Emily and the Notorious Prince

by India Grey

  Only she sat frozen and still.

  On the stage the dancers swept forward again to bow to the enchanted audience, the white dresses of the ballerinas billowing out as they made their deep, graceful curtsies, their faces uniformly composed in spite of the wrenching sadness of the dance they had just finished. For as long as she could remember Emily had wanted only to be like them—flawless and doll-like in white tulle and satin shoes. For years she had devoted her life to training her body, rigidly controlling and disciplining it to achieve that cool, remote perfection.

  And she had. Only to realise—too late—that she’d missed the point all along. Being a dancer wasn’t just about precision or perfection or lucky shoes.

  It was about emotion.

  And that was something she’d deliberately, ruthlessly, shut out since the day her mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer. It was how she had got through Mia’s arrival and the realization that her father had betrayed and lied to them all. It was what had enabled her to calmly and quietly walk away from Balfour the day after her mother’s funeral.

  But it was also what had taken away her ability to dance.

  She stumbled to her feet. Groping behind her for her wrap she caught sight of Luis, and realised that she wasn’t the only one in the audience not clapping. Lounging back in his seat, he had his mobile phone in his hand and was tapping away at it. In the greenish light of the screen his face was a mask of boredom.

  He looked up. She was caught in the dark vortex of his gaze, and in that moment she understood that the terrifying, uncontrollable emotions she had spent the past six exhausting months trying to run away from she hadn’t escaped at all, because they were inside her all along.

  Slowly he unfolded his long, lithe body from the seat and stood in front of her, his face expressionless. At some point during the performance he had surreptitiously undone his top button and his black silk tie, which now hung loosely around his neck. He looked frighteningly beautiful.

  ‘Finally.’ His lips twitched into a crooked smile. ‘I thought it would never end. You don’t look like you enjoyed it much either.’

  ‘I loved it,’ she said, her voice hollow and fierce.

  ‘Really?’ His arched brows rose in surprise. ‘Well, that’s lucky, I suppose, because I have a proposition for you.’ He reached down and picked up her wrap, which was trailing over the back of the chair, and in one practised movement settled it lightly over her shoulders, his fingers brushing her skin for the merest fraction of a second.

  Emily steeled herself against the shuddering awareness that gripped her, but then he was taking her hands and drawing her gently backwards so they were concealed behind the heavy velvet curtain that hung down at the side of the royal box and she felt herself go rigid with panic.

  ‘Wh-what are you doing?’ Her voice came out as a frozen whisper, and he dropped her hands immediately, his face curiously blank.

  ‘Relax,’ he said wearily, ‘I’m not trying to ravish you behind the curtains, but in case you hadn’t noticed the entire audience have now shifted their attention from the stage to us.’

  Emily darted a glance over her shoulder. Her breathing was shallow and uneven. Below them the lights had gone up and the hum of conversation had resumed as people put back their opera glasses and gathered their evening bags. Several of them still had their faces turned up towards the royal box. Frowning, she turned back to Luis.

  ‘Please—can we go now?’

  ‘Wait.’ His face was shadowed by the fall of the curtain, but she could see the dull gleam of his eyes and the flicker of a muscle in his cheek. ‘I have something to ask you first.’

  The shadows closed in on her a little and she took a small, gasping breath.

  ‘It’s my father’s Silver Jubilee this year and there’s going to be some kind of event to mark it,’ he said dully. ‘The Brazilian National Ballet are scheduled to perform there. We’d like you and Luciana to dance with them.’

  She opened her mouth to laugh at the irony, but instead it came out as a sob. She shook her head, biting down on her bottom lip as her fragile shell of control threatened to crack.

  ‘Impossible,’ she said in a tight, cold voice. ‘I’m afraid I couldn’t. Now please, can we just go?’

  Two men in suits had appeared at the doorway to the box, their ubiquitous headsets clearly marking them out as palace bodyguards. Luis seemed to hesitate for a moment, his face as cool and blank as marble, but then he gave a curt nod and the security men opened the door and went ahead of them, down the dimly lit VIP staircase that led directly to the main foyer.

  Emily was glad of the gloom. Surreptitiously she sniffed and pressed the palms of her hands to her cheeks, desperately trying to stem the tears that had started to slide down her face in a silent stream and keep herself from being sucked down into despair.

  The door at the foot of the stairs opened, letting in a blast of noise from the hallway beyond and the clear evening light. Emily blinked, instinctively wanting to hide her tear-stained face, but it was too late. The guards stood aside, holding the door open and motioning them to go through, to the car that waited at the foot of the steps outside.

  Luis glanced down at her and in that split second she saw a flare of some unfathomable emotion in the depths of his eyes. His reactions were as swift and devastating as lightning. Instantly his arm was around her shoulders, sheltering her against the protective wall of his body as he pulled her forwards. He raised his other hand to wave to the crowd, but Emily understood that it was also shielding her from the glittering camera flashes and the glare of onlookers.

  As they went out into the still-warm evening and down the steps she kept her body rigid, every atom of her being resisting the urge to melt against him. But then his grip on her relaxed as they approached the waiting car and an arrow of desolation shot through her. She raised her head just at she same moment he looked down at her.

  Afterwards she couldn’t have said how it happened, or who made the first move. All she knew was that one moment he was reaching out to open the door of the car for her and the next he had taken her upturned face between his strong hands and their mouths had come together in a hard, helpless kiss.

  It lasted only seconds. And then she was in the car and he was beside her and they were pulling away from the screaming, ecstatic crowd.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  IT WAS a heartbreakingly beautiful evening. As they flew back to Santosa the sun was setting over the sea, streaking the clear turquoise water with ribbons of rose and gold, and turning the white sand of the many beaches fringing the islands of the archipelago to pink sherbet.

  Was this how it was for Rico, flying home that night? Luis wondered bleakly. It was oddly comforting to think that his last moments on earth had been like this—a foretaste of the paradise in which he was assured a place.

  Unlike Luis.

  Beside him Emily sat, taut and silent. They had barely spoken since they left the opera house, and although he had tried to say ‘sorry’ she had batted his apologies straight back in a way that told him this time things were different. She seemed angry with him, which he couldn’t blame her for in the slightest, but hell, he thought savagely, she couldn’t be more angry than he was with himself.

  He glanced across at her. The setting sun gilded her perfect profile, sprinkling gold dust on her long, luxuriant lashes, her delicate slightly upturned nose, and he had to crush another debilitating spasm of want. Deus , he raged silently, staring out into the apricot heavens, wasn’t it punishment enough that he’d given it all up, without this cruel temptation, this constant, tantalising reminder of the pleasures that he’d forsworn?

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  Her subdued voice came through his headset. Luis felt his whole body tense and he smiled grimly.

  ‘I think that’s my line,’ he drawled. ‘What are you sorry for?’

  She was very still, her head bent. ‘For being so ungrateful earlier. For turning down what was a very…generous o
ffer.’

  The dancing. She was talking about the dancing, he realised. Oddly enough he’d forgotten all about that, but suddenly his curiosity was aroused. Which made a change from other, baser parts of him. ‘Good point,’ he said tersely. ‘So why did you turn it down? I thought you’d be pleased.’

  Beneath them the shadow of the helicopter skimmed serenely over the silken sea, giving absolutely no indication of the electrifying tension that crackled inside the small space inside.

  ‘Because it’s out of the question. I just…can’t.’

  ‘Can’t, or won’t?’ Such was his awareness of her body beside him that he felt her startle at the harshness of his tone, but he didn’t seem to be able to soften it. ‘Naturally a suggestion like that wasn’t made without a bit of preliminary research, and according to the principal of your school you were the most talented dancer of your year.’

  ‘Was,’ she said bitterly. ‘Past tense.’

  They were flying over a long stretch of innocuous-looking white sand, edged on one side by a clear sea that in the fiery light of the dying sun looked like pink champagne. It was here that the wreckage of Rico’s helicopter had been found, washed up at the base of the steep cliffs which cast their jagged shadows over the beach. Flying towards them Luis kept his voice carefully flat. ‘What changed?’

  ‘I did.’ She laughed, and the headset magnified the despair in it. ‘You were right—I was just a kid then, a silly, naive little girl. And then I grew up and the magic just…went. Like when you stop believing in fairy tales.’ Her head was turned away from him, but in her lap he could see that her hands were twisted together in a tight knot of anguish, almost as if she were trying to hold on to herself. ‘I can do the steps,’ she went on, in a low, toneless voice. ‘Go through the motions, and I can do it so perfectly that sometimes I can almost convince myself I might still be a dancer. But tonight…’ she faltered. ‘Tonight I realised how far from the truth that is. There’s no passion there. I just can’t feel it.’

  Luis remembered what Oscar had said that night on the telephone. She doesn’t do anything in half-measures. Never has. Whatever she does she does passionately, with her whole heart and soul.

  The cliffs were right in front of them now and suddenly from the benevolent golden sunshine of evening they plunged into cool gloom that only served to tighten the atmosphere in the confined space. Sharply Luis brought the helicopter upwards, and as he did so his arm brushed against hers. She gave a muffled cry and jerked away, as if he had burnt her.

  It was like the first crack of thunder in a storm that had been brewing for hours. Swearing under his breath Luis steadied the helicopter and looked across at her, his heartbeat echoing loudly in his own ears.

  ‘Don’t tell me you don’t feel it,’ he said through gritted teeth. ‘Don’t tell me you’re not passionate because—’

  ‘I’m scared !’

  The words seemed to be torn from somewhere inside her. Luis flinched, everything in him tensing as if against a blow. Adrenaline coursed through him so that it took all his skill and self-control to keep the helicopter flying straight. It was what he’d always known, since the night that he’d first met her. She’d seen through him, to the contemptible person beneath the veneer. ‘Of me?’ he said in a voice that dripped despair and self-disgust. ‘Deus , Emily—’

  ‘No. No .’ Emily splayed her hands out on her knees, staring down at them and speaking deliberately and carefully. She was aware of her heart beating, very hard, as if it was trying to break free of the restraints of the tight, red silk. ‘Not of you. Of me .’ She broke off with a ragged, self-mocking laugh. ‘There. That’s the reason I can’t do it. Because I’m scared of letting go. I’m scared of all the feelings inside me spilling out and…and…I don’t know, sucking me down, overwhelming me…’

  The words faded in the tense, buzzing silence. Oh, God, what had she said? She didn’t dare look across at Luis, scared to see the mockery and contempt on his beautiful, cruel face. The helicopter was coming lower, she realised with a stab of despair. They were back at the palace and in a moment men in uniforms with blank faces would be opening the doors, forcing her out into the real world again. She would go back to her lavish, lonely suite and the silence and the emptiness, and he would walk away, thinking she was insane.

  She closed her eyes, squeezing them tight like she used to do when she was a child and believed that you could get anything by wishing hard enough. They were descending quickly, and she waited for the slight thud of solid ground beneath them before she opened her eyes.

  She blinked, expecting to see the wide lawn and the palace beyond, but here it was dark. Secret. She blinked again, looking round in disbelief. They were in a clearing, surrounded by trees.

  ‘Wh-where—? What—?’

  Slowly Luis pulled off his headset and ran a hand through his hair. ‘Sorry,’ he said in a voice like broken glass. ‘I can’t fly like this. I’m not safe. Security will come over soon. You can fly back with them.’

  ‘No.’

  He turned to look at her. His face—his high-cheekboned face with its generous, sensual mouth—was set hard, as if he was silently enduring some private torment, but those narrow, golden eyes were as dark as treacle, burning with an emotion that made her gasp.

  ‘I don’t want to be safe,’ she whispered.

  She was shaking. Trembling with fear and excitement and wild, urgent need. They weren’t touching at all, but their eyes were locked together.

  ‘Emily, do you know what you’re saying—?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, so quietly it was little more than a shivering breath. ‘Oh, yes.’

  The forest was deep and dark, and as Luis pulled her through the trees some ragged birds rose, flapping and shrieking into the faded sky. Emily jumped, her footsteps faltering, so that Luis turned back to look at her. In the velvet twilight his expression was tortured.

  ‘Do you want to go back?’

  ‘No.’

  It was a low, primal moan. Hearing it seemed to release some instinct in him that he was trying to suppress and he stopped and took her face between his hands, crashing his mouth down on hers and kissing her as if he almost wanted to devour her. As his mouth crushed her lips and moved across her jaw, her throat, Emily felt her shaking legs buckle and collapsed against the trunk of a massive tree, surrendering to the waves of ecstasy that were battering her.

  Suddenly Luis pulled away, and cold dread gripped her.

  ‘Don’t stop…please, Luis…’

  ‘Christo , I have to,’ he ground out through gritted teeth. ‘Otherwise I won’t be able to. In a few minutes the sky up there is going to be swarming with helicopters looking for us, and I wouldn’t like to corrupt the innocence of the security team by letting them see me making love to you on the forest floor.’

  Emily laughed, but it came out as a desperate sob of need. Luis took her face in his hands again, stroking his thumbs across her cheeks, gazing into her eyes with a scorching intensity that made her feel like her whole body was on fire. ‘Are you sure this is what you want?’

  Incoherent, frantic with longing, Emily could only nod, but the expression in her eyes must have told him all he needed to know because the next moment he was taking her hand. With a muffled curse that sounded like a plea for forgiveness he was pulling her onwards again so that she had to gather up her scarlet silk skirts and run to keep up. Slipping through the gloom beneath the trees she felt like Red Riding Hood, all grown up and not afraid of the wolf any more

  Ahead of them a high wall reared up, blocking out the remainder of the dying light. Luis headed for a steel gate set into it, and dropped Emily’s hand long enough to press his finger onto a small electronic pad and then key in a number. A second later the gate swung heavily open.

  ‘It’s the house we saw from the helicopter,’ Emily murmured, as Luis seized her hand again and led her towards a low stone house with a steeply sloping gabled roof that made it look exactly like a picture from a chi
ld’s storybook.

  At the door Luis went through the same process with the fingerprint and the security number. Emily’s heart was beating so hard it shook her entire body, sending jets of adrenaline through her with every racking thud. Her skin felt hypersensitive, so that the feel of his hand grazing the top of her bare arm as she went through the door he held open for her made her shiver and suck in a breath.

  She jumped as the door closed behind them.

  The large, open-plan room smelled of wood smoke and was full of dusk and shadows. Emily stood in its centre, unable to look around her or take anything in apart from Luis. After shutting the door he leaned back against it and for endless minutes neither of them moved. His dark gaze seared into her through the twilight, pinioning her to the spot in an agony of helpless longing. A pulse throbbed insistently at the apex of her thighs, each beat increasing the quivering, tingling tension. She was aware of a wetness inside her that both thrilled and horrified her.

  ‘I’m scared.’

  The whispered words had left her lips before she could stop them, and the instant she had spoken she pressed her teeth into her bottom lip, wishing she could take them back. Slowly Luis levered himself away from the door and came towards her, his eyes never leaving hers.

  ‘You don’t have to be scared.’ Standing in front of her he seemed hugely tall, impossibly broad shouldered and strong. Head tipped slightly back, he took her hands in his and held them, hard. ‘You can stop all this now…any time you want.’

  Wide-eyed, trembling, she looked up at him. ‘No. I want this. So much . But…’ She swallowed.

  His grip on her hands tightened. ‘But what?’

  ‘I’m scared because I don’t know what to do. What if I can’t…? What if I’m no good—?’

  With a moan he let go of her hands and stepped back, clenching his fists for a moment before pushing his fingers through his hair. ‘Deus , Emily. It’s all I can do to control myself right now, standing here in front of you in that dress.’