my choice... I don’t know if I want to stay here in Bordo Del Cielo, Luka. There is too much past...’
They were the same, Luka realised.
‘I think my father is up to no good,’ Sophie admitted. ‘I love him yet I want to get away from him. I want no part in that type of life.’
During his last years at school Luka had started to question the way things worked here and he had fought hard to go to university in England. There, his eyes had been fully opened as to his father’s ways and from that distance he had decided to stay away.
Sophie had worked it out from here, Luka thought.
Or was starting to.
‘My father doesn’t work, he sits in a bar most of the day and into the night. What are these meetings he says that he has to go to?’ She looked up from his chest and instead of giving her an answer or avoiding the subject he offered the unexpected.
‘Come to London with me,’ Luka said.
‘With you?’
‘You could apply to the cruise liners from there. I could help you to get on your feet. I am a part owner of a hotel, you could work there till you get your dream job...’
Sophie lay there, thinking about it. She wasn’t surprised that he part owned a hotel—Malvolio would have seen to it that his son was looked after.
‘I have a flat,’ Luka said. ‘You could stay with me for a while.’
‘Stay with you?’ Sophie blinked. ‘I don’t know if that would work out...’
‘Why not?’
‘Luka, while I accept this is a one-off, I really don’t want to be there if you bring another woman home...’
It angered her that he laughed and Sophie climbed from the bed. ‘I’m going to have a shower and then I have to go to church...’ She stopped talking when she saw the sheets that bore the evidence of what had just taken place. ‘Oh.’
‘I’ll sort it all out,’ Luka said. ‘I’m not going to leave them for Angela. Go and have your shower...’
As Sophie did so she thought about what Luka had suggested and she thought too about her cross response.
It was true.
She somehow had to hold in her jealousy at the thought of him with someone else. She’d agreed to break things off, a part of her had even been happy about it and certainly she had been relieved...
That had been before they’d made love, though.
How could once with Luka ever be enough?
He had taken her, left her exhausted and sated.
Now, though, even the recent memory was bringing her back to sensual life. She soaped her tender breasts and saw the bruise that his mouth had made. Her sex was hot and swollen and as Sophie soaped the last traces of him away she wanted him again.
She walked out with a towel around her to the sight of a naked Luka changing the sheets. Now from a relative distance she could admire his naked beauty. He was tall and lean and she could see the muscles on his thighs as he bent to rather haphazardly tuck in the sheet. His shaft, though soft against his leg, lifted a little from the movement and she wanted to take the sheet from his hand and get back to bed.
‘Is that the first bed you have ever made?’ Sophie teased, trying to keep things light.
‘It is the first bed I have ever made in Bordo Del Cielo,’ Luka answered. He looked to where she stood and wondered if what he had to offer would be enough. She thought him rich and, in London, he wasn’t.
Yet.
‘Sophie, I have a small flat in London...’ Luka would explain it all to her later, he decided. He would go into detail about how he had removed himself completely from his father, that his ways were honest. But he wasn’t going to do that here, and anyway there was something else that needed to be addressed before they got to family stuff. Today was about them, about the possibility of a future away from Bordo Del Cielo. ‘What you said before about me bringing another woman home if we lived in London, I would not do that to you. In the same way I wouldn’t like it if you were staying with me and saw anyone else...’
‘I don’t understand what you are saying.’
‘I’m saying that I don’t want it to be over between us. Maybe I don’t want to commit to marriage, or getting engaged just yet, it is far too soon for that, but we can date,’ Luka said. ‘Once we get to London we can go out and get to know each other away from our families. We can do things our way, without all the pressure and expectations.’
Sophie could feel the goose-bumps on her bare arms as she realised that Luka wasn’t just offering her a way out of Bordo Del Cielio but a way out with him.
‘Can I still apply to work on the cruise liners if we are going out with each other?’
‘Sophie,’ Luka said. ‘Tomorrow you are nineteen, of course you must follow your dreams and do the work you want to.’ He threw a sheet at her. ‘For now, though, you can help me do this...’
Sophie took the sheet and started making her side of the bed. ‘Does anything smell better than a sheet dried in the sun?’ Sophie asked, because at the hotel it was all starch and bleach.
‘One thing does,’ Luka said, and he beckoned her to cross the bed. Unabashed, wanting the same as him, she climbed over to him, kneeling up as he stood. ‘You do.’
‘And you,’ Sophie said.
They kissed a slow, long kiss that she wanted to go on for ever but it was Luka who halted things—the sky was turning orange, he could hear the bell in the distance, summoning everyone to church. He had no intention of going himself but he knew that Sophie would be expected to be there so he pulled back. ‘I’ll go and get your dress. You said you needed to be at church.’
‘Soon,’ Sophie said.
‘You’ll be late,’ Luka said.
‘I’m always late.’
‘When we’re in London, we can spend the whole day...’ He didn’t finish. Her towel was slipping and Sophie let it fall. His lovely erection was nudging her stomach as they kissed some more.
‘I want to kiss you there,’ Sophie said, and now, when she lowered her head, Luka didn’t remind her that there was somewhere else she needed to be.
She kissed down his stomach until his erection was too tempting at her cheek to ignore. He held the base as she tasted him first with her tongue then kissed him along his thick shaft and then Luka removed his hands.
Sophie felt giddy as she ran her lips over the salty tip.
Together they would go to London; they would get to know each other’s bodies.
The world was theirs.
‘Like this?’ Sophie asked, and then parted her lips and took him a little way in.
‘Like that,’ Luka agreed. This, for Luka, was more intimate than sex. More private. He would prefer to give rather than take but he went with it now. His hands were in her hair and she felt the building pressure. ‘Deeper,’ Luka said, and she obliged, taking him in as far as she could as her tongue swirled on his shaft.
His powerful thighs started to buck a little, his hand coiled her hair into a long ponytail and Sophie loved the traction—the tightness to her scalp gave her delicious direction but then cruelly she stopped.
‘Now?’ Sophie said, hovering over him, and then she looked up and smiled as he swore. ‘Is now a good time to get my own way?’
‘Why the hell did I tell you that?’ Luka both laughed and groaned. ‘What is it that you want?’
‘Can Bella come too?’ Sophie asked. ‘Just