good news was, once she provided Dal with the requisite heir and spare, she could look forward to a happy, solitary life of charity and good works. They could live apart, only coming together at certain events annually. Or they could work together as if the family name was a brand and the two of them its ambassadors, just like her own parents.
No one would call her parents unhappy, she’d told herself as she’d tried to find her equanimity again.
But then again, no one was likely to call them happy, either.
Sophie just needed to resign herself to what waited for her. She knew that. She didn’t understand why the closer she got to her wedding, the less resigned she felt.
But then she’d looked up, and there he’d been.
Renzo had been dressed in a dark suit, open at the neck, that seemed to do nothing but emphasize the long, sculpted ranginess of a body she knew at a glance was athletic in every sense of the term. His hair was a rich, too-long, dark brown, threaded through with gold, that called to mind the sorts of endless summers in the glorious sun that she had never experienced. He had the face of a poet, a sensual mouth below high cheekbones, and glorious eyes of dark, carnal amber—but he moved like a king.
She had known that he was coming for her from the first glance.
And when she lay awake at night and cataloged her sins, she knew that was the worst one. Because she hadn’t turned around or headed back to her friends. She hadn’t kept going, pushing her way through the crowd until she could hide herself in a bathroom somewhere. She hadn’t assumed her usual mask of careless indifference that the papers she tried her best not to appear in liked to call haughty.
Sophie had seen temptation on a collision course with her and she’d...done absolutely nothing to avoid it.
She had stood where she was, rooted to the floor, and while she would never admit this out loud—and especially not to him—the truth was that she hadn’t thought she could move.
One look at Renzo from across the crowded floor, right there in the grand casino, and her knees had threatened to give out.
And it didn’t help, here on a forgotten country lane back home in England, that she knew precisely what he was capable of. She knew that none of her oversize, almost-farcically innocent daydreams were off the mark.
She hadn’t been ready for a man of Renzo’s skill, much less his uninhibited imagination.
But Sophie had always been a quick learner.
“Why am I here?” Renzo growled again.
He moved closer to her, that same erotic threat a kind of loose promise that hovered in his bones. She could see it all over his face. Worse, she could feel it echo deep within, a kind of fist in her gut and below, nothing but that same bright fire that had already destroyed her.
“There are consequences to actions,” she said carefully, mimicking something her father might say, because she didn’t know another way into the subject. “Surely you know that.”
“Is this where the threat comes in?” Renzo’s laugh was low. And not kind. “You people are all the same. Carrot and stick until you get your way. And you always get your way, don’t you, Sophie?”
He was much too close then. Sophie expected him to stop, because she had nowhere to go, backed up into his car the way she was—but he didn’t stop.
He kept coming.
And he didn’t stop until he’d insinuated himself between her legs and bent her backward so for all intents and purposes, they were sprawled out together over the front of his car.
He was over her but not on her. If she strained to keep her legs apart, he wasn’t even touching her. And yet he might as well have scooped her up in his fists and held her fast.
“Let me up,” she whispered fiercely.
Desperately.
But if Renzo heard her, he gave no sign.
He didn’t claim her mouth in a bruising kiss, as she half expected, the way he had when he’d helped her from the car that night in Monaco. He held himself above her, sprawled over her body to keep her exactly where she was. Pinning her there. If she tried to move, she would be the one to rub her body against his.
And if she did...would she stop? She shuddered at the notion.
“Tell me about these consequences, cara,” he murmured. “Tell me how you have suffered. Tell me how brave you have been to forge ahead in your gilded, pampered circumstances, feted and celebrated wherever you go, so soon to be the countess of all you survey.”
His mouth was at her ear, then down along her neck, and she could feel the heat of him everywhere—but he still wasn’t touching her.
Not the way she wanted him to.
And he wasn’t done. “Where does your earl imagine you are tonight? Locked away in your virginal bridal suite, perhaps? Dressed in flowing white already, the living, lovely picture of the innocence he purchased?”
It was one thing for Sophie to think of herself as chattel in the privacy of her own head. It was something else entirely to hear Renzo say it, sardonic and mocking.
“He has not purchased me. I’m not a cow.”
“Nor are you the virgin he expects.”
“I would be shocked if he has any expectations at all.”
“When marriage is commerce, cara, the contract is signed and sealed in the marital bed. Shall I tell you how?”
A wave of misery threated to take her over then. Sophie fought it back as best she could. “Not everyone is as...elemental as you are.”
“Will you tell him why?” Renzo asked, unsmiling and much too close. “When he comes to claim his bride, will you tell him who else has been between the pale thighs he imagined were his alone to part?”
He shifted his position above her and she sucked in a breath in a messy combination of anticipation and desire, but he only went down on one elbow so he could get his face that much closer to hers.
It made everything that much worse.
Or better, something in her whispered.
“You’re disgusting,” she told him. “And he won’t notice either way.”
“I think you underestimate your groom considerably,” Renzo murmured. “What purpose is there in being an earl in the first place if not to plant a flag in unclaimed land and call it his?”
Her breath deserted her at that. “I’m not... There’s no flag—”
But Renzo kept right on. “Why did you bother to remain pure and untouched for so long, if not to gift it to this betrothed of yours who you clearly hold in such high esteem?”
Sophie pressed her fingers hard against the metal of the car beneath her. She tried to pretend she didn’t feel that instant wave of shame—but she did. Did it matter how distantly Dal treated her? She’d made a promise and she’d broken it.
Spectacularly.
Over and over again.
And then it had gotten even worse.
“I wanted to wait,” she said quietly, fighting to stay calm. Or at least sound calm. “Until I didn’t.”
“I’m sure that distinction will please him greatly.” Renzo’s mouth was a scant centimeter from the sweep of her neck and she was sure—she was sure—that he could taste her rapid, revealing pulse. “Make sure your confession is vivid. Paint a picture. A man likes to know how many times his woman cries out another man’s name and begs him not to stop.”
She shoved at him then, no longer caring if that meant she was forced to touch him. She ignored the feel of