Passion and the Prince

by Penny Jordan

  ‘Anton … Anton Gillman.’ Just saying his name made Lily shudder. Watching her, Marco frowned, guessing, ‘The man you were with earlier this evening, after dinner?’

  ‘Yes,’ Lily acknowledged.

  ‘You gave him your room number?’

  ‘No. I dropped my keycard and he saw it. I was afraid that he’d come looking for me …’

  ‘Why would he do that?’

  There was a look on her face that caught him off guard. Fear. Raw, naked fear. He could see it in her eyes and hear it in her voice. Against his will it touched a nerve within him. To his own disbelief he could feel himself reacting, weakening, as she aroused in him an instinctive male urge to take that fear from her and to protect her.

  He could not and would not allow himself to give in to that urge. He fought against it, insisting, ‘He must have a reason.’

  Lily shuddered as Marco’s words reminded her of exactly what reason Anton did have for persecuting her.

  Marco watched as she shuddered and a mental image from the past was resurrected from the place where he had buried it. Time after time Olivia, her face swollen and bruised, had cried out emotionally to him that she wanted him to take her home, away from her latest ‘boyfriend’ and his physical abuse of her, and then less than twelve hours later she would be telling him that nothing and no one would ever part her from the man she loved, and that his violence towards her was simply caused by jealousy.

  Some women were like that. Some women were drawn to men who abused and humiliated them. Some women even enjoyed deliberately making such men jealous, and went back time and time again to them. Was that why she was here? Because she knew her ex-lover would seek her out and she wanted him to believe she was with someone else?

  It all made sense now, Marco decided cynically. She had come here intending to use him to make another man jealous. And she’d nearly succeeded, he was forced to admit. That knowledge caused him to state harshly, ‘I know what you’re up to. You came here to me because you want to make this Anton believe that you and I are lovers.’

  He had hardened his heart against her now. He knew that look of fear had been faked, for all that he had initially been deceived by it. She was very good at pretence, as he had already discovered, but he was not a naive eighteen-year-old any more, ready to trust a woman just because she was a woman, ready to accept whatever lies she chose to feed him.

  Lily stopped pacing to stare at him in despairing disbelief. How could he think that?

  ‘No,’ she denied. ‘No, that’s not true. I’m so scared—’ Her body gave another violent shudder at the thought of having to endure any kind of intimacy with the man she loathed and feared so much, but Marco didn’t notice. He was too caught up in the defence mechanism within him that refused to allow him to trust her.

  She had come here to his room. She had looked at him as though he was the first man she had seen, the only man she wanted to see, and to his own chagrin he had responded to that look. That was a danger he could not allow to exist. Far better and safer to destroy that response by coming to the conclusion that he had than to risk allowing his vulnerability to her. It made sense to punish himself for that vulnerability by facing up to the reality of what she was based on his own assessment of her. It was entirely logical for him to believe that she was trying to manipulate him. If there were holes in the fabric of his argument, if there were fault lines that threatened to bring it down—such as why, for instance, a chance encounter should lead to Lily being willing to stop at nothing to make an ex jealous—then he did not wish to see them.

  ‘You’re lying—again,’ he insisted, in defence of his argument, and shored it up with a cold, ‘But you’re wasting your time. Now, if you’d be kind enough to leave, I’ve got some work to do.’

  Without waiting for her response Marco turned his back on her and headed for the door.

  Marco had got it all wrong. Panic spilled through Lily. She had to make him understand. She couldn’t let him send her back to her room. The ring of the room’s telephone had him turning away from the door and crossing the room to answer the call. He was going to abandon her and leave her defenceless, undefended and unprotected, just as her father had done. She couldn’t let that happen—especially when somehow she knew deep down inside herself that there was a human being who cared about the welfare of others buried deep within that inviolate image he chose to project.

  He had his back to her now, as he reached for the receiver. Her heart banging into her ribs, her actions driven by the adrenaline of fear, Lily ran into the bedroom, pushing the door closed behind her with one hand. She was trembling from head to foot with the panicked need for speed, her mouth dry with anxiety as she climbed into the bed, pulling the bedclothes round her. What she really wanted to do, she recognised, was to hide herself away underneath them, to hide herself away for ever. But of course she couldn’t do that. Marco’s anger had showed her the contempt he felt for what he thought she was doing. Surely in view of that contempt he would leave her where she was? Lily reasoned. Rather than risk contaminating himself by touching her and physically ejecting her from his room?

  She hoped so. Because if there was one thing she did know beyond all other things it was that she could not go back to her suite and stay there all alone, growing more terrified with every second that passed. Men like Anton fed off the fear of their victims. She knew that. But even knowing it she couldn’t control her own fear.

  The bedroom door opened. Marco stood framed in the doorway, his mouth hard with fury.

  ‘I’m not going back to my own room,’ Lily told him defiantly. ‘I’m staying here. With you.’

  It was those last two words that did it, setting a match to Marco’s already tinder-dry fury and making it burn at a white-hot heat. How dared she lie there in his bed and calmly make it plain that she expected him to play along with her little game as though he simply didn’t matter? Did she think he was completely without any male instincts? Any male desire, any male susceptibility to the temptation she was offering?

  His fury burned through his self-control.

  Advancing towards her, he told her savagely, ‘He must have been good.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He must have been good if you are this desperate to get him back. Making him jealous and getting him back is what this is all about, isn’t it?’ He had reached the bed now, one hand reaching for the covers Lily had drawn up protectively over herself.

  ‘No, of course not. Marco, please let me stay,’ Lily begged him, desperately holding onto the bedding.

  Marco had grabbed a fistful of the fabric and she could feel where his bunched knuckles were grazing the upper curves of her breasts through the layers of material. By some alchemy of their own her nipples started to ache and tighten, and a cord of shockingly hot sweet desire was pulling so taut inside her that she could feel the pulse of its beat sending out waves of awareness from deep inside her to the sensitive nerve-endings lining the soft outer flesh of her sex. A new form of panic seized her. This wasn’t what she should be feeling. Beneath the bedclothes Lily squirmed sensually, choking back a small bemused gasp at the speed with which her sensuality vied with her fear.

  ‘Keep me safe, Marco,’ she pleaded.

  Marco knew his self-control was on a short rope. He could feel it straining and stretching against its tether, that dark well of male desire for her that should not be there surging savagely into life. Her breath grazed his cheek, her lips parting as she fought to resist him—to resist him because she wanted to use him, so that she could arouse within another man the jealousy she had already aroused in him.

  That knowledge was all that was needed to sever his hold on his self-control.

  The extent of the anger he felt at the thought of her with another man was so alien to him that it took Marco several seconds to grasp what it actually was. He was jealous? Jealous because she wanted someone else? How could that be? It could not be. But it was, Marco knew. Somehow she had conjured up from
within him a version of himself he had never imagined might exist. A version of himself that was all primeval male.

  The thought of those softly parted lips being possessed by another man ripped at the pride of the previously unknown version of himself she had somehow brought to life inside him. With a smothered oath Marco slid his hand along the soft column of her throat, bending her back against the pillows, telling her thickly, before his mouth closed over hers with angry male possession, ‘Very well, then. If you won’t leave, why don’t we really give him something to be jealous about?’

  Marco was kissing her, and immediately nothing else mattered. Immediately no one else mattered. Immediately she was kissing him back as her heightened emotions exploded into a surge of sensual hunger.

  At some deep level inside he had known from the first minute he had set eyes on her that it would be like this between them. He had sensed it, felt it and tried to reject it. But now it was too late for him to reject it, or her, any longer. He had known that his senses and his body would take fire from the wild sensuality of her. He had told himself that she wasn’t what he wanted. But he had lied to himself, Marco knew. This was why she had angered him—because he had known. His hunger for her ran though him like a deep subterranean power, possessing him and driving him. This was why she had angered him so intensely—because at some level he had known that she would take him down into this dark intensity of need where he had no control.

  Beneath Marco’s kiss Lily gasped and moaned. So this was a woman’s desire for the man who could arouse that in her—this was her need and her longing, her sensuality stripped bare of its protection, whilst her body ached to be stripped bare of its covering by the hands of the man holding her. No wonder she had feared it and tried to hide herself. No wonder she now wanted to give herself up to it entirely and completely, her body, her senses, her emotions—all that she offered in an almost pagan sacrifice to the man whose touch held her in such thrall.

  Instinctively she clung to Marco, needing his strength to sustain her and guide her through such uncharted waters, her senses clamouring for fulfilment of the desires and needs their intimacy had unleashed. Beneath his kiss her tongue-tip hesitantly sought and found his, quickly retreating from the shock of sensation that sent a deep shudder jolting through her body, only to return to stroke against his tongue again, more slowly this time, her heart thudding erratically into her ribs as she savoured the unfamiliar intimacy.

  Marco groaned beneath her exploratory touch—a sound of protest against the torment she was inflicting on him mixed with a raw need for deeper intimacy. When her tormenting caresses didn’t offer it he took matters into his own hands—literally. He cupped her face, stroking his tongue against her own, his desire driving a sensual rhythm to its movement that nearly brought Lily’s heartbeat to a standstill. The rhythm of the movement of Marco’s tongue against her own was the rhythm of life—the rhythm that created life itself.

  The bedclothes had slipped away from Lily’s body.

  Marco could feel the soft motion of her breasts rubbing against his bare chest through her clothes. He warned himself not to lose control, but it was too late. Ruthlessly he stripped off her dress and bra, and his body surged in an almost violent sensual reaction to the sight of the soft, shapely curves of pale female flesh, perfectly shaped and tip-tilted, with deep rose-pink nipples that right now were stiffly erect with arousal. Groaning against what he was feeling, Marco tried to fight against the desire burning through him—but the fight was already lost, because he was already reaching out to cup Lily’s breasts in his hands, enticed by her open shivers of mute pleasure into driving his tongue even more deeply into the wet heat of her mouth.

  How had it happened? How had she gone from abject fear to this? Lily tried to ask herself through the delirious fever that had taken possession of her.

  Beneath his towel Marco could feel his body harden. His erection ached and throbbed madly, sending the blood pounding through his veins and with it the unbearable ache and heat of his desire.

  Was it her release from fear that had somehow sparked off this torrent of wild female need inside her? This almost frenzied, frantic yearning for everything that Marco could give her? Lily didn’t know. She just knew that the feel of his tongue against hers, the stroke of his fingers against her breasts and her nipples as he tugged erotically on their flauntingly aroused hardness, was sending her crazy with longing. Her—a twenty-seven-year-old woman who had never previously experienced the full passion of her own desire.

  She reached out for Marco’s body, exploring the muscles in his shoulders, blind with delight at the sensation of his flesh against her hands, stroking her way down his arms to his elbows, then up the solid, flaring V of his torso and all the way down his back, from his shoulders to the barrier of his towel. Her palms were flat against his flesh, the better for her to absorb every sensation against her own skin. Each one of her five senses clamoured to be sated. This was surely what she had been born for, what she had been created a woman for. She could feel the drumbeat of the call of her own desire driving insistently within her.

  Marco could feel her hand resting on the small of his back, against the edge of the towel, and her touch was sending wrecking shudders of longing pounding through him.

  His tongue twisted against hers, his mouth pressing hungry kisses against the parted softness of her lips. A kind of madness seemed to have possessed him. A voice, words he barely recognised as his own, pleaded and urged between his kisses. ‘Unfasten it.’

  Unfasten it and touch me. Know me as though I am the first and only man there’s ever been.

  ‘Marco … Marco …’ His name slipped helplessly from her lips, the sound a driven breath of aching need, and her fingers slipped on his arousal-slick flesh as she worked to obey his demand.

  She was a sorceress, a Circe, tempting and entrancing him with the spell of her sensuality, binding him to her, trapping him in the promise of what she was offering with every touch of her hands, every arch of her back against him, every soft breath of response she gave to his touch. She was the hottest, sweetest woman he had ever touched or tasted—the only woman his body felt it could ever or would ever want to know. His desire for her drowned out every instinct that should be urging him to resist her, feeding itself on every beat of her heart against the hand that covered her breast. Her nipple rose tight and hard against his palm, calling to him to stroke its eager arousal with the pad of his thumb, to roll it between thumb and finger so that she arched up against him in wild abandon. The curve of her spine was lifting her body, offering the fruit of his own conjuring for him to take between his lips, to lick and stroke and finally suckle.

  The pleasure of Marco’s mouth against her breast! Such an almost unbearable pleasure that it made her cry out wildly and then lift her hands to his head to hold him against her body, leaving Marco to complete the task he had set her.

  The light coming in through the still open door to the suite’s sitting room burnished Marco’s naked body, making him look like a living bronze, Lily thought in dazed helpless delight. Her hungry gaze was desperate to absorb every detail of him, from the muscular line of his calf upwards along the powerful strength of thighs that Leonardo himself would have ached to draw, and then higher …

  In the shadows of the room the dark maleness of the body hair at the apex of his thighs sent a surge of reaction shuddering through her senses—a woman’s awareness of him as a man—and her gaze was drawn to the raw potent evidence of his readiness to possess her. An impulse she would never in a thousand years have expected herself to feel had her reaching out towards him, her fingers drawn to the hot satin slickness of his flesh, her fingertips stroking down the length of its maleness.

  As though in retaliation for her wanton sensuality Marco took her hands, pinning them to the mattress either side of her body with his own, leaving him free to take a slow, self-control-destroying journey of exploratory kisses over her stomach and then across her thighs, whilst h
er body twisted and trembled helplessly beneath his erotic pleasuring. Desire gripped her in sheets of lightning intensity, quivering surges of sharply increasing longing for his full possession of her. Behind her closed eyelids she was already feverishly imagining that final intimacy, her sex turning hot and wet with eager anticipation. Her ability to think or reason logically, to remember what it was that had brought her here, had been suspended by the demand within her for absolute capitulation to her desire.

  Marco gazed down at Lily writhing ecstatically beneath him. How was it that he had reached this point, this place, where this woman held the key to all the answers to everything in his life? How was it that just by breathing, just by being, she seemed able to arouse every single one of his senses whilst feeding his desire for more of her?

  ‘Please. Oh, please!’

  Lily’s sharp, staccato cry of tortured need pierced the heavy sensual accompaniment to their intimacy—the sounds of deeply drawn breathing, of an aroused body moving rhythmically against linen bedclothes, of sensual kisses pressed into flesh drawn taut with desire.

  It wasn’t him she was crying out for. It couldn’t be, Marco knew.

  As abruptly as though someone had thrown a bucket of cold water over him, that recognition brought Marco back to reality. Releasing Lily, he pushed himself away from her on a savage thrust of anger and revulsion, keeping his back to her. He had no need to look at her to know that she would be watching him with female triumph because he had made his vulnerability to his need for her so very clear. How had he let things get so out of hand? How had he allowed his desire for her to take him down the road to a self-destruction? And, worst of all, how had he allowed his emotions to become entangled in what should have been nothing more than an instinctive male need for sexual satisfaction?

  The only comfort he could offer himself now was that at least her behaviour had confirmed what he had already suspected about her, and he need not have any more doubts that he might in some way have misjudged her. And he had been beginning to have those doubts, Marco admitted to himself now. He had been beginning to think and to feel … what? That making love to her would be a good idea? he derided himself caustically.