The Unwanted Conti Bride (The Legendary Conti Brothers) (10 page)

She would back off now. She hated being told what to do, didn’t she? She hated anything that she thought made her weaker or exposed or vulnerable. And of all the people in the world, she’d never bow or bend to his commands—

He tensed as he felt the tentative slide of her tongue over the head.

Dio in cielo
, she looked up at him, a wicked smile in her eyes and then her wide mouth closed over the tip of his shaft. His head went back; his vision blurred as he slid into the warm crevice of her mouth.

“Like that?” she whispered when she slid him out, her pink mouth wet, her nudity a luscious invitation.

Challenge and entreaty. Siren and slave. Desire and defiance. He had never seen a sight, heard a sound, more beautiful than her. For the first time in his life, he had no saucy retort, no way to reduce this into simple carnality. How when only Sophia and her wicked mouth would do?

She flicked her silky tongue over the slit and repeated her question. He saw stars, and sky and pleasure so blinding that he couldn’t breathe. His hands sank into her hair, holding her in place. He had meant to disarm her; he had meant to somehow bring the chains of this thing between them back into his control.

Instead, he felt unmanned. Distilled to his essence, stripped of his armor.

Sweat dampened his skin as she continued her little ministrations with an eagerness and efficiency that pushed him closer to the edge. There was a fever in his muscles and he found it was he that was shaking now. Coming inside her mouth would be heaven but more than that, he wanted to be inside her, he wanted to see her face when he finished, he needed to drive her to this same...bewildered, out-of-control state she drove him to. He needed to be one with the incredible woman that was cajoling, stealing, wrenching away parts of him.

He pulled her up in a hurry of need, never having felt this sense of urgency, this potent urge to feel and revel. Pressed his mouth to one softly rounded shoulder before thrusting his thigh between hers. Against his muscular, hair-roughened thigh, she was like satin silk, a sweet haven.

“Luca?” she whispered, her eyes impossibly round in her face. The innocent but curious interest in it pounded in his veins.

Dio
, was there nothing about the woman he could hold against her? Even in this, she shed her inhibitions, willing to go wherever he took her.

He delved his fingers into her folds to test her readiness. Pink spilled into her cheeks, a spectrum of browns in her eyes. She was slickly wet against his fingers. He stroked the swollen bud there and she jerked into his touch, demanding more. Twisting her chin, he kissed her plump mouth. “First, I need you like this,
cara mia
,” he offered, before he took himself in hand and pushed into her wet sheath from behind.

The tight fit of her flesh stroked every nerve in him, a flare of heat pooling at his groin.

Her gasp, throaty and husky, tore at his nerves. Desire and lust, need and something more, everything roped together, all independent flames merging together and setting him on fire.

He met Sophia’s eyes in the mirror and Luca believed everything in his life—every ugly thing he’d lived through—was all worth it, if it had brought him to this woman in this moment.

* * *

Sophia scrambled to keep a millionth of the wits she possessed, for she didn’t want to miss a single moment of being possessed by Luca. She wanted every sense open, for she felt like she was turned inside out, every secret, every fantasy, exposed. In this position, she didn’t know where she ended and where he began.

He had made it good ten years ago; even her virginal body huddled under the covers on his bed, had known it. Even as she had refused to let him turn the lights on, look at her in daylight. He’d handled her with tender caresses, reverent touches. However ugly his motives, he’d made seeking and giving pleasure a beautiful celebration, made her body feel like an instrument of pleasure instead of a source of shame.

But this was different. She was not an awkward girl who didn’t know what to do with her suddenly voluptuous curves or the sudden, unwelcome, indecent attention from the same boys who despised her guts. She was not ashamed or confused by the demands or the reactions of her body.

Now she was Sophia Conti, the devil’s wife, and it had already changed her. For better or worse, she had no idea but it was irrevocable. She owned him in this moment and she owned her sexuality.

Instead of distaste, as her expectations had been about this experience, she felt like she was an extension of him. Or he of her. Instead of shying away, she boldly raised her gaze and met his in the mirror.

Smoothly contoured shoulders framed her slender ones. Dark olive skin, stretched tightly over sinew provided an enticing contrast against her skin. Nostrils flaring, plump mouth pursed in passion, he was magnificent. And so was she, the perfect female counterpart to his masculinity.

Dark fingers moved from her hips, across her rib cage to cup and lift her breasts. He rubbed the turgid peak lightly, then moved to the other one. But even the gossamer touch was too much when she held his hard heat inside her. She clenched her inner muscles, the need primal, instinctual.

He pressed his forehead against her shoulder, a guttural growl coming from the depths of him. He didn’t withdraw, but rotated his hips and again, Sophia clenched around him.

Sensation spiraled, inch by inch, until Sophia felt even the jerk of his hot breath against her skin like a stinging caress. They stayed like that, learning each other and testing all the different ways they could move against and with each other, their bodies in perfect harmony, the tension building to an unbearable pitch.

Sophia was afraid she would fragment into a million little pieces if she didn’t climax soon. She held on to his forearms and pressed herself against his chest. “Luca?”

He licked the pulse beating frantically at her neck and spoke against her skin
. “Si, cara mia?”

She arched her spine and pushed back into him, until he was more deeply embedded within her. Voluptuous pleasure suffused her at the hard length lodged inside her. Head over her shoulder, she looked back at him, half-delirious with need. “I’m dying here, Luca.”

A quick stroke of his fingers at her clit made her groan wildly. “All you have to do is ask,
bella
.”

She panted, struggling to form a thought. “Please, Luca...don’t make me wait anymore. I need you. I need this like I’ve needed nothing in my life before.”

Long fingers gripping her hips with such deliciously tight pressure, he pulled out of her. All the way before thrusting back into her again.

Sophia arched her back, threw her head against his chest.

Her breath came in soft little pants, her channel still trying to accommodate his large size. Every inch of her sex quivered at his stark possession. At the unbelievable pleasure pulsing up her spine. Her thighs shook under her, her knuckles white where she gripped the table.

There was no technique, no experienced caresses. This was raw, real. And so damn good that she thought she’d implode from the inside.

A palm on her lower back pushed her down and she bent, malleable and willing. Like heated clay in his hands, his to do with as he wished. Another hand quested toward her breast, plumping and molding.

Her entire body was like a bow for him. Long fingers pulled expertly at her nipple before moving down, down to tug at the sensitive, swollen bud at her sex again.

He thrust in again, his fingers and his hard length applying counterpoint pressure over her throbbing flesh to his rough, upward thrusts. Pleasure screwed through her pelvis again, nearly cleaving her in half. Sophia sobbed, screamed.

“
Dio
, Sophia,” he whispered, before withdrawing and pushing in again.

The intimate slap of their flesh, the slick slide of their sweat-dampened skin, there was nothing civilized or romantic about what he did to her. He was not the experienced lover whose technique and skill in lovemaking was rhapsodized about in silkily whispered innuendoes. He was not the masterful seducer.

With her he was desperate, his thrusts erratic, raw, his need nothing orchestrated. With her, he was just a man who was as desperate for her as she was for him. He took her, savage and uncompromisingly male, and Sophia reveled in it as she climaxed in a wild explosion of pleasure. Fingers roughly holding her down, Luca thrust in a long stroke and then he was convulsing against her, a rapid stream of filthy Italian words filling her ears.

Sophia smiled and decided they were the sweetest words she’d ever heard.

CHAPTER NINE

“M
ALEDIZIONE
, S
OPHIA
!
Stay away from Antonio.”

Sophia stilled as Luca, for the first time since she’d known him, raised his voice. He stormed into her brand-new but mostly bare office on the floor newly given over to displaced Rossi staff in the CLG offices in the heart of Milan’s business district.

“I have kept every promise I made. What more could you want from that manipulative old bastard?”

Her newly appointed assistant, Margie—Sophia had never had an assistant or an office or even a stapler of her own before—stood staring at Luca, her mouth open wide enough to catch any stray butterflies. The woman had to be fifty and yet, like clockwork, a faint gleam of interest appeared in her eyes and she abruptly straightened out her shoulders, sucked her tummy in and thrust out her meager breasts clad in a thick wool sweater.

Bemused, Sophia turned to Luca. Who was completely unaware of anyone but her in the room. Like nothing but Sophia in the entire world had any consequence to him whatsoever. Whether meetings or parties, whether they were surrounded by a hundred guests curious about their marriage, or just at an intimate dinner with the Rossis—they hadn’t socialized much with his family after the party, as if he wanted to keep her separate from them—Luca had the addictive habit of zeroing all his focus on her.

A woman couldn’t be blamed for getting used to being looked at like that. For misunderstanding fiery lust for intimacy, camaraderie for affection. For starting to believe in her own fairy tale that she could tie the charming, incredibly insatiable Luca Conti to herself.

Thick hair disheveled, sporting a stubbly beard along with the constant blue shadows, and dressed in a rumpled white Polo T-shirt and blue jeans, her husband looked like a thwarted grizzly bear. An utterly sexy and thoroughly disreputable version.

Her husband; she was calling him that far too frequently, even if in her head. She was becoming possessive, and she had no idea how to stop.

She sighed, waiting for the stinging awareness that took over her body every time he was near to lapse into a bearable pulse.

Luca, she’d come to learn in four weeks of their all-too-real-feeling marriage, was given to bouts of intense restlessness, which usually signaled that he was going to retreat, from which he emerged a day or two later and then followed furious social activity.

The restlessness wasn’t violent or physical as she had learned the night she had found him sitting at the veranda, staring into the pitch-black of the night. It was in his eyes, in the detached, distant way he looked at everything around him, in the long walks he took around the estate as if his energy was boundless. In the warning that radiated from him to be left alone when he was in such a state.

But when he emerged from it, it was as if he hadn’t been absent for hours.

She’d hurried back from work one afternoon to Villa de Conti, intensely relieved to see his bike and marched straight into the shower. A wicked glint in his eyes as he watched her, water caressing his hard body. “Please tell me,
bella
, that you came home for an afternoon quickie.”

“This is not funny,” she’d said then, fighting off his nimble fingers. He’d still somehow shed her of her linen jacket, leaving her in her stretchy camisole.

“Luca, this is serious.”

His knuckles traced her nipples, tight and wet against the fabric. “I have a new appreciation for your starchy suits,
cara
. I feel like a kid unwrapping a present every single time I undress you. Only I know the treasure that is beneath.”

“We can get help.” Her hair plastered to her scalp and her mascara ran down her cheeks. For once, Sophia didn’t give a damn how she looked. “I did some research and there are all kinds of new research to beat a drug addiction.” It was the only thing that made sense.

To which he had replied that he didn’t do drugs, kissed her and then proceeded to show her how
she
could calm him down. He had taken her then, against the wall, under the onslaught of water, with swift, desperate, hard thrusts, his mouth buried in her neck while she had halfheartedly and nearing climax, objected that this was the opposite of calming.

She had no idea what calmed that restless look in his eyes or why he needed to escape.

For a lazy playboy, the patterns of his days and nights were utterly demonic. Her mind reeled at the highs and the lows, at the chaotic clamor that seemed to be his life. She couldn’t imagine surviving the erratic quality of his days and nights, the lack of structure... How could he get anything done?

He doesn’t do anything, remember?
a voice whispered. The shrew, as she had taken to calling that voice, the one she’d developed to distance herself from anything she sensed might make her weak.

But he hadn’t once left her hanging.

He’d given her every bit of his attention in numerous meetings she’d had with Leandro and him to reinvent the Rossi brand as a subsidiary of CLG. First she had had to sell Leandro that Rossi was still a household name, prove that it had upped manufacturing standards in the last five years, a project she’d overseen personally. Then she’d shown him sales numbers proving that when it came to belts, men’s wallets and other niche leather goods, Rossi was still beating CLG.

“And here I thought you were taking my brother on a ride,” Leandro had said drily, pinning her with his implacable gaze.

Once Leandro had come on board, she had taken on Salvatore.

Which had needed a show of support from the Conti brothers—even Sophia had been impressed by the complementary strengths of the brothers, one silent but reeking of power and the other charming but persuasive. An agreement that CLG signed saying it would never do away with the Rossi name
and
endless business proposals, finally convinced Salvatore.

Though he’d grumbled when she’d suggested discontinuing any Rossi products that competed directly against CLG and instead develop a range of more complementary products. Luca had managed to convince Sal in a matter of minutes that
Rossi’s
had sunk because it could never compete with CLG and yet kept trying to, a point she’d been trying to make for several years now.

An official press release said CLG was investing in Rossi’s to make their renowned clutches, belts and other accessories, redesigned to meet the luxury standards of CLG and enter the market again.

Sophia had been appointed as the director of overseeing the first production line from design to marketing. An appointment that hadn’t filled Sal with confidence until Luca had winked at him and said, “Good to keep someone from your side in there, Salvatore. You can’t trust my brother or Antonio completely.”

When she’d thanked him with a kiss on his cheek, he’d grinned wickedly. “I love this whole man behind the woman concept with you,
bella
. Although I like being above and under you, too.”

Leandro had watched them with something like shock in those gray eyes.

She’d hidden her face in his chest, her throat dangerously close to tears, and pretended to find his lascivious comment obnoxious. He’d warded off the emotional moment with humor. As always. But Sophia didn’t believe that Luca was shallow anymore.

The truth was that he was weaving himself into every part of her life, into her very being. All too frequently now, Sophia wondered what she would do when he was gone from her life.

Who would she cry to about Salvatore? About the entire species of men? Who would make her laugh? Who would drive her to the edge of ecstasy? Who would hold her in bed as if she were the most precious thing in the world?

She ran a hand over her stomach, as if she could calm the panic. “Hello, Luca. Do you like my new office?”

He pushed a hand through his hair and walked around, his long, sinuous body overpowering the space immediately. Then he turned to her with a frown. “You should have one with a nicer view. Not the one looking at the back alley.”

Smarting at his dismissal, Sophia said, “I don’t care about the office so much, Luca. Salvatore has agreed to let me pitch the idea for—”

“You should care, Sophia. As long as you act like you deserve only this much, that’s all you get. All these years, you have let Salvatore box you into a position that you were overqualified for. You—”

“I was learning the business, every part of it.”

“What is your excuse now? Why are you still pussyfooting around him?”

“Too many things have changed in the past few months. He needs—”

“He needs to hear you say that this is your company as much as it is his. That you’re the best thing that’s happened to it in the last decade. Have you decided to neatly play in the boundaries you set for yourself, afraid that if you push, he might tell you you’re not his daughter after all? Have you decided that is all you could have, Sophia?”

It felt like the ground was melting away from under her feet. Like something she hadn’t even seen was ripped open for everyone to see.

Like she was standing naked in the midst of a crowd, her worst nightmare, all her toughness, her strength, her pride, mere illusions. She was that little girl again, desperately pretending that she was not scared at the prospect of leaving the only home she knew. Her throat felt raw. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He reached her then and the tenderness with which he clasped her jaw was enough to break her. She should hate him, this man who saw past everything, but she couldn’t. “What will you do when I’m done with you? How will you convince Sal of anything then?”

All Sophia heard in that little outburst was
when I’m done with you
. Her entire world felt colorless, lifeless, in that sentence. “I haven’t thought that far ahead.”

“Then you aren’t much of a planner, are you?”

“Wow, is this how you are when you don’t sleep for a few days?”

He ran a hand through his hair in a rough, restless gesture. “No, I’m like this because I found out that you’re making secret deals with Antonio. Again.”

“
Again?
What do you mean?”

“I know he’s the one who put you up to marrying me.”

“He told you?”

“
Si
. So tell me what are you doing meeting with him in secret in the middle of the night? Alex saw you.”

“So she told on me?”

“She thought I should know that my wife is continuing negotiations with my wily grandfather,
si
. Alex despises Antonio as much as I do.”

Sophia knew there was a guilty flush climbing up her cheeks. “I just... I told him to stop bullying Salvatore, and every one else, that’s all. He and his gray wolf pack.”

The sinuous lines of Luca’s face became still. “You did?”

“Yes. It’s high time someone stood up to him. He plays with everyone—Kairos, you, me, Tina. Only Leandro seems to escape his clutches. I might have gone a little overboard, I was so angry about it.”

“How overboard?”

“I told him if he wasn’t careful, I would send him and his pack out of the board with their tails tucked between their legs.”

But Sophia had approached Antonio only to ask about Luca, for she knew Leandro could never be induced to talk about his brother. The bond between the Conti brothers, as she’d guessed, was inviolate, for all they were diametrically opposite in temperament.

What haunted Luca? Was it a medical condition? Why weren’t the Contis, with all their bloody wealth, doing something to help him?

With each passing day, she felt as if she’d go mad if she didn’t understand what drove Luca. It felt like an invisible wall was already pushing her away from him.

For a man who gave every outward proof of despising Luca, Antonio hadn’t betrayed a single thing. Only stared at her as if she was an apparition that had appeared out of thin air. Beyond frustrated, Sophia had vented the anger, the fear that was slowly consuming her from within.

She took Luca’s hand in hers, the long, elegant fingers as familiar as her own now. She’d never known this intimacy, this sort of connection with another person, in her life. Not even her mother. Somehow, Luca had become a part of her own makeup. “I would never whisper about Valentina to another soul.”

“He told you about Tina?”

He sounded so disquietingly furious that the words poured out of Sophia. “I would never betray your family in that way. I would never ever pull the rug like that from anyone, much less Tina. I know what it feels like to not have a name. To not know where you belong. You believe me, don’t you, Luca?”

* * *

Luca stared at Sophia, the wistfulness in her tone calming the anger inside. His grandfather really needed to keep his mouth shut. Sensing the wariness in her tense stance, he pulled her into his arms. “You fight so ferociously for Salvatore, I forget you’re not even his, Sophia. Tell me more about you.”

“There’s not much to tell. My English father died before he could marry my mother. She became the village pariah when she found out she was pregnant. She moved to Milan to find a job and to raise me. For a long while, we struggled to make ends meet. She wasn’t really suited for any kind of job. So she cleaned houses. Big, posh houses, and I tagged along whenever I could.”

“It made you determined to succeed.”

“Yes. I wanted to go to college, I wanted a career. Luckily for me, I did well at school. I never ever wanted to have just a glass of milk for dinner. Can you blame my fixation with cakes and pastries? Diets are torture for me, to deny myself food when we didn’t have much for so long, my body revolts at the very idea.”

He buried his nose in her hair, tenderness enveloping him. “Then why do you?”

“It’s okay, I’m coming to realize that I’ll never be stick-thin, anyway.”

“You’re a fighter,
cara mia
. It lights you from the inside out.”

“That’s what good-looking people say to the ugly ones,” she retorted instantly.

They burst out laughing. She hid her face in his chest. It felt as if his lungs would burn if he even tried to contain this.