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I’m actually not sure which is worse. I didn’t want Luca to force me, but I also don’t want my first and possibly only experience in bed to be with him behaving like a man being led to his execution. “What happens if I say no?” I blurt out. It’s the only thing I can think of to say.
“Then we’re both dead,” Luca says tiredly. “Rossi won’t tolerate any chance that the marriage might be able to be annulled, however slight. And if he thinks my loyalty to you outweighs my loyalty to him, he won’t tolerate that either. If somehow I survive it, it won’t be with all my body parts or my position intact.”
He says it so tonelessly, as if he’s telling me that the sky is blue, or that it’s spring. I, on the other hand, shrink back in horror. “But you’re his heir,” I whisper. “He’d dispose of you, one way or another, just like that? Over one lie?”
“Loyalty must be absolute.” Luca gives me a small, tight smile. “We like to think that we’re better than the Bratva, more cultured, but in our own ways we’re equally as cruel. And Rossi can be a brutal man in his way.” He looks down at me, and I can see in his expression that there’s no way out. “Sofia, rape is very far down the list of things that Rossi would hesitate at. And while it’s againstmypersonal moral code, it’s exactly what he expects of me tonight, if you refuse.”
“So what do you want from me?” I whisper.
“I want you willing.” He says it simply. “And if you’re not—then I don’t know what we do. I can’t live with myself if I force you, Sofia. I can do a great many things, but not that. But I don’t want to die slowly, either. So you see, I’m at an impasse.”
It’s the longest conversation we’ve ever had, and the most serious. It’s the first time I’ve ever felt that he’s spoken to me as an equal. It doesn’t make me love him, not even like him, but it does make me hate him a tiny bit less. It makes me feel, for the first time, that he doesn’t think of me as something to be used and managed. He at least, for once, is asking for my cooperation instead of demanding it.
I don’t want to be married to him. I don’t even want to know him. I want to be as far away from this as I can possibly be.
But that doesn’t mean I want him to die, let alone in the ways I can imagine Rossi could come up with—and probably ways that I can’t imagine. And I don’t want to die, either.
“I’m sorry,” I say simply.
His face pales a little, and I realize that he thinks that I’m telling him no, apologizing for not being able to give in. The momentary upper hand feels like a small victory, and I grab onto it as something to cling to.
“I’ll do it.” I bite my lower lip, feeling my skin tingle with fear and—although I don’t want to admit it—a little anticipation. “I don’t want this—but I don’t want either of us to die. I just wish you’d told me that you’d lied,” I finish softly. “After all, I am your wife.”
The corner of Luca’s mouth twitches just a tiny bit. He reaches out then, pushing a curl of hair off of my shoulder, the tips of his fingers tracing over my collarbone. It makes me breathe in sharply, and his eyes close for a moment.
“I’d prepared myself to sleep in a chair tonight,” he says wryly. “I’m not sure that I wouldn’t have touched you at all, Sofia, especially after last night. But I need you to know—” He takes a deep breath, and there’s something unreadable in his eyes, something that I can’t quite decipher. “I would never have taken your virginity against your will, Sofia. I am not a good man, but there are some things even I wouldn’t do.”
“I know,” I whisper. I can feel my pulse racing, and my mouth is dry, my hands shaking. “I—”I’m scared,is what I want to say, but I can’t admit that to this man, this gorgeous, mercurial man who is looking down at me, preparing to take me to bed for the first time. I don’t know him well enough—I don’ttrusthim enough.
“I’ll be as careful as I can,” Luca says, his voice dropping an octave. I can hear it deepening, growing rougher, and it sends a quiver through me that might be from fear or desire, I’m not sure which. “But I can’t deny that I want you, Sofia. And when the moment comes—”
I shouldn’t want him. Nothing about this man should turn me on. But something about the roughness of his voice, hearing him say that he wants me so badly that he can barely control himself—this man who can have any woman he wants, arouses me despite myself. I can feel the dampness on my thighs, my skin tingling as his fingers trail down to the space between my breasts, down to the edge of my neckline.
“You are beautiful,” he murmurs. “I mean that. You’re a beautiful bride, Sofia.”
I look up at him, watching him as his gaze trails over my breasts, and his face is utterly unreadable. I can’t tell what he’s thinking, what he’s not saying, and my chest squeezes with anxiety. The few times that I’d tried to imagine my first time, it was nothing like this. Sometimes I pictured it happening out of nowhere, tumbling into bed with someone overcome with passion, other times I pictured it planned, sweet and slow and intentional.
Instead I’m in the most expensive, luxurious hotel room that I’ve ever been in, with the most gorgeous man that I’ve ever seen touching me like I’m a fragile treasure, instead of handling me roughly like he has before. He’s trying to make this easier on me, I can tell, and somehow that makes it worse—because I know that he doesn’t really care about me. In the end, he’s just saving his own skin.
Luca looks up, meeting my eyes. “What do you want?” he asks, his voice low. “Do you want me to take my time? Do you want—” he breaks off, but I know what he’s offering. A night of pleasure, of him treating me the way he would any woman that he brought home to bed, a night of discovering all the delights that can be had with him. All of the mysteries of sex, unveiled to me in a single night.
And a part of me wants it. I can’t deny that. My skin is electric with his touch, my lips already tingling with the memory of his kiss. I’ve had a taste of what he can give me, and if my mind and heart are still resisting, my traitorous body is quicker to give in.
But as always, I have a choice. Maybe not as much of one as I’d thought, but I can choose how this night unfolds. How much I give him.
I want pleasure, but not if it means giving him something that I can’t get back, something that I’ll never get in return. And I know that if I open myself up, if I let myself indulge and lose myself in him for a night, I might lose everything.
I might lose more than just my innocence.
Luca is not a man who can ever love me. Not a man who can ever be my husband in any way except the strictest definition.
And I can’t give him what I would, if he did.
“Just get it over with,” I hear myself saying, my voice more emotionless than I’ve ever heard it. Even as I say it, I can feel my body rebelling, wanting more than just a quick deflowering, but I refuse to give in. “Do what you have to.”
Luca tenses, his hand going very still above my breasts. I can almost see him reshaping, turning back into the cold, hard Luca that I know so well, and not the almost-vulnerable man of the past half hour. “Very well,” he says, his voice flat, and I feel a chill in my stomach as I realize what I’ve done. I’ve turned tonight from something we could both take at least some pleasure in, back into a chore. A duty that neither of us wants. And now that Luca isn’t trying to be gentle, he could be something far worse.
He turns me away from him then, his fingers pulling the buttons of my dress loose one by one, until the zipper is laid bare. The room suddenly feels very cold, and I shiver under his touch as he pulls the zipper down, inch by inch, revealing the smooth skin of my back to him. When the dress is open, the straps sliding slightly off of my shoulders, Luca lays his palm against my back. His hand trails downwards, the heat of it burning into my skin, and then he reaches up, pushing the straps off of my shoulders.
