Читать книгу Modern Romance July 2015 Books 5-8 - Andie Brock, Louise Fuller - Страница 12

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.’