She didn’t think she’d be letting the trust down. She had enough information and commitment already for the exhibition. Of course leaving tomorrow did mean that she’d never get to see Marco’s home …
If she did have any regrets they were superficial—a wish that she could have dressed herself for Marco in something more sensually provocative than the bathrobe she was wearing under which she was naked. She hadn’t forgotten his reaction to her sensible undies. Better not to wear them than risk putting him off with their practicality and lack of feminine allure.
The door was opening. Her mouth might have gone dry with tension, her heart might be pounding erratically against her ribs, but she was ready.
Ready and oh, so willing and wanting. A small final mental prayer that things would go well, and then she was positioning herself so that she would be the first thing Marco saw when he walked into the room.
When he did, though, his reaction wasn’t what she’d hoped for. She’d somehow envisaged them looking at one another and then her slipping out of her bathrobe and going to him in a shared intense silence. Instead Marco seemed to be avoiding looking at her.
Why hadn’t he knocked on the door first? Marco asked himself savagely. If he had he would have saved himself the agony of knowing that Lily was probably naked under that bathrobe, and everything that that knowledge was doing to his self-control. He could almost feel the satin softness of her skin beneath his touch his need for her was so intense. He could almost see her, feel her, taste her, and his body was reacting as though he had. Molten, hot pent-up desire—the kind of desire he had never imagined he could allow himself to feel—was surging through him, taunting him and tormenting him as it swept away his self-control.
He ached for her—and not just physically. His desire for her was passionately emotional. It filled him not just with a need to bind them together in the physical act of love but also with a hunger to bind them together with words as well—the kind of words he had always sworn he would never utter. Words of longing and giving. Words of pleasure and promise. Words that would humbly offer up to her the poor gift of his love and somehow magically win from her the sweet prize of hers.
Words that would give his emotions expression and free them from their imprisonment. The same words that had always been his adversaries, bringing a danger that could rob him of his defences, would now become his aides in the battle to win Lily’s heart.
Marco still hadn’t moved or spoken, but it wasn’t for nothing that Lily had her doctorate. It took her only a handful of seconds to mentally reorganise her plan and see a way of using Marco’s silence as a way of taking charge and setting her own agenda.
She paused to steady her nerves, and then told him, ‘I’m so grateful to you, Marco, for helping me to come to terms with … with things, and to leave my past behind and walk freely into my future.’
A future he wanted to share with her, Marco recognised as he listened to her.
‘I’ve got a favour to ask you,’ Lily continued.
‘If I can help, then you have my word that I will,’ Marco responded.
Lily’s heart somersaulted. He might not say that when he knew what the favour was.
‘I know that you aren’t the kind of man who likes to leave a task only partially completed,’ she said sedately, ‘so I’m hoping …’
Marco waited.
‘The thing is …’ Lily paused. Did she really have the courage to do this? Thinking about the consequences if she didn’t, of all that she would never know or have, was all she needed to convince her that she did.
‘Well, the fact of the matter is, Marco, that helping me to get over the effect Anton had on me isn’t just about listening to me talking about it. I need your help with something else.’
‘Something else?’
Did she want him to pursue Anton and punish him as he deserved for what he had done? He was certainly willing to do so if that was what she wanted.
‘I want you to take me to bed and make love to me, please, Marco.’
When she heard the breath he expelled from his lungs, Lily told him quickly, ‘I know—I know it’s a lot to ask of you. But you are the only person I can ask. You must see that.’