She hoped so. Because if there was one thing she did know beyond all other things it was that she could not go back to her suite and stay there all alone, growing more terrified with every second that passed. Men like Anton fed off the fear of their victims. She knew that. But even knowing it she couldn’t control her own fear.
The bedroom door opened. Marco stood framed in the doorway, his mouth hard with fury.
‘I’m not going back to my own room,’ Lily told him defiantly. ‘I’m staying here. With you.’
It was those last two words that did it, setting a match to Marco’s already tinder-dry fury and making it burn at a white-hot heat. How dared she lie there in his bed and calmly make it plain that she expected him to play along with her little game as though he simply didn’t matter? Did she think he was completely without any male instincts? Any male desire, any male susceptibility to the temptation she was offering?
His fury burned through his self-control.
Advancing towards her, he told her savagely, ‘He must have been good.’
‘What?’
‘He must have been good if you are this desperate to get him back. Making him jealous and getting him back is what this is all about, isn’t it?’ He had reached the bed now, one hand reaching for the covers Lily had drawn up protectively over herself.
‘No, of course not. Marco, please let me stay,’ Lily begged him, desperately holding onto the bedding.
Marco had grabbed a fistful of the fabric and she could feel where his bunched knuckles were grazing the upper curves of her breasts through the layers of material. By some alchemy of their own her nipples started to ache and tighten, and a cord of shockingly hot sweet desire was pulling so taut inside her that she could feel the pulse of its beat sending out waves of awareness from deep inside her to the sensitive nerve-endings lining the soft outer flesh of her sex. A new form of panic seized her. This wasn’t what she should be feeling. Beneath the bedclothes Lily squirmed sensually, choking back a small bemused gasp at the speed with which her sensuality vied with her fear.
‘Keep me safe, Marco,’ she pleaded.
Marco knew his self-control was on a short rope. He could feel it straining and stretching against its tether, that dark well of male desire for her that should not be there surging savagely into life. Her breath grazed his cheek, her lips parting as she fought to resist him—to resist him because she wanted to use him, so that she could arouse within another man the jealousy she had already aroused in him.
That knowledge was all that was needed to sever his hold on his self-control.
The extent of the anger he felt at the thought of her with another man was so alien to him that it took Marco several seconds to grasp what it actually was. He was jealous? Jealous because she wanted someone else? How could that be? It could not be. But it was, Marco knew. Somehow she had conjured up from within him a version of himself he had never imagined might exist. A version of himself that was all primeval male.
The thought of those softly parted lips being possessed by another man ripped at the pride of the previously unknown version of himself she had somehow brought to life inside him. With a smothered oath Marco slid his hand along the soft column of her throat, bending her back against the pillows, telling her thickly, before his mouth closed over hers with angry male possession, ‘Very well, then. If you won’t leave, why don’t we really give him something to be jealous about?’
Marco was kissing her, and immediately nothing else mattered. Immediately no one else mattered. Immediately she was kissing him back as her heightened emotions exploded into a surge of sensual hunger.
At some deep level inside he had known from the first minute he had set eyes on her that it would be like this between them. He had sensed it, felt it and tried to reject it. But now it was too late for him to reject it, or her, any longer. He had known that his senses and his body would take fire from the wild sensuality of her. He had told himself that she wasn’t what he wanted. But he had lied to himself, Marco knew. This was why she had angered him—because he had known. His hunger for her ran though him like a deep subterranean power, possessing him and driving him. This was why she had angered him so intensely—because at some level he had known that she would take him down into this dark intensity of need where he had no control.
Beneath Marco’s kiss Lily gasped and moaned. So this was a woman’s desire for the man who could arouse that in her—this was her need and her longing, her sensuality stripped bare of its protection, whilst her body ached to be stripped bare of its covering by the hands of the man holding her. No wonder she had feared it and tried to hide herself. No wonder she now wanted to give herself up to it entirely and completely, her body, her senses, her emotions—all that she offered in an almost pagan sacrifice to the man whose touch held her in such thrall.
Instinctively she clung to Marco, needing his strength to sustain her and guide her through such uncharted waters, her senses clamouring for fulfilment of the desires and needs their intimacy had unleashed. Beneath his kiss her tongue-tip hesitantly sought and found his, quickly retreating from the shock of sensation that sent a deep shudder jolting through her body, only to return to stroke against his tongue again, more slowly this time, her heart thudding erratically into her ribs as she savoured the unfamiliar intimacy.
Marco groaned beneath her exploratory touch—a sound of protest against the torment she was inflicting on him mixed with a raw need for deeper intimacy. When her tormenting caresses didn’t offer it he took matters into his own hands—literally. He cupped her face, stroking his tongue against her own, his desire driving a sensual rhythm to its movement that nearly brought Lily’s heartbeat to a standstill. The rhythm of the movement of Marco’s tongue against her own was the rhythm of life—the rhythm that created life itself.
The bedclothes had slipped away from Lily’s body. Marco could feel the soft motion of her breasts rubbing against his bare chest through her clothes. He warned himself not to lose control, but it was too late. Ruthlessly he stripped off her dress and bra, and his body surged in an almost violent sensual reaction to the sight of the soft, shapely curves of pale female flesh, perfectly shaped and tip-tilted, with deep rose-pink nipples that right now were stiffly erect with arousal. Groaning against what he was feeling, Marco tried to fight against the desire burning through him—but the fight was already lost, because he was already reaching out to cup Lily’s breasts in his hands, enticed by her open shivers of mute pleasure into driving his tongue even more deeply into the wet heat of her mouth.
How had it happened? How had she gone from abject fear to this? Lily tried to ask herself through the delirious fever that had taken possession of her.
Beneath his towel Marco could feel his body harden. His erection ached and throbbed madly, sending the blood pounding through his veins and with it the unbearable ache and heat of his desire.
Was it her release from fear that had somehow sparked off this torrent of wild female need inside her? This almost frenzied, frantic yearning for everything that Marco could give her? Lily didn’t know. She just knew that the feel of his tongue against hers, the stroke of his fingers against her breasts and her nipples as he tugged erotically on their flauntingly aroused hardness, was sending her crazy with longing. Her—a twenty-seven-year-old woman who had never previously experienced the full passion of her own desire.
She reached out for Marco’s body, exploring the muscles in his shoulders, blind with delight at the sensation of his flesh against her hands, stroking her way down his arms to his elbows, then up the solid, flaring V of his torso and all the way down his back, from his shoulders to the barrier of his towel. Her palms
