and curling his hands into fists.
“If you say so.”
He gritted his teeth. He did not like the idea that his stepmother of all people would find him transparent. He prided himself on his control, but Sophia tested it at every turn.
And so he told himself that the feeling roaring through him now was relief when the man took hold of Sophia and swept her around the dance floor.
The other man’s hand rested perilously low on her waist, on the curve of her hip, and if he was to move his hand down and around her back he would be cupping that lovely ass of hers. And that, Luca found unacceptable.
He will not stop there if he marries her. He will touch her everywhere. Taste her everywhere. She will belong to him.
He gritted his teeth. That was the point. The point was that she needed to belong to another man, so that he could no longer harbor any fantasies of her.
As 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.
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