Page 41 of Modern Romance Collection March 2025 (1-4)

He splayed his fingers wide, moved his hands over her abdomen, her thighs, encouraging them apart.

His name on her lips, not with disdain or that infuriating cool detachment. Hoarse and desperate and wanting. Wantinghim.

He followed the path of his hands, tracing open-mouthed kisses down her body, while she moved, urging him on. Her breath in staccato gusts. Her movements wild and desperate.

For him. For this. For them.

He moved her legs wider, settled between them for a taste. But when she stilled, so did he.

“You only have to tell me to stop, Lynna.” He waited, bracing himself for the inevitable guillotine. It was too much, too fast. He should have—

“No, don’t stop,” she said. Maybe her voice was breathless, but the words were clear. An order.

One of the few he would gladly obey.

* * *

Lynna felt like a top, spinning out of control. And Athan and this weren’t at all like she’d expected. She’d known there would be pleasure, the sparkling fireworks of their kisses, his touch, his voice had showed her that in a million ways—it was why she was evenhere.

But it was different naked. Brighter and hotter and more all-encompassing than even those kisses that had given her some reprieve from all her thoughts, anxieties and heavy responsibilities.

This was like…she wasn’t even herself. She was just skin and nerve endings. Need and desire in a throbbing, desperate storm.

It didn’t matter that she’d never done this, that Athan was touching the most intimate parts of her, that she could feel him hot and hard against her own skin. It only mattered that she find the peak of everything her body was building to.

His whiskers were a scrape on the inside of her thigh. His hands on her hips a firebrand as he moved her just how he wanted. And then his mouth, his tongue,insideher, lighting fires she’d never dreamed possible.

Until it all tightened into one spot that exploded, shuddering through her like an earthquake. Likefinally. Echoing, echoing, turning her body lax, languid, sated.

What had she been doing with her life? Why had she thought sex could be a waste of time when even just this in this moment was all-encompassing and everything?

Nothing else mattered. Nothing else rated. Just this pleasure, this heat, justhim. His mouth, his hands, his body now ranging over hers.

The dark, dangerous intent in her eyes, so potent, so desperatelyjustout of reach, she felt no nerves, no concerns. There was nothing inside of her but anticipation as he rolled the condom on himself.

And when he was on top of her once more, nudging inside of her, impossibly large, she could only look at his face. A face she’d known for so long. A face she’d once had vague girlish fantasies about, a face she’d once hated, but it had always been too handsome. Toohim.

He whispered something to her in Greek, something she probably could have parsed if her brain was functioning beyond the moment. But he was filling her, and it was too much and not enough all at once, but there was a freedom in that. In theeverythingof it all.

His hand clamped at her waist, the impossibly hard length of him deep inside her body. It was too much intimacy and not enough. The way each movement reverberated through her like a drum. And it built, higher and higher, a soaring, joyous climb to new heights.

With his voice in her ear, his body on hers, a perfect symphony of utter freedom and joy. Until it all crashed, a throbbing, potent delight.

He pushed against her, hard and firm, staying there on a guttural, conquering sound as the ebbs and flows of her own release stretched out, settled in. Winded and relaxed, she trailed her hand down the hard plane of his back.

She had never once believed a person was anything more than exaggerating stories of sex that made it seem otherworldly and worth sacrificing or risking for.

Now she knew different.

Athan’s warmth slid off of her. In the dim light of the room, she watched as he removed himself to an en suite bathroom.

She felt…sleepy. With absolutely no desire to rush into thinking or action. She just wanted to lie here and absorb every last pulse of pleasure until there was nothing left.

But when he returned, still beautifully naked and too handsome to be fair to anyone, the tiniest inkling that she needed toactbegan to stir.

But before she could, he returned to the bed, tucked her into his body, the blanket tight around them, his arms tight around her. And it was…nice. This quiet moment, after all the storms had receded. Calm and nice and for a few fleeting seconds, the responsibilities that lay heavy on her shoulders were still gone.

But she began to be aware of them again. “I should go back to my room,” she said, though she didn’t move. Becauseshouldshad always governed her, but it didn’t mean shewanted.

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