Emily’s fingers trembled over and tugged at his shirt buttons and trouser fastenings, her endeavours deliberately interrupted by him when he raked his teeth against the sensitive thrust of her nipple, causing her to gasp and then moan, unable to do anything other than give in to the intensity of the sensation he was inflicting on her. When pleasure was this intense, she thought frantically, it bordered on the almost unendurable. And yet she wouldn’t have wanted it any other way, wouldn’t have wanted any other man, wouldn’t have been able to reach this lack of inhibition with anyone else.
‘You want me to stop?’ Marco demanded. His breath cooled the aching flesh that had been tormented by his erotic caress, whilst the subtle touch of his fingertips continued to play on her nipple, increasing its dark, swollen call for the renewed heat of his mouth.
Emily couldn’t speak, she could barely stand up any more. But she knew Marco knew she wanted no such thing. She ran her hands along his sweat-dampened naked torso, deliberately bending her head so that she could graze her tongue-tip along his skin and taste the tangy maleness of his flesh, whilst she breathed in his aphrodisiacal Marco-drenched scent. At times like this, just the smell of him was enough to make her go weak with lust.
The ache deep inside her tightened and burned with a heat that could only be slaked by the possession of Marco’s hard flesh filling her and completing her. She could feel the small hungry ripples of sensation caused by her muscles as they tightened with the need to have him fill the empty, wanton place inside her.
‘Now, Marco,’ she urged him fiercely, ‘now!’
When he still waited, she looked up at him. She could see the dangerous look in his eyes, the darkness that said he was on the verge of wanting to punish her and that he was challenging her, needing to force her to acknowledge his supremacy, his ability to control her desire, arouse it and then satisfy it. It was too late for her to try to play him at his own game and deny him his triumph by pretending that she didn’t want him. Her own need was too great and too immediate. She would have to punish herself later for her weakness. Right now, no price was too high to pay for the satisfaction her body craved. She had tried to resist.
‘Now!’ she repeated.
For a second, she thought he was going to refuse, but then he was reaching for her, lifting her up so that she could wrap her legs tightly round him whilst he thrust firmly into her in one long, slow, deliberate movement that made her shudder violently. As he withdrew her muscles tightened, protesting around him, not wanting to let him go, and were then rewarded for their adoration by the almost mind-altering sensation of his second, stronger, deeper thrust. The sensitive nerve-endings in her flesh wept with joy at the intensity. Instinctively Emily drew in her muscles around him, savouring the sensation.
She could feel his hot breath in her ear, the tip of his tongue tracing the curls of flesh. She felt his teeth against the sensitive cord in her neck. Her whole body was being possessed by a pleasure so heightened she thought she might die from it.
‘Marco…’ She moaned his name as a plea, striking a solitary note of female praise as he thrust deeper, harder and faster now.
‘Mmm.more. Marco…more!’ she urged him, gasping out aloud in delight as he obeyed her and his movements became fast and rhythmic. Then he drove them to their climaxes, and she was left so boneless and weak that she collapsed helplessly against him, trembling in the aftermath.
The heat of the fury that had driven him was cooling on his sweat-slicked skin. Where he should have felt satisfaction and triumph at making Emily acknowledge that he could still arouse her, Marco could only feel a dark sense of stark awareness that he had crossed over a boundary he should not have breached. In forcing Emily to give in to the desire he had summoned in her, he’d also forced himself to acknowledge his need for her. A fleeting need, brought on by his justifiable anger, he assured himself, that was all! It meant nothing in the broader picture of his life.
‘I think we both needed that,’ he told her coolly, ‘and perhaps it was a fitting end to our relationship, a tribute to the mutual attraction that brought us together.’
Emily couldn’t believe what she had done—and what she might have betrayed. She couldn’t bear the thought of Marco thinking now how stupid she had been, maybe guessing she had dreamed that, one day, he might fall in love with her as she had done with him. A wave of irritation surged through her—not against him, but against herself. What a fool she had been, deliberately blinding herself to reality and fixating on something that her common sense could have warned her wouldn’t possibly happen. If Marco had really loved her he would have told her so. But he hadn’t, and he never would. She had deceived herself just as much as Marco had deceived her, and if anything her crime against herself was even greater than his. The fierce turbulent, almost torrid heat of their lovemaking had subsided now, and her anger had burned down into stark bleakness and grinding pain. Her dreams had been swept aside, shown to be pitifully worthless. Marco was a stranger to her, but no more so than she felt at this moment she was to herself.
‘Mutual attraction then, but perhaps mutual contempt now,’ she answered Marco pointedly. ‘I’m not the naïve girl that I was when we first became lovers, Marco.’
‘Meaning what?’ he challenged her, frowning.
‘Meaning that I’ve learned enough about sex from you to know that it isn’t always used as an expression of positive emotions. It’s common knowledge these days that couples on the verge of splitting up do sometimes use sex as a way of venting their negative feelings. Some couples say that they had the best sex of their relationship when the emotional side of it was dying. Of course, I know that we aren’t emotionally intimate with one another.’ What she meant of course, Emily admitted, was that Marco had never been emotionally close with her, because he didn’t want to be, whilst she had had to struggle not to be close when she’d wanted to be. ‘But I think both of us would accept that the break-up of any relation ship—even one like ours—does bring things to the surface that aren’t easy to accept.’
Marco’s frown deepened. She was now being far more matter-of-fact about their relationship ending than he had expected—and he didn’t like that! But he was being ridiculous. He should feel very relieved that she was being so sensible, especially after her earlier, uncharacteristic outburst.
CHAPTER SIX
FROM his seat on the royal jet, Marco looked down onto his family’s private runway at Niroli’s airport to where a group of formally dressed courtiers and officials were waiting to greet him. The ostrich-feather plumes of their dress hats fluttered in the breeze as they stood straight-backed, ignoring the heat of the sun. Marco’s lips twisted with irony at the thought of the heavily gold-braided, bemedalled uniform that his grandfather had sent him, along with strict instructions that he must wear it when he landed and was greeted by the courtly welcoming committee. In fact, the uniform, appropriate for the rank of Lieutenant Colonel in Niroli’s ancient Royal Guard, was lying in its leather dress-trunk in the plane’s hold, whilst he wore his own handmade Saville Row suit. His grandfather wouldn’t be pleased. But Marco intended to let him, and the court, know right from the word go that he would make his own decisions and judgements and he wouldn’t allow them to force theirs on him.
Emily would have appreciated and understood his decision, though she would probably have laughed gently, and teased him as well into wearing that undeniably magnificent, beautifully tailored uniform. Emily.he tried to thrust the thought of her away from him, along with the erotic mental image of her alongside him in his bed that was forming inside his head, but it was too late; she was there, smiling at him, wanting him, as he ached for her. What the hell was this?
He stood up so abruptly that the young Niroli air force aide-de-camp, who’d been sent to escort him home, was caught off guard, and his own attempt to get to his feet before Marco was severely hampered by his ceremonial sword. The red-faced young man saluted as he semi-stuttered, ‘Highness, if you wish to have more time in order to prepare, then please allow me—’
‘No, I am ready,’ Marco told the aide shortly and then relented when he