The Royal House of Niroli Collection. Кейт Хьюит
of them. But she knew that she wouldn’t, just as she knew that some deep-rooted female part of her wanted this show of male dominance from him, wanted her own sense of fierce surging excitement, wanted and needed the pure, fierce searing heat of the mutual lust they had conjured up out of nowhere. She could quite easily have pushed past him, Emily knew, and she knew too that Marco would not try to stop her if she did. But the reality was that she didn’t want to… The reality was that her body was possessed by an incendiary mix of anger and desire that took fire from Marco’s determination to confront her with her own acceptance of his power to arouse her.
‘But that would be a lie, wouldn’t it?’ Marco challenged her softly as he continued his relentless sensual assault, his lips brushing the bare flesh of her throat in between each word, imprisoning her in her own wild arousal.
‘Wouldn’t it?’ he insisted as he slid his hand beneath her sweater and freed her breasts from the constriction of her bra. A low moan of unappeased longing bubbled in her throat as he fed her craving for his possession.
‘You want more?’ he demanded, his voice thickening and softening.
‘No!’ Emily lied. She could feel his hand cupping her breast and his fingertips stroking deliberately against her nipple again. She knew she couldn’t hold out much longer against the dammed-up force of her own need. With a low sound of surrender, she reached blindly for him, drawing his head down towards her own, her lips parting for his kiss and the swift, exultant victory of his tongue.
She could feel the thick hardness of his manhood pressing against her body. In her mind’s eye she visualised his naked body, familiar now after their years together, seeing behind her closed eyes the thick sheathing of smooth flesh over rigid muscle, where it rose from the dark silky thickness of hair. She could almost feel the smooth warmth of him, so enticingly supple to her touch, and so responsive to the caress of her fingers and her mouth. Fresh longing seized her. Impetuously she reached down between their bodies to touch him, spanning his length with the spread of her fingertips, and then stroking his thickness. A deep purr of satisfaction gathered in her throat as she felt him stiffen further and then pulse, becoming a moan of out-of-control urgency when she felt him tugging at the fastening of her skirt.
Not even in their early days together had she experienced this degree of intense need, she recognised. It was so much bolder than anything she remembered feeling before; bolder, and fiercer and hungrier—the sexual desire of a woman who must be satisfied.
The demoralising fear that had in recent weeks sucked from her any delight in their intimacy was as easily sloughed off by their shared passion as were their clothes, unwanted encumbrances that prevented her from taking all that she could. Marco was driving both of them to that place where they had no choice other than to plunge into the turbulent flood of the maelstrom together.
Emily’s fingers trembled over and tugged at his shirt buttons and trouser fastenings, her endeavours deliberately interrupted by him when he raked his teeth against the sensitive thrust of her nipple, causing her to gasp and then moan, unable to do anything other than give in to the intensity of the sensation he was inflicting on her. When pleasure was this intense, she thought frantically, it bordered on the almost unendurable. And yet she wouldn’t have wanted it any other way, wouldn’t have wanted any other man, wouldn’t have been able to reach this lack of inhibition with anyone else.
‘You want me to stop?’ Marco demanded. His breath cooled the aching flesh that had been tormented by his erotic caress, whilst the subtle touch of his fingertips continued to play on her nipple, increasing its dark, swollen call for the renewed heat of his mouth.
Emily couldn’t speak, she could barely stand up any more. But she knew Marco knew she wanted no such thing. She ran her hands along his sweat-dampened naked torso, deliberately bending her head so that she could graze her tongue-tip along his skin and taste the tangy maleness of his flesh, whilst she breathed in his aphrodisiacal Marco-drenched scent. At times like this, just the smell of him was enough to make her go weak with lust.
The ache deep inside her tightened and burned with a heat that could only be slaked by the possession of Marco’s hard flesh filling her and completing her. She could feel the small hungry ripples of sensation caused by her muscles as they tightened with the need to have him fill the empty, wanton place inside her.
‘Now, Marco,’ she urged him fiercely, ‘now!’
When he still waited, she looked up at him. She could see the dangerous look in his eyes, the darkness that said he was on the verge of wanting to punish her and that he was challenging her, needing to force her to acknowledge his supremacy, his ability to control her desire, arouse it and then satisfy it. It was too late for her to try to play him at his own game and deny him his triumph by pretending that she didn’t want him. Her own need was too great and too immediate. She would have to punish herself later for her weakness. Right now, no price was too high to pay for the satisfaction her body craved. She had tried to resist…
‘Now!’ she repeated.
For a second, she thought he was going to refuse, but then he was reaching for her, lifting her up so that she could wrap her legs tightly round him whilst he thrust firmly into her in one long, slow, deliberate movement that made her shudder violently. As he withdrew her muscles tightened, protesting around him, not wanting to let him go, and were then rewarded for their adoration by the almost mind-altering sensation of his second, stronger, deeper thrust. The sensitive nerve-endings in her flesh wept with joy at the intensity. Instinctively Emily drew in her muscles around him, savouring the sensation.
She could feel his hot breath in her ear, the tip of his tongue tracing the curls of flesh. She felt his teeth against the sensitive cord in her neck. Her whole body was being possessed by a pleasure so heightened she thought she might die from it.
‘Marco…’ She moaned his name as a plea, striking a solitary note of female praise as he thrust deeper, harder and faster now.
‘Mmm…more. Marco…more!’ she urged him, gasping out aloud in delight as he obeyed her and his movements became fast and rhythmic. Then he drove them to their climaxes, and she was left so boneless and weak that she collapsed helplessly against him, trembling in the aftermath.
The heat of the fury that had driven him was cooling on his sweat-slicked skin. Where he should have felt satisfaction and triumph at making Emily acknowledge that he could still arouse her, Marco could only feel a dark sense of stark awareness that he had crossed over a boundary he should not have breached. In forcing Emily to give in to the desire he had summoned in her, he’d also forced himself to acknowledge his need for her. A fleeting need, brought on by his justifiable anger, he assured himself, that was all! It meant nothing in the broader picture of his life.
‘I think we both needed that,’ he told her coolly, ‘and perhaps it was a fitting end to our relationship, a tribute to the mutual attraction that brought us together.’
Emily couldn’t believe what she had done—and what she might have betrayed. She couldn’t bear the thought of Marco thinking now how stupid she had been, maybe guessing she had dreamed that, one day, he might fall in love with her as she had done with him. A wave of irritation surged through her—not against him, but against herself. What a fool she had been, deliberately blinding herself to reality and fixating on something that her common sense could have warned her wouldn’t possibly happen. If Marco had really loved her he would have told her so. But he hadn’t, and he never would. She had deceived herself just as much as Marco had deceived her, and if anything her crime against herself was even greater than his. The fierce turbulent, almost torrid heat of their love-making had subsided now, and her anger had burned down into stark bleakness and grinding pain. Her dreams had been swept aside, shown to be pitifully worthless. Marco was a stranger to her, but no more so than she felt at this moment she was to herself.
‘Mutual attraction then, but perhaps mutual contempt now,’ she answered Marco pointedly. ‘I’m not the naïve girl that I was when we first became lovers, Marco.’
‘Meaning what?’ he challenged her, frowning.
‘Meaning that I’ve learned enough about