“But I…” I struggled to find the correct words to match the swirl of emotions tearing through my chest. “Are you saying they were going to reject my application?”
“No,” he said. “But I’m not a man who leaves anything to chance.”
“We don’t even know each other,” I choked out, wondering why he would intervene on my behalf.
“That’s not true. I have known about you for most of your life. Until tonight, you were Carl Wellington’s best-kept secret. A union between our families will secure world domination for the Wellingtons and Salvatores.”
He grinned like a megalomaniac plotting his next move, the wheels turning inside his beautiful head. Now I understood the women in the ballroom’s whispers.
“A union,” I stammered. “You want to marry me?”
“As I said, the fates decided a long time ago. When I was a boy, my father promised me the most beautiful woman in the world.” He gave me a sly smile that made my heart hammer in my chest. “As usual, he didn’t disappoint. I grew up knowing how our lives would play out. I’ve been waiting a long time for you, Alexandrea.”
I stared at the pink label on the bottle of Dom Perignon Brut Rose, wondering if Luca was right. My parents had sprung the last-minute trip to Devil’s Creek on my brother and me, only two days into our summer break. They shipped us halfway across the country to visit our estranged grandparents while they took their own vacation.
“No offense, but I don’t want to marry you. I don’t even know you.”
He was panty-melting hot, but not that hot. I had plans for my life that did not involve him.
“People like us don’t get to choose,” he said with zero emotion.
“After I graduate from art school, I’m traveling the world.”
He shook his head, his eyes like lasers burning through me, and a chill rolled down my spine. Without words, he could disarm me.
I shoved the bottle at his chest. “I think I drank too much.”
He finished the rest of the bubbly in one gulp and then threw the bottle off the cliff. A long beat passed before the water splashed below us, reminding me of the drop. We stood in silence as orchestra music floated through the air. Luca seemed at ease as the song reached its crescendo, his shoulders relaxing at the sound of the violin.
My head spun from the alcohol, making it hard for me to catch my balance. When my body felt heavy, I took that as a sign and lowered myself onto the grass. I shoved my dress over my legs, careful not to reveal too much skin.
Luca sat beside me, twirling one of my blonde curls around his finger, his blue eyes fixed on mine. The right corner of his mouth turned up into a crooked grin. “I know everything about you,” he confessed.
“Like what?”
“Everything,” he said, stripping me bare with one word. “Want to know a secret?”
I blew a breath between my teeth and nodded.
“You’re the first woman I’ve let touch me.”
Luca was in his senior year at Harvard University. I found it hard to believe someone with his looks made it through college without having contact with a woman.
“Are you a virgin?”
He laughed as if it were the craziest thing he’d ever heard. “No. I have fucked a lot of women.”
Heat coiled in my belly and spread throughout my body. He was too close, too tempting.
“How can you have sex with a woman and not let them touch you?”
“Easy.” Luca brushed his knuckles against my cheek. “Tie them up. Bend them over. Punish them for breaking the rules.”
A gasp slipped past my lips. My pulse pounded, the blood rushing to my head making me dizzy. I licked my lips, hating myself for being turned on by the idea of Luca dominating me. Why did I like it? Because I was fucked up like him.
“If they’re not allowed to touch you, how do you kiss them?”
“I don’t.”
“Never?”
He shook his head.
“You’ve never kissed a woman?”
Luca shrugged. “I don’t see the point in intimacy.”
I leaned closer as if drawn to him by some kind of dark magic. “Would you kiss your wife?”
“I knew there was a little devil in there,” he said with a crooked grin, his fingers grazing my cheek. “But can two broken halves make a whole?”
“I don’t know,” I whispered.
“The correct answer is no,” he fired back, annoyed I didn’t know the answer to his stupid ass question.
Whatever pieces of his tainted soul remained were rough, jagged, and would probably slice my heart into pieces. It was a trick question, and this bastard wanted to play a game with me. I could see in his beautiful but cruel blue eyes that he was the Devil incarnate.
Luca tugged on my curls and pulled my face closer, his lips pressed into a thin line. His expression was unreachable as if he’d gone to another place in his mind while his body was still very much present and pressing up against me. I felt the warmth and strength of his thigh against mine and tasted the sweetness of the champagne on his breath. An uncomfortable silence fell over us, my nerves shaking through me as he held me in his firm grip.