‘Give that to me,’ Marco demanded, taking the envelope from her.
‘It’s too late to destroy the evidence, Marco.’ Emily told him brokenly. ‘I know the truth now. And I know how you’ve lied to me all this time, pretending to be something you aren’t, letting me think.’ She dug her teeth in her lower lip to try to force back her own pain. ‘Do you think I haven’t read the newspapers? Do you think the people of Niroli know that their prince is a liar? Or doesn’t lying matter when you’re a member of the Royal House?’ she challenged him wildly.
‘You had no right to go through my desk,’ Marco shot back at her furiously, his male loathing at being caught off guard and forced into a position in which he was in the wrong making him determined to find something he could accuse Emily of. ‘I thought we had an understanding that our private papers were our personal property and out of bounds,’ he told her savagely. ‘I trusted you…’
Emily could hardly believe what she was hearing.
‘Did you? Is that why you hid this envelope under everything else?’ she challenged him, shaking her head in answer to her own question. ‘No, you didn’t trust me, Marco, and you didn’t trust me because you knew that I couldn’t trust you. And you knew that because you are a liar, and liars don’t trust people because they know that they themselves cannot be trusted.’ She not only felt sick, she also felt as though she could hardly breathe. ‘Everything I thought I knew about you is based on lies, everything. You aren’t just Marco Fierezza, you are Prince Marco of Niroli. You yourself are a lie, Marco.…’
‘You are taking this far too personally. The reason I concealed my royal status had nothing whatsoever to do with you. It was a decision I made before I met you. My identity as plain Marco Fierezza is as real to me as though I were not a prince. It has nothing to do with you,’ he repeated.
‘How can you say that? It has everything to do with me, and if you had any shred of decency or morals you would know that. How could you lie about who you are and still live with me as intimately as we have lived together?’ she demanded brokenly. ‘How could you live with yourself, knowing that others, not just me, believed you, accepted and gave you their trust, when all the time—’
‘Stop being so ridiculously dramatic,’ Marco demanded fiercely. ‘You are making too much of the situation.’
‘Too much?’ Emily almost screamed the words at him. ‘Too much, when I have discovered that you have deceived me for the whole time we’ve been together? When did you plan to tell me, Marco? Perhaps you just planned to walk away without telling me anything? After all, what do my feelings matter to you?’
‘Of course they matter,’ Marco stopped her sharply. ‘And it was in part to protect them, and you, that I decided not to inform you of the change in my circumstances when my grandfather first announced that he intended to step down from the throne and hand it on to me.’
‘To protect me?’ Emily almost choked on her fury. ‘Hand on the throne? Don’t bother continuing, Marco. No wonder you told me when you first took me to bed that all you wanted was sex. You knew that was the only kind of relationship there could ever be between us! You knew that one day you would be Niroli’s king. No doubt you are expected to marry a princess. Is she picked out for you already, your royal bride?’
‘No.’
Emily shrugged disdainfully. ‘There’s no point in replying because, whatever you say, I can’t believe you, not now.’
‘Emily, listen to me. This has gone far enough. You are being ridiculous. I know you have had a bit of a shock, but…’
‘A bit of a shock? A bit of a shock?’
When she whirled round and headed for the door, Marco demanded, ‘Where are you going?’
‘To pack my things,’ Emily told him fiercely. ‘I’m leaving, Marco, right now. I can’t and won’t stay here with you. I feel I don’t know you any more, and right now I don’t really want to.’
‘Don’t be stupid. Where will you go? This is your home.’
‘No, this is your apartment, it has never been my home. As to where I will go, I have a home of my own—remember?’ she challenged him.
Marco frowned. ‘Your house in Chelsea? But your assistant is living there.’
‘She was living there, but she moved in with her new partner at the weekend, not that it or anything else in my life is any business of yours, Your Highness. Or should it be Your Majesty?’
‘Emily.’ He reached for her but she started to pull away from him, a look of angry contempt in her eyes that infuriated him. She had accused him of deceit and duplicity, but what about her actions? What about the fact that she had gone through his private papers behind his back? Her accusations had stung his pride, and now suddenly recognising that control of the situation had been taken from him and that she was about to walk out on him awakened all his most deeply held, atavistic male feelings about her. She was his—his until he chose to end their relationship.
Emily’s eyes widened in mute shock as his fingers closed round her wrist, imprisoning her, and she saw the familiar look of arousal darkening his eyes. ‘Let go of me,’ she snapped. ‘You can’t really expect…’
‘I can’t really expect what?’
He wasn’t going to let her go, Emily realised. She felt a quiver of sensation run down her spine—and it wasn’t fear.
‘What is it that I can’t expect, Emily?’ he repeated silkily. ‘Is it that I can’t expect to take you to bed any more—is that what you were going to say? That I can’t expect to touch you or hold you?’
She had edged towards the study door as he’d advanced, but before she could open it and escape Marco reached past her, kicking it shut. Then, he placed his hands on it either side of her so that she was caught between the door and him. A telltale spiral of excitement was sizzling through her, its presence within her reminding her of the early days of their affair, when just to know that Marco wanted her and intended to have her was enough to leave her quivering on the edges of erotic need and surrender. Just as she was doing now. She tried to vocalise her denial, not just of her own arousal but also of Marco’s intentions, but the words were locked in her throat. Beneath the soft wool of her sweater she could feel the growing hardening of her nipples and the desire-heavy weight of her breasts. How long had it been since she had felt like this? How long had it been since Marco had shown her this side of himself? So long that she couldn’t remember? So long that, because it was happening now, she couldn’t resist his allure?
Her heart jerked around inside her chest as though it were suspended on a piece of elastic. The ache in her breasts curled down through her belly to taunt her sex and tease from it a throbbing pulse of excitement and longing. She realised that she should be horrified by the way she was reacting to him, in view of what she had now discovered, horrified and determined not to let him touch her, sickened by the thought of him touching her. But she also knew that she wasn’t; instead she wanted him with a physical intensity that held her fast in an unfamiliar, almost violent grip.
‘Is that what you wanted to say to me, Emily—that I can’t make you want me any more, that I can’t arouse you, that I can’t do this…?’ He lifted his hand and stroked a fingertip down the side of her neck and along her collar-bone, making her shudder in violent erotic delight. He had moved closer to her, so close that she could smell the familiar scent of his cologne and the aroused heat of his body. Was it that, with its powerful but subtle message of male sexuality, that was turning her boneless with aching longing for him, even while her mind was telling her that she should resist him, and that this was no way for her to behave if she truly wanted him to believe what she had said?
She