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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.
