‘A gift should be offered without ties or expectations,’ she returned sweetly. ‘Didn’t you know that?’
‘Do you always have a smart answer for everything, Lucy?’
‘I certainly hope so.’ She narrowed her eyes. ‘If it is submissive gratitude you desire, Guido, then there must be any number of women who would be only too glad to provide it.’
And she was right, maledizione! He enjoyed much more than just her lovemaking because she challenged and intrigued him—he could not now dispense with those qualities when it suited him.
He put his hand between her thighs and heard her gasp. ‘I am going
to make love to you again,’ he said, on a note of husky intent. ‘And then I am going to take you out and dress you from head to foot.’
Lucy let him whisk her around Manhattan, unable to shake the slightly surreal sensation of feeling as though she was appearing in a film as Guido took her from shop to exclusive shop. Stuff like this didn’t happen in real life, she told herself dazedly.
But it seemed that it did.
First came the lingerie—stuff like she had never seen before: drifts and drifts of delicate silk, trimmed with lace so fine that it seemed to have been spun from gossamer. A brisk, efficient Frenchwoman measured her, and it transpired that Lucy had been buying the wrong bra size off the peg for years!
‘We’ll take them both,’ drawled Guido carelessly as she vascillated between a matching set in electric blue trimmed with cerise satin and a more conventional pure white outfit—which was, she thought with a fleeting wistfulness, exactly the kind of thing a bride might covet for her trousseau. ‘And the black.’
‘Guido, no!’ protested Lucy as the saleswoman tactfully withdrew from the room.
‘Guido, yes,’ he argued, with a smile of satisfaction.
‘I won’t be wearing more than two sets of underwear in a weekend!’
‘But after the weekend you will, and I want to see you in it all. And out of it,’ he said, his voice dipping into a note of erotic promise.
Of course she couldn’t possibly argue after that—because his words implied that their affair was going to run and run when they got back from Mardivino.
She silenced the cruel little voice in her head which asked her just how long she was prepared to dedicate her life to a relationship which was doomed to go nowhere.
In a succession of luxurious shops he bought her an outfit for the christening, plus the most gorgeous hat she had ever seen, two evening gowns, daywear, negligees, and a cashmere wrap.
‘Sometimes the evening breeze which comes down from the mountains can chill the skin,’ he murmured. ‘Especially skin as fine and as fair as yours, Lucy.’
He ran his fingers lightly over her bare arm and Lucy began to tremble. Tersely he asked for the garments to be wrapped and delivered and then took her back to his apartment and made love to her all over again. He was wild for it, and so was she, and the sound of her ecstatic cries rang round his vast bedroom as she lay shuddering in his arms afterwards.
But once the storms of passion had abated Lucy felt different. Something had changed, or at least in her imagination it had, and she wondered if she had given away something of herself in her shamefully easy acceptance of his gifts. Her independence, maybe?
She snuggled into the crook of his arm, for he was sleeping, and her own eyelids began to drift down.
I will only wear the clothes on Mardivino, she vowed.
And after that I’ll go back to being me.
CHAPTER FOUR
‘LOOK down now,’ said Guido, above the sound of the engines. ‘And you will see the mountains of Mardivino.’
Lucy did as he said, though she was so distracted by his proximity that she might as well have been looking at the skyscrapers of a city for all the impact the breathtaking scenery made on her.
Was it the fact they were now most definitely moving into his exclusive territory that was making her feel very slightly disorientated—or just the rather daunting prospect of what might lie ahead? With an effort she forced herself not to think about the sexy and sophisticated Prince who sat beside her on the luxury jet, and to drink in the beauty of his homeland instead.
Beneath her lay a bewitching-looking island which sparkled like a jewel set in a blindingly blue sea. In the distance she could see the mighty peaks of the mountains he had mentioned, and as the plane circled she could see beaches and brilliant white buildings clustered together, like a handful of pearls.
‘Wow!’ she breathed. ‘Is that a city there?’
He smiled. ‘It’s Solajoya—our capital. I don’t know if it qualifies as a city, as it’s pretty small—though it does have a cathedral.’