Chapter 6 Leo #2
I follow her with my eyes, and when I catch my father’s sharp gaze, I know I’ll have to go after her to ‘smooth things over’. That’s fine. If I need to, I can give her one last push.
Tugging on the lapels of my jacket to straighten it, I stay several paces behind, walking casually so it won’t be obvious that we’re leaving the party at the same time.
The sharp sound of Sora’s steps on the marble floor tells me where she’s going before I catch sight of her rounding the corner at the far end of the hall.
She’s moving quickly for a woman in heels.
Still, I manage to catch up to her before she can close the guest bathroom door.
“What are you doing?” she gasps as I grab the wood and force my way inside.
Closing the door behind us, I round on her as I cage her against it with my arms.
Electric heat sparks between us as my face comes within inches of hers and her ragged breaths wash over me.
Sora glares up into my eyes, and the sweet scents of peach and jasmine tease my nose, inviting me closer.
“You can’t be in here with me,” she hisses, her voice starting to quaver.
“As your husband, I’ll have the right to do whatever I want with you,” I assure her, the thought flooding me with arousal, even though I’m giving my best effort to convince her to break off the engagement.
“After tomorrow, you’ll be little more than my property, so you might as well get used to the idea. ”
“Maybe so, but not yet. If someone saw us—”
“You really think anyone’s going to make a scene about it? In less than twenty-four hours, you’ll be my wife. What does it matter to anyone if I have a taste now?” I breathe.
“Don’t even think about touching me after what you just did,” she warns, her onyx eyes flashing with a resentment more potent than anything she’s cast my way before—even after I sent her swimming in the fountain.
“And what did I just do?” I goad, leaning in to crowd her.
Being this close to her is intoxicating.
The errant thought blindsides me as my senses launch into overdrive.
Heat radiates from Sora’s slight frame, warming the narrow space between us. I can feel the door vibrating beneath my palms as she trembles against it, but I can’t tell if it’s with fear or anger.
An overwhelming desire to touch her floods my body, an urge to pull her into my arms and calm her shaking.
God, I want her.
The need hits me so unexpectedly that for a second, I lose track of our conversation, my motivations, the reason I’m torturing her.
I lose track of everything but the overwhelming craving to taste her lips, painted vixen-red to match her provocative dress—a dress that, on any other woman, would probably look perfectly modest.
But somehow, Sora makes it ravishing until all I want to do is tear it off her.
“You just slept with another woman,” she spits. “The night before our wedding. You’re not even trying to be discreet about your lack of faithfulness.”
I’m not prepared for the pain in her eyes—a potent cocktail of rejection and betrayal that I hadn’t anticipated in my bride. Not after the way I’ve treated her.
I’ve given Sora every reason to hate me, to walk away and call off this farcical wedding.
But she hasn’t, and as her eyes shine with unshed tears, I can’t let her continue to believe I was with another woman.
“I didn’t,” I state flatly, my voice so low I’m not sure she heard me.
But her eyebrows press into an emotional frown, and she swallows visibly as she wavers between confusion and disbelief. “Didn’t what?”
Sighing, I close my eyes as the last of my conviction to push her away crumbles. “I didn’t sleep with her.”
“Are you serious right now?” she hisses, somehow sounding even more furious than before as her voice jumps an octave, and my eyes fly open to read her expression. “You’re going to nitpick my choice of words because I didn’t want to say you fucked her?”
That flash of angry fire is back in her gaze, and I chuckle as the sight fills me with relief.
“Get away from me,” she demands, shoving at my chest with more strength than I imagined she could have. “I can’t even look at you right now.”
“Sora, stop, stop,” I insist, grabbing her wrists and trapping them against my chest when she continues her effort to escape.
Electricity crackles through me where we touch, and I’m suddenly intensely aware of the fact that I’ve pinned her back against the door with my body to stop her from running.
I can feel every quivering inch of her beneath me, and it steals the oxygen from the room. I’ve never wanted a woman so badly.
But to my horror, when Sora lifts her chin to glare at me, a single tear escapes her eye.
“I didn’t have sex with her,” I insist, pressing both of her palms against my chest with one hand so I can cup her cheek and wipe her tear away with my thumb.
“I really don’t want to hear the gritty details about what you two did or did not do,” she says, her voice thick with emotion.
“We didn’t do anything,” I clarify because she doesn’t seem to be getting what I’m trying to say.
“You didn’t?”
“No, we stopped right after you kicked us out of your room.”
Silence stretches between us, heightening my awareness of how close we are, but Sora seems too stunned to notice.
“Why?” she murmurs finally, her elegant brows lifting in disbelief, and though I’ve given her no reason to trust me, her doubt still tears at my heart.
My eyes flick down to her red dress then back up to her face. “Because I want you.”
Sora’s breath catches, her lips parting, and her eyes grow impossibly darker.
Then they widen as she glances down at the lack of space between us, like she’s only just noticed how intimate this is.
When she looks up at me again, I can see the desire there.
Despite everything, she wants me too.
The need to kiss her intensifies as her pink tongue darts out to wet her ruby lips.
The pull is magnetic, the urge irresistible, and I feel myself leaning in even before I’ve made the conscious decision to do so.
Would it be the end of the world to kiss her now?