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Emily would love Niroli, an island so beautiful and fruitful that ancient lore had said Prometheus himself caused it to rise up from the sea bed so that he could bestow it on mankind

When Marco thought of the place of his birth, his ht, an island so richly gifted by the gods that it was little wonder soends had referred to it as an earthly paradise

But where there was great beauty there was also terrible cruelty, as was true of so ods had often exacted a terrible price froifts

He pushed back the duvet, knowing that he wouldn't be able to sleep now His body was lean and powerful, reat ht as he left the bed and padded silently toward the

The wind had picked up and was lashing rain against the s, bending the bare branches of the trees on the street outside Marco was again transported back to Niroli, where violent stor seas The people of Niroli knew not to venture out during the high tides that battered the volcanic rock cliffs of a h and so inaccessible in parts that even today it still protected and concealed the bandit descendants of Barbary pirates who long ago had invaded the island In fact, the fierce seas sucking deep beneath the cliffs had honeycombed them into underwater caves and weakened the rock so that whole sections of it had fallen away The gales that stirred the seas also tore and ripped at the ancient olive trees and the grapevines on the island, as though to punish them because their harvest had already been plucked to safety

As a boy Marco had loved to watch the wind savage the land far below the high turrets of the royal castle He would kneel on the soft padded seating beneath an ancient stoneeo out and accept the challenge it threw at hio outside and play as other children did Instead, at his grandfather's insistence, he'd had to re about his family's past and his own future role as the islands ultimate ruler

Inside Marcos head, i wraithlike frorandfather and not his parents who had dictated the rules of his childhood, and who'd seen that they were imposed on him

‘Marco, come back to bed It's cold without you' Emily's voice was soft and sloarm, full and sith promise, like the fruit of Niroli's vines at the tirapes lay heavily beneath the sun swollen with ripe readiness and with implicit invitation

He turned round He had woken her after all En business from a small shop-cum-office just off London's Sloane Street Marco had known from the moment he first saw her at a PR cocktail party that he'd wanted her and that he'd intended to have her And he'dhis oay to claiht to direct the course of his own life, even if thathis will on those ould oppose him This was an imperative for him one he refused to be swayed from

He had quickly elucidated that Emily was a divorced woman with no children, and that had made her pattern-card perfect for the role of his mistress If he had known then her real emotional and sexual history, he knew that he would not have pursued her But by the time he had discovered the truth, his physical desire for her had been such that it had been impossible for him to reject her

He looked towards her now feeling that desire gripping hiht all his life against anything or anyone who threatened to control him

'Marco, so What is it?’

Where had it come fro what she could not possibly be able to know? The year his parents died, the storms had come early to Niroli Marco could remember hohen he had first received the news, even before he had said anything, she had so However, whilst she s were concerned Eh to make the connection between the announcement of his parents’ deaths and the news in the media about the demise of the next in line to the Niroli throne

He remembered how hurt she had looked when he'd infor his mother and fathers funeral without her but she hadn't said a word Maybe because she hadn't wanted to provoke a row thattheir affair, the reason she didn't want it to end being that, for all her apparent lack of interest in his money, she had to be well aware of what she would lose financially if their relationship came to a close It was in Marcos opinion, impossible for any wo his randfather had warned hied around hiifts and had no co that plain