Passion and the Prince

Oh, what a perfidious creature she was—and far more adept at using all the tricks that Eve had given her sex than she had ever imagined.

‘If you won’t, then how will I ever be able to live a normal life? I’ve only had sex once, with a boy who was even more nervous about it than I was myself,’ she reminded him. ‘How can I ever be a proper woman, the woman I really want to be, if I don’t even know what it means to be a woman sexually?’

She could see him shaking his head. He was going to refuse.

But instead he said hoarsely, ‘You’d trust me to do that … to show you … give you …?’

Lily had never seen him respond so emotionally before, and her heart turned over.

‘I trust you completely, Marco. I’ve never known anyone I could trust more.’

He was looking at her now with something unfathomable and almost tortured in his eyes. Holding her breath, Lily walked towards him, and then, when she was close enough for him to touch her, she let the bathrobe slip to the floor.

‘Lily …’

Was the way he said her name a protest or a sign that he was giving in? Lily didn’t know, but she did know that she could feel his breath against her lips, and that he wasn’t stopping her when she placed her hands on his shoulders and her mouth against his.

‘Lily.’

He said her name again. Against her lips this time, taking them beneath his own when they parted, drawing her naked body close to his. She could feel the unmistakable hardness of his arousal and a thrill of relief went through her. It had begun—the journey that would take her from her past to her future, through heartache to a pleasure beyond which lay even more heartache. But she wasn’t going to think about that now. For now she was only going to think about Marco, and loving him.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

THEY were on the bed, lying naked there together, and the soft sound of Lily’s sighs of pleasure was floating on the air as Marco kissed his way from her shoulder to her ear, causing shimmering showers of lightning pleasure to burst into brilliant life inside her. The touch of his fingertips against her skin as he caressed her provoked a counterpoint sensual response of pleasure, bringing her body to singing, delirious life wherever he touched it. His deliberately slow and careful arousal of her was thrilling it and her with starbursts of erotic delight.

Beneath that pleasure, though, Lily was conscious of a deeper, sharper, keener hunger that had fed on and grown with each small measure of sensual delight until it was beginning to rage fiercely inside her. It was this hunger that she had always feared—this need within her to burn at such an intense heat with love for her lover that her feelings for him could destroy her. The need she had for Marco would never be satisfied by sensual pleasure alone, she knew. It went deeper than that. But for now she would think only of this pleasure and this intimacy, because it was for now that it and Marco would be hers.

Her response to him was magical—a miracle, given what she had endured. Marco struggled to contain and control his own desire for her so that he could concentrate on her experience and her pleasure. He wanted this to be perfect for her. He wanted it to be everything she hoped it to be. He wanted every touch, every sensation she had to show her a fulfilment that would set her completely free from the past.

He cupped her shoulder, stroking her warm, soft skin and then her breast, feeling her shudder and arch her body against his hand, her nipple taut and flushed with desire, her own hands reaching for his shoulders. He kissed the valley between her breasts and then the soft, sweetly fragranced slope, stroking his tongue against her nipple.

Immediately she cried out, her nails digging into his back and her eyes wide with wonder and delight as her breathing accelerated into unsteady swiftness. His own body ached and pulsed, his groin tightening with his need to grind it against her softness in an attempt to reduce the pressure of his desire. But this wasn’t about his satisfaction. Not even when he took the hard peak of her nipple into his mouth to suckle it slowly and Lily responded by crying out and gripping his hips, pulling him down against her open thighs. Her actions turned the soft, slow suckle of his mouth on her breast into a fiercely insistent rhythmic demand that came perilously close to making him lose control.