The Royals Collection. Rebecca Winters

‘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.’

       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.

       This was what she wanted, Lily acknowledged triumphantly as her body answered the demand of the sexually explicit rhythm Marco was driving into her with the possessive heat of his mouth. Deep within her that same rhythm was pulsing its own growing need, telling her to wrap her legs around him and draw him down against her body.

       His need to possess her, to claim her and fill her, had become an insistent drumbeat inside his body, but Marco knew that he could not give in to it. Not yet. Not until he had given Lily all the pleasure she deserved.

       It was hard for him to go slowly and give her the time he thought she needed as he kissed his way down over her quivering stomach, following the path already taken by his hand which was now covering her sex. He stroked the soft mound with the pad of his thumb, and then when she gasped and moaned his name carefully caressed apart the neatly folded lips covering the swollen wet heat of her sex whilst he kissed the inner flesh of her thigh. He felt the shocked tremors of delight that ran through her.

       Lily gasped in raw, agonised ecstasy. She couldn’t bear it. She could not bear any more of the pleasure that was shooting through her in fiery waves, driving her higher and higher with every erotic touch of Marco’s fingers and then his tongue-tip against the eager point of her desire. But even as she cried out her protest the dam broke, sending a series of pulsing quivers of release cascading over her.

       Held fast in Marco’s arms, Lily clung to him as the last surges of pleasure filled her. Her voice thick and soft with emotion, she whispered her gratitude to him. ‘It was wonderful—everything I hoped for and more.’

       Smoothing the damp hair back off her face, Marco smiled. ‘That was just the beginning.’ He loved her so much. Would always love her, he knew.

       He kissed her slowly and deeply, taking time to rebuild her need until he was sure that her desire matched his own. Then he entered her slowly, carefully but firmly, stopping when he felt the shudder jolting through her.

       But Lily shook her head and begged him fiercely, ‘Don’t stop. Please don’t stop now, Marco. I want you so much. I want this so much.’ She moved her body against his, gasping with pleasure when he responded, and she felt herself tightening around him, taking him, claiming him. The headiness of her own sense of wonder and triumph dazed her senses and filled her with erotic excitement.

       She was all and everything he had been born for, Marco thought as he drove deeper and deeper into her, knowing she was moving with him, knowing that this time their journey was one they were sharing. Their discovery that their desire for one another, like their pleasure in one another, had no limits was a shared knowledge that had them exchanging kisses and touches and murmured words of praise and arousal until Marco felt his body tighten and surge and knew that he couldn’t hold back. But even as the first pulse of his orgasm overtook him he felt Lily’s flesh tighten round him, her cry of orgasmic relief mingling with his own.

       Marco was still holding her close, his arms wrapped tightly around her. Hot tears scalded Lily’s eyes. She had thought that knowing him like this would make her feel better, but instead it had made her feel worse. The tears spilled down onto her cheeks.

       ‘You’re crying. Why…?’

       ‘Because I love you.’

       The words had escaped before she could stop them, and now Marco was looking down at her, his own expression unreadable.