there had been a moment, when he had found her breathless from running out in the garden like a schoolgirl when she had been the advanced age of seventeen, that everything had locked into place. That it had occurred to him that if he could only capture that insolent mouth of hers with his own she would finally yield. And he would no longer feel so desperately beguiled by her.
It had only gotten worse as the years had progressed. And the idea of kissing her had perverted yet further into doing much, much more.
But it was not to be. Not ever.
As he had just told her, his father had decreed that she was family. As much as if they were blood.
And so he was putting an end to this once and for all.
“He asked me to take care of you in a very specific fashion,” Luca continued. “And I feel that now that it has been six months since his passing, it is time for me to see those requests honored.”
A crease appeared between her brows. “What request?”
“Specifically? The matter of your marriage, sorellina.” Little sister. He called her that to remind himself.
“My marriage? Shouldn’t we see to the matter of me getting asked to the movies first, Luca?”
“There is no need for such things, obviously. A woman in your position is hardly going to go to the movies. Rather, I have been poring over a list of suitable men who might be able to be brought in for consideration.”
“You’re choosing my husband?” she asked, her tone incredulous.
“I intend to present you with a manageably sized selection. I am not so arrogant that I would make the final choice for you.”
Sophia let out a sharp, inelegant laugh. “Oh, no. You’re only so arrogant that you would inform me I’m getting married, and that you have already started taking steps toward planning the wedding. Tell me, Luca, have you picked out my dress, as well?”
Of course he would be involved in approving that selection; if she thought otherwise she was delusional. “Not as yet,” he said crisply.
“What happens if I refuse you?”
“You won’t,” he said, certainty going as deep as his bones.
He was the king now, and she could not refuse him. She would not. He would not allow it.
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“You are welcome, of course, to make a mockery of the generosity that my father has shown to your mother and yourself. You are welcome, of course, to cause a rift between the two of us.”
She crossed her arms, cocking one hip out to the side. “I could hardly cause a rift between the two of us, Luca. No matter what you might say, you have never behaved as a loving older brother to me.”
“Perhaps it is because you have never been a sister to me,” he said, his voice hard.
She would not understand what that meant. She would not understand why he had said it.
And indeed, the confusion on her face spoke to that.
“I don’t have to do what you tell me to.” She shook her head, that dark, glossy hair swirling around her shoulders. “Your father would hardly have forced me into a marriage I didn’t want. He loved me. He wanted what was best for me.”
“This was what he thought was best,” Luca said. “I have documentation saying such. If you need to see it, I will have it sent to your quarters. Quarters that you inhabit, by the way, because my father cared so much for you. Because my father took an exceptional and unheard-of step in this country and treated a child he did not father as his own. He is giving you what he would have given to a daughter. A daughter of his blood. Selecting your husband, ensuring it is a man of impeccable pedigree, is what he would have done for his child. You are welcome to reject it if you wish. But I would think very deeply about what that means.”
* * *
Sophia didn’t have to think deeply about what it meant. She could feel it. Her heart was pounding so hard she thought she might pass out; small tremors running beneath the surface of her skin. Heat and ice pricking at her cheeks.
Oh, she wasn’t thinking of what this meant in the way that Luca had so imperiously demanded she do.
Luca.
Her beautiful, severe stepbrother who was much more king of a nation than he was family to her. Remote. Distant. His perfectly sculpted face only more desperately gorgeous to her now than it had been when she had met him at seventeen. He had been beautiful as a teenager. There was no question. But then, that angular bone structure had been overlaid by much softer skin, his coal-black eyes always formidable, but nothing quite so sharp as crushed obsidian as they were now. That soft skin, the skin of a boy, that was gone. Replaced by a more weathered texture. By rough, black whiskers that seemed ever present no matter how often he shaved his square jaw.
She had never in all of her life met a thing like him. A twelve-year-old girl, plucked up from obscurity, from a life of poverty and set down in this luxurious castle, had been utterly and completely at sea to begin with. And then there was him.
Everything in her had wanted to challenge him, to provoke a response from all of that granite strength, even then. Even before she had known why, or known what it meant that she craved his attention in whatever form it might come.
Gradually, it had all become clear.
And clearer still the first time she had gone to a ball and Luca had gone with another woman on his arm. That acrid, acidic curling sensation in her stomach could have only been one thing. Even at fourteen she had known that. Had known that the sweep of fever that had gone over her skin, that weak sensation that made it feel as though she was going to die, was jealousy. Jealousy because she wanted Luca to take her arm, wanted him to hold her close and dance with her.
Wanted to be the one he took back to his rooms and did all sorts of secret things with, things that she had not known about in great detail, but had yearned for all the same. Him. Everything to do with him.
As Luca had said not a moment before, he had never thought of her as a sister. He was never affectionate, never close or caring in a way that went beyond duty.
But she had never thought of him as a brother. She had thought of him in an entirely different fashion.
She wanted him.
And he was intent on marrying her off. As though it were nothing.
Not a single thing on earth could have spoken to the ambivalence that he felt toward her any stronger than this did.
He doesn’t want you.
Of course he didn’t. She wasn’t a great beauty; she was well aware of that. She was also absolutely and completely wrong for him in every way.
She didn’t excel at this royal existence the way that he did. He wore it just beneath his skin, as tailored and fitted to him as one of his bespoke suits. Born with it, as if his blood truly were a different color than that of the common
