The Unwanted Conti Bride (The Legendary Conti Brothers) (7 page)

His mouth pursed tight, as if he was trying to stop himself from bursting into laughter. Which in turn animated the rest of his face.

Mouthwatering chocolate, knee-melting Luca and she—locked behind a closed door.

Ignoring her plea, he tugged her toward him and raised a truffle to her mouth. “A wedding like ours, that sets at least some things to right, deserves a little celebration,
si
?”

Caught in the startlingly deep conviction in his words, his gaze intent on her mouth, Sophia licked her lips.

He groaned then, a deep, husky sound that pinged through her, leaving pockets of heat all over. “Open up,
cara mia
.”

The taste of that melting chocolate exploded on her tongue. A moan she couldn’t stop escaped her throat, while his fingers lingered on her lips. Pressed at the soft cushion of her lower lip.

His gaze was hot, hungry. His mouth even hotter as he bent and swiped at her lower lip. A jolt of pleasure traveled through her, so acute that Sophia jerked.

Sinewed arms came around her, pulling her closer. The muscles in his arms clenched under her questing fingers. Air became short in supply. And what was there was coated with the scent of him. She felt dizzy, like she was high. On him.

She licked her lips again.

He bent and dug his teeth into her lower lip. And then stroked the nip with his tongue. Liquid heat rushed between Sophia’s legs. His fingers tightened over her hips. “You lick your lips like that, I will think it a call to action.”

She tried to wiggle out of his hold. Only managing to press herself tighter against him. “I’m not doing it on purpose.”

“I know.”

His chest pushed against her breasts. Muscle and sinew, he was rock hard everywhere she touched. What the hell did the man do to have a body like that? With his lazy lifestyle, he should have had a paunch. At least a small belly. Not this washboard abdomen that she wanted to touch and lick and scrape with her teeth.

But she didn’t want to let go of him. Not just yet, she promised herself. She didn’t want to give up this intimacy with him. This easy familiarity that they were slipping into. The laughter they shared. The way he made her see things about herself she didn’t know. She hadn’t realized how deprived she’d been of this kind of companionship, how monotonous her life had become.

Maybe there were other advantages to this short marriage of theirs. The zing in her blood, the ache between her thighs, begged her to consider them. She traced the shadows under his eyes, something she’d always wanted to do. “Do you not sleep at all?”

He held her wrist and pressed his face into her hand. Leaned into her touch as if he needed it. Breath whispering like a whistle, Sophia traced the sharp angles of his face. The pad of her forefinger reached his mouth. That mouth, God, that mouth... She had such hot dreams about it.

With no warning, he turned his head, opened his mouth and closed it over her finger. And then sucked it. A hungry, stringent pulse began at her sex, in tune with the pulls of his mouth.

Her skin felt too tight to hold her. The silk of her panties was wet. Rubbed against her inner thighs as she shifted restlessly.

He released her finger. Sophia clenched her thighs closed instinctually, needing friction there.

A dark flush dusted his cheekbones. He knew, oh, God, he knew. He knew where she was burning to be touched.

“I’m an insomniac.”

It took her several long seconds to realize he was answering her question.

He was an insomniac?
“How bad is it?”

“I sleep a few hours every few days.”

“That’s it? I need at least eight hours every day to feel remotely human. Doesn’t that have side effects?”

“It does. But I have learned to live with them.”

It made him more three dimensional, more...human. As strange as that sounded. “What do you do, then? In all that time?”

Fingers busily shifted the collar of her dress. His mouth landed on the skin he bared. His tongue licked that juncture, sending hot shafts of pleasure down her spine. “Do you taste like silk all over, Sophia?”

“Yes,”
she said, completely lost in the magic he wove. She tried to recall some warning, some common sense as to why she shouldn’t be in his arms, pressed up snugly against him. With him sucking on random parts of her.

Zilch. Nada. Nothing came up.

Then the diamond on her ring finger glinted, a twinkling ray of common sense. She ordered her body to stiffen, to move away, but it had different ideas. “We can’t be doing this. We can’t... If you gave me that power over your stock thinking that will make me grateful, thinking I’ll happily—”

“Spread your legs and take me inside you?” He was the one who pulled back. “You really think I’d have to pay for sex? I’m not sure who it reflects badly on that you think that, you or me. Or have you truly become as cynical as they call you?”

He castigated her so softly and yet Sophia felt his words like tiny pricks. “Then why?”

In response, he dipped his mouth and took hers again. This kiss was not an invitation or a tease. It was full-on assault, demanding surrender. Almost brutally efficient in the way he slowly but surely made her into a mass of shuddering sensation.

She’d made him angry, Sophia realized beneath the avalanche of sensations. His tongue laved the interior of her mouth, while his hands moved up and down her body, inciting her into a frenzy.

Expert strokes, here and there, perfect pressure, a master of seduction at work. A routine.

His heart wasn’t in it. He was seducing her with technique and experience. He was proving a point. She could be a tall, blonde model for all that it mattered to him.

The difference, even as heat drenched her, sent bile up her throat.

“No, Luca, please.” She sank her hands into his hair and tugged his face down. “That was moronic. What I said,” she finally whispered, her hands molding and tracing the line of his shoulders. “I...have never been able to believe that someone like you could want someone like me.”

She didn’t want to mention the bet again. It was in the past. But she saw his understanding of it, saw those same shutters come down.

He sighed and instantly gentled. A devil so easily calmed with honesty? A man whose feelings could hurt under that almost impenetrable mask he wore? She wasn’t so sure anymore that she knew him.

Across her temple, then over her nose, and then her jaw, he placed soft kisses. “I kiss you because you’re thoroughly kissable, Sophia. I kiss you because I can’t bear the thought of those lush lips not quivering under mine, of that stout will not surrendering to me. I kiss you because I want to hear that sigh you release when you realize this fire between us is too hot to fight. I kiss you for that moment when your shoulders lose that stiff line, when you melt into willing softness. I kiss you for that moment when you make that little growly sound in the back of your throat, as though you’ve just realized that you’ve been a passive spectator. I kiss you because then you take over the kiss, you forget why you should resist me and you devour me as if I was your favorite dessert in the world.”

He whispered the last words against her mouth. As if he was infusing her very blood with those tender words.

She sighed.

Then she groaned.

Then she kissed him back with a ravenous hunger. All things he’d predicted. He knew her so well, even in this... It was a faint warning at the back of her mind that dissolved under the influx of such delirious pleasure.

His lush mouth delivered on the fantasies it promised. Hard and soft, sometimes masculine demand, sometimes a tender entreaty.

Vining her arms around his nape, she stretched to reach more of him. He was right; she hated being a spectator. One hard thigh pushed in between her legs, but didn’t quite hit the spot.

When she shifted, one hand landed on her thigh, pushed up her dress and then pulled her leg up and around his buttocks.

His thigh moved even farther between her legs. And up. Right against the hungry core of her.

Shamelessly, Sophia clenched her thighs and then moved on his leg, back and forth. Up and down. Pleasure spiraled through her pelvis, building to an unbearable rhythm.

Teeth banged, tongues sucked. Clasping his jaw with her hands, she held him for her delectation. Then she dug her teeth into that carnal lower lip, hard, and sucked it into her mouth.

A growl rumbled from his chest. A wild beat danced in her blood as she realized something had changed between them. Tension radiated from his lean frame. His fingers became more urgent, his mouth harder and hotter.

Playtime was over.

His fingers crawled into her hair, tugged at the clip she’d used to pull it back into a tight knot. The clatter of the clip against the wall where he threw it was a bang in the hoarse silence. Fingers pulled and plumped her hair until it fell in unruly waves around her face.

She forgot what she’d meant to ask him. She forgot what had disconcerted her so much about the scene in the conference room. She forgot why she shouldn’t kiss him like this. Only sensation mattered. Only the heat building inside her mattered.

He moved his thigh away and she whimpered. She’d melt into a puddle if he didn’t hold her up. Her mouth was stinging, her blood singing; Sophia was so aroused she was ready to beg him to finish it.

He lifted her leg again, pushing away at the ugly dress. Up and up. Until the lace of her garters was visible and then a strip of her thighs. “Sophia.” He was panting against her cheek. “This is where you put a stop to it if you don’t want to be bent over that table and have me thrusting inside you in three seconds.”

Reality came crashing with that crudely worded statement. He’d put it like that on purpose. She growled, a demand and a plea twisted in that animal sound. He laughed, took her mouth with his again.

She jerked away from him, stumbled on jelly-like legs and then reached for him again to steady herself. “No,” she said, running a hand over her mouth.

All she wanted was to cry. Her mind felt soaked in desire, frustration. “God, I came looking for you because I wanted to talk.” His pupils were dilated, his chest still falling and rising. But he didn’t look the least bit put out for being denied the same satisfaction. “I didn’t mean to hump you like a dog in heat. You’re not angry?”

“I’m in considerable pain, yes...” He sighed “I’m not angry. I know you’d like to believe the worst about me but I do have a little self-control.”

“Oh, is there anything I can do to—”

“You can fix your dress and stop offering to help. Next time you offer, I’ll ask you to go down on your knees.”

O went her mouth again. An instant image fluttered through her brain. Did he ask it of all his lovers? Did they do it because they didn’t want to lose his interest?

Personally, Sophia had always thought the act a little subjugating, undignified and maybe even a little painful to the participating woman’s mouth. “Do you ask it of all your lovers or—”

“Stop talking, Sophia,” he growled again.

Sophia dashed into the attached bathroom. She splashed water over her heated cheeks. His fingers had built her hair into a cloud around her face. She looked soft and feminine and like a woman who lost her mind after two kisses.

Damn it, she had the most important meeting of her life in a few minutes and here she was, climbing all over Luca. He was like her craving for that chocolate truffle. A bad habit she thought she’d beat only to succumb again and again.

He’d suggested she fall. And she was falling gloriously. She thought herself above all those women who threw themselves at him. How bitchily righteous she’d been... If anything, she was even more foolish because she’d already had a taste of him ten years ago.

She’d thought herself beautiful, special to have attracted his attention. And it had been nothing but a bet. “Maybe deprivation will build a little character,” she said, coming out of the bathroom.

Could she sound any more naively hopeful, any more sanctimoniously righteous? She couldn’t,
absolutely
couldn’t care if he satisfied himself with another woman that night.

He was scowling. “We’re both consenting adults and have been joined in the holiest of bonds in front of God and man just this morning. You’re making us both walk back out like horny dogs. You have enough character, don’t you think?”

He sounded so pained, so disgruntled, that Sophia burst out laughing.

It was easy, far too easy, to be mesmerized by Luca’s easy charm. As long as she remembered that there was nothing of substance beneath. “I scheduled a meeting with you and Leandro in an hour.”

“Your plans for Rossi Leather are ready for Leandro?”

She nodded, barely bracing herself against the admiration in his eyes. “I want to run them by you and Leandro first before I present them to Salvatore. That way, we’re all in the loop.”

How was it that with of all the men she’d dealt with—CEOs and ruthless businessmen and millionaires—it was this wastrel playboy that was never intimidated by her? Who only showed respect for her accomplishments and her ambition.

Could that easy confidence come from just his looks? Or was there more to Luca than met the eye?

He uncorked the champagne bottle and poured it into two flutes. Handing her one, he clinked his against hers. The bubbles kissed her throat on the way down. She looked up to find his gaze on her. Rattled by the line of her thoughts, she said nothing.

They talked of a varied range of topics, sometimes agreeing and more than once, getting into a heated argument. Only when her watch pinged did Sophia realize how invigorating and informative their discussion had been.

And how enjoyable.

Throughout the meeting with Leandro and Luca, all Sophia could think of was how jarringly discordant, how disconcertingly different this side of Luca was from the man she’d despised for so long.

CHAPTER SIX

T
HE
LAST
THING
Sophia wanted, after the events of the last week, was a party.

A party thrown specially in honor of Luca and her.

A party to which every member of the high society of Milan was invited, including men who’d known of her humiliation ten years ago.

A party thrown by her in-laws, the Conti family, which was a minefield of dysfunction—her family seemed so normal even with her differences with Salvatore—she couldn’t imagine navigating without setting off an explosion.

The last she’d seen of Luca had been outside the Conti building, six days ago. He’d called a taxi for her after her meeting with Leandro and him and then driven off. The invite for the party came later that night, in the form of a phone call from Leandro’s wife, Alexis, her new sister-in-law.

When she’d moaned about attending, Salvatore had warned her that she couldn’t alienate her husband’s family.
Her new family
, in fact.

To which, she had, quite forcefully and uncharacteristically, asked him if he was that happy to be rid of her. Only silence had remained then. Full of guilt and shame, Sophia had apologized to him and left.

She’d never confronted Salvatore like that. There had never been any need. Since he had married her mother, he’d been kindness itself to her. He’d paid for her to go to University, given her a job at Rossi Leather, provided her with everything she could have ever asked for.

The only thing he didn’t give her was his trust when it came to business matters. Could she blame him when it was a one-hundred-and-sixty-year-old legacy that he wanted to protect for her brothers? Maybe asking for him to take such a big risk on her, when she’d never really excelled at the things he wanted of her, was too much?

Maybe things would have been different if she’d been born a Rossi.

At least, she had done the right thing in marrying Luca. Salvatore was delighted that finally he had a connection to the venerable Contis.

Sophia had come to Villa de Conti straight from work that evening, and had been shown into Luca’s suite by a smiling Alexis. Aware that she’d wanted to chat, Sophia had claimed a headache and rushed in for a bath.

After her shower, Sophia put on a silk wrapper and stepped out into the bedroom. Her impulse purchases lay in chic, expensive bags on the bed, having left a hole the size of a crater in her bank account. Designer heels lay in another box.

The glittering bags mocked her. She flopped to the bed, feeling foolish now for splurging—when the devil hadn’t even answered her texts.
Again.
Was he going to show up tonight?

She’d just rubbed lotion in and put her underwear on when the door opened quite rudely. Cursing, Sophia grabbed her towel just as Valentina, of all people, came into view.

Spine rigid, Sophia preempted the tall beauty, who looked stunning in a long black evening dress. “I’m far too nervous already, so please, Valentina, no theatrics right now.”

The younger woman had the grace to look ashamed. “I came to apologize, Sophia.” When Sophia remained stubbornly silent, Valentina changed tack. “My brother sent me to see if you wanted help.”

“Thank Leandro, but I’m good.”

“
Non
, Luca sent me.”

The towel slipped from Sophia’s hands. “Luca is here? Downstairs?” Her breath ballooned up in her chest.

“Si.”

He hadn’t deserted her. Just for this evening, Sophia needed him by her side. After tonight, after getting through facing the society that she’d never belonged in, she wouldn’t need him again.

“You thought he would not come?”

Curiosity filled Valentina’s question. The last thing Sophia wanted was the Contis or anyone else for that matter, to know how little familiarity she had with Luca’s lifestyle. “I’m nervous because I know everyone’s eyes will be on me and I don’t handle attention well.”

Valentina’s gaze swept over her almost clinically, assessing, and Sophia tugged the towel toward her. “You are hot, Sophia, why do you hide it?”

The question was so matter of fact that Sophia forgot that she was supposed to be angry with Valentina. “Did he ask you to be kind to me?”

“
Non
, I’m not being kind. He did tell me to stop being bitchy to you.” The woman didn’t mince her words and Sophia was beginning to like her. “You have breasts I would kill for.” To punctuate it, she looked pointedly at Sophia’s breasts, contained dangerously in a pink bra and then at her own relatively smaller ones, which wasn’t saying much because everyone had smaller breasts than Sophia’s.

And then Valentina sighed.

Sophia half groaned, half choked.

“I developed very late and even then, they were like apples. Yours are more like...” Sophia wanted to crawl under the bed sheets. “Small melons.”

“Please, Tina...stop!” Sophia rubbed her fingers over her forehead, shook her head and then let the laugh building in her chest escape. Tears filled her eyes, her nose, she was sure, was running and her throat and lungs burned. “Oh, how we torture ourselves... I’ve always been so jealous of your model-like figure, your style and grace. You’re like a gazelle, whereas I...waddle like a penguin. Your sense of fashion is...just wow.”

Warmth entered Valentina’s eyes, transforming her entire visage. “Sense of style and fashion can be...acquired,
si
? But not curves. Unless I go for those silicone implants. But I don’t think Kairos will like artificial boobs and there is already too much he...” Stricken black eyes shied away from Sophia’s. “I know now that Kairos and you are just friends.”

“You confronted Kairos?”

“
Si.
He was angry that I struck you.
But...
I had no business acting like a bitch to you. Not when the problem is between us.” Misery radiated from her. “Will you forgive me, Sophia?”

Sophia smiled. “If you help me, yes. Since you’re a fashionista who Milan looks up to, can you advise me? I bought three dresses. I don’t want them to see a wobbly penguin paired with a strutting peacock. I want to look back on tonight and not cringe.” There were far too many cringe-worthy episodes already in her life.

Valentina burst out laughing. “My brother is a peacock?”

Sophia nodded. With a brisk efficiency, Valentina vetoed all three dresses in two minutes flat.

“The saleswoman assured me that they are the height of—”

“
Si
, but she followed your direction to cover up every inch of skin. What is in the last bag?”

“That one... I picked that one. But it’s going straight back to the shop. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

Valentina floated through the room, picked up the last bag on the bed. The knee-length turquoise silk slithered out in a silken whisper. “This dress is perfect.”

Alarm rattled through Sophia. “That was a foolish purchase. It is strapless and too snug and my
melons
will surely pop out and then—”

“What are you so scared of, Sophia? That people will realize you’re beautiful under the hideous clothes you wear?”

“Hey! They’re not hideous and—”

“Fine, look like a penguin, then. There will be at least three women downstairs who have, at some time, been linked with Luca.”

Sophia gasped. “Oh...you play dirty.”

No way was she going to be shown up by Luca’s willowy exes. Tonight might be a farce, but
she
was going to be the heroine of the farce.

A thousand butterflies flying in her stomach, she let Tina do her hair, even her makeup. When Tina pronounced her ready, she faced the floor-length mirror. Her breath halted in her throat.

The low cut of the bodice showed the upper curves of her breasts. Simple beadwork on the bodice caught the light with every breath she took. The hem of the dress kissed her knees just so, baring her legs. She turned her foot and looked at her legs. She did have sexy legs.

The woman in her, the part she tried to hide and ignore and forget, preened that she looked good in it. Nothing was going to make her tall, elegant or graceful but that was okay. She would continue her diets, grumble about never being svelte but she would also enjoy what she was. No more hiding, as if she was ashamed of herself.

Rub their noses in it...

Her hair, air dried during her chat with Tina, fell in dark waves, softening the strong planes of her face.

Bright red lipstick, brighter than Tina’s, made her mouth look scandalously seductive. Like her red lips could somehow balance the rest of her features that she’d told herself were far too stubborn for a woman. “This is too red. It will make everyone look at my mouth—”

“You married the Conti Devil. Of course they will look at you. Why not give them something gorgeous?” She looked Sophia up and down with a strange glitter. “How like my artistic brother to see what you so carefully hide, to see what no one else could.”

A cold shiver snaked up Sophia’s spine. “Luca is artistic?”

It was Tina’s turn to look surprised. “Luca is a lot of things that I can’t even keep track of. He works for CLG only to please Leandro. He has a personal...” She threw Sophia a startled glance. “Leandro even calls him our very own mad genius. Apparently, Luca’s musical talents have no comparison.”

“In a fond, useless sort of way, right?” Sophia asked, her heart thundering in her ears. “He lives off his brother and his family’s fortune and dabbles in music, surrounds himself in beautiful things, that kind of artist?”

Her nose high up in the air, Valentina flayed her with her gaze. “That indulgent playboy thing he does—that’s only one side of him. Your marriage to Luca, I know that it’s an agreement for a few months. That he lets you use him in them. But still you should know that—”

“I’m not using him as much as we’re using each other,” Sophia interrupted, in prickly defense. Of course, the devil would try to come off as her savior in his account of their deal.

“Luca is not all he seems, Sophia.”

Luca works at CLG, just to please Leandro.

Luca is artistic.

Luca was turning out to be more complex than any man she knew.

Sophia halted on the top of the stairs, trying to corral the panic spearing her belly. She tried to let very little in life unsettle her—in that way, she and Luca were alike, although with him, she supposed it was easier, more his natural state.

At least, that’s what she’d assumed.

Even taking a couple of deep breaths didn’t calm the furor in her veins. She couldn’t get a grip on why it mattered this much.

All she knew was that she needed him to be what she and the entire world though him to be. A wastrel, a playboy. A man who cared for nothing and no one.

* * *

She appeared at the top of the curving marble staircase like a beautiful thought from his mind come to life. Luca felt a pressure on his chest, as if there was weight there, making it harder to pull a breath. He’d known, and guessed, she would be a revelation.

Oh, but what a revelation she was...

He heard the stunned whispers behind him, like a gathering wave rushing toward the shore.

The gasps, the
bellissimas
, the frantic reassessment of a woman they had all been duped into not seeing. Joy sang through his veins. The same he felt when he finished a piece of music or when he manipulated stock numbers into a pattern, into making sense. Like seeing a piece of art, unfinished and raw, come to life.

His joy in her was possessive and primitive. Suddenly, he didn’t want anyone else to see her like this. He didn’t want the whole world to see and covet this beautiful creature.

She was his
, at least for now. He wasn’t arrogant enough to think he’d created her but he’d discovered her, hadn’t he? He alone had seen what Sophia was beneath that prickly nature and tough attitude. And tonight, she was a true reflection of the woman beneath—soft and yet formidably beautiful.

He wanted to pick her up, throw her over his shoulder, carry her away to his studio and lock the world away. He wanted to bury himself deep in her, until neither of them could breathe, until he was rid of this obsession with her. Until her mind, body and spirit, they were all only his.

He’d never chased a woman before. They all came to him. That he was chasing a woman who was determined to not be caught by him was perfect irony.

The bold, sensual lines of her body were a feast. The upper curves of her breasts swelled over the strapless bodice, beckoning to be savored. The silk followed the dip of her waist and the flare of her hips, lovingly touching everything he wanted to.

Their eyes met and the world floated away.

Her brown gaze raked over his face, lingering, assessing, almost frantic in its search. A clamor began in his veins as he stood at the foot of the steps and she took each step down.

Shards of light from the crystal chandelier caught at the white beads on her dress. And glinting brown eyes. They didn’t look average or dull right then.

They glinted with a fierce intention.

She looked at him as if...she wanted to peel off all the layers he covered himself in and reach inside the core of him. A shiver traveled down his spine.

As though she’d somehow bypassed the surface sheen of him—his looks, his charm. As though she hungered to know more.

But he couldn’t reveal himself to her. He couldn’t show the dirty truth of his birth, couldn’t show her the devouring hunger for something more than he was allowed to have. Only then would this work. And he was so lust-riddled for her that Luca would have taken even a morsel of Sophia.

By the time she reached the last step, he’d calmed himself down. His practiced smile curved his mouth.

She raised a well-defined brow, all haughty arrogance.

He imagined that was how she commanded her team at work. One raised brow and one blistering remark from Sophia would probably send the staunchest soul scrambling to do her bidding. She wielded it with the same skill now, he thought, as if to start the evening with swords drawn.

All it made him want to do was kiss that brow. And probably her temple. Then that stubborn bridge of her nose. That lush, carnal mouth. Then he would bite, none too gently, on that defiant chin.