The Unwanted Conti Bride (The Legendary Conti Brothers) by Tara Pammi

Author:Tara Pammi [Pammi, Tara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin Presents
Published: 2016-05-31T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

HE GROWLED FROM across the room. This horrible noise that came from his throat, as if he were a ferocious but wounded animal and she the hunter.

She got off the bench and moved toward him.

“Your affairs are always splashed about. There’s always some drama at some big party where you behave abominably. The only time one of your affairs wasn’t splashed about was with me.”

Now his hands were fisted by his sides.

Somehow, that disgusting bet had never reached anyone’s ears. Of course, she saw the knowledge of it in those friends of his over the years, taunting and offensive, but no one had actually dared say a word about it to her face. Or spread it around that the chubby geek, Sophia Rossi, had fallen for the devilish Luca Conti.

“Will you give me sainthood now for not making a public spectacle of you, Sophia? Are you that desperate to justify this?” The sneer in his voice struck her like a stinging slap.

She bucked against his tone. But she didn’t break and run away as he intended. She reached for him and leaned her forehead against his back.

Warmth from his skin radiated through his shirt. Hands shaking, she pulled his shirt out of his trousers. She sank them under it, frantic in her search for bare skin.

Skin like hot velvet, the muscles bunching under her touch. She moved her questing hands around to his abdomen. Up and down, like he’d done with her. Ropes of lean muscles. And his heart thundering like a ram under her palm.

He was a study in stillness, in tension, in rejection. Every inch of him was locked tight. Another push and he would lash back at her, would break her.

But how could she back down now?

She’d always thought of his looks as the gateway to his arrogance, to his indulgent lifestyle, but now she wondered if they weren’t just a mask, hiding so much more than they revealed. Every woman was blinded by his smile; every man wanted to have that natural, effortless charm he possessed; everyone willingly bought into the role he played.

She’d bought it, too, all these years. “You...you perform, Luca. For Antonio, for Leandro, for Tina, for the entire world. You have created this specter of you and you use it to keep everyone at a distance.”

He turned and Sophia braced herself for his attack. She was learning him now, learning when there was a hint of the real Luca and when it was the abhorred playboy.

Something changed in his face, then. An infinitesimal tightening of those razor-sharp cheekbones. A thinning of those lush lips. A glitter in those eyes that were always quick with a smile and a comeback, usually laden with sexual innuendo.

He seemed to see straight through to the heart of her—the fears and desires, everything she kept locked away to get through hard life. “You want to have sex with me. Desperately. You crave it and yet, you can’t give in to the inevitable. So you look for some redeeming quality in me.

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