the song ended, another man approached Sophia, and she began to dance with him. Another of her selections.
Luca approached a woman wearing royal blue, and asked her to dance. Kept himself busy, tried to focus on the feel of her soft, feminine curves beneath his hands. Because what did it matter if it was this woman, or another. What did it matter. Sex was sex. A woman’s body was a woman’s body. He should be able to find enjoyment in it. He should not long for the woman in pink across the room. The woman who was tacitly forbidden to him. But he did.
The woman he held in his arms now might well have been a cardboard cutout for all that she affected him.
But still, he continued to dance with her, knowing that he should not. Knowing that dancing with any single woman this long would create gossip. He didn’t even know her name. He wouldn’t ask for it. And tomorrow he would not remember her face until he saw it printed in the paper. She didn’t matter.
Suddenly, Sophia extricated herself from her dance partner’s hold, excusing herself with a broad gesture as she scurried across the ballroom.
“Excuse me,” he said, releasing hold of his dance partner, following after his stepsister.
Sophia wove through the crowd and made her way outside. He followed. But by the time he got out to the balcony, she was gone. He looked over the edge and saw a dark shape moving across the grass below. He could only barely make her out, the glow from the ballroom lights casting just enough gold onto the ground to highlight her moving shape. He swung his leg over the edge of the balcony and lowered himself down to the grass below, following the path that Sophia had no doubt taken.
He said nothing, his movements silent as he went after her. To what end, he didn’t know. But then, he had no idea what she thought she was doing, either. It was foolish for her to leave the ball. And it was foolish for him to go after her. All of this was foolish. Everything with her. Always.
And yet, he couldn’t escape her. That was the essential problem. She was unsuitable because of their connection. She was inescapable because of their connection. And for that reason, he had never been able to master it.
He could not have her; neither could he banish her from his life.
And here he was, chasing after her in a suit.
He was the king of a nation, stumbling in the dark after a woman.
Finally, she stopped, her pale shoulders shaking, highlighted by the light of the moon. He reached out, placing his hand on her bare skin. She jumped, turning to face him, her eyes glistening in the light. “Luca.”
And suddenly, he knew exactly why he had gone after her. He knew exactly what the endgame was. Exactly why he was here.
“Sophia.”
And then he wrapped her in his arms and finally did the one thing he had expressly forbidden himself from doing. He claimed her lips with his own.
LUCA WAS KISSING HER. It was impossible. Utterly and completely impossible that this was happening. She was delusional. Dreaming. She had to be.
Luca hated her.
Luca saw himself as being so far above her that he would hardly deign to speak to her if they weren’t related by marriage.
He didn’t want to kiss her. He didn’t.
Except, with the little bit of brainpower that she had, she recalled that moment in the halls of the castle days ago. When she had gotten her makeover. He had grabbed hold of her arm and had told her he could not tell her how beautiful she was because it was pointless. Because nothing could come of it.
Did that mean he wished it could?
It had all felt like something too bright and too close then. Something she couldn’t parse and didn’t want to. Not when the end result would only be her own humiliation. Even if he didn’t know what she was thinking, entertaining the notion that Luca might want her had always seemed horrific, even if no one ever found out.
It was so surreal a thought that she was still asking it even as those firm, powerful lips thrust hers apart, his tongue invading her mouth.
She had never been kissed like this before. Had never received anything beyond polite kisses that had seemed to be a testing of her interest.
Luca, true to form, was not testing her interest. He was assuming it. And she imagined that if he found her disinterested, he would work with all that he had to change her mind.
Except, his assumption was correct. And she did not possess the strength to deny that. Not now.
Not when her most cherished fantasy was coming to life, right here in the darkened garden of the palace.
Luca cupped her face, large, hot hands holding her steady as he angled his face and took her deeper.
He kissed exactly like what he was. An autocratic conqueror. A man who had never been denied a single thing in his life.
A man who would not be denied now.
“I cannot watch this,” he rasped. “I cannot watch other men dance with you. Put their hands on you.”
“You said... You said you had to find me a husband.” Her voice was wobbly, tremulous, and she hated that. She wished—very much—that she could be more confident. That she could sound sophisticated. As if this was simply another garden tryst of many in a long line of them. Rather than the first time she had truly, honestly been kissed by a man.
Rather than a girl on the receiving end of something she had desired all of her life.
She didn’t want him to know that. She didn’t want him to know how she felt.
But then she imagined that she betrayed herself with each breath, with each moment that passed when she didn’t slap his face and call him ten kinds of scoundrel for daring to touch her in that way.
Of course she betrayed herself. Because, though he had been the one to instigate, she had kissed him back.
She had been powerless to do anything else. She had been far too caught up in it, consumed by it. By him.
The story of her life.
Things went well, and then Luca. And it all went to hell. It all belonged to him.
“I am going to find you a husband,” he said. “I swore it to my father.” He dragged his thumb along the edge of her lip. “But I cannot pretend I don’t want you. Not any longer.”
“You... You want me?”
“It is like a disease,” he ground out. “To want my sister as I do.”
“I’m not your sister,” she said, her lips numb. “We don’t have the same parents. We don’t share blood at all.”
“But don’t you see? To my father you were.
