“Yes,” she said, finally. Then those dark eyes connected with his and he felt it like a lightning bolt straight down to his stomach. He should not. For every reason cataloged in his mind only a moment before. She was not beautiful. Not when compared to the elegant women who had graced his bed before her. Not when compared to nearly any other princess the world over.
But she captivated him. Had done from the moment he had met her. At first it was nothing more than feeling at turns invaded and intrigued by this alien creature that had come into his life. She had been twelve to his seventeen when their parents had married.
Sophia had possessed a public school education, not a single hint of deportment training and no real understanding of the hierarchy of the palace.
She had a tendency to speak out of turn, to trip over her feet and to treat him in an overly familiar manner.
Her mother was a warm, vivacious woman who had done much to restore his father’s life, life that had drained away after the loss of his first wife. She was also a quick study, and did credit to the position of Queen of San Gennaro.
Sophia, on the other hand, seemed to resist her new role, and her new life. She continued to do so now. In little ways. Her bare legs, and her bare face, as an example.
His irritation with her had taken a sharp turn, twisting into something much more disturbing around the time she turned sixteen. That sense of being captivated, in the way one might be by a spider that has invaded one’s room, shifted and became much more focused.
And 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.
Bu
t 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 people. As if he were a different creature entirely from the rest of the mere mortals.
She had done her best to put that royal mantle on, but much like every dress that had ever been made for her since coming to live at the palace, it wasn’t quite right. Oh, they could measure it all to fit, but it was clear that she wasn’t made for such things. That her exceedingly nonwaiflike figure was not for designer gowns and slinky handmade creations that would have hung fabulously off women who were more collar and hip bone than curves and love handles.
Oh, yes, she was well aware of how little she fit. And how impossible her feelings for Luca were.
And yet, they remained.
And knowing that nothing could ever happen with him, knowing it with deep certainty, had done nothing to excise it from her soul.
Did nothing to blunt the pain of this, of his words being ground into her chest like shards of glass.
Not only was he making it clear he didn’t want her, he was also using the memory of his father—the only man she had ever known as a father—to entice her to agree.
He was right. King Magnus had given her everything. Had given her mother a new lease on life, a real life. Something beyond existence, beyond struggle, which they had been mired in for all of Sophia’s life prior to her marriage to him.
He had met her when she was nothing more than a waitress at a royal event in the US, and had fallen deeply for her in the moment they met.
It was something out of a fairy tale, except there were two children to contend with. A child who had been terrified of being uprooted from her home in America and going to a foreign country
to live in a fancy palace. And another child who had always clearly resented the invasion.
She had to give Luca credit for the fact that he seemed to have some measure of affection for her mother. He did not resent her presence in the way he resented Sophia’s.
She had often thought that life for Luca would have been perfect if he would have gotten her mother and his father, and she had been left out of the equation entirely.
Well, he was trying to offload her now, so she supposed that was proven to be true enough.
“That isn’t fair,” she said, when she could finally regain her powers of speech.
Luca’s impossibly dark eyes flickered up and met hers, and her stomach—traitorous fool—hollowed out in response. “It isn’t fair? Sophia, I have always known that you were ungrateful for the position that you have found yourself in your life, but you have just confirmed it in a rather stunning way. You find it unfair that my father wished to see you cared for? You find it unfair that I wish to do the same?”
“You forget,” she said, trying to regain her powers of thought. “I was not born into this life, Luca, I did not know people growing up who expected such things for their lives. I didn’t expect such a thing for mine. I spent the first twelve years of my life in poverty. But with the idea that if I worked hard enough I might be able to make whatever I wanted of myself. And then we were sort of swept up in this tidal wave of luxury. And strangely, I have found that though I have every resource at my disposal now, I cannot be what I want in the same way that I imagined I could when I was nothing but a poor child living in the United States.”