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 till we get on our feet?’
‘Sophie...’ Luka tried to come up with a reason why she couldn’t but, what he hell, he knew Bella and Sophie had been friends for ever and it might make it easier for Sophie to settle in. ‘Sure,’ Luka said. ‘Bella can come too. Now, get back to work.’
Laughing, happy, she did so. Her hands moved and held his taut buttocks. He let her hair fall and what went on behind the black curtain was a private tasting. Sophie rested on her heels, her sex on fire as Luka didn’t try for gentle. She loved his passion, how he told her exactly what he wanted—which was simply more of the same. It was hot work and then he swore again, and it was right to swear because things could never be the same as he swelled in her throat, she pulled her head back and caught him first on her tongue, tasting and swallowing him down, more turned on than she thought possible. But then she realised he hadn’t finished, and the sound of him gently swearing as he came over her lips and into her hair had her close to climax.
‘Tonight...’ Luka scooped her up to him, told her he would wash himself out of her hair, right now in the shower, and then, ‘I shall go and speak to your father tonight.’
Not yet, though. He saw her so flushed and aroused and ready that he pushed her back on the bed. Too giddy to stand, he knelt on the floor. She would take a minute. Luka knew. She was almost there. He could see her wet, sore and swollen, her clitoris erect, and God help him but he never wanted them to get out of bed.
Sophie watched, shocked and laughing, as he pulled her to his mouth, and she lay there longing for the building pressure in her to release to his lips. She would later wish she could somehow hold that moment, for it was a time that belonged only to them. A time of pure happiness. A moment without shame, where the future was bright, where dreams were coming true, but then a crashing noise doused her in panic.
There was the sound of footsteps running up the stairs.
A lot of them.
Her first thought was that Malvolio had come home, though there was too much noise for it to be only him, but then the police shouted out that they were being raided.
Luka threw a sheet over her. The bedroom door splintered and as it was kicked open he lay over her as gruff voices told them not to move.
‘Non muovetevi!’
Sophie closed her eyes in terror as Luka was hauled from the bed to the floor where he was cuffed.
‘Stay still,’ Luka warned her. ‘Just stay calm.’ Then he shouted to them to fetch her clothes but all they gave her was one of Luka’s shirts.
‘Not in church this evening?’ The lewd comment only added to her embarrassment and terror as Sophie attempted to cover herself.
‘Say nothing,’ Luka warned her. His voice was the only calm in the room but then it changed as they pulled Sophie’s
