“Yeah, I saw him.” His fingers tightened. Disgust pulled at his lips as he pressed his body into mine.
“No! You’re not doing this when little Ms. Perfect is out there sporting the rock of the century.” I tried to push him away, only to get my hands stuck in between us.
Luca shook his head. “What does that have to do with anything?”Disbelief must’ve shown on my face because Luca quickly added, “Oh, you think her and me? No, no, no! She’s engaged to one of my accountants, Aldo. We’re just having a working dinner.”
As soon as my body relaxed in relief, I tensed. I shouldn’t have care. I shouldn’t have been relieved that he wasn’t engaged. But I fucking was.
“Oh.”
Luca’s plump lips twitched into a cautious smile. “You were jealous?”
“No, I just . . .” My eyes dropped to where my hands sat pinned between our chests. One breath and I looked back into his impossibly dark eyes. “I just don’t like hypocrisy.”
“Oh, that’s it.” His long fingers caressed the side of my face, and it felt like fire licking at my skin. “It had nothing to do with you still having feelings for me.”
Violently shaking him from me, I moved against the countertop. “Fuck you, Luca! The only feelings I have for you now are disappointment and annoyance.”
Instead of being the verbal hit I wanted, my words gave Luca confidence. Crowding my space again, he was every bit the business tycoon the world knew him as.
“You can’t be disappointed without caring.” Bending a little to meet me eye to eye, he cupped my cheeks in his palms. “I still love you, Sasha. Tell me you still love me.”
I didn’t say a word. Luca’s fingers slid into my hair and tightened. “Say you love me.” His Adam’s apple bobbed. “Please.”Raw emotion poured from Luca’s eyes. Every day of hurt, every hour of longing, every minute of missing suffocated us. He was breaking me.
For a moment,I allowed myself to revel in his hands on me, in his eyes looking at me, but I knew nothing had changed. “It doesn’t matter if I love you.”
“But it does!” Luca’s face twisted with frustration. “All that mattersisthat we love each other.”
The honesty in his voice made my body weak. Grabbing his forearms, I tried to anchor myself. “You know that’s not true. You—”
His lips silenced my words. Leaning back, I tried to break the kiss, but his fingers twisted in my hair kept me in place.
When I didn’t kiss him back, he nibbled a trail to my ear and then down my neck.
“Luca, you have to stop.”
Pulling back, he looked me dead in the eyes. “No, you have to stop. You’ve made us miserable for a year. Aren’t you tired of this?”
“I’m not miserable.” Luca laughed, making me more adamant. “I’m not! I have my friends, my business, my distractions. I’m fine.”
Dark, bottomless eyes regarded me. “Yeah, your distractions. Are you honestly trying to say that those random fucks come close to what we had?” Luca hoisted me up on the countertop, sliding the hem of my tight dress up. “How I made you feel.”
My body instantly heated as he stepped between my legs, but my brain was sounding the alarms. “Luca, I . . .”
Strong fingers dug into my ass, pulling flush to his body. His grip was firm and sure. With no space between us, all I could do was breathe him in.
When his lips touched mine again, I was done fighting. Sure, I knew I would regret everything, but a part of me knew I would regret not kissing him more. I’d been starving for him for a year.
Breaking our kiss, I grabbed his chin. “This is it, Luca. No more after this.”
He sighed. “Fine, whatever you say.”
I stopped him as he tried to kiss me. “No. I mean it. After this, if you see me out, you don’t follow me to get me alone. You don’t approach me.” I ran my fingers gently over his jaw.
“Do you think this is the first time I’ve seen you in the past year?” I thought over our time apart, unable to think of a single time we would’ve been in the same place. “St. Louis isn’t that big of a city. I’ve seen you, and I’ve avoided you. Tonight, I just couldn’t.”
“Oh.”
Shaking his head, he gripped me harder. “You know what? Fine. I’ll pretend you never existed. Happy?” My body shrank under his glare.