LITMIR.BIZ

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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

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