Passion and the Prince

His status meant that a good deal of his life was played out in public. That made the privacy he claimed for himself even more important to him. As a lover he considered it his duty to ensure that his partners found pleasure and satisfaction in his arms, but as a man he preferred to sleep alone afterwards. And now here was Lily, intruding into his personal space and looking at him as though.

Did she know what she was doing to him, looking at him like that? Marco wondered grimly. Of course she did. That was why she was doing it. He was not vain about his body—he ate healthily and kept fit without being excessive about it—but that wide-eyed look of dazed, entranced delight Lily was giving him right now, as though his was the most magnificent male form she had ever seen, would boost any man’s ego. Never mind what it was doing to his body. But this was a woman who knew all about manipulating others, Marco reminded himself. Whatever Lily had come to his suite for it certainly wasn’t because she had been filled with an urgent desire for him, no matter what impression she might be trying to give him right now.

‘Why are you here?’ he demanded stiffly. ‘What do you want?’

The sound of Marco’s voice broke the spell that the intimacy of his nearly naked body had spun round her, his curtness bringing Lily back to reality.

‘I had to come. Seeing Anton again after so long … so unexpectedly … He knows my suite number. I couldn’t stay in my room. He …’ Fear and shock disjointed her words.

‘Anton?’ Marco checked her, and then wished that he had simply told her to leave. After all, he wanted her out of his room. He wanted her out of his life, he acknowledged.

‘Anton … Anton Gillman.’ Just saying his name made Lily shudder. Watching her, Marco frowned, guessing, ‘The man you were with earlier this evening, after dinner?’

‘Yes,’ Lily acknowledged.

‘You gave him your room number?’

‘No. I dropped my keycard and he saw it. I was afraid that he’d come looking for me …’

‘Why would he do that?’

There was a look on her face that caught him off guard. Fear. Raw, naked fear. He could see it in her eyes and hear it in her voice. Against his will it touched a nerve within him. To his own disbelief he could feel himself reacting, weakening, as she aroused in him an instinctive male urge to take that fear from her and to protect her.

He could not and would not allow himself to give in to that urge. He fought against it, insisting, ‘He must have a reason.’

Lily shuddered as Marco’s words reminded her of exactly what reason Anton did have for persecuting her.

Marco watched as she shuddered and a mental image from the past was resurrected from the place where he had buried it. Time after time Olivia, her face swollen and bruised, had cried out emotionally to him that she wanted him to take her home, away from her latest ‘boyfriend’ and his physical abuse of her, and then less than twelve hours later she would be telling him that nothing and no one would ever part her from the man she loved, and that his violence towards her was simply caused by jealousy.

Some women were like that. Some women were drawn to men who abused and humiliated them. Some women even enjoyed deliberately making such men jealous, and went back time and time again to them. Was that why she was here? Because she knew her ex-lover would seek her out and she wanted him to believe she was with someone else?

It all made sense now, Marco decided cynically. She had come here intending to use him to make another man jealous. And she’d nearly succeeded, he was forced to admit. That knowledge caused him to state harshly, ‘I know what you’re up to. You came here to me because you want to make this Anton believe that you and I are lovers.’

He had hardened his heart against her now. He knew that look of fear had been faked, for all that he had initially been deceived by it. She was very good at pretence, as he had already discovered, but he was not a naive eighteen-year-old any more, ready to trust a woman just because she was a woman, ready to accept whatever lies she chose to feed him.

Lily stopped pacing to stare at him in despairing disbelief. How could he think that?

‘No,’ she denied. ‘No, that’s not true. I’m so scared—’ Her body gave another violent shudder at the thought of having to endure any kind of intimacy with the man she loathed and feared so much, but Marco didn’t notice. He was too caught up in the defence mechanism within him that refused to allow him to trust her.