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

recall some warning, some common sense as to why she shouldn’t be in his arms, pressed up snugly against him. With him sucking on random parts of her.
    Zilch. Nada. Nothing came up.
    Then the diamond on her ring finger glinted, a twinkling ray of common sense. She ordered her body to stiffen, to move away, but it had different ideas. “We can’t be doing this. We can’t... If you gave me that power over your stock thinking that will make me grateful, thinking I’ll happily—”
    “Spread your legs and take me inside you?” He was the one who pulled back. “You really think I’d have to pay for sex? I’m not sure who it reflects badly on that you think that, you or me. Or have you truly become as cynical as they call you?”
    He castigated her so softly and yet Sophia felt his words like tiny pricks. “Then why?”
    In response, he dipped his mouth and took hers again. This kiss was not an invitation or a tease. It was full-on assault, demanding surrender. Almost brutally efficient in the way he slowly but surely made her into a mass of shuddering sensation.
    She’d made him angry, Sophia realized beneath the avalanche of sensations. His tongue laved the interior of her mouth, while his hands moved up and down her body, inciting her into a frenzy.
    Expert strokes, here and there, perfect pressure, a master of seduction at work. A routine.
    His heart wasn’t in it. He was seducing her with technique and experience. He was proving a point. She could be a tall, blonde model for all that it mattered to him.
    The difference, even as heat drenched her, sent bile up her throat.
    “No, Luca, please.” She sank her hands into his hair and tugged his face down. “That was moronic. What I said,” she finally whispered, her hands molding and tracing the line of his shoulders. “I...have never been able to believe that someone like you could want someone like me.”
    She didn’t want to mention the bet again. It was in the past. But she saw his understanding of it, saw those same shutters come down.
    He sighed and instantly gentled. A devil so easily calmed with honesty? A man whose feelings could hurt under that almost impenetrable mask he wore? She wasn’t so sure anymore that she knew him.
    Across her temple, then over her nose, and then her jaw, he placed soft kisses. “I kiss you because you’re thoroughly kissable, Sophia. I kiss you because I can’t bear the thought of those lush lips not quivering under mine, of that stout will not surrendering to me. I kiss you because I want to hear that sigh you release when you realize this fire between us is too hot to fight. I kiss you for that moment when your shoulders lose that stiff line, when you melt into willing softness. I kiss you for that moment when you make that little growly sound in the back of your throat, as though you’ve just realized that you’ve been a passive spectator. I kiss you because then you take over the kiss, you forget why you should resist me and you devour me as if I was your favorite dessert in the world.”
    He whispered the last words against her mouth. As if he was infusing her very blood with those tender words.
    She sighed.
    Then she groaned.
    Then she kissed him back with a ravenous hunger. All things he’d predicted. He knew her so well, even in this... It was a faint warning at the back of her mind that dissolved under the influx of such delirious pleasure.
    His lush mouth delivered on the fantasies it promised. Hard and soft, sometimes masculine demand, sometimes a tender entreaty.
    Vining her arms around his nape, she stretched to reach more of him. He was right; she hated being a spectator. One hard thigh pushed in between her legs, but didn’t quite hit the spot.
    When she shifted, one hand landed on her thigh, pushed up her dress and then pulled her leg up and around his buttocks.
    His thigh moved even farther between her legs. And up. Right against the hungry core of her.
    Shamelessly, Sophia clenched her thighs and