She never got to finish. His mouth was hard on her hers and he kissed her then as he had wanted to on the dance floor.
He kissed her hard until she was kissing him back, her fingers knotting in his hair.
‘Remember, I don’t want charity,’ Luka said, as his thighs parted her legs.
He made her back down.
With his refusal to go further, he tested their patience to the edge.
‘It isn’t charity,’ Sophie said, as she guided him to her heat.
‘Some phobia.’
He exposed her lie and she didn’t care, as long as he took her now.
Yet he didn’t.
And neither did he leave her hanging on; instead, he knelt up.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Picking up where we left off.’
He lowered his face to her and confirmed her desire for she was wet and swollen and a moment away from coming to him.
She tried to scramble away from him, but he held her hips down; she wanted them face to face, not this intimate, raw exploration where there was no place to lie.
And, Sophie thought as he pressed his long tongue in over and over again, she was wrong to berate him for past lovers.
She should handwrite them all thank-you notes because his mouth was sucking on her clitoris now and his fingers were probing her along with his tongue, and she was sobbing as she came to him.
‘Luka...’
He was kneeling between her parted legs, pulling them apart when they ached to close in on the orgasm he had just delivered her.
‘What?’ Luka checked, as he nudged a little way in. ‘Do you want to me stop?’
He would.
The bastard would.
‘Or,’ Luka said, ‘I go deeper.’
She could hear the sound of them, feel the tease of him that had her beating below again.
‘Just come,’ Sophie said.
‘I told you, I loathe martyrs.’
He rested on his heels and pulled her hips down and carried on his cruel tease, there but not, in but not enough.
‘Or,’ Luka offered, ‘we could try something different...’
‘Like?’ Sophie asked, and he suppressed a smile.
He could feel her mounting tension, he was holding down her hips as they rose in his hands.
‘Something dangerous,’ Luka said, and she nodded her head, set now on a rigid neck.
And so he kissed her like the first time.
When they’d tasted sweet and new.
He toppled onto her as he fully entered her again, and he brushed her wet lips with his as she clawed at his back and then gave in.
They made love.
They might well regret it tomorrow, but that was for then.
Now he kissed her like he only ever would kiss her, and Sophie just drank it in.
She smiled and she pushed back his damp hair just to see him, just to feel it. She stopped fighting and started caressing and they rolled, made love to each other, nipped, sucked and tasted, and came.
And came again.
Guns were down.
Walls were gone.
She accepted his temporary truce as they made up for lost time.
‘I DON’T UNDERSTAND YOU.’
They were the words he awoke to the next morning. He stared at the face that belonged on his pillow.
‘Where did the other earring come from?’ Luka asked, because she was wearing both.
‘I always carry it in my purse,’ Sophie said.
She would carry her mother with her for ever, Luka knew. If the truth was ever revealed she would never forgive and he was right not to trust her with his heart.
Some things were too big to come back from.
‘You don’t understand me, Sophie, because I won’t let you.’
He rose from the bed.
‘Will you let me try?’
It was the calmest they had ever been, like sweeping up the debris after a wild party that neither regretted.
‘No,’ Luka said. ‘Sophie...’ He sat on the bed and took her hand. ‘We had a love that most people never know. You know that saying...better to have loved and lost—’
‘I hate that saying,’ Sophie broke in. ‘I hate that saying more than any other. Who wrote that?’ Sophie demanded.
‘Tennyson.’
‘Well, he was wrong.’
‘I agree,’ Luka said. ‘I wish I’d never loved you.’
‘But you did.’
‘I did.’
‘And you don’t now?’
Luka wasn’t that good a liar so he gave her a kiss instead. A nice one, not a loaded one. A sweet one, if, between them there could be such a thing.
‘In a few days this will be over,’ Luka said. ‘We’re going to get back to our lives knowing that we did the right thing by your father. It will be easier on us both once we get to Bordo Del Cielo.’
‘How?’
‘I’ll check into the hotel and, like a good groom, I’ll stay well away from the blushing bride-to-be.’
‘Not as blushing as I’ll be when you jilt me.’
‘I can’t marry you, Sophie. I can’t be your fake husband. I can’t stand in a church and exchange vows that I know we can’t keep.’
He got up and headed to the bathroom.
‘Hey, Luka,’ Sophie said. ‘I wished I’d never loved you too.’
* * *
The calm did not just belong in the bedroom.
A new presence had arrived with the dawn, though no one fully acknowledged it.
The colour seemed to have drained from Paulo’s irises, Luka noticed as he wished him good morning.
And as Sophie passed her father his coffee and his shaking hand reached for it, it was a natural transition for her to lift the cup to his lips and help him to drink it.
The nurse stood, about to help, but Sophie shook her head.
‘I’ve got this.’
So too had Luka.
He was so kind to Paulo and so engaged in organising the quick wedding that there were times Sophie had to catch herself because it felt real.
‘What about the evening?’ Paulo wheezed.
‘The hotel is already holding a function,’ Sophie explained, and she looked at Luka, but he shook his head. There was nothing he could do. It had been the first thing he had sold. ‘The hotel is under new ownership.’
‘We don’t need that hotel,’ Paulo said. ‘Before it was built we would party in the street. I remember my wedding to your