Chapter 17 #2
“No, I don’t think I can pretend to tolerate you,” he grits out, his tone filled with steely determination that slices through me.
He really can’t even act like he doesn’t think I’m an annoying little sister he wants nothing to do with.
He steps into my space, and I suck in a breath, bracing for him to put me down. Again.
But the air around us is charged with an electricity I can’t begin to understand. He leans in closer to me. His breath on my neck makes my skin pebble and the hair on my neck stand on end. He’s all predator and stupidly attractive.
“I can’t pretend to tolerate you, Sofia. ‘Tolerate’ doesn’t begin to cover what I feel for you.”
He presses his lips to the curve of my shoulder, right over my marking spot. A shiver courses through me. My knees buckle with the intensity of the desire that shoots through me, but Luca snakes an arm around my waist, pulling me closer to him and keeping me upright.
My hands come to his chest, and I push him gently away. This is going to be torturous. Living in his space, his scent infiltrating my being all the time, his stupid sexy moves that have me wanting to give in.
Maybe I need to screw him and get it out of my system. Or maybe that would make things even harder.
“This is fake, Luca. You do realize I don’t want to actually give us a try. Right?”
Something akin to hurt flashes across his face, but it’s not like he cared when he was the one hurting me. And the expression is gone as quickly as it arrived, replaced with a smirk and a raised eyebrow.
“Fake as it may be, we do need to learn how to act the part. Better decide what the limits around others are now. Newly found mates usually can’t keep their hands off each other. We’re going to need some ground rules,” he says with a waggle of his eyebrows.
I want to throat punch him. Even more so because he’s right.
We need to keep Ryan’s condition quiet and the only way we can go from an attempted rejection to moving in together is if we look as though we’re working things out.
If we want to sell this, we will need to look and smell like we are together.
Fuck. Thank the Goddess for Doc giving me heat suppressants because this is about to become my own personal hell.
Living with my mate, having to act as though I like him when others are around, the need to smell like him.
This is going to kill me. Because, yeah, I can’t stand Luca’s personality, but he’s still the most breathtakingly beautiful male I’ve ever laid eyes on.
He’s still sexy as sin. He’s still the first crush I ever had.
And there’s all that history. All the times he was kind and generous.
My wolf preens, delighted by the forced proximity to our mate, ecstatic at how this place smells only of him and me. But I can resist him, right? I can totally share a living space and act affectionately with my fated mate without getting attached.
“What do you have in mind?” I ask with a sigh as I step back from him and stretch my arms out, trying to relieve the tension in my back and shoulders.
Luca gazes at me, his eyes melting into the silvery hue of his wolf.
“You look tense. If we weren’t faking things and I saw that, I would probably do this,” he says as he steps towards me and spins me around.
His hands cup the outside of my arms, moving them upwards, slowly—painfully slowly—as tingles erupt where his warm palms meet my bare skin.
His hands move to my shoulders as he begins to massage me.
His skilled fingers both releasing tension and creating more.
I bite my lip to stifle a moan building in my chest. It feels way too good. I need to end this now. I roll my shoulders and step back from him, pivoting as I go to face him.
“Okay, don’t show if I have tension in front of others, so you don’t need to rub your grubby hands all over me, got it.”
He chuckles darkly, as if he knows exactly how much I enjoyed having his hands on me.
“Holding hands, me putting an arm around your shoulders?” he asks.
I let out a sigh and stare at the ceiling of his log cabin. I can’t think of any logical reason to say no to that. “Fine. Only when we are around pack members though.”
“Kissing? Pretty sure if we weren’t faking things that I would be kissing you at every opportunity I could.”
“Fine. Kissing. In public only.” I let out a sigh because this physically pains me, but it is necessary to make this whole fake mating thing work. “And… I guess you can scent mark me in the mornings if I’m going to be around others.”
Surprise flares in Luca’s eyes at my agreement, and the way I brought up scent marking. It’s what shifters do when they can’t give a permanent mark. Like in a relationship where one hasn’t yet turned twenty-one.
“Deal,” Luca agrees, his eyes sparkling and his wolfish grin letting me know how much he’s enjoying this.
“We’re not done yet. And no, don’t go getting any ideas about what else I’m going to let you do to me. We need to work out our story. How are we going to say you got me to go from wanting to reject you to moving in with you?”
“No one is going to question it. You may not have noticed, but your mate is roguishly handsome and has many great qualities.”
I roll my eyes and cross my arms. That’s not enough. I don’t need anyone thinking I let him walk all over me after treating me like crap for the past few years. “Yeah, that’s not going to work for me.”
“What do you want to say? I begged? Pleaded? Offered you the moon?” he asks, dropping to his knees in front of me and wrapping an arm around my thighs, and dropping a kiss on my bare stomach.
“Something like that,” I huff.
“Fine, you can say I did all of the above,” he says, as he pulls me towards him. I lose my balance enough to fall on my ass. Except I don’t land on my ass. Nope. I land in Luca’s muscular arms, and I hate the butterflies that erupt in my stomach at the closeness of our contact.
“The physical contact is for in public only, dipshit,” I say, pushing away from him and sitting on the floor beside him.
“You don’t think we should practice?” he asks. His smirk is wicked; his grip is unyielding. “Get comfortable with each other?”
“I don’t see why that would be necessary.” I snap, dizzy from the proximity to him. His heady scent intoxicates me, and the electricity dancing across my skin has my mind ready to throw caution to the wind completely.
Fuck. I am so screwed.