LITMIR.BIZ

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soft darkness.

      Emily breathed it in slowly, trying to steady her own nerves. She was, she realised, standing in the courtyard of what looked like a haphazard jumble of white stone walls, shuttered, arched windows and delicate iron balconies, illuminated by moonlight and lamplight from the surrounding buildings. The courtyard was shielded from the narrow street outside by a pair of heavy wooden doors, and as Emily’s senses adjusted themselves to the darkness she could hear from somewhere the sound of water from a fountain falling into a basin.

      ‘It looks almost Moorish,’ she told Marco.

      ‘Yes, it does, doesn’t it?’ Marco agreed with her. ‘History does have it that the Moors were here at one time, and it’s here in the oldest part of the main town that you can see their architectural influence. Although there were also Nirolians who travelled as traders to and from Andalucia in Spain, as well.’ He was guiding her towards an impressive doorway as he spoke. Emily hesitated, knowing it was too late now to change her mind about the wisdom of allowing him to bring her here and yet not totally able to overcome her uncertainty.

      ‘You said that you’re living here, instead of at the palace?’

      ‘Yes. Are you disappointed? If so, I am sure I can arrange for us to have a suite of rooms there—’

      Us? ‘No…’ Emily stopped him hurriedly. ‘Marco…’ She stopped, and shivered slightly despite the warmth of the air. She was a fool to have allowed Marco to steamroller her into coming here so that he could have her back in his bed, when she knew there was no real future for her with him. But why think of the future when she could have the present? an inner voice urged her. Every day she could have with Marco, every hour, were things so precious she should reach out and grab them with both hands. Emily squeezed her eyes tightly closed and then opened them again. She wasn’t used to this unfamiliar recklessness she seemed to have developed, with its blinkered refusal to acknowledge any-thing other than her determination to be with him. She did love him so much, Emily accepted, but it would be far better for her if she did not.

      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 Niroli’s 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.

      ‘Let’s 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 grandfather’s 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 remem-ber 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 naïve 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

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