‘I need to think about what I’m prepared to agree to, but before we go any further there is something that you need to know.’ They were face-to-face as Luka said it. ‘I will never marry you.’

‘You’ll do whatever it takes …’

The spitfire he had known was returning, and Sophie jabbed a finger into his chest as if to make her point.

‘Whatever. It. Takes—’

‘No,’ he interrupted calmly.

Despite the cool façade she attempted, he knew that she was as Sicilian as the volcanic soil they were from, and as he watched her struggle to hold in her temper he didn’t suppress his triumphant smile. She was just as volatile and passionate as he remembered. Those traits in Sophie were everything he both loved and loathed.

‘After what you did … after what you said about me in court …’

‘Lose the drama, Sophie.’ His voice was completely calm. ‘I accept that I have a moral debt to you, given all that has happened, but even with several years’ interest added I do not owe you that much. I will agree to be your fake fiancé, but never your fake husband. Know that now, or get out.’

He hoped for the latter. Get out of my life, my head, my heart. Just get out!

Instead Sophie must have accepted his terms, for she sat down again.

It was time to talk business.

Playboys of Sicily

Taming Italy’s most notorious men!

Tycoon Luka might agree to be ex-flame Sophie’s fake fiancé … but at what cost?

Sicilian’s Shock Proposal Available July 2015

Bella hasn’t seen millionaire Matteo since that night. He’s as irresistible as ever, but will he still want her after he discovers her secret?

His Sicilian Cinderella Available August 2015

You won’t want to miss this sizzlingly dramatic new duet from USA TODAY bestselling author Carol Marinelli—available only from Mills & Boon® Modern™ Romance!

Sicilian’s Shock Proposal

Carol Marinelli

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CAROL MARINELLI is a Taurus, with Taurus rising, yet she still thinks she’s a secret Gemini. Originally from England, she now lives in Australia and is a single mother of three. Apart from her children, writing romance and the friendships forged along the way are her passion. She chooses to believe in a happy-ever-after for all, and strives for that in her writing.

Contents

Cover

Introduction

Playboys of Sicily

Title Page

About the Author

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

EPILOGUE

Extract

Copyright

PROLOGUE

‘A WOMAN WHO says she’s your fiancée is in Reception, asking to see you.’

Luka Cavaliere looked up from his computer and saw the wry smile on his PA’s face.

‘I thought I’d heard it all until now,’ said Tara.

Women would try anything to get an audience with Luka, but to have someone pretending to be his fiancée was a first. Tara knew from bitter experience that the woman in Reception was lying—the only thing that Luka ever fully committed to was work.

She certainly wasn’t expecting his response.

‘Tell Reception that she can come up,’ he said in his rich Italian voice.

‘Sorry?’

Luka didn’t respond to Tara’s question. Instead, he got back to the work he was doing on his computer. Certainly he did not need to repeat himself to his PA, nor explain things to her.

‘Luka?’ Still Tara hovered at the door, unable to believe that he knew who this woman was—he hadn’t even asked for her name.

‘Do you want a second warning?’ Luka checked. ‘I have already told you that I should not have to give out my instructions twice.’

‘No, you want to give me a second warning so that soon you can fire me.’ Tara’s voice was thick with tears. ‘You want me gone...?’

Of course he did.

‘It’s because we made love, isn’t it?’ she simpered.

He could correct her but he chose not to. Luka didn’t make love—he had sex.

Often.

His wealth attracted shallow women, but his dark good looks and skills in the bedroom did not lead to the fleeting encounters that he preferred. Always they wanted more than he was prepared to give. He knew that he should never have got involved with his latest PA, especially when he’d just trained her up to be useful.

‘I’m not going to get into a discussion,’ Luka said. ‘Send her up.’

‘But you never said that you were engaged. You never even gave a hint that there was anyone else—’

Bored now, Luka thought. ‘Take as long as you like for lunch,’ he interrupted. Yes, he wanted her gone. ‘Actually, you can take the rest of the day off.’

Tara let out a hopeless sob and then turned and rather loudly left the office.

The slam of the door made Luka’s eyes shut for a brief moment.

It had nothing to do with his PA’s brief outburst, or the noise from the door—it was what would happen in the coming moments that he was bracing himself for.

There had always been someone else.

And now she was here.

He stood up from his desk and moved to the window and looked down below to the London street. It was the middle of summer—not that he usually noticed. His life was spent in air-conditioned comfort and he dressed in the same dark suits whatever the month.

It was ironic, Luka thought, that he and Sophie, after all these years, should meet in London—the place of their far younger dreams.

Until recently he had always assumed that if they did come face to face again it would be in Roma, perhaps on one of his regular visits there. Or even back in Bordo Del Cielo—the coastal town on Sicily’s west coast where they had grown up. He had only returned once, for his father’s funeral last year, but he had been wondering whether he might go back one final time if Sophie’s father decided he wanted to be buried there.

Luka still hadn’t made up his mind if, when that day came, he would attend the funeral.

He knew that that day was coming soon.

And that, he also knew, was the reason that Sophie was here.

His hand reached into his jacket and he took out not a photo, not a memory; instead, it was a brutal reminder as to why they could never be.

He stared at the thin gold chain that wrapped around his long fingers and then he looked at the simple gold cross that lay in his palm. Yes, he would go to her father’s funeral, for this necklace belonged in that grave.

It took only a few moments for Sophie to make her way from the foyer to his suite yet it felt like for ever as he awaited her arrival, but then came the knock at the door that he recognised from yesteryear.

How much easier might his life have been had he not answered the door that long-ago day? Perhaps, Luka thought, he should not respond to it now.

He pocketed the necklace and cleared his throat. ‘Come in.’ He managed a deep summons but, as the door opened, he did not turn around.

‘Your assistant asked me to pass on the message that she’s just resigned. Apparently I’m the final straw.’

The sound of her voice, though a touch stilted and measured, still held, for Luka, the same caress.

For a man who feared little, he was nervous to turn around.

Luka rather hoped that the years that had passed since they’d last met had not treated her kindly—he fleetingly hoped that a nice little drug habit might have aged her terribly, or that she was pregnant with triplets perhaps...anything that might douse the eternal flame.

He turned and found out that time had indeed been cruel, to him at least, for perfection greeted his navy eyes.

Sophie Durante stood before him again.

She was wearing a simple dress in the palest ivory that showed her curvaceous figure. Her glossy, long black hair was worn neatly up in a French roll when he remembered it spilling over naked shoulders.

Her neutral-coloured high-heeled shoes enhanced her toned olive legs.

He forced his gaze up but only made it as far as her mouth. Her full lips were pressed tightly together when he remembered them once laughing and smiling. Then he remembered them somewhere else, which was a rather inconvenient image to have sprung to mind, so he forced himself to meet those dark brown eyes again.

She was just as beautiful as he remembered and, just as they had at their parting, her eyes showed she abhorred him.

Luka stared back with mutual loathing.

‘Sophie.’ He gave her a curt nod.

He did not know how he should greet her—shake her hand, or kiss both cheeks perhaps?

Instead, he gestured for her to take a seat.

She did so; placing her designer bag by the seat, she neatly crossed her legs at the ankles.

‘You look well,’ Luka said, and hoped she might miss that he then cleared his throat—for those first delicate traces of her scent had now reached him and his mind was firing taunting glimpses of memory.

‘I am well,’ she responded, and gave him a tight smile. ‘I am very busy, of course.’

‘Are you working?’ Luka asked. ‘Did you ever get to work on the ships?’

‘No.’ Sophie shook her head. ‘I am an events planner.’

‘Really?’ He didn’t even attempt to hide his surprise. ‘You were always running late for everything.’

He glanced at the ring on her finger—a ruby stone set in Italian gold. It was very old-fashioned and far from what he would have chosen for her. ‘I have terrible taste in rings, it would seem,’ Luka said.

‘Don’t!’ she warned abruptly. ‘You will never insult me again.’

He looked up and into the eyes of the only woman he had ever made love to as she asked him a question.

‘Aren’t you going to ask why I am here?’

‘I presume you’re about to tell me.’ Luka shrugged. He knew damn well why she was here but he’d make her say it just for the pleasure of watching her squirm.

‘My father may be released from prison this Friday on compassionate grounds.’

‘I know that.’

‘How?’

‘I do occasionally glance at the news.’ Luka’s sarcasm didn’t garner a response, though his voice was kinder when he asked her a question. ‘How is he doing?’

‘Don’t pretend that you care.’

‘And don’t dare assume that I don’t!’ he snapped, and he watched her rapid blink as he continued speaking.

Seeing her, he had been momentarily sideswiped but now he took back control and made a vow never to lose his control with her again.

‘But, then, that’s you all over, Sophie. Your mind was always made up even before the jury had been chosen. I’ll ask you again. How is your father?’

‘He is fading, he is a little confused at times.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

‘Isn’t that what prison does to an innocent man?’

Luka stared back and for now said nothing.

Paulo was not as innocent as Sophie made out.

‘Not that a Cavaliere would know about prison,’ she added.

‘I spent six months in prison awaiting trial, two of them in solitary,’ Luka pointed out. ‘Or were you referring to my father being found not guilty?’

‘I have no wish to discuss that man.’ She couldn’t, Luka noted, even bring herself to say his father’s name. How much worse would this conversation be if she knew the truth? he wondered. He could almost feel the heat from the necklace in his pocket. He was actually tempted to toss it across the desk to her, to end them once and for all.

‘Just what are you doing here, Sophie? I thought we ended our engagement a long time ago.’

‘Firstly, I don’t want you to think, for even a moment, that I am here for any romantic reasons.’

‘Good, because it would be an extremely wasted journey if that were the case.’

‘However,’ she continued, ‘my father believes that you upheld your promise. He thinks we got engaged and that we now live together in Rome.’

‘Why would Paulo think that?’

‘It was kinder to lie and let him think that you upheld your commitment to me. I never thought he would be let out and now that he might be I need to keep up the pretence. I told him that the terrible things you said in court about me were in an attempt to protect him.’

‘They were,’ Luka responded. ‘I said what I did in the hope of protecting him, or rather protecting you. You simply refused to see it from my side.’ He looked at her for a very long moment and found he could not stand even having her in the same room so he shook his head. ‘It wouldn’t work.’

‘It has to work,’ Sophie said. ‘You owe me.’

‘I do.’ Luka did not concede with those words. He knew she spoke the truth. ‘But apart from the fact that neither of us can abide being in the same room together, I do have a life. I might be seeing someone...’

‘I don’t care if this upends your life for a while. This is going to happen, Luka. You might sit a rich man in your posh London office and live a jet-set lifestyle but you are from Bordo Del Cielo, you cannot escape from that. You might go through women like tissues but the fact remains we were promised to each other from childhood and where we come from that means something.’ Luka let out a tense breath as she asked again. ‘Will you help my father die in peace?’

‘You want me to move in with you and pretend that we live together?’

‘No, I read that you have an apartment in Rome...we will use that.’

‘Why not yours?’

‘I share with my friend Bella. You might remember her...’

Luka bit back a sarcastic response. From what he had heard, a lot of men might remember Bella!

‘She runs a business from our home.’

As she spoke, he noted that Sophie ignored his slight sardonic smile, even though she must know what it insinuated.

‘It would not be fair to disrupt Bella and it would look odd for us, as a couple, to be sharing a home with her.’

‘And would this loving couple be sharing a bed?’ He voiced the obvious question but she did not answer directly.

‘It would look strange for us to sleep apart.’

‘Would there be sex?’ he asked, wishing a blush would rise on her cheeks, for Sophie to give some indication that this hurt like hell for her also, but she stared back coolly as she delivered her response.

‘I would think not,’ she said. ‘Since that evening, given what happened, I have a phobia...’

Luka’s eyes widened. Was Sophie saying that there had been no one since him? There was a small rush of giddy relief that he quickly doused but she hadn’t finished speaking. ‘But if that is what it will take for you to agree, then, yes, there can be sex.’

‘I thought Bella was the whore.’

‘We can all be whores,’ Sophie responded with spite, and Luka looked at the beautiful yet hostile stranger whose innocence he had taken, never to return. ‘So, yes, if sex is to be part of the deal—’

‘No, thanks,’ Luka interrupted. ‘I don’t need charity sex and, anyway, martyrs don’t turn me on—it’s extremely willing participants that do.’ He watched the slight swallow in her neck and he knew, he just knew she was remembering how good they had been so he cruelly walked her down memory lane and, as he did so, he reinforced a truth. ‘Surely you know how much I like a woman who instigates things.’

He’d thought she’d blush as he pointed out how she had been the one who had practically begged him to make love to her yet, rather than blush, Sophie surprised him with a shrug and a smile.

‘Well, there will be no sex for us, then, because I won’t be instigating anything. Are you going to do this, Luka?’

‘I’d like some time to think about it.’

‘My father doesn’t have time.’

‘Leave me your business card, Sophie, I’ll call you when I’ve made up my mind.’

He watched as she went into her bag and for the first time appeared flustered. ‘I don’t have any with me.’

‘Give me your number.’

‘I will contact you.’ Sophie stood and went to leave but at the last moment changed her mind. ‘You owe me this, Luka, we were promised to each other. You took my virginity.’

He could only admire her for, unlike most women, she spoke of their time together without misty recall. In fact, she reduced it to cold fact.

Almost.

‘Took?’ he checked. ‘What an odd choice of word. You see, from my recollection...’ Now a blush spread from her neck and rose to her cheeks. He came around the desk and stood in front of her, and she backed up to the desk. ‘Are you going to jump up, Sophie...or do your prefer a kitchen bench to an office desk?’

Now she was struggling to keep her cool.

‘Why didn’t I marry you?’ He played devil’s advocate. ‘You being such a good Sicilian girl...’

‘I told my father that it was my dream for him to walk me down the aisle. I told him—’

‘Stop there,’ Luka interrupted. ‘I need to think about what I’m prepared to agree to but before we go any further there is something that you need to know.’ They were face to face as he said it. ‘I will never marry you.’

‘You’ll do whatever it takes.’ The spitfire he had known was returning and she jabbed a finger into his chest to make her point. ‘Whatever. It. Takes.’

‘No,’ he calmly interrupted. Despite the cool facade she had attempted, he knew that she was as Sicilian as the volcanic soil they were from, and as he watched her struggle to hold in her temper, he didn’t suppress his slight triumphant smile. She was just as volatile and passionate as he remembered. Those traits in Sophie were everything he both loved and loathed.

‘After what you did, after what you said about me in court...’

‘Lose the drama, Sophie,’ His voice was completely calm. ‘I accept that I have a moral debt to you, given all that happened, but, even with several years’ interest added, I do not owe you that much. I will agree to be your fake fiancé, but never your fake husband. Know that now, or get the hell out.’

He hoped for the latter. Get the hell out of my life, my head, my heart.

Just get out!

Instead, Sophie must have accepted his terms for she sat back down.

It was time to talk business.

Finally, together, they would face the mistakes of their past.

CHAPTER ONE

‘HAPPY BIRTHDAY FOR TOMORROW!’

Sophie smiled as Bella went into her bag and bought out a neatly wrapped package.

‘Can I open it now?’ Sophie asked. She already knew what it was—a dress for her engagement party next week. Even though they worked as chambermaids, Bella was a talented dressmaker and Sophie had spent the last few weeks having sheets of paper pinned to her. She couldn’t wait to see the real thing. Bella had kept it a complete surprise and Sophie didn’t even know what colour the dress was.

‘Don’t open it here.’ Bella shook her head. ‘Wait till you get home. You don’t want to get sand on it.’

Though tired from the shifts as chambermaids at the Brezza Oceana hotel, just as they always did they had come to their secret cove. It wasn’t really a secret cove but it was tucked behind jagged cliffs and could not be seen from the hotel. The tourists didn’t really know about it as the small beach was accessible by a path that the locals of Bordo Del Cielo kept to themselves. When the hotel had first been built, much to the locals’ disgust, it was here that Sophie and Bella would come after school. Now, even though they worked together most days, still the tradition remained.

Here, where no one might overhear them, they came and sat, their legs dangling in the azure water, chatting about their hopes and dreams and voicing some of their fears...

Not all of their fears, though.

Bordo Del Cielo was a town of secrets and some things were too dangerous for even the closest of friends to discuss.

‘Now I can get on with making my own dress,’ Bella said.

‘What is yours like?’

‘Grey,’ Bella replied. ‘Very simple, very sophisticated. Maybe then Matteo might notice me...’

Sophie laughed. Matteo was Luka’s best friend and had been Bella’s crush for years, but he had never given her so much as a glance.

‘You must be getting excited,’ Bella said, and Sophie was about to smile and nod.

In fact, she did so.

‘Of course I am,’ she said, but her smile, the one she had worn so determinedly whenever her upcoming engagement was discussed, suddenly wavered and rare tears started to fill her expressive brown eyes.

‘Sophie?’ Bella checked when she saw that her friend was struggling. ‘Tell me.’

‘I can’t.’

‘Are you worried about...?’ Bella hesitated. ‘Sleeping with him? I know he might expect you to once you are engaged but you could tell Luka that you are a good girl and want to wait for your wedding night.’

Sophie actually managed a small laugh. ‘That’s the only part I’m not worried about.’

It was the truth.

Oh, she hadn’t seen Luka in years but she had grown up nursing a crush on him. Luka’s widowed father was rich; Malvolio owned the hotel and most of the businesses and homes in town. Those Malvolio didn’t own he took payments from for their protection. When Luka’s mother had died, instead of struggling to raise his child, in the way Sophie’s father had, Malvolio had sent Luka away. He had attended boarding school on the mainland but, every summer when he’d returned, to Sophie he’d looked more beautiful. She had no doubt that the years he had spent in London wouldn’t have dimmed that.

‘I’m actually looking forward to seeing Luka again.’

‘Remember how you cried when he left?’

‘I was fourteen then,’ Sophie said. ‘Tomorrow I’ll be nineteen...’

‘Do you remember when you tried to kiss him?’ Bella laughed and Sophie cringed in recall.

‘He told me I was too young. I guess he would have been twenty then.’ She smiled at the embarrassing memory of Luka dropping her from his lap. ‘He told me to wait.’

‘And you have.’

‘He hasn’t, though,’ Sophie said, her voice bitter. Luka’s reputation was as undeniable as the waves that pulled at their calves. ‘He didn’t back then, he was already screwing around.’

‘Does it make you angry?’

‘Yes, but more...’ She felt a familiar burn rise in her chest—little bubbles of jealousy at the thought of Luka with other women that did not ease when they popped, for it felt like shards of glass were being released in her throat. ‘I want what he has had.’

‘You want to date other men?’

‘No, I want my freedom,’ Sophie said. ‘I want to have experiences and chase my own dreams. I’ve spent my life taking care of my father’s home, cooking his meals, doing his washing. I don’t know if I want to be someone’s wife yet. I want to work on the cruise liners...’ She looked out to the sparkling ocean. Travelling, sailing on the seas had always been her dream. ‘I wouldn’t mind making beds for a living if I could do it on a ship. It’s like you with your dressmaking...’

‘That’s just a dream, though,’ Bella said.

‘Perhaps not. Your application might be accepted. You might be off to Milan soon.’

‘I got rejected,’ Bella said. ‘My drawings weren’t enough for them and I’ll never be able to afford models and photographers for a decent portfolio.’ Bella shrugged her shoulders as she both tried and failed to convince Sophie that not getting in to study fashion design in Milan didn’t hurt like hell. ‘I could never have gone anyway. I need my wage to pay the rent. Malvolio would give my mother hell if...’ Bella’s voice trailed off and she shook her head.

Yes, there were things that should never be discussed, but with her engagement now less than a week away Sophie could no longer keep her fears in. ‘I don’t want to be pulled even closer into Malvolio’s life. I don’t think Luka is anything like his father but—’

‘Shh,’ Bella said, and even though they had the cove to themselves she looked over both shoulders just to make sure. ‘Don’t speak like that.’

‘Why not?’ Sophie pushed. ‘We’re just friends talking.’

Bella said nothing.

‘I don’t want to get married.’

There—Sophie had said it.

‘I’ll be barely nineteen. There are so many things I want to do before I settle down. I don’t know if I want to...’

‘You don’t know if you want to live with Luka in a beautiful home and be taken care of?’ Bella’s response was one of anger. ‘You don’t know if you want to be rich and pampered?’ Bella was starting to shout. ‘Well, I’d take it if I were you and count yourself lucky—after your engagement party Malvolio has told me to stay back. I’ll be working the bar. This time next week I won’t be making beds at the hotel, I’ll be...’ Bella broke down then and Sophie held her own tears in check. ‘Like mother, like daughter,’ Bella sobbed. ‘I am not ashamed of my mother, she did what she had to to survive, but I don’t want that for me.’

‘Then don’t do it!’ Sophie shook her head furiously. ‘You are to tell him no!’

‘Do you think for a moment that he’d listen?’

‘You don’t have to jump to his rules. He can’t make you do anything that you don’t want to.’ Sophie was insistent. She loathed the way everyone jumped at Malvolio’s command, her own father included. ‘If you can’t say no to Malvolio then I shall for you.’

‘Just leave it,’ Bella pleaded.

‘No, I will not leave it. When Luka gets here on Wednesday I’ll try speaking with him...’

‘It won’t do anything.’ Bella shook her head and stood. ‘I need to get back...’

They walked down the little pathway together and Bella apologised for her outburst. ‘I didn’t mean to be cross with you. I understand that it should be your choice if you marry.’

‘We should both have choices,’ Sophie said.

They didn’t, though.

Everyone considered Sophie lucky—that, because of her father’s connections to Malvolio, she would marry Luka.

There had been no discussion with the future bride.

They came out of the trees and onto the hilly street and walked past the hotel Brezza Oceana, where Sophie and Luka’s engagement party would be held.

‘Are you taking your Pill?’ Bella asked, because they had taken the bus two weeks ago to a neighboring town so that Sophie could get contraception without the local doctor knowing.

‘Every day.’

‘I’d better get some,’ Bella said, and Sophie’s heart twisted at the resignation in her friend’s voice.

‘Bella—’

‘I have to go.’

‘Will I see you tonight at church?’

‘Of course.’ Bella attempted a smile. ‘I want to know if you like your dress.’

They parted ways and Sophie was almost home when she remembered she was supposed to have stopped for bread, so she turned and raced back to the deli.

As she walked in, the conversation stopped abruptly, just as it often did these days.

Sophie did her best to ignore the strange tension and when it was her turn she smiled at Teresa, the owner, and ordered the olives and cheese she had chosen, as well as a large pane Siciliano, which was surely the nicest bread in the world, and then took out her purse to pay.

‘Gratuitamente.’ Teresa told Sophie there would be no charge.

‘Scusi?’ Sophie frowned and then blushed. She was being let off paying because she was marrying Malvoio’s son, Sophie decided. Well, she wanted no part in that sort of thing and angrily she took out some money, placed it on the counter and then walked out.

‘You’re late,’ Paulo said, when Sophie let herself into their home and walked through to the kitchen, where her father was sitting reading his paper at the table. ‘You would be late for your own funeral.’

‘Bella and I got talking,’ Sophie said.

‘What do you have there?’

‘Just some bread and olives...’ Sophie answered, and then realised that he was referring to the parcel she was carrying, but before she explained what it was she asked her father a question. ‘Father, when I went to pay, Teresa said there was no charge. Why would she say that?’

‘I don’t know.’ Paulo shrugged. ‘Perhaps she was being nice. After all, you are there every day.’

‘No.’ Sophie refused to be fobbed off. ‘It was uncomfortable when I walked in—everyone stopped talking. I think it might have something to do with my getting engaged to Luka.’

‘What is in the parcel?’ Her father changed the subject and Sophie let out a tense breath as she set down the food and pulled out some plates.

‘Bella gave me my birthday present a day early. It’s my dress for my engagement. I’m going to try it on when I have had my shower. Father...’ As she cut up the loaf Sophie did her best to sound casual. ‘You remember you said I could have my mother’s jewellery when I got engaged?’

‘I said that you could have it when you got married.’

‘No!’ Sophie corrected. ‘You told me years ago that I could have it when Luka and I got engaged. Can I have them now, please? I want to see how my dress looks with everything.’

‘Sophie I’ve just sat down...’

‘Then I will fetch them if you tell me where they are.’

Her father let out a sigh of relief as the phone rang and, though not prepared to get her mother’s jewellery, he happily headed out to answer the phone.

He was always making excuses. For years Sophie had been asking for her mother’s necklace and earrings and always he came up with different reason why she couldn’t have them yet.

‘Father...’ she started as he came back into the kitchen.

‘Not now, Sophie. Malvolio has called a meeting.’

‘But it’s Sunday,’ Sophie said.

‘He said that there is something important that needs to be discussed.’

‘Well, surely it can wait till Monday?’

‘Enough, Sophie,’ her father snapped. ‘It is not for me to question him.’

‘Why not?’ Sophie challenged. She was sick and tired of her father being Malvolio’s puppet. ‘What is this meeting about? Or is it just an excuse to sit in the bar for the evening?’

Surprisingly, her father laughed. ‘You sound just like your mother.’

Everyone said the same. Rosa had had fire apparently, not that Sophie could remember her as she had died when Sophie was two.

‘Here,’ Paulo said, and handed her a small pouch. ‘These are her jewels.’

Sophie let out a small gasp and then looked at her father and saw that he was sweating and a little grey.

‘This means so much.’

‘I know,’ Paulo said, his voice shaken. ‘There are only her earrings.’

‘I thought there was a necklace...’ In all the photos Rosa wore a simple gold cross but she could hear the emotion in her father’s voice when he told her that he didn’t have it.

‘It was a very fine chain. I believe that it came off in the accident. Even after all these years I still look for it in the bushes when I take my walk in the morning. I wanted you to have it. I’m so sorry that I cannot give that to you.’

‘Is that why you haven’t let me have them?’ Sophie asked. ‘Father, I just wanted something...anything of hers...’ She looked at the fine gold hoops, that had a small diamond in each, with tears in her eyes. ‘And now I have her earrings. Thank you so much.’

‘I have to go to my meeting,’ Paulo said, and Sophie pressed her lips together. She didn’t want to fight, especially not when he had just given her something so precious, but her father looked terrible and she really did want him to rest. ‘I’ll try and get back for dinner.’

Sophie simply could not hold her tongue. ‘If Malvolio lets you.’

She saw her father’s eyes shut for a brief moment before he turned and headed for the door.

Sophie knew it might be kinder to apologise and that she was maybe making things harder for her father by admitting her truth but she didn’t like his involvement with Malvolio.

‘Father, I don’t know if I am ready to get engaged...’ She held her breath as her father’s shoulders stiffened.

‘It is normal to be nervous,’ her father said, but did not turn around. ‘Sophie, I have to go.’

‘Father, please, can we talk...?’

But the door had already closed.

Sophie walked around the small home and picked up a picture of her mother. She could see the similarities there—they had the same long black hair, the same dark brown eyes and full lips. Oh, Sophie wished she was here, just for a moment. She missed having a mother to give her advice so badly.

‘I am so confused,’ Sophie admitted to the photo of Rosa. A part of her dreaded being married, yet there was another part of her that longed to see Luka again, the man who had always filled her dreams. She had always looked up to him, had always nursed a crush on him, and she wanted her first kiss to belong to them and to be made love to by Luka.

What would Luka want, though?

She blushed in embarrassment at the thought of him returning and being forced to marry her.

No doubt he was dreading next weekend and returning to uphold his father’s commitment for him to marry poor little Sophie Durante.

Was that the hold Malvolio had over her father? Sophie wondered.

Well, she didn’t need charity and she would tell her father that.

She put down the photo, took her parcel upstairs and finally opened it.

The dress was exquisite. It was in the softest chiffon and the colour was a very pale coral. Sophie badly wanted to try it on but she had a very quick shower and washed her hair and then combed it before picking up the dress.

She slipped it over her head and looked in the mirror.

Sophie found she was holding her breath. All those hours standing as Bella had pinned sheets of paper had been worth it for this moment.

The dress was amazing. It was scooped low at the front and showed Sophie’s cleavage. Of course, it would need a bra but even without it was somehow both elegant and sexy. It came in at the waist and then fell in layers, emphasising her curves when usually Sophie did what she could to downplay them.

Yes, she knew she should take it off but instead she put on her mother’s earrings and found the lip glaze she had bought.

Working at the hotel, Sophie was used to seeing beautiful women but this afternoon, for the first time in her life, she felt like one.

Now she blushed for different reasons when she imagined facing Luka.

She wanted him to see her grown up.

Briefly she imagined his mouth on hers but a loud knocking on the door snapped her out of her daydream.

It sounded urgent and Sophie ran through the house but she smiled when she opened the door and saw that it was just Pino on his bike.

He was twelve years old and everyone used him as a messenger.

‘Malvolio wants you to go to his home,’ Pino said in a self-important voice.

‘Malvolio.’ Sophie frowned. She had never been to Malvolio’s home. ‘Why? What does he want?’

‘I was just told to give you the message,’ Pino said, balancing on his bike. ‘He said that it is important and that you’re to go there now.’

Sophie went and got Pino some money and thanked him but her heart was racing.

Why would Malvolio ask her to go to his home?

She had assumed that he and her father were meeting at the hotel bar.

Sophie thought of her father’s grey complexion and the sweat on his face and was suddenly worried that he might have been taken ill.

She slipped on some sandals and ran up the hill towards Malvolio’s spectacular home, which overlooked not just the ocean but the entire town. Once there she took a breath and then knocked on the door. She didn’t want to be there but he had summoned her after all.

No one ever said no to Malvolio.

CHAPTER TWO

‘WHY DON’T YOU ask Sophie to come over?’

Luka let out a tense breath at his father’s suggestion. Against his father’s wishes he had been in London for the last six years, at first studying but now he was now starting to make a name for himself.

He had offered some financial advice to a boutique hotel, but when unable to pay him to implement the changes Luka had offered to work for them for a stake in the hotel.

It had been a gamble. For a year he had worked for nothing by day and earned money by working in a bar at night.

Now, though, the hotel was starting to flourish and Luka owned ten percent of a thriving business.

Luka had his start.

He could have it all here, he knew that.

His father was one of the wealthiest men in Sicily, and he should be stepping in now. His father thought he was back to settle down and start taking over his empire, but instead Luka was choosing to step out for good.

His time away had opened his eyes. With an increasing awareness of his father’s corrupt ways he had chosen to stay away and had made only the occasional trip home to Sicily.

Deliberately he hadn’t seen or spoken to Sophie in that time.

And in that time an awful lot had changed.

‘It might be nice to spend some time with her before the engagement party,’ Malvolio pushed. ‘Angela will be at church all day and I know that there is a bible meeting this evening she wants to attend,’ he said, referring to their maid. ‘I’ll go out and give you two some time—’

‘There isn’t going to be an engagement party,’ Luka said, and met the eyes of his father—a man who he did not even recognise, for Luka had come to understand that he had never really known his father at all. ‘Because there isn’t going to be an engagement. I’m not marrying Sophie Durante.’

‘But the two of you have been promised to each other since childhood.’

‘That was your promise, not mine,’ Luka said. ‘You chose my future wife, the same way you have chosen for me to follow in the family business. I’m here to tell you that I am going to be returning to London. I’m not going to live and work here.’

‘You can’t do that to Paulo, to Sophie.’

‘Don’t pretend you care about them,’ Luka said, and watched his father start to breathe harder as he realised the challenge he was facing.

‘I won’t let you do it to me,’ Malvolio said. ‘You will not shame the Cavaliere name.’

Luka jaw gritted. His father had no shame. His father took from the poor, from the sick, his father ruled the people of Bordo Del Cielo with an iron fist—there was the real shame.

‘I will speak with Sophie’s father and explain that I will not have a bride chosen for me. The same way that I will not have my career, nor the place on this planet where I live, dictated to me.’

‘You will destroy Sophie’s reputation.’

‘I am not discussing this,’ Luka said. ‘I am telling you that I shall speak with Paulo about my decision and then, if he will allow me to, I will talk to Sophie myself.’

‘You are not returning to London, you will work with me. After all I have done for you—’

‘Don’t!’ Luka said. ‘Don’t say that you did all this for me when I never asked for any of it.’

‘But you took,’ Malvolio said. ‘You have lived in the best home and I gave you the very best education. I have a business waiting for you to take over. I will not let you walk out on that.’

‘Let me?’ Luka checked. ‘It’s not for you to choose how I live. I don’t need your permission for anything.’ He went to walk off but his father stopped him in the way he knew best.

Luka, at twenty-four, could have halted the punch that was coming to him but he did not. His father sent him crashing back into the wall and there was a gush of warm blood down his face. Not that it would stop Malvolio.

His only son, his only child was now turning his back on everything Malvolio had worked for and Luka had known that it would come to this.

Too often, growing up, it had.

As his head hit the wall his father thumped him in the stomach and as Luka doubled over Malvolio’s fist came into his ribs, but all it did was reaffirm to Luka that his decision to leave for good was the right one.

While he did not hit his father, Luka pulled himself back to his feet and faced him. ‘Clever men fight with their minds,’ Luka said, as Malvolio raised his fist again. ‘Whereas you instil fear...’ He shrugged his father off. ‘But not in me. The next punch you deliver will be returned,’ he warned—and he meant it.

‘You will marry her.’

Luka might not have fought back but anger raged through his veins. He loathed his father’s assumptions and the way he dictated his life, and he told him so.

‘I live in London,’ he shouted. ‘I date models now, glamorous, sophisticated women, not some peasant that you have chosen for me.’

‘I have to go to a meeting,’ Malvolio hissed. ‘We will speak of this when I return.’

Luka said nothing, standing bruised and bleeding and a bit breathless as his father picked up his car keys and stormed out.

He headed up to his old bedroom and stripped off his shirt then went into his bathroom and examined the damage.

There was bruising to his ribcage and on his shoulder where it had met the wall. An old gash above his eyes had opened up and probably needed stitching.

Not now, though.

For now he would patch himself up and then head to the airport. He might call Matteo and ask if he wanted to meet for a drink but they would meet at the airport.

He was done with Bordo Del Cielo.

Sophie.

As he splashed cold water on his face he thought of her.

Yes, this would be hell for her, Luka knew that and it didn’t sit right with him. Perhaps before he left for good he should go and speak with Paulo and maybe Sophie too.

He pressed his bloodied shirt over his eye and went into his suitcase to find a fresh one. He hadn’t unpacked. Luka hadn’t even been back home for an hour before the argument had started.

He heard a knock at the door but ignored it.

Angela could get it, but then he remembered that she was at church.

There was another knock but more loudly this time, and Luka headed down the stairs and opened the door.

The breath that had just returned after his father had knocked it out of him stilled inside Luka now.

His voice, when it finally came, was low and curious, and even though he said but one word there was a slight huskiness.

‘Sophie?’

He was struggling to meet her eyes. In the argument that had just taken place, as he had attempted to wrestle back his life from his father’s control, things had been said about Sophie.

Things she did not deserve.

It had been said in the heat of the moment. Vile words in a vile row and Luka could taste bitterness along with blood in his mouth.

Now, though, as finally he looked at her, there was a pleasant silence. No other thoughts other than this moment.

Her eyes were the same, yet more knowing. Her mouth was full and she was wearing a little make-up.

Her hair was thicker and longer.

And her body—he could not help but briefly look down. The skinny teenager he remembered had left and in her place stood a very beautiful woman.

One whose heart he was about to break.

CHAPTER THREE

‘LUKA?’ SOPHIE FROWNED. ‘I didn’t think you were getting here till Wednesday.’

‘There was a change of plan.’

‘What happened?’ Sophie asked.

‘I decided to fly home earlier—’

‘I meant to your face.’

‘It’s just a cut,’ Luka said. ‘An old cut that opened up.’

‘The bruises are new,’ Sophie pointed out, and he gave a pale smile.

‘My father,’ he admitted.

Sophie didn’t really know what to say to that so she cleared her throat and got back to the reason she was standing at the door.

‘I just had a message from Pino. Your father said I was to come here. That it was important.’

‘I can guess why,’ Luka said. No doubt his father had thought that one look at Sophie and he would change his mind. Well, he wasn’t that shallow. He saw her frown as he explained things a little better. ‘I think my father wanted us to be alone.’

‘Oh.’

‘You know how manipulative he can be,’ Luka said.

She didn’t answer. Everyone might think that of Malvolio but no one would ever dare to say it.

‘Come in, Sophie.’ He held open the door and after a moment’s hesitation she stepped inside. ‘We need to talk.’ She followed him through to the kitchen, her eyes taking in his back and wide shoulders, and she felt very small and not in a nice way.

He was so glossy, so sophisticated, he was everything that she wasn’t.

Of course he wouldn’t want her.

And now, from the little he had said, and the way he couldn’t quite meet her eyes, Sophie guessed she was about to be told that.

Yes, she had her doubts about the engagement—yes, she wasn’t sure if she wanted to get married—but it felt very different from being told to your face that you weren’t wanted.

‘I just need to sort out this cut,’ Luka said. ‘Take a seat.’

She didn’t.

‘I don’t know where Angela keeps the first-aid kit,’ Luka continued as he went through the cupboards. ‘Here it is.’ Sophie watched as he pulled out a small first-aid kit and even smiled as his long fingers tried to open a sticking plaster while holding the shirt over his eye.

‘It needs more than a plaster,’ Sophie said. ‘You need a doctor to stitch it.’

‘I’ll get it sutured tomorrow if it needs it,’ Luka said. ‘In London.’

He looked up and caught her eye but she didn’t respond to his opening.

She’d damn well make him say it, Sophie decided.

‘I’ll do it,’ Sophie said, because it really was a nasty cut. She took out the scissors then cut the sticking plaster into thin strips onto the kitchen bench, and as she did so Luka spoke.

‘You look well.’

Sophie gave a wry smile. At least he had got to see her in her beautiful dress, she thought with slight relish. She knew she looked her very best and it was a rather nice thing to know when you were about to be dumped.

Let him think she ran around on a Sunday in coral chiffon with lip gloss and jewellery...

And no underwear, Sophie remembered, as she jumped up onto the kitchen bench and quickly put her dress between her thighs.

‘Come here,’ Sophie said, now that she had set up for the small procedure.

‘I don’t want to get blood on your dress.’

It didn’t matter now if her dress was ruined, Sophie knew. This was the only time that he’d be seeing her in it. ‘Oh, this old thing.’ She shrugged. ‘Don’t worry about it.’

Luka went over to where she sat and stood as Sophie concentrated on closing the cut.

‘Why were you two fighting?’

‘We weren’t fighting,’ Luka said. ‘He was taking out his temper on me. I chose not to hit him back. This one last time.’

‘I hate how he treats you,’ Sophie said, and her hand paused over the cut as she deliberated with herself whether or not to continue. ‘How he treats everyone.’

She thought of Bella and if there was any good that could come out of this then she’d damn well find it.

‘Bella’s mother is sick,’ Sophie said. ‘She can’t work and now he wants Bella to start doing shifts at the hotel bar.’ She assumed, given that his eyes refused to meet hers, that he knew what that meant. ‘Can you speak with him for me?’

‘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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