“You’ve never kissed a woman?”
Luca gave a light shrug, unaffected by my question. “I don’t see the point in intimacy.”
I leaned closer as if drawn to him by dark magic. “Would you kiss your wife?”
“I knew there was a little devil in there,” he said with a crooked grin. “But can two broken halves make a whole?”
“I don’t know,” I whispered.
“The correct answer is no,” he fired back, annoyed I didn’t know the answer to his stupid ass question.
Whatever pieces of his tainted soul remained were rough and jagged and would probably slice my heart into pieces. It was a trick question, and this bastard wanted to play a game with me. In his beautiful but cruel blue eyes, I could see that he was the Devil incarnate.
Luca tugged on my curls and pulled my face closer, lips pressed into a thin line. His expression was unreachable, as if he’d gone to another place in his mind while his body was still very much present and pressing against me. I felt the warmth and strength of his thigh and tasted the sweetness of the champagne on his breath.
An uncomfortable silence fell over us as he held me firmly. “You won’t like how this ends.”
His words sounded like a threat.
What the hell had made him so cold and hateful? Even with my horrible upbringing, I could still find the goodness in people, still find it in myself to care about others. But Luca was long gone, replaced by a monster with teeth and claws. I felt like he would suck the life from my body if I didn’t get away from him.
Every second in his presence had me falling deeper under his spell.
I slipped out of his grasp and hurried across the grass, pushing the short, frilly dress down my legs.
“What the hell is wrong with you?”
He tipped his head back and howled with laughter. “Everything.”
Damaged and broken, Luca was the shell of a gorgeous man with a wicked slant to his mouth and blue eyes that sliced through me. He was trying to intimidate me. But I didn’t understand why.
“Why did you let me touch your scars?”
“Because you need to understand the cruelty of our world.” He lifted my fairy mask and cupped my cheek with his hand. “You’re so beautiful and pure, easy to break.”
I’m already broken.
His sapphire irises flickered, and I shivered from his touch. “Soon, you’ll understand what it’s like to be one of us.”
Before I could respond, my grandfather’s deep voice boomed behind us. “Alexandrea, I’ve been looking everywhere for you. Get in the house.”
His words said one thing, but his face said, Get away from Luca.
“I was just….”
What was I doing? Sitting at the edge of a cliff with a sexy lunatic who made my heart pound with a mixture of fear and desire.
Luca glanced over his shoulder and smirked at my grandfather before his eyes landed on me. “I have to do this.”
He leaned into me, his lips inches from mine. “I can’t help myself. I have to know….”
Know what?
And then he kissed me.
