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‘Lets 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 grandfathers 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 remember 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 naive 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...
