LITMIR.BIZ

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don’t want to be in your arms because there I might convince myself that this is real.

      He held her at her waist and she could feel his cheek by hers and it was their first dance and had to be their last because it nearly killed her to be back in his arms.

      Yet she didn’t want their one dance to end—ever.

      ‘Why did you get me that bracelet? Why would you have engraved “Together for Ever”?’

      ‘What did you want me to have inscribed? “Né tu letu né iu cunsulatu”?’

      She looked right at him with narrowed eyes as he delivered a very apt Sicilian saying—‘Neither you happy nor I consoled.’

      ‘Do you need consoling, Luka?’ Her smile was mean with seduction.

      ‘Are you happy?’ Luka asked, and saw that her smile struggled to stay on. ‘Do you miss it?’

      ‘Miss what?’ Sophie hissed, yet she knew what was coming and she was right, for he practically echoed Bella’s words.

      ‘Everything we could have had.’

      ‘You ended things with me,’ Sophie said. ‘You came back to Bordo Del Cielo just to say you didn’t want to marry me.’

      ‘Oh, you are so good at rewriting history, Sophie,’ Luka refuted. ‘I ended the old us, we were just starting anew. It was you that ultimately broke things off. You who refused to come to London with me. So,’ he asked, ‘do you regret it?’

      If she said that she did, then she admitted her love. And if she admitted her love, then it made the last years wasted, and that shamed her more than being led to a police car dressed in his shirt.

      Instead, she clung to her pride as she fought not to rest her head on his shoulder. ‘No.’

      ‘Then you’re more of a fool than I thought.’

      ‘Oh, I’m a fool now, am I?’ Sophie retorted. ‘A peasant and a fool.’

      ‘You’ll never let it go, will you? Always you let your temper get the better of you,’ Luka said into her ear, and she fumed silently in his arms as one by one he took out her faults and examined them as their bodies swayed to the music and turned the other on. ‘Your quick tongue...’

      ‘My slow tongue...’ Sophie said, and he laughed a dark laugh at her attempt to change the subject.

      Yes, the old Sophie was back.

      ‘It won’t work, Sophie.’

      ‘Ah, but it already has,’ she said, because she could feel him hard against her and certainly, for Luka’s sake, one dance must now become two.

      ‘You should be careful who you tease,’ he said into her ear. ‘I have no problem sleeping with you and then walking away.’

      ‘You would do that, wouldn’t you?’

      ‘Oh, yes,’ Luka said. ‘So don’t play with fire.’

      It felt strange to be both angry and turned on, to want and to resist.

      ‘Why do you loathe me?’ Sophie asked. ‘You have a wonderful life. And why does Matteo hate me?’

      ‘Because I’m boring when I’m drunk,’ Luka said. ‘I guess I tend to complain about you.’

      ‘And why do you hate me so?’

      ‘Many reasons.’

      ‘Such as?’

      ‘You held what my father did against me. You compare me to him when I never did that to you.’

      ‘My father is a good man.’

      ‘Perhaps, but he is not completely innocent.’ He dropped a kiss on her burning shoulder and there was nowhere to hide, no row that could be had in the public arena she had made for them, and resistance was agony.

      ‘Don’t make him out a saint,’ Luka said.

      ‘I don’t.’ Sophie closed her eyes as his face came back to her cheek.

      ‘What else?’ she asked.

      ‘Your inability to back down, to admit you were wrong,’ Luka said, and then he warned her what he was about to do. ‘I’m going to kiss you now. I’m going to kiss you and there is nowhere you can go and nowhere you can hide, and I am going to remind you what you let go. You are going to taste what you must now miss every day.’

      ‘A small kiss is hardly going to have me on my knees.’

      ‘Who said small?’

      ‘There are people present. My father...’

      ‘Would he not expect us to kiss at our engagement party? Just pull away when it gets too much...’

      ‘Luka, you seem to think I still want you. I told you, I don’t want anyone.’

      ‘Oh, that’s right—your phobia...’

      He pulled his head back so she could see his black smile.

      ‘When you need me to stop, I shall.’

      Sophie blinked. She already needed him to stop and he had barely started, but just the graze of his lips was too much, just the press of his mouth was too dangerous.

      He was necessarily cruel.

      Necessarily because their mouths needed each other, and it was a relief just to give in to mutual want.

      The shiver along her spine this time came from his fingers, and it was Sophie’s tongue that caressed his.

      Just the tip.

      That cool, muscular tip that stroked hers enough to remind their scalding bodies of the fire they’d once made.

      ‘Enough for show,’ Sophie said, and pulled back.

      Just not enough for them.

      ‘I’m going to see Matteo off.’ Luka ran a slow tongue over his lips and tasted her again. ‘Your father looks as if he needs to go to bed.’

      He left her burning.

      As Luka saw their guests off, Sophie took the elevator with her father and the nurse.

      ‘It is good to see you so happy.’

      ‘We are happy, Dad,’ Sophie told him, as she saw him to his room. ‘You can see how Luka takes care of me. You don’t have to worry any more.’

      ‘But I do,’ Paulo said, then turned to the nurse. ‘Can you excuse us, please?’

      The nurse nodded and they walked into his room. ‘You have no idea how good that feels,’ Paulo said.

      ‘What?’

      ‘To ask for privacy and to be given it. You have made my final days happy, Sophie, but there is more that I want. I need to walk you down the aisle. I want to return to Bordo Del Cielo...’

      ‘The journey will be too much for you.’

      ‘Then I will die returning home to my Rosa.’

      ‘Father...’

      ‘Sophie, don’t say no to me. Let me see you and Luka marry in the same church that your mother and I did, now, this weekend. I won’t see another one, this much I know...’

      How could she say no to him?

      ‘I’ll speak to Luka.’

       CHAPTER FOURTEEN

      SHE WALKED INTO the bedroom. Luka was lying on his side, his back to her and the sheet low on his hips.

      She didn’t know if he was awake or asleep but she knew that she

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