Passion and the Prince

Crushed against his body, Lily waited for the familiar feelings of nausea and terror to flood through her, but instead—unbelievably, and surely impossibly—her senses were sending her messages of an awareness of her captor so unfamiliar to her that they stunned her into a bewildered stillness.

Could it really be happening that, instead of filling her with repugnance, the cool cologne-over-male-warmth smell of him was actually arousing her desire to move closer to its source? How was it that the solid strength of his male body against her own felt somehow right? As though it was something her flesh approved of instead of feared. It was as though she had opened a door and walked into a world that was topsy-turvy—an Alice in Wonderland world in which what she’d expected to feel had been replaced by the unexpected. The totally unexpected, she acknowledged as she looked with bewilderment at the way her free hand was splayed out against his chest, her skin pale next to the dark fabric of his suit.

Only seconds had passed—seconds in time but an aeon in terms of her emotions. Now, alongside the confusion of what she was feeling, she had a growing sense of urgency. A desire—no, a need to be free from the intimacy of his hold. And not because she feared him, but because she feared her own awareness of him.

There was an odd look in his eyes, a sort of shocked and furious disbelief, as though he couldn’t fully comprehend something.

‘Let me go.’

The words, echoing from her past, had a galvanising effect on her captor, banishing that look immediately and replacing it with the anger she could now see in his eyes. Anger was better—anger meant that they were enemies and on opposite sides, even though it was obvious to Lily that, whoever and whatever he was, he wasn’t used to women rejecting him. His gaze was a dangerous volcano of molten gold, fixing on hers, pinning her beneath it. She could feel herself starting to tremble, weakness filling her. Tiny betraying shivers of sensation rayed out all over her body from its point of contact with his hand. Sexual awareness? Sexual desire? From her? For this man who was a stranger to her—a stranger who had already shown his bitter contempt for her? How could he have such an intense impact on her, sidetracking her away from telling him just how wrong he was about her?

Abruptly he released her, thrusting her from him, turning away from her towards the stairs and taking them two at a time, whilst she gasped for air and tried to turn the handle of the door to the studio with trembling fingers.

She was back—safe in the studio. Only Lily knew that she could never be completely safe with herself ever again. In a handful of seconds and with one automatic and instinctive male movement the protective bubble in which she had wrapped herself to defend herself against his sex had been torn from her. In his hold she had experienced an awareness of him as a man that had struck right at the core of everything she believed about herself, revealing to her a vulnerability she had promised herself she would never know. How could it have happened so quickly and so unexpectedly? So unacceptably? Like lightning striking out of nowhere? She didn’t know, and she didn’t want to know. She just wanted to ignore it and forget about it.

Numbly, she forced herself to go through the motions of getting back to work.

‘What was all that about?’ the stylist asked her curiously.

‘Nothing. Just a bit of a mistake, that’s all.’

A mistake it certainly had been—and the real mistake had been hers.

Her hands trembled as she adjusted the camera. Her very first memories included the feeling of being able to make herself feel safe behind a camera as she played with the equipment in her father’s studio, where she had been left so often as a young child, by parents too involved in their own lives to care about hers. Her camera represented security in so many different ways. It was the magic cloak behind which she could conceal and protect herself. But not today. Not now. When she looked through her camera, instead of seeing a model posing, ready for her to photograph, all she could see was an image of the man who had just ripped the security of her self protection from her.

She closed her eyes and then opened them again. Nothing had really happened to alter her life in any way. She might feel as though she had been dragged through the eye of a storm, but that storm had gone now and she was safe.