the intensity of his grip.
And it was the same inside her as it had always been, gloves or no.
Fire.
“What lies will you tell me tonight, I wonder?” he asked, low and dark. Ominous.
“You found me,” Sophie said, trying to keep her feet solid beneath her. Trying to ignore the wildfire heat ignited in her. Again. “I... I didn’t want...”
She didn’t know how to do this.
He had texted her out of nowhere, as far as she’d known.
This is Renzo. You must want to meet.
Now, standing outside on a cool, wet night, Sophie had to ask herself what she thought he had been offering, exactly. Blackmail?
That was what she’d told herself. That was why she’d come.
But she understood, now that he was touching her again, that she’d been lying to herself.
And now she had to lie to him. Again.
The trouble was, Sophie had never told so many lies before in her life. What would be the point? Too many people knew too much about her, and everyone was more than happy to compare notes and then decide what was in her best interest without her input. Therefore, she’d always done exactly what was expected of her. She’d done well at school because her father had made it clear that she was expected to be more than simply an ornament.
“Clever conversation and sparkling wit are not something one is either born with or not, Sophie,” her father had told her when she’d been barely thirteen. “They’re weapons in an arsenal and I expect you to be an excellent shot.”
Sophie had made certain she was. After school, she’d involved herself with only carefully vetted charities, so as never to cause her father or future husband any cause for concern about what she’d done with her time.
Or more to the point, her name.
No carousing. No scandals. Nothing that could be considered a stain.
She’d even agreed to marry a man she thought of as her own, personal brick wall—though far less warm and approachable than any slab of stone—on her eighteenth birthday.
Well. Agreed was a strong word.
Randall Grant, the sixth Earl of Langston, had been her father’s choice for her since she was in the cradle. Her agreement, such as it was, had never been in doubt.
Dal, as Randall was known to friends and family and the girl he’d been given, had produced the Langston family ring and handed it to her with a few cold words about the joining of their families. Because that was all that mattered.
Not Sophie herself. Not her feelings.
Certainly not love, which Sophie thought no one in either her family or Dal’s had believed was real or of any import for at least the last few centuries.
And her reaction—her attempt at defiance—in the face of the life that had been presented to her as a fait accompli had comprised of a single deep breath, which Sophie had held for just a moment longer than she should have as Dal stood there, holding the ring before her.
Just a moment, while she’d imagined what might happen if she refused him—
But that was the thing. She couldn’t imagine it. Even thinking about defying her parents and all the plans they’d made for her had made her feel light-headed.
So she had said yes, as if Dal had asked her a question.
As if there had ever been any doubt.
She’d locked the heirloom ring away in her father’s safe, murmuring about how she didn’t dare flash it about until she was Dal’s countess.
All she’d asked for was a long engagement, so she could pretend to have what passed for a normal life for just a little while—
But she hadn’t. She hadn’t dared. She’d only been marking what time she had left.
Until Renzo.
“DO IT,” RENZO GROWLED, snapping Sophie back to her current peril. The dark lane. The powerful man who still held her before him, that hand on her chin. “Tell me another lie to my face. See what happens.”
Sophie didn’t know how to respond to him. She didn’t know how to respond at all. She’d been so certain that his text had been a threat. That he had planned to come here and...do something.
To her.
Did you truly believe it was a threat? asked a small voice inside of her that sounded far too much like her mother. Or did you imagine that Renzo might save you?
But that was the trouble, wasn’t it? No one could save her.
No one had ever been able to save her.
Sophie tried to pull her chin from his grip, but he didn’t let go. And for some reason, that was what got to her. One more man was standing before her, making her do things she didn’t want to do. Like the others, Renzo wasn’t forcing her into anything. He wasn’t brutish or horrible.
He was simply, quietly, unyieldingly exerting his will.
And Sophie was tired of bending, suddenly. She was tired of accepting what was handed to her and making the best of it when she’d never wanted it in the first place.
She’d made her own mistakes. Now she’d figure out how to live with them.
“Why did you come?” she demanded of Renzo then. “I doubt I’m the only woman you’ve ever spent a night with. Do you chase them all down?”
A flash of white teeth against the night. “Never. But then again, they do not typically furnish me with false names.”
“How can you possibly know that if you never seek them out again?”
The look in his eyes changed. Oh, there was still that heat. That simmering temper. But now, suddenly, there was a different kind of awareness.
As if she had challenged him.
She supposed she had.
“I can think of only one reason a woman would wish to meet me the night before her wedding to another man,” Renzo said then, his tone cold enough to do her father proud. But his gaze was pure fire. “Is that who you imagine I am? A gigolo on call? You merely lift a finger and here I am, willing and able to attend to your every desire?”
This time when she tipped her head back he released her chin.
“You’re here, aren’t you?”
“Indeed I am,” Renzo said, something blistering and lethal in his voice then. “And never
