Page 235 of Modern Romance Collection March 2025 (1-4)

And whatever this was.

This pounding, painful feeling at the center of her chest. That was there too.

“I expect you had a good day?”

She nodded slowly.

She found she didn’t want to recline when he was in there.

She rose up from the chaise lounge slowly, a little bit dizzy, because she had been lying down for so long.

“It’s been a lovely afternoon. Thank you for suggesting this.”

“I’m glad. I’m not a monster.”

“I know. Though, I don’t think you’re entirely what you appear to be either.”

“You think?”

“Yes.”

He looked at her for a long moment, and the tension between them seemed to grow.

She looked away, because she refused to be humiliated again like she was yesterday.

She heard footsteps, and looked up, and then he was there. He put his finger beneath her chin, and tilted upward, forcing her eyes to meet his. “I owe you an apology,” he said.

“You gave me one of those yesterday.”

“So I did. And perhaps it is not an apology that I owe you.”

And suddenly his lips were on hers. It was fierce and intense, and utterly unexpected. But it was also… Everything.

She couldn’t have denied him even if she wanted to. And she found she didn’t want to.

She wrapped her arms around his neck; how glorious to kiss him when he was standing up. When they weren’t freezing cold. When she wasn’t afraid of dying. When she wasn’t afraid she would make him bleed to death.

All things that most people didn’t usually have to worry about when they made love, she assumed.

Novice though she was.

He moved his hands up her back, and she sighed, his hold so large and strong it filled her with boundless need.

He held her close, deepening the kiss. She felt a yawning, relentless need widening up inside of her. Oh, how she wanted him.

She did.

Because he was everything.

And she wrapped her arms around his neck, no longer afraid that he was going to pull away. His hold was strong. And she rejoiced in the vitality.

Also in the fact that she still wanted him. That it hadn’t simply been about survival, or this strange, driving need to affirm life. She had wanted him.

They never would’ve met. They never would have met if he hadn’t been in that airport. And nothing ever would’ve happened between them if they hadn’t crashed the plane. That day had changed the course of her life irrevocably. And the idea that she might never have met him suddenly filled her with a sense of panic. It was such an odd thing. Because this whole time she hadn’t even been certain if she wanted this. But she couldn’t imagine living without it or him either.

She simply couldn’t.

So she held him, and kissed him. Let the slick friction of his tongue against hers drive her to absolute madness.

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