Emily's Innocence

She watched in alarm as he swung his long legs onto the bed and leaned back against the pile of pillows. ‘B-but I’m not dressed,’ she stammered.

‘Believe me, you look a lot more respectable like that than in that awful cardigan.’

She took a deep breath, determined to rise above his taunting. ‘Look, I didn’t ask for any of this. I don’t want—’

But Luis cut her off, his voice suddenly edged with steel. ‘The thing is, amada, right now I’m not overly bothered about what you want. This isn’t just about you, I’m afraid. It’s about your family. Your father. He’s just lost his wife—do you really think now was a good time for him to cope with losing a daughter too?’

Emily gave a short, bitter laugh. ‘I think it was the perfect time, since he’d just gained another one to take my place.’

Luis speared her with his gold-flecked eyes and nodded slowly. ‘I thought as much. This is about Mia, isn’t it?’

‘No. No, it’s not about Mia at all,’ Emily said despairingly, sinking down onto the bed, as far away from him as possible, and taking a huge mouthful of wine. As its heat stole down inside her she could feel her defences slipping, melting away like snow in the glare of the sun. After two months of bottling it all up the urge to talk was suddenly overwhelming. ‘I have nothing against Mia herself—she seems very sweet. It’s hardly her fault.’

‘What’s not her fault?’

Pain knotted in Emily’s throat, making it difficult to swallow the mouthful of smoked-salmon sandwich. ‘That my father—sorry, our father—’ she corrected, her voice dripping with irony ‘—was so weak and stupid that he had a meaningless one-night stand with a woman he’d never met the night before his wedding and got her pregnant.’

She waited. Waited for his expression of surprise at this revelation about Oscar Balfour—irre-proachable pillar of the establishment.

It didn’t come.

‘No,’ he agreed nonchalantly, taking another sandwich and devouring it in one bite. ‘Accidents happen. You certainly couldn’t blame Mia for the circumstances of her own conception. Anyway, what does it matter now? Oscar still married your mother and remained happily married to her for—what—twenty years?’

She frowned, staring down at the crust of bread between her fingers, crumbling it into tiny pieces. ‘But it was based on lies,’ she said in a choked voice. ‘A good relationship can only be based on trust and truth. Love means not having secrets from someone, not having to hide anything.’

‘Does it really?’ he said softly, and with infinite scorn, as if what she had said was utterly facile. ‘And what if there are things the other person would be better off not knowing?’

She lifted her head, forcing herself to look at him. ‘Better for them, or better for you?’

He looked back at her. His eyes were narrowed, but for a fraction of a second she thought she saw something in them that was almost like uncertainty. ‘Better for you both.’

‘You have to trust the person enough to forgive you,’ she said, emotion turning her voice husky. ‘You have to give them a chance.’

He turned his head away from her and looked down. A lock of hair fell down over his eyes, making him look suddenly strangely unguarded. Emily felt a painful lurching sensation in her chest.

‘And your father didn’t do that?’ he said tonelessly. ‘He didn’t tell her, even when Mia came?’

Emily shook her head, not wanting to remember those dark days after Mia had shown up. Days that slipped by like sand in a bottle. ‘My father told us all to make sure she didn’t suspect a thing.’ She gave a bleak smile. ‘Mia pretended to be the new housekeeper, which wasn’t a great start to her life as a Balfour, but Mum had such little time left by then.’

Luis shrugged, leaning over to pick up the wine bottle from the bedside table. ‘There you are, then. At least he spared her the pain of finding out.’

‘What? So you think that makes it OK?’ Angrily she snatched her glass away just as he was about to fill it, so that wine spilled onto her bare legs.

A muscle jumped beneath the bronzed skin of his cheek. The room suddenly seemed very still. ‘I think it doesn’t alter the fact that your parents had a good, happy marriage,’ he said slowly.

Emily gave a snort of low, cynical laughter. ‘Oh, right. Your definition of a happy marriage being one where you can screw around as often as you like and it doesn’t matter as long as the other person doesn’t find out? What a lucky woman the future Crown Princess of Santosa is.’

‘That’s different.’ As if in slow motion she watched him reach out and catch the drip of wine that was running down her shin with his thumb. ‘When I marry it’ll be a business arrangement. Love will have no part in it, and I expect the future Crown Princess of Santosa will fully understand that.’

Emily turned to stone beneath his touch, terrified by the fire that was crackling along her nerves, like the fuse of a bomb. ‘A business arrangement?’ she rasped. ‘The terms of which will make it perfectly OK for you to sleep with whoever you like. And will she be free to do the same?’

‘As long as she’s discreet,’ he said softly, following the wet trail of the wine down her leg and over her ankle. ‘Jealousy is a nasty disease to which, thankfully, I’m completely immune. I’m a realist. Marriage fulfils a lot of needs—in my case practical, in your father’s case emotional. He loved Lillian, and one last fling before his wedding doesn’t alter that. It meant nothing.’

‘That’s the bit I don’t get,’ Emily said, forcing her mind to stay focused on the subject, and not on the sparks of pleasure his touch had ignited beneath her skin. ‘Why do it, then? Why have sex with someone if it means nothing?’

In the soft lamp light his face was beautiful but impossible to read. Thoughtfully he slid his hand beneath her instep, turning her foot round and studying it. Emily felt it flex helplessly, her toes curling downwards as if they had a life of their own. All the nerves of her body seemed suddenly to be concentrated in that foot, making it tingle as if with pins and needles. Distantly she remembered the sensation she used to get in her feet before a performance, how it felt as if they were coming alive.

‘If you have to ask the question you probably wouldn’t understand the answer,’ Luis said dryly, his thumb massaging her high arch. ‘Sexual attraction isn’t something you can rationalize, or sometimes even control. It’s called being human. Oscar might be your father but he’s still just a human being.’

‘I know that.’ Her voice was quivering and breathless.

‘And yet it seems to me that you want to punish him for it.’ He ran his fingertips over the hard, shiny calluses at the base of her toes, adding softly, ‘You have the most extraordinary feet.’

Sharply she pulled her foot from his grasp and stood, pacing over to the fireplace, desperate to get far enough away from him to think clearly—focus on the conversation they were having, not the very separate line of communication her body suddenly seemed intent on pursuing. ‘It’s not like that. I’m not punishing him. I just feel…betrayed. Everything feels like it’s falling apart…with my mother and Mia and now Zoe and that…that…stuff in the paper today. It’s like the whole family is damned or something—like some awful fairy tale where the wishes that the good fairy has given to the princesses turn out to be curses. The money and the good looks—they’ve just brought temptations that it seems no one can resist.’

‘Except you.’ He had got up and followed her to where she stood. Her back was towards him but in the mirror above the fireplace their eyes met and she felt her blood heat as he smiled right into them. ‘As I recall, you resisted most forcefully last year.’

‘Yes.’ She wanted to look away, but she couldn’t. ‘Because I want more than that.’

He dropped his gaze, and she felt a split second of relief. But then he slid his hand beneath her hair and she stiffened again, gripped by emotions and sensations she couldn’t identify or control. Or resist.

‘Than what?’ He said softly, gently stroking the back of her neck.

‘Than quick…meaningless…sex.’ She gasped.

‘Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.’ In contrast to her own voice, his was as smooth and slow and rich as sun-warmed honey.

‘And what makes you think I haven’t?’

It was a desperate attempt at bravado, but in the mirror she caught a brief glimpse of the golden gleam in his eyes as he bent his head and brushed his lips against her ear. Instinctively she flinched violently away from the thousand-watt electric shock that his touch sparked through her whole body.

He laughed softly. ‘That.’

Trembling, breathing as heavily as if she’d just run a marathon, Emily faced him. Cheeks flaming, she pulled the collar of the robe up around her neck and raised her chin defiantly and attempted what she hoped was a scornful laugh. ‘Just because I’m not willing to fall into bed with you the moment you click your fingers.’

Luis caught hold of the tie belt of the robe and pulled her gently towards him. ‘I see,’ he said gravely, wickedness glittering in the depths of his eyes, ‘you expect foreplay too, do you? Something like this…’

She opened her mouth to protest, but before she could make the words come out his lips had covered hers and darkness had exploded inside her head, obliterating everything but him: the heat and closeness of his body, the scent and taste of him. She was shocked rigid, shocked into helplessness, unable to think, to respond sensibly. She should be pulling away, but all she seemed to be capable of was standing as still and stiff as Joan of Arc at the stake with the flames licking up around her…

Devouring her.

She was trembling uncontrollably, parting her lips beneath the firm pressure of his, opening her mouth to the gentle probing of his tongue. A whispered, shuddering sigh escaped her as he moved his mouth from hers and began to kiss a path downwards to the angle of her jaw and her earlobe, and the hand that had been resting on her hip slid across her midriff, making her quiver and gasp as the feelings that had haunted her unsettled dreams since that night at Balfour zigzagged through her again.

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