by Penny Jordan
Fine, the reckless voice told her. So you spend your time trying to stop loving him, and I'll spend mine enjoying being with him. You can't leave—not now. What was this? She felt as though she were being torn in two. The sensible, protective part of her was telling her that it would be better if she spent her time here learning to recognise the huge differences between them; far better if she made herself focus, not on the fact that Marco was her lover and the man she loved, but on the fact that he was Nirolis future king and as such could never be hers. However, this new reckless part of her was insisting that nothing mattered more than squeezing the intimacy and the sweetness out of every extra minute she had with him. regardless of what the future might bring. How could she bring together two such opposing forces? She couldn't.
‘Lets go inside.’ she heard Marco telling her ‘then I can introduce you to Maria and Pietro who look after the villa for me’
Emily still hung back.
‘They are bound to talk about my being here.’
‘I expect they will, but why should that matter?’ Marco knew all too well that they would, and that their talk would very quickly reach his grandfathers ears. There was no need for him to share that knowledge with Emily, though.
'Wouldn't it perhaps be better if...well, you said you wanted me to restyle the villa. Perhaps I should have my own room, for convention's sake, and then you could...’
‘I could what? Sneak you into my bed at dead of night?’ Marco shook his head, his mouth tightening. 'I am a man, Emily, not a fearful boy.’
‘But if we are going to be lovers...’
"If" we are?’ he mocked her softly. ‘There is no "if about it. Emily. You will be sleeping in my bed and I shall be there with you. Make no mistake about that. I know you’re tired, so I shall not make love to you but only for tonight. My people will understand that I am a man as well as their future king, and they will not expect me to live the life of a monk. They will accept that—‘
‘That what? That I am your mistress, and that you have brought me here to warm your bed?’ When Marco talked like this, she felt as though she were listening to a stranger. Emily recognised in sharpening panic. His casual reference to his ‘people and his position as their future king’ set him on a different plane from her and a different life path; already he was someone else from the man she had known...a king-in-waiting...
'Are you saying that you don't want to warm it?' Marco asked her breaking into her thoughts and then adding so seductively, almost like the old Marco that she used to know. ‘Did you know there is something about the smell of your skin that right now is filling my head with the most erotic thoughts—and memories?’ His voice had dropped to a whisper that was almost mesmeric. ‘Can you remember the first time I tasted you?’
Despite the doubts and fears she was experiencing, his words sent a thrill of sensation through her making her body quiver with arousal at the images he was conjuring up. She wanted to tell him that she wasn't a naive virgin any more and that she wasn't going to play his game, but instead she heard herself saying thickly.
‘Yes.'
‘And the first time you tasted me?'
Now she could only nod her head as desire kicked up violently inside her stomach.
Marco's fingers had encircled her wrist and he was stroking her bare skin in a rhythmic, beguiling caress.
‘You didn't care then about the staff of the hotel knowing that we were lovers.’
‘That was different.’ she protested.
‘Why?’
‘Then we were private lovers. But here Marco, as you yourself have just said, in the eyes of the people of Niroli you are their future king, and I will be your mistress’
'So?'
Could he really not understand how she felt? Was he really already so far removed from ordinary life that he couldn't see that she would a thousand times rather be the lover of plain Marco Fierezza than the mistress of the future King of Niroli?
‘I can assure you that you will be treated with courtesy and respect. Emily, if that is what is worrying you.’ he continued when she didn't answer him. ‘And if it should come to my ears that you aren't. I will make sure that is corrected.'
He sounded shockingly, sickeningly aloof and regal. The words he had spoken were the kind of statement that previously she would have laughed openly over and expected him to do the same. But she could tell from his expression that he meant them seriously. Marco's always had been a very commanding presence, but now Emily felt there was a new hauteur to his manner, a coldness and a disdain that chilled her through. The hardening of his voice and the arrogance of his stance betrayed his determination to have his own way. And a belief in his royal right to do so? Emily wasn't sure. But she did feel that the subtle change she could sense in him highlighted her own uncertainties.
In London, despite the financial gap between them, they had met and lived as equals. Here, on Niroli she knew instinctively that things would be different. But right now she was too tired to question how much that difference was going to impact on their new relationship. Right now all she wanted...Marco was still stroking her arm. She closed her eyes and swayed closer to him. Right now she admitted, all she wanted was this: the scented darkness, the proximity of their bodies and the promise of pleasure to come...
It was the single, sharp, shrill, animal cry of the victim of a night predator who had come down from the mountains to hunt, cut off along with its life, that woke Emily from her deep sleep. At first, her unfamiliar surroundings confused her but then she remembered where she was. She turned over in the large bed her body as filled with sharp dread as though the dying creature had passed on its fear to her.
‘Marco?' She reached out her hand into the darkness and to the other side of the bed but encountered only emptiness.
She had been so tired when they had arrived that she had gone straight to bed in the room to which Marco had taken her leaving him to explain the situation to the couple who looked after the villa for him. She suspected she must have fallen asleep within seconds of her head reaching the pillow. She had assumed though, after what he had said to her that he would be joining her in it. She hadn't had the energy to argue, even if she had wanted to.
The door to the rooms en suite bathroom opened. A mixture of relief and sexual tension filled her as she watched Marco walk towards her. He always slept naked and there was enough light coming in through the window to reveal the outline of his body. Her memory did the rest, filling in the shadow-cloaked detail with such powerfully loving strokes that she trembled.
‘So you're awake.' she heard him murmur as she lifted her head from the pillow to watch his approach.
‘Yes.' Her response was little more than a terse, exhaled breath, an indication of her impatience at herself at being unable to tear her gaze from his magnificent physique.
‘But still tired?’ Marco was standing at the side of the bed now leaning down towards her.
'A little. But not too tired.’ she whispered daringly. She had known all along, of course, that this would be the outcome of being with him again. How could it not be when you had a man as sexually irresistible as Marco and a woman as desperately in love as she was?
They looked at one another through the semi-darkness; night sounds rustled through the room, mingling with the accelerated sound of their breathing. The darkness had become a velvet embrace, its softness pressing in on them like an intimate caress, stroking shared sensual memories over their minds.
The sudden fiercely intense surge of his own desire caught Marco off guard, as it threatened his self-control. He knew that he had missed their sex but he hadn't been prepared for this raw aching hunger that was now consuming him.
Emily’s skin smelled of his own shower gel in a way that made him frown as his senses searched eagerly for the familiar night-warm, intimate scent that was hers and hers alone, and which he was only recognising now how much he had missed...She moved, dislodging the bedclothes, and his chest muscles
&nb
sp; contracted under the pressure of the pounding thud of his heartbeat. His pulse had started to race and he recognised that the ache of need for her which had begun here in this bed the first night he had spent in it without her had turned feral and taken away his control.
‘Emily.’
The way he said her name turned Emily’s insides to liquid heat. He and this yearning beating up through her body were impossible to resist. She sat up in the bed giving in to her love, pressing her lips to his bare shoulder, closing her eyes with delight as she breathed him into her. She ran the tip of her tongue along his collar-bone, feeling the responsive clench of his muscles and the reverberation of his low groan of pleasure. When he arched his neck, she kissed her way along it. caressing the swell of his Adams apple, whilst his muscles now corded in mute recognition of his arousal. And his desire fed her own intoxicating her. empowering her encouraging her to make their intimacy a slow, sweetly erotic dance spiced with sudden moments of breathless intensity.
It felt good to keep their need on a tight knife-edge, refusing to let him touch her until he couldn't be refused any more, and then giving herself over completely to the touch of his hands and his mouth, crying out her need as he finally covered her and moved into her. But it was his own cry of mingled triumph and release that took them both over the edge, to the sweet place that lay beyond it.
Several minutes later, rolling away from Emily. Marco lay on his back, staring up at the ceiling and waiting for his heartbeat to steady, willing himself not to think about what his body had just told him about the intensity of his need for Emily.
If the way in which Marco was rejecting her in the aftermath of the intimacy they had just shared was hurting her then it served her right for coming here. Emily told herself. She must take her pain and hold onto it, use it to remind herself what the reality of being here with Marco meant. It would do her good to see him in his true role, in his true habitat, because it would show her surely that the man she loved simply did not exist any more, and once she knew that her unwanted love would die. How could it not do so?
CHAPTER NINE
KING GIORGIO wagged a reproving finger. Is it not enough that you have deliberately attempted to undermine the authority of the Crown—an authority which is soon to be your own—with these generators you have brought to Niroli without this added flouting of my command to end your association with this.. .this floozy? You know perfectly well that there are channels and protocols to be followed when a member of the royal family takes a mistress. It is unthinkable that you should have brought back with you to Niroli a woman who is a common nothing, and who never can and never will be accepted here at court!’
‘You mean I take it that I could take my pick from the married women amongst the islands nobility? Her husband would of course be instructed to do his duty and give up his wife to royal pleasure and in due course, both would be appropriately rewarded—the husband with an important government position, the wife with the title of Royal Mistress and a few expensive baubles.’ Marco shook his head.
‘I have no intention of adorning some poor courtier with a pair of horns so that I can sleep with his wife.'
‘You cannot expect me to believe that you a prince of Niroli can be content with a woman who is a nothing—‘
‘Emily is far from being nothing, and the truth is that you insult her by comparing her with the blue-blooded nonentities you seem to think are so superior to her. There is no comparison. Emily is their superior in every way.’ The immediate and heated ferocity of his defence of Emily and his anger against his grandfather had taken hold of Marco before he could think logically about what he was saying.
His immediate impulse had been to protect her and that alone was enough to cause him to wonder at his uncharacteristic behaviour. And yet even though for practical and diplomatic reasons he knew if he could not bring himself to recall his statement, then at least he should temper it a little. But he couldn't do it. Why not? Was it because by bringing Emily here to Niroli he now felt a far greater sense of responsibility towards her than he had done in London?
His grandfather didn't give him time to ponder. Instead the king pushed his chair back from the table and eased himself up before demanding regally. Do you really think that I am deceived by any of this, Marco? Do you think I don't realise that you have brought those generators and this woman here to Niroli expressly to anger and insult me? You may think that you can win the hearts of my people by giving them access to the technological toys you believe they crave, and that they will accept your mistress, but you are wrong. It is true that there are elements of rebellion and disaffection amongst the mountain-dwellers, the Viallis who will give you their allegiance and sell you their loyalty for the price of a handful of silver, but they are nothing. The hearts of the rest of the Nirolian population lie here with me. They, like me know that on Niroli the old ways are the best ways, and they will show you in no uncertain terms how they feel about your attempts to win round the Viallis.’
‘No. Grandfather, it is you who is wrong.’ Marco answered him curtly. You may wish to stick with the old ways as you call them, enforcing ignorance and poverty on people, refusing to allow them to make their own choices about the way they want to live, treating them as children. You try to rule them through fear and power, and some of them rightfully resent that, as I would do in their places. I have brought back the generators because your people, our people, need them, and I have brought Emily back because I need her’.
It wasn't what he had planned to say and it certainly wasn't what he had been thinking when he had walked into this confrontation, but as soon as he had said the words Marco recognised that they contained a truth that had previously been hidden from him. Or had it been deliberately ignored and denied by him? He had known that he wanted Emily; that he desired her and that he could make use of her presence here to underline his independence to his grandfather, but needing her...that was something else again, and it made Marco stiffen warily, ready to defend himself from what he recognised was his own vulnerability.
‘The woman is a commoner, and commoners do not understand what it is to be royal. They cause problems that a woman born into the nobility would never cause.’
'You're speaking from experience?' Marco taunted his grandfather, watching as the older man's face turned a dangerously purple hue.
‘You dare to suggest that I would so demean myself?'
Marco looked at him.
‘Whilst Emily is here on Niroli she will be treated with respect and courtesy, she will be received at court and she will be treated in every way like the most highly born of royal mistresses.' he told his grandfather evenly. I have a long memory and those who do otherwise will be pursued and punished.'
He had spoken loudly enough for everyone else in the chamber to hear him. knowing that the courtiers would know as well as he did that he would soon be in a position to reprimand those who defied him now.
Before this he had never had any intention of bringing Emily to court, but he did not intend to tell his grandfather that. How dared the old man suggest that Emily was somehow less worthwhile as a person than some Nirolian nobleman's wife? He'd back Emily any day if it came to having to prove herself as a person. She possessed intelligence, compassion, wit and kindness, and her natural sweetness was like manna from heaven after the falseness of the courtiers and their wives.
He had seen the pleased looks that some of the flunkies had exchanged when his grandfather had flown into a rage over the generators. Of course, they couldn't be expected to like the fact that there were going to be changes, but they were going to have to accept them. Marco decided grimly. Just as they were going to have to accept Emily. He was striding out of the audience chamber before he recognised how much more strongly he felt about protecting Emily than he had actually known...
Emily stared at her watch in disbelief. It was closer to lunchtime than breakfast! How could she have slept so late? The sensual after-ache of the night's pleasure
gave her a hint of a reason for her prolonged sleep.
Marco! She sat up in bed and then saw the note he had left for her propped up on the bedside table. She picked it up and read it quickly.
He was going to the palace to see his grandfather, he had written, and since he didn't know when he would be back, he had given Maria instructions to provide her with everything she might need, and had also explained to her that Emily was going to be organising the interior renovation of the villa.
‘If you feel up to it by all means feel free to have a good look around.’ he had written, ‘but don't overdo things.'
There was no mention of last night, but then there was hardly likely to be was there? What had she been hoping for? A love letter? But Marco didn't love her. Did he? The starkness of that reality wasn't something she was ready to think about right now. Emily admitted. It was too soon after the traumatic recent see-sawing of her emotions from the depths of despair to the unsteady fragile happiness of Marco's appearance at the shop and their intimacy last night.