not the right one.
‘My mother’s earring.’
‘I found it in my bedroom,’ Luka said. ‘Come on, Sophie, say what you have to.’
‘I don’t want to row.’
‘You want to make love?’ Luka checked.
She ran an eye over his naked body and when most might avert their eyes from an angry erection, Sophie frowned.
‘I don’t think it has love on its mind.’
Uh-oh!
Luka walked over and she refused to flinch as he shredded her flimsy nightdress.
‘You’ll have sex with me yet you won’t go through with the marriage?’ Sophie checked.
‘Yes,’ Luka said. ‘And if you knew my reputation you would know many of my girlfriends have complained about the same thing.’
‘Ah, but you don’t make love to them the way you do with me.’
‘You don’t know that.’
‘I do know that,’ Sophie said, and looked right into his eyes. ‘Absolutely I do.’
‘That’s a very confident assumption for someone who’s only had sex twice.’
‘Once,’ Sophie corrected. ‘We only did it—’
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
