The Unwanted Conti Bride (The Legendary Conti Brothers) (5 page)

“It blends perfectly with your skin.” His breath whispered over her cheek. “I can’t wait to discover if you smell like that all over.”

Liquid heat claimed Sophia, the very fabric of her dress scraping everywhere it touched. She took deep breaths, trying to not sink into his hard body.

He smelled of leather and musk, of quintessential male. Pleasure and pain, all tangled up in her head. Freedom and captivity, one inseparable from the other. He made her so aware of things she’d forced herself to ignore. Of the thump of her heart, the thrum of her skin, the sudden heaviness in her breasts, the slow, pulling pulse in her sex. Of being a woman who denied herself so many things in the name of being strong. If she’d had a boyfriend, if she’d satisfied her body’s demands, maybe she wouldn’t have been this vulnerable to him.

Sophia Conti, expert in self-delusion. “A pity you won’t,” she offered finally, a pathetic sop to a protest. She cleared her throat, as if she could chase away the desperate need. “Please tell me you talked to your lawyer.”

“Non.”

“Christ, you can’t approach this like you do everything else. You should make me sign a contract that what is yours will stay yours.”

“I thought you thought me worthless.”

“I’m sure just your stock in CLG is worth a lot.”

Faint tension emanated from him, his roving hands clenched tight on her shoulders. “I don’t care about that stock. Or the company or the legacy.”

Something in his tone, a vein of disgust, alerted Sophia. It sounded so discordant, so jarring, for she’d never heard him speak in that tone before. This didn’t sound like not caring. It was active loathing that hinted at a depth of feeling she didn’t think him capable of.

“It’s a legacy, Luca. It roots you to this place. How can you...
hate
it?”

She felt his shrug rather than saw it. “Is that why you want to head Rossi’s? Don’t let the idea of belonging become more important than everything else.”

Faint alarm tripped along Sophia’s nerves.
Was that her real intention beneath wanting to save her family? Was it an utterly selfish desire to belong?

“Keep your hands to yourself. You’re distracting me,” she burst out.

The man’s hands were forever roaming and roving over her. Even when she was bristling with anger. He touched as if it was as natural as breathing. Sometimes, it was affectionate, sometimes, it was provoking. But always, as if he needed the physical connection.

It was one of the things she’d loved then—being touched by him.

He laughed and continued touching her.

“This is serious, Luca. When we...separate, I don’t want any accusations.”

“Do you intend to take me to the cleaners, Sophia?”

“It would serve you right if I did.”

“There’s nothing you could do that would make me end this in a bad way,
cara mia
. Except if you fell in love with me and made a nuisance of yourself.”

She laughed. A brittle, fake sound. “That is an impossibility right there.”

“Then we’re good,
si
? I’m aware that you’re placing a huge amount of trust in me. I’m doing the same.”

She had no reply to that. In her wildest nightmares, she wouldn’t have imagined Luca Conti of all men coming to her rescue.

One hand landed on her shoulder. A finger stroked her nape, between her knot and the edge of her cardigan. Back and forth, up and down, until all of her being focused on that spot. “This is romantic,
si
? Us eloping like this.”

She snorted. “No one who knows me would believe I’d elope.”

Now the finger moved, snuck under the seam of her dress and traced her shoulder blades. “
Si
, but then I corrupted you with my kisses and my infinite charm and my dazzling good looks. I stole away every bit of your famed common sense, enthralled you. Sounds perfect when you think about it.”

She flushed and looked down at herself, at the horrible dress. Would she have dressed differently if she had known? Not that she had anything in her closet that was remotely better or dressy enough for a bride.

No, this was right. Their wedding wasn’t a romantic affair. It wasn’t even one of those advantageous society arrangements that seemed to abound around her. It had a shelf life of three months, if that.

Her spine rigid from holding herself so tight, she blew a breath. Turned around. “Let’s get married.”

He smiled then, and the golden sunlight illuminated that gorgeous face. Her breath caught. He hooked his arm through hers and walked up the steps. When she wobbled, one corded arm came around her waist. She felt him look down and followed it.

When he met her gaze, there was such genuine laughter etched in his face that she smiled back. “What?”

“I’m going to take a pair of scissors and rip up all those black trousers you usually wear. You’re not hiding those legs again. Not if I have anything to say about it.”

* * *

They were married fifteen minutes later, in a huge cathedral-like room. Sunlight gleamed through high, soaring windows, dusting everything with a golden glow. Every time she moved, the princess-cut diamond, set in platinum, caught the rays piercing it over and over.

That he’d remembered the rings—for him and her—still shocked her.

Even the impersonal civil ceremony with no personal vows couldn’t seem to dim the momentousness of the occasion.

Sophia couldn’t meet Luca’s eyes throughout the ceremony. Or anyone else’s. Didn’t want to see a mockingly wicked smile as if this was just another of his antics, another joke, just another day.

Much as she tried to not attach significance to the day, she’d forever remember it. At least, as her only wedding day.

So the images she had of that half hour were of ancient but stylish furniture, a seventeenth-century tapestry covering one huge wall, luxurious chandeliers, brocade-covered chairs and golden-framed mirrors reflecting back Luca and her every which way she looked—she short and dowdy in her ugly dress, which she promised herself she was going to burn the moment it came off her, and Luca, looking gorgeous and a little roguish in a white shirt and black jeans that gave the best view of his tight butt.

It was a place steeped in history and for someone who’d never been able to afford sentimentality, the hall impressed Sophia. Three months later, or a year later, or even a decade later, this hall would be here, a building that had stood witness to their strange wedding.

Her wedding...to the one man she shouldn’t even come near.

The clerk asked for fifteen Euros for the banns license, which Luca didn’t have. “My wife is responsible for all matters financial,” the rogue added with a glint in his eyes.

The wedding felt both surreal and strangely kooky. As if they were co-conspirators in a reckless game. While the truth was that she was burning all her bridges by trusting Luca.

Her family was going to be excited for all the wrong reasons. Kairos was probably never going to talk to her ever again. Society was going to laugh at her. Even she didn’t believe that a man like Luca could fall in love with a woman like her. Why should they?

Suddenly, she couldn’t even breathe, the enormity of what she’d done pressing upon her. She was trusting the one man who’d broken the very thing into a thousand pieces with his recklessness.

As if tuned into every doubt coursing through her, Luca wrapped an arm around her. “Trust yourself, Sophia. You made the right decision, for you.”

Two of Luca’s friends—a woman who worked in the Piazza del Duomo and the mayor’s sister, two of his exes,
of course
—stood witness as they signed the marriage license. Neither woman, at least openly, exhibited their shock that the Conti playboy, the man who’d been called a god for his looks, was marrying the short, snarky, shrewish Sophia.

And soon, she became Sophia Conti. A solemn expression on his face, Luca pulled her close and kissed her cheek. Not her mouth, surprisingly, for a man who’d said he was eager to get her into bed.

A tender, almost affectionate caress that brought a lump to her throat.

Waving his friends off, they walked out into the sunshine. It was a gorgeous day for November.

“Let’s go,” he said then, pointing to his bike.

“No way am I climbing that beast in this dress.”

“No way am I leaving my new bride here. Hop on,
cara mia
. I want to get to the Conti offices before they disperse for lunch. I hear they have a board meeting today.”

“You want to walk in there and—” she swallowed audibly “—announce what we did?”

“You sound as if we did something naughty. And why not? I want to see the expressions on my Nonno’s face. And Kairos’s. And Leandro’s.”

Sophia wanted to see none of those people. She wanted to go home and come to terms with the emotions bursting through her before she faced anyone else. Once she processed them, she wanted to build a neat little cupboard in her mind and shove them all in there and slam the door.

“Is it necessary to upset them?”

“Stop chickening out, Sophia. You need to stop being scared of them.” Which was exactly what she was doing. But for altogether different reasons.

Facing society as the Conti Devil’s wife was going to be an exercise in humiliation and agony and a host of other excruciating things. But coward, she was not. With some difficulty, for she didn’t want to flash him a glimpse of her underwear, she got on the bike.

With her awareness of the man and an active imagination, she didn’t want to straddle anything when he was so close. The leather was supple against the tender skin of her thighs, both indecent and exciting, thanks to her libido.

“
Mio Dio!
Was that black lace and garters?” he asked the moment she settled on the scandalously wide seat.

He sounded hoarse and rough.

“You peeked? You actually peeked?” Outraged, she hit him on the shoulder, got off the bike and sputtered like a woman incapable of forming a coherent sentence. “You...you’re the very devil.”

He turned to the side, offering her his sharp profile. “You don’t think your horribly closed-off dresses work, do you, Sophia?”

Throat dry, it took her a few seconds to speak. “What?”

“You have the lushest curves I’ve ever seen on a woman,
bella
. Those dresses, all they do is tempt and tease. Didn’t you ever wonder why all those idiots made that bet about you ten years ago?”

All those idiots...
He talked so glibly as if he hadn’t been a part of it. The man seemed to have a selective memory along with a face that would tempt a saint.

And she had never been a saint.

“Because I beat them all in every test we took. Because I proved again and again that I was better than them at everything. And I didn’t think they were charming princes like the rest of society did. They—” she swallowed tightly, for she’d never understood why he’d taken part in it “—wanted to see me humiliated.”

That whole episode, along with being viewed as prize cattle that he could exchange for an advantageous marriage by Salvatore, everything that was tender in her, had taken a beating.

Before she’d a chance to understand her femininity, it had been crushed. So she had locked it, and any other vulnerabilities, away and continued on.

“All that is true, yes. But they were attracted to you. They thought you were the hottest girl around. They all wanted to be the ones who tamed you.”

“Wild animals are tamed,” she said in a tight whisper that hurt her throat.

“You can’t change the world, Sophia. Men will be men—childish, arrogant and insecure. Any time we see a woman we don’t understand, we call her names. All you do by hating the world is make yourself miserable.”

“So I should lie down and let them beat me into what they think I should be.” Because her mother, Salvatore, Antonio, Kairos, that was what they all wanted to do. They all wanted her to fit into the roles they had for her.

“No,
cara
. You fight, like you always do. You live. You count your wins. You glory in what makes you stand out and you rub their noses in it.”

She smiled, finding the idea intriguing, at least in theory. “And what would these wins be?”

“Convincing the most beautiful man in Italy,
probably Europe
, to marry you, should count as a win,
si
?”

Sophia burst out laughing. He possessed an uncanny knack to make her laugh, at the world and even herself. Like a ray of sunshine in a gloomy, dank cave.

But beneath her laughter, shock persisted, an uncomfortable knot in the pit of her stomach. Every moment she spent with Luca, he tossed her assumptions of him upside down.

He saw and understood far more than the world thought he did.

Even back then, even as he’d seduced her as part of that horrible bet, not once had he tried to minimize her to exaggerate his masculinity. Not once had he called her intelligence and ambition weird. Not once had he told her to be happy with her lot.

His betrayal in the end had colored everything of that time but Sophia didn’t remember a time when she’d been so easy with herself.

“You are beautiful,
cara mia
. Enough to make stupid boys do a cruel thing to get close to you.”

Was that why he’d taken part in that bet, too? Hadn’t he known he didn’t need it? She’d been putty in his hands from the moment he’d smiled at her.

She offered a wan smile, far too rattled. “You can make the earth believe it’s the sky if you put yourself up to it, Luca. I’m not falling for you.”

He sighed, that dramatic, larger-than-life gesture. “Oh, you will,
cara mia
. And you’ll love every minute of your descent.”

Hands snug around his waist, she hung on for dear life as he took off.

In two seconds flat, wind whipped at the knot of her hair. Her dress rode up to her thighs, and her breasts were crushed against his tensile back.

But for the moment Sophia found she didn’t really mind being plastered to him. In fact, she decided to enjoy it.

She decided to call being plastered to the sexiest man she’d ever meet a win.