Passion and the Prince (18 page)

His response was gruff. ‘I was thinking of her, yes.’
But not as much as I was thinking of you
, Marco added to himself privately.
Not as much as I shall be thinking about you for ever.

It was her own fault if his answer had hurt her—her own fault because deep inside herself she must have known that she was falling in love with him, Lily castigated herself. She wouldn’t have burned for him in the way that she had if it hadn’t been for that love. The look on his face made her feel as though her heart was being wrung out and weeping in pain. It was time for her to move on.

‘It’s been illogical of me to be so afraid of Anton. I’m an adult now, and he can only intimidate me through my fear if I keep that fear,’ she told him, trying to make sure her voice sounded purposeful and friendly instead of betraying her aching need for him. ‘And what makes that fear even more illogical is that I made sure that I lost my virginity and so removed what it was about me I believed Anton desired the minute I reached my sixteenth birthday.’

Marco bowed his head. He had lost his own virginity at sixteen himself, to an older girl who had seduced him with enthusiasm and what to him at that age had seemed a great deal of expertise, but it had been an emotionless experience.

‘It was a goal I’d set myself—a bridge I had to cross and then burn behind me to keep me safe from Anton,’ Lily continued. ‘As my birthday is in May, it had to be during term-time. At a dance with the boys from a
nearby public school a boy asked me to dance who I remembered from the Christmas Dance. I’d liked him because he was quiet and shy. We did the deed with a good deal of fumbling and uncertainty on both sides, more at my instigation than his. It was a practical necessity rather than an … an act of mutual desire, and I have to say that nothing about it has ever made me feel I want to repeat it.’

Marco’s heart jolted. It was wrong, so wrong, that all either of them had known of sexual intimacy was a cold, emotionless coming together—even if in the years since his first encounter he had acquired all the necessary physical skills to please his partners. Together they could share something unique, give one another something that neither of them had experienced with anyone else—something that he now knew he would never want to experience with anyone other than her.

Marco considered himself to be a modern man, and indeed something of a pragmatist, but right now, against any kind of logic, there was something inside him that was asking if it
was
merely circumstance that had brought them together.

What was he thinking? That they had been fated to meet? That it had been written into their lives from birth—preordained, in fact? Was that what he wanted to believe? Was that what he wanted to trust, to give himself over to? Just as he yearned for Lily to give herself over to him?

The walls within which he had imprisoned his emotions were crashing down around him and there was no place left for him to hide from them. He must confront
them and accept what they were telling him about himself—if he dared.

Lily’s hesitant, ‘Can I ask you something personal?’ had him giving her a wary look before nodding his head.

‘Is it just because I was involved in the modelling world that you don’t trust me? Or is it because of her … your… . your girl as well?’ Why was she persisting in adding more pain to the pain she was already enduring? What difference would it make?

None at all. And yet she found herself exhaling unsteadily when Marco agreed brusquely, ‘Yes.’

Lily nodded her head, and was about to turn away when Marco added with even more brusque reluctance, ‘And it’s
didn’t
—not don’t. I
didn’t
trust you—not I don’t,’ he elucidated, crossing the floor and opening the door, before she could say anything, leaving her to stare after him.

Did he mean that he trusted her now? And if he did. Stop it, Lily warned herself. Stop building impossible hopes out of nothing, because it’ll only backfire on you.

I
T WAS
over an hour since Marco had left her alone in their suite. An hour in which she had gone over and over their conversation. What had possessed her to say that about there not being anyone since that boy? What had she hoped for?

Did she really need to ask herself that question? She had wanted him to take her back in his arms. She had wanted him to take her to bed and show her—give her, share with her—all the sensual pleasures she knew she would find there with him. She had wanted to give him her love—even if he had no love to give her because he loved someone else.

He loved someone else, but she knew instinctively that, being the man he was—the kind, caring man he sought to hide beneath an outward mask of disdain and arrogance, the man who had rescued her from Anton—were she to ask him, plead with him, beg him to give her what she had never had, his compassion—the compassion she had now discovered the he possessed—would lead to him giving in and giving her what she wanted.

She would do that? She would humiliate herself like that when she knew he loved someone else?

But didn’t she have the right to know him as her
lover? Didn’t she have the right to create memories with him and of him that she could hold long, long after she could no longer hold him? She was on the pill—prescribed by her doctor because of problems she’d been having with her periods—so there was no question of an accidental pregnancy, and something told her that a man like Marco would always place sexual health high on the list of things that were important to him.

She had always sworn not to get sexually involved, in case it led to her falling in love and suffering the pain she had seen her mother go through.

She was already in love with him, though, so that argument no longer held good. She was going to suffer the pain of not being loved by him whether or not they were lovers.

Lovers. Her and Marco. Wasn’t that really what she had wanted right from the start?

It was too late now. He had gone. But he would come back, Lily reminded herself, and when he did.

When he did she must think about her pride and do nothing, she warned herself.

Marco hesitated outside the suite door. It was over two hours since he had left Lily to rest, and he wanted to warn her that the Duchess had asked if they would mind dining alone this evening, without her, as she had an engagement she’d overlooked. If Lily preferred she could eat alone in the suite. She was bound to have a reaction to what she’d gone through in telling him about her past, and she might prefer to be alone.

With his admission to Lily that he trusted her the last of his barriers against her had been swept away—kicked
away by himself, he acknowledged, because he no longer wanted or needed them. What he needed and wanted was Lily’s love, Lily’s presence in his life. He had been so wrong about her. Could he bring himself to tell her that? Could he bring himself to let her see his vulnerability and his need? Could he really believe the inner voice that told him he could place his trust in her?

Lily watched as the handle to the suite door turned, her heart lifting and then plummeting downwards in a high dive, the sensation inside her chest echoing the tension of the high-risk strategy she intended to adopt. After all, what had she got to lose?

Her heart? She’d already lost that. Her pride? She didn’t care about it. Right now all she cared about was creating enough memories to sustain her through the rest of her life from the handful of hours that were all she would have of Marco. She’d made her plans. If he agreed then later, afterwards—tomorrow morning, in fact—she intended to leave the villa for the airport and England without completing their tour. That way Marco would be spared the embarrassment and awkwardness of her continued company, and she would be spared having to face the reality of his lack of love for her. Her last memories of him would be those of lying in his arms as his lover.

She didn’t think she’d be letting the trust down. She had enough information and commitment already for the exhibition. Of course leaving tomorrow did mean that she’d never get to see Marco’s home …

If she did have any regrets they were superficial—a wish that she could have dressed herself for Marco in something more sensually provocative than the bathrobe
she was wearing under which she was naked. She hadn’t forgotten his reaction to her sensible undies. Better not to wear them than risk putting him off with their practicality and lack of feminine allure.

The door was opening. Her mouth might have gone dry with tension, her heart might be pounding erratically against her ribs, but she was ready.

Ready and oh, so willing and wanting. A small final mental prayer that things would go well, and then she was positioning herself so that she would be the first thing Marco saw when he walked into the room.

When he did, though, his reaction wasn’t what she’d hoped for. She’d somehow envisaged them looking at one another and then her slipping out of her bathrobe and going to him in a shared intense silence. Instead Marco seemed to be avoiding looking at her.

Why hadn’t he knocked on the door first? Marco asked himself savagely. If he had he would have saved himself the agony of knowing that Lily was probably naked under that bathrobe, and everything that that knowledge was doing to his self-control. He could almost feel the satin softness of her skin beneath his touch his need for her was so intense. He could almost see her, feel her, taste her, and his body was reacting as though he had. Molten, hot pent-up desire—the kind of desire he had never imagined he could allow himself to feel—was surging through him, taunting him and tormenting him as it swept away his self-control.

He ached for her—and not just physically. His desire for her was passionately emotional. It filled him not just with a need to bind them together in the physical act of love but also with a hunger to bind them
together with words as well—the kind of words he had always sworn he would never utter. Words of longing and giving. Words of pleasure and promise. Words that would humbly offer up to her the poor gift of his love and somehow magically win from her the sweet prize of hers.

Words that would give his emotions expression and free them from their imprisonment. The same words that had always been his adversaries, bringing a danger that could rob him of his defences, would now become his aides in the battle to win Lily’s heart.

Marco still hadn’t moved or spoken, but it wasn’t for nothing that Lily had her doctorate. It took her only a handful of seconds to mentally reorganise her plan and see a way of using Marco’s silence as a way of taking charge and setting her own agenda.

She paused to steady her nerves, and then told him, ‘I’m so grateful to you, Marco, for helping me to come to terms with … with things, and to leave my past behind and walk freely into my future.’

A future he wanted to share with her, Marco recognised as he listened to her.

‘I’ve got a favour to ask you,’ Lily continued.

‘If I can help, then you have my word that I will,’ Marco responded.

Lily’s heart somersaulted. He might not say that when he knew what the favour was.

‘I know that you aren’t the kind of man who likes to leave a task only partially completed,’ she said sedately, ‘so I’m hoping …’

Marco waited.

‘The thing is …’ Lily paused. Did she really have the
courage to do this? Thinking about the consequences if she didn’t, of all that she would never know or have, was all she needed to convince her that she did.

‘Well, the fact of the matter is, Marco, that helping me to get over the effect Anton had on me isn’t just about listening to me talking about it. I need your help with something else.’

‘Something else?’

Did she want him to pursue Anton and punish him as he deserved for what he had done? He was certainly willing to do so if that was what she wanted.

‘I want you to take me to bed and make love to me, please, Marco.’

When she heard the breath he expelled from his lungs, Lily told him quickly, ‘I know—I know it’s a lot to ask of you. But you are the only person I can ask. You must see that.’

Oh, what a perfidious creature she was—and far more adept at using all the tricks that Eve had given her sex than she had ever imagined.

‘If you won’t, then how will I ever be able to live a normal life? I’ve only had sex once, with a boy who was even more nervous about it than I was myself,’ she reminded him. ‘How can I ever be a proper woman, the woman I really want to be, if I don’t even know what it means to be a woman sexually?’

She could see him shaking his head. He was going to refuse.

But instead he said hoarsely, ‘You’d trust me to do that … to show you … give you …?’

Lily had never seen him respond so emotionally before, and her heart turned over.

‘I trust you completely, Marco. I’ve never known anyone I could trust more.’

He was looking at her now with something unfathomable and almost tortured in his eyes. Holding her breath, Lily walked towards him, and then, when she was close enough for him to touch her, she let the bathrobe slip to the floor.

‘Lily …’

Was the way he said her name a protest or a sign that he was giving in? Lily didn’t know, but she did know that she could feel his breath against her lips, and that he wasn’t stopping her when she placed her hands on his shoulders and her mouth against his.

‘Lily.’

He said her name again. Against her lips this time, taking them beneath his own when they parted, drawing her naked body close to his. She could feel the unmistakable hardness of his arousal and a thrill of relief went through her. It had begun—the journey that would take her from her past to her future, through heartache to a pleasure beyond which lay even more heartache. But she wasn’t going to think about that now. For now she was only going to think about Marco, and loving him.

T
HEY
were on the bed, lying naked there together, and the soft sound of Lily’s sighs of pleasure was floating on the air as Marco kissed his way from her shoulder to her ear, causing shimmering showers of lightning pleasure to burst into brilliant life inside her. The touch of his fingertips against her skin as he caressed her provoked a counterpoint sensual response of pleasure, bringing her body to singing, delirious life wherever he touched it. His deliberately slow and careful arousal of her was thrilling it and her with starbursts of erotic delight.