, better even than anticipated. A soft tasting that had her hands move to his chest as they had ached to do on sight.
In her dreams he had crushed her mouth and his tongue had fiercely parted her lips, but in reality he had no need to for her mouth readily opened to his and mutually their kiss deepened.
Her palms pressed to his naked chest and as his tongue slipped in she slid her hands, loving the feeling of strength beneath the skin. His breathing was harsher as her hands moved over his flat, mahogany nipples and then it was Sophie who took his face in her hands.
She felt he was going to halt their kiss so her tongue pleaded for him not to. She wanted this just as he did.
She wanted his hand that was now stroking at her breast through the fabric of her dress and as her nipple thickened to the touch of his thumb he let out a small moan that sent a vibration to her core. He stepped in closer and her legs parted to enable him to. One hand still toyed with her breast while the other slid up the outside of her smooth thigh, but when he encountered her naked bottom he stilled and pulled his mouth back a little.
‘Do you always run around with no underwear on?’
‘You’ll never know.’ Sophie smiled and Luka returned it but when she went to kiss him he moved his mouth back and she ached because he had halted. ‘Please, Luka...’
‘You said a kiss.’
‘We want more than a kiss.’
She was so certain in that moment that she could speak for them both.
‘I’m not ending things and taking your virginity,’ Luka said. ‘You’ve already got enough reasons to call me a bastard.’
‘Then don’t give me another one,’ Sophie warned. ‘I cried every night for a month when you left but I’m not going to cry this time. You’ve had all my tears, Luka. I just want a part of what was promised to me.’
‘Which part?’
‘This part.’
His eyes closed as her hand found him and she ran her fingers over his length. Lightly at first but then she pressed her fingers in a little.
She had never been shy around Luka.
She had never been shy.
She watched as he closed her eyes and felt the bliss as he grew to her touch. The ache in her groin grew too and so Sophie wriggled provocatively closer to the only man she had ever wanted.
She met his ear and kissed it as he pulled her in firmly.
‘I want you to be my first.’ She stated her wishes. ‘It has to be you, Luka... It was always going to be you.’
CHAPTER FOUR
GONE WAS THE girl he had tipped from his knee all those years ago. Gone was the teary teenager. Instead of pleading, instead of crying, now she seduced.
Now she removed her hand from where it was teasing him and stopped the dance with her tongue on his ear so that she could watch his eyes open.
With a smile, in one lithe easy motion, she pulled off her dress and naked she sat before him, watching his eyes roam the lushness of her breasts.
‘This part,’ Sophie said again, and with her legs balanced on his hips she unzipped and freed him.
He was beautiful. His skin was soft and dark and together they watched her explore him till Luka could take it no more. He was there at her entrance and Sophie was guiding him in, her jaw tensing as he stretched her but the rest of her was loose and willing.
‘Not here,’ Luka said, even though it was contrary to his action, for he was inching just a little more inside her tight space.
‘Yes, here,’ Sophie urged.
They wanted each other’s mouths yet the top of their heads were locked, watching as if from the edge of paradise as he inched in a little further. Bordo Del Cielo meant the edge of heaven and that was exactly where both of them were as he stretched her.
‘Not here,’ Luka warned again, despite her frantic pleas for him to continue. ‘I’m taking you to my bed.’
He tried to zip up but with the protest of her kisses and the scent and oil of her on his fingers further turning him on it was like trying to reset a jack-in-the-box. He gave in and just kicked off his pants and got back to kissing her as he lifted her from the kitchen bench. With her legs coiled around him they kissed all the way up the stairs.
‘Here,’ Sophie said, when they were halfway up and he halted just to taste her deeper. He almost relented but then reminded himself of a part of the need for getting to his bedroom.
‘I’ve got condoms in my case.’
‘I told you we don’t need them.’
They just made it to the bedroom and he dropped her onto the bed but, unlike the last time when he’d had had to peel her from him, now, loose-limbed, she let herself fall—because this time Sophie knew that in a moment he’d join her.
‘I told you I’ve already gone on the Pill,’ she said, watching the delicious sight of him kneeling and trying to open up his case.
‘It’s for protection.’
‘I’ve never needed protection from you.’
Innocent, Luka thought, but only to a point. Her words were more seductive than any he had ever heard. Nothing would usually halt him—sheathing was, to Luka, second nature. Not with Sophie, though, because he wanted the naked bliss of them together. Later he would scold her, and warn her not to trust another with such a choice. She was right, though; she needed no protection from him.
‘I know what I want, Luka.’
He came over to the bed where she lay and like a panther he crawled with stealth that had her writhing until he was with her, and she would never forget his smile.
‘I’m going to talk to you later.’
‘You’re going to make love to me now, though.’ Sophie smiled back.
‘Are you nervous?’
‘I’ve never been nervous with you.’
It was true. Around him she was not nervous. How could she be scared? Sophie briefly pondered when the mouth that made her shiver returned to hers.
They kissed naked and long and then he left her mouth and blazed a hot, wet trail down her neck and then to her breasts, where he licked the warm skin, avoiding her aching nipples till her hands guided his head. It was Sophie who moaned as his mouth captured her and sucked deeply, not once, not twice, but over and over till she twitched and writhed. How could she be nervous when her body just came alive to him?
She loved how he gave the same attention to the other breast and yet she was almost pleading for him to stop because he had lifted just a fraction of the lid and she was greedy for the treasure he would bring.
Luka knew it.
He knelt up for a moment and looked down at her.
Her mouth was swollen from his kisses, her breasts were wet and her nipples erect, and there was a small purple bruise on her perfect skin that his mouth had made.
‘Luka...’ Sophie liked the warmth of his eyes and the affection of his gaze yet she was on fire. He was intimately stroking himself against her as he had downstairs, but there was no holding back as there had been then—this was just a moment of pure decadent indulgence.
She felt like his instrument, tuned purely for him to play to perfection, and he did. She looked down and this time watched him disappear further in.
‘It might hurt,’ Luka said.
‘It had better.’
He laughed and toppled onto her. His weight was half on her and yet not enough; she liked the feeling of being lost beneath him—how the sight of the ocean from his window no longer existed, how the bark of a dog in the distance receded, how it was late in the afternoon and she welcomed the light just to see his closed eyes as he kissed her. Sophie’s friends had needed wine, or long dances, some had demanded the promises of a love that would never die before this.
All Sophie needed was Luka, for this was just how it was supposed to be.
Luka was torn. He wanted to taste her breasts again, he wanted to kiss and make moist every inch of her skin, he wanted the musk of her sex on his tongue, not just his fingers. Badly he wanted her to come to his mouth, but he was as impatient to be inside as Sophie was to be taken.
Later, he told himself.
There would be time for that later.
Like a chip to his skull, somewhere he refuted that, because they ended today, this was it.
Yet there, in that second, Luka knew he would take her again, that this was not the end.
And, yes, he could feel her impatience. Her hips kept lifting, her mouth was more demanding and then there was almost anger as he removed his kiss.
‘Luka.’ She was breathless.
‘Now!’ Luka said, that one word taking such effort to deliver.
‘Yes, now,’ she said, but then she saw his slow, teasing smile.
‘I mean now is when you can get anything you want from a man.’ He was referring to her earlier innocent thinking. ‘Not after...’
‘I’ll remember that for the future.’
She did not understand the flare of possession in his eyes as she spoke of others, but she didn’t have time to dwell on it for he took her then. Luka seared into her and swallowed her sob with his mouth.
It hurt, far more than she had expected it to, far better than she had ever dared dream. He filled her and stretched her and, when she thought she knew what it was to be his lover, still further he went tearing at virgin flesh and then stilling as her body fought to acclimatise to him.
She forgot how to breathe until he gathered her right into him and hooked his arm beneath the small of her back.
‘Luka...’ Sophie didn’t even know what she wanted or what it was she was trying to say, but as he started to move any pain was forgotten because with each thrust he made her more his. His mouth was by her ear now, and he spoke as he did in her dreams. ‘I won’t hurt you...’ he said, when she now knew that he would.
The pain of being taken by him was receding. It was the pain of being left by him that was now starting to make itself known.
She wished that her body didn’t love him so completely. She wished that he would take her deeper, harder, faster, rather than deliver, as he was now, the slow torture of his love, because that was exactly what this felt like.
As her legs coiled around him, even as she urged him on, Sophie was frantically trying to hold back.
How do I let you leave? she wanted to sob as her orgasm gathered.
‘Luka...’ She said it again as she started to come and the intensity scared her.
‘Let it happen...’ Luka said, and his rapid thrust gave her no choice but to do as his body commanded.
Inwardly he beat her to match his rhythm but it wasn’t that that had her toppling over the edge, it was Luka, and the feel of his shoulders tense beneath her hands. It was the last look at the world without fully having the other, this strange brink they both found themselves on. Luka was in that beat before coming, past the point of no return when he felt her pulse to him and he just unleashed. Nothing could ever top this, he knew. Her intimate pulses beckoned and he gave in to the tight, soft warmth of her endless caress.
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