Page 6 of The Sicilian’s Deal For 'I Do'

‘Ican’t,’ she clarified, infusing her voice with a certainty she didn’t feel. ‘I’m getting married, Luca. For real this time.’

His eyes bored into hers, something in their depths she couldn’t understand.

‘But you are not married yet, are you?’

She tried to swallow again, past a throat that was thick and raw.

‘I—what do you want?’

‘An interesting question. Are you sure you would like the answer?’

She squeezed her eyes shut on a wave of feeling, then shook her head a little. Luca’s finger beneath her chin had her tilting her face to his. ‘I have a proposition for you.’

Her heart slammed into her throat.

‘If I’m honest, I’m still reeling from the last proposition we entered into.’

A quick, cynical smile flooded her and was replaced with warmth. She focused over his shoulder. ‘I want you to come home with me.’

The floor seemed to open up and swallow Mia whole. ‘What?’

‘One night.’

She scanned his face, looking for evidence of a joke, but he wasn’t smiling now, and there was such a look of intense hunger in his eyes that she gasped, because it was exactly how he’d looked at her that night, by the car.

Desire was a fever pitch in her bloodstream.

‘I can’t,’ she said, desperate to believe that. Luca was the opposite of what she wanted in every way except one—physical. But he was dangerous. Far too dangerous for Mia, who’d experienced more than enough hurt and humiliation in one lifetime. Now she was all about control. Measured, calm, unemotional control.

‘Not even for old time’s sake,’ he prompted with a softness she hadn’t expected. In anyone else, that soft tone might have spoken of uncertainty but in Luca it was dangerous.

‘There were no old times,’ Mia hissed, furious. ‘There was a stupid arrangement and one quick, forgettable moment by a car.’

But for a man like Luca, who was all alpha-male pride, her insult appeared to sail right into its mark. His lips twisted in an approximation of a smile but she saw something else in the depths of his eyes, something darker. ‘Forgettable?’ He dipped his head forward just as she realised she’d wanted him to, as she’d been goading him to. Oh, what kind of fool was she? ‘Let’s see if this next kiss is any more memorable then.’

He stared at Mia, challenging her, waiting for her to say or do something, to fight back, but instead, to Mia’s shock and despair, anger had her pushing up onto the tips of her toes and seeking his mouth with her own, as if to prove to him how far she’d come in the past year, to show him that she wasn’t the same stupid, ignorant girl who’d gone blindly into a marriage arrangement with this man.

But how quickly her control was sapped by the desire that instantly flared between them, as his body pressed hers to the wall, holding her immobile, as he then demanded—and received—her total surrender, the tables utterly turned. The kiss she’d initiated to prove a silly point had become an ultimate surrender.

It had been over a year, and, despite what she’d just said, Mia had never forgotten the power of his mouth. She’d dreamed of this, had longed for it, even when she hated him, and thought him the very worst man on earth. How was it possible that her head and heart could exist in such conflict?

His tongue lashed hers, his body still at first and then moving, a knee moving between her legs then lifting higher, separating her thighs, one arm pressing to the wall at her side, the other curving around her waist, stroking her, holding her, as if he couldn’t let her go. But it was all a ruse. A lie. A game.

A game?

Yes. That seemed appropriate. For whatever reason, he’d played Mia. She couldn’t understand it, because there had been so much in their arrangement for him to benefit from: the business had seemed so important to him—he’d spent hours with her father, going over the corporate structure, hinting at plans he’d developed to turn Marini Enterprises into a global powerhouse. He’d seemed fully invested, as though buying Marini Enterprises was the most important thing in his world. And then he’d disappeared into thin air.

But these were logical thoughts, and Mia was well beyond the ability to be logical. Her brain was mush, rendered that way by the power of his nearness, the chemistry that sparked between them like a match being struck. She felt its heat and flame ignite inside her body, as though her veins were flooded by pure rocket fuel.

‘Luca,’ she groaned his name, liked the taste of it, the feel of it, the weight of it against her tongue, the way they rolled together, a tsunami of feelings, but there was terror too, because this was all too much. By the car that night it had been powerful, but like an electrical shock, sharp and succinct, splitting her world in two, then it was over. This was long, growing, a spreading heat that was gripping Mia, changing her, making her want things she couldn’t understand, things that were powerful and overwhelming andnecessary.

She was a woman, damn it. At twenty-three, she was old enough to understand enough about her body and yet she had no experience. While in theory she knew what was going on, the reality of these sensations was totally overwhelming and daunting.

His hand moved to her waist, to the silk shirt she wore, lifting it slightly, just an inch, separating it from the waistband of her full, ballgown skirt so his fingertips brushed her bare skin and she trembled, goosebumps covering her flesh, responding to the possessive glide of his fingers, and all the while a pulse began to beat between her legs, overheating her body. This had to stop, this had to stop, a little voice tried desperately to drag her back to a place of reason, but feelings were drowning it out, the rushing of her blood too loud to allow for any thought.

His fingers crept higher, beneath her shirt, all the way to the underside of her bra, touching her there, as if they were so much more than this. As if he hadn’t treated her like dirt. It was too much. Everything was overwhelming to Mia; she couldn’t breathe, and yet she needed to. She needed space. In the midst of passion, she clung to that one fact: he’d treated her—and her parents—so badly, in a way she could never, ever forgive. She hated him, with all her soul. Luca Cavallaro was not a man to be trusted.

With a guttural, soul-destroying cry, she pushed at his chest, anger making her strong, her breath wrenched from her body as she tried to regain her footing, staring at him across air that sparked with a strange, cosmic energy.

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