CHAPTER 5: TASTING TEMPTATION
1415 Words
Sofia didn’t see Emilio for two days.
Not at breakfast. Not in the vineyard. Not even in the stables where she wandered now and then, half-hoping he’d appear like a ghost summoned by the heat between them.
But the air around the estate was heavier, as if something beneath the surface was shifting. She felt it in the quiet glances of the guards. In Luce’s clipped responses when she asked simple questions. In the way her skin tingled every time she passed Emilio’s study door.
It stayed shut. Locked.
Until tonight.
***
She’d gone to the library on a whim, restless and barefoot in silk shorts and a camisole. The moonlight spilled in from the tall windows, silvering the old bookshelves. She reached for a novel blindly, trying to distract her thoughts—but the second her fingers brushed the spine, she felt him.
Turning, she saw him standing in the doorway.
Emilio.
Loose black shirt, unbuttoned halfway down his chest. His eyes were darker tonight, shadows carved into the sharp lines of his face.
Neither of them spoke.
The silence between them was louder than any storm.
Then—
“I should go,” she whispered, barely audible.
But she didn’t move.
He stepped forward. “You should,” he said hoarsely. “But you won’t.”
And he was right.
Sofia stood frozen as he crossed the distance between them. He didn’t kiss her.
He just stared at her mouth like it was a sin he was about to commit.
Then his hand—broad, calloused—lifted, sliding beneath her camisole. Her breath hitched.
“Sofia,” he growled softly, as if her name burned him.
She leaned into his touch, wanting it—needing it.
The first press of his lips was firm, claiming. Her back hit the bookshelf with a gentle thud as he devoured her mouth, pulling a gasp from her throat. He tasted like whisky and heat and restraint finally broken.
When his hands found her thighs, lifting her easily onto the wooden table behind her, her legs opened instinctively for him.
“You have no idea,” he rasped, “what you’re doing to me.”
His mouth was everywhere—along her jaw, down her neck, across the swell of her breasts. Then lower.
When he sank to his knees, she shivered.
“Emilio—”
“Shhh.”
He hooked his fingers under the edge of her silk shorts and dragged them down, slow and deliberate.
And then—
He devoured her like a starving man.
Sofia cried out, legs trembling as his mouth moved over her with sinful precision. Tongue, lips, soft groans vibrating against her core as her hands tangled in his thick hair, pulling, anchoring. She didn’t know how long she floated in the heat of it, but when her release hit, it stole the air from her lungs.
She came undone on his mouth, and he held her through every tremor.
When she finally opened her eyes, he was watching her.
Eyes fierce. Jaw clenched.
But he didn’t kiss her again. He just stood, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and whispered:
“This changes nothing.”
Then he left her trembling in the moonlit silence of the library.
***
Sofia sat there on the edge of the table, dazed, her breath still uneven, her skin slick with the echo of his mouth. The room was too quiet, too still—as if the walls themselves were holding their breath.
This changes nothing.
The words echoed louder than any moan she’d let slip under his tongue.
It wasn’t true. It had changed everything.
The heat, the hunger, the way her body still ached for more—it wasn’t just desire. It was need, dangerous and raw, threaded into every glance they’d shared since the day she arrived.
She slid off the table slowly, legs shaky. Her shorts were on the floor, forgotten. She didn’t bother pulling them back on. Instead, she walked to the window in just her camisole, skin still flushed.
Outside, the vineyard was bathed in silver.
Inside, she burned.
A soft creak sounded down the hall.
She thought—hoped—it was Emilio.
But the footsteps never came closer.
He was gone again, back into whatever dark world he kept locked behind his silences.
And that did something to her.
It made her want to unlock him.
***
Later that night, lying in her bed, she touched the space where his mouth had been. The memory of his tongue still pulsed between her thighs like a secret only her body remembered.
But it wasn’t just the s*x. It was how he made her feel.
Seen.
Craved.
Ruined.
And yet—abandoned.
Because he’d taken her apart… then walked away like it cost him nothing.
What was he hiding?
Why did it feel like touching her was a line he wasn’t supposed to cross?
She turned on her side, restless, her fingers curling into the sheets. She wanted to go to him. To demand more. Answers. Another taste.
But something in his eyes, right before he left, had warned her.
This wasn’t a man who gave without consequence.
He’d started a fire.
And now she was the one left burning in the dark.
***
She didn’t sleep that night.
Her body was still humming, oversensitized, skin tingling where his mouth had lingered. But it was the ache in her chest that kept her wide awake—the confusion, the hunger, the cruel finality of his words.
This changes nothing.
She wanted to scream at him for saying that. For touching her like that—worshiping her like she was his salvation—and then walking away without looking back.
The truth was, it had changed everything.
Sofia no longer saw him as just her father’s old friend. Or even just the quiet, brooding man who kept too many secrets.
He was temptation made flesh.
And she had tasted him.
***
By morning, she couldn’t bear to stay inside. The walls felt too tight, the air too heavy.
She wandered barefoot through the gardens, dew wetting her ankles, the Tuscan sun just beginning to rise behind the hills. She let her fingers brush over the tall lavender stems, inhaling their calming scent, pretending—just for a moment—that nothing had happened.
But everything had.
And still, she hadn’t seen him.
Sofia headed toward the stables next, heart pounding at the chance she might find him there. She didn’t. Just Luce, grooming one of the horses with that quiet, watchful focus that made her feel like she was always being studied.
He looked up, nodded once. “Morning.”
“Have you seen Emilio?”
He hesitated. “The Don’s… busy.”
Her brow furrowed. “Busy?”
Luce said nothing more.
Sofia’s stomach knotted. The Don. It was the second time she’d heard that word used so specifically. Not Emilio. Not Signor Lombardi. Just… the Don. The way it lingered in the air made her skin prickle.
She tried to push the thought away, but it clung like burrs in her mind.
What did he do, exactly?
Why were there men with earpieces around the estate?
Why had she caught whispers in Italian late at night—words she didn’t fully understand but recognized in tone: threat, tension, obedience?
The answers were hiding in plain sight. She just hadn’t wanted to see them.
Until now.
***
That night, as the house quieted and the staff retired, Sofia left her bedroom with a single candle in hand.
She padded down the marble hallway barefoot, past the closed library, past the locked study—until she found the door Emilio had warned her not to open on her first day.
The one that led to the east wing.
The candle flickered.
Her hand hovered over the doorknob.
And for the first time, Sofia didn’t feel like a guest in this house.
She felt like a trespasser.
A single creak echoed through the hallway.
She turned.
He was there.
Emilio stood in the shadows, his shirt unbuttoned again, the same way it had been the night he’d touched her—but his face was different. Tighter. Controlled.
“Looking for something?” he asked, voice low.
“I could ask you the same thing,” she whispered.
Their eyes locked.
And in that moment, she knew—he’d been watching her. Maybe not just tonight.
Maybe always.
- Writer
