LITMIR.BIZ

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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 room’s 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 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 Adam’s 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 island’s 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

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