Page 95 of Modern Romance Collection March 2025 (1-4)

She was cleaning herself for him. She was soaping flesh abuzz with an anticipation that burned strong enough to melt bone.

She couldn’t pretend to herself that she was going along with this solely for the sake of her daughters. She was going along with it for her own sake too. Because she couldn’t not.

Any attempt to resist would end in failure. Diaz only had to touch her for her skin to melt.

Her body had bound itself to him when she was seventeen and it had belonged to him ever since.

Somehow, though, she had to find a way through this night…the whole summer…possibly her whole life…without giving him everything again. Without losing the whole of herself to him. A way to give him everything and take everything while keeping the most essential part of herself safe.

Teeth and hair brushed, face moisturised, she looked at her fevered reflection. The pretty cream negligee she’d selected was virtually transparent, her dusky pink nipples a shimmer of colour through it. She shivered to know that soon, very soon, he would be stripping it from her, and soon, very soon, he would be taking those nipples into his mouth…

She swayed as a tight, heavy sensation formed in her breasts, and unthinkingly cupped one, imagining it was his hand holding it. The flush of colour on her cheeks deepened.

An impulse that came from nowhere had her tugging the negligee off, and she stepped out of it and stepped to the door before she could change her mind.

It was only her heart she needed to shield from him.

He was already in bed. His hair had that freshly washed and towel-dried messiness she’d seen so many times over the years, his jaw that freshly shaved smoothness she’d seen all those times too…but never in a bedroom. Never when he was propped against a headboard, sheets draped to his waist, the soft lighting creating shadows over the beautifully honed torso with its perfect smattering of fine dark hair. Never when he was clearly naked.

There was a stillness about him, the illusion of flesh wrapped in marble. The only sign of life was in his eyes. Even with the distance between them she could feel the heat contained in them, as if he’d stretched an invisible arm and stroked the flesh above her pounding heart.

The heavy tingles in her pubis thickened. Deepened. All the tentacles spreading from it thickened and deepened too.

The sheets on her side of the bed had already been turned over so she could slip in beside him unhindered.

Unhindered by anything except her own fear.

She must, must, must keep a lock on her emotions, she dimly beseeched herself.

Almost sick with longing, she unrooted her feet from the cool flooring and walked towards him.

The statue on the bed made no movement but the heat of his stare burned through to her core.

She slipped between the silk sheets with closed lungs and faced him.

Eyes locked.

The unbreathable air of the silence engulfing them was so highly charged it threatened to choke her.

The strong throat moved and then the statue came to life as if in slow motion, a hand reaching through the charged atoms enveloping them to spear through her hair.

Slowly, slowly, he trailed fingers down her neck and onto her shoulder, sending shivers of delight fizzing through her entire being, and she moaned softly when those same fingers skimmed at the same unhurried pace over her unbearably heavy breasts.

Consumed with the need to touch him as he was touching her, Rose pressed a shaking palm to the base of his throat, saw the pulse flare in his pupils and felt the subtle shudder of reaction. With the same rigidly contained pace his fingers were caressing her, she tiptoed her fingers up his smooth neck to scrape through hair that was the only softness to be found on the whole of his beautiful body.

Unable to tear her stare from his face, she drank in every last detail with an openness she had only permitted herself that one night.

Diaz was beautiful. The entirety of him. As masculinely beautiful as it was possible to be.

His breaths heavy, the stare locked on hers molten, the sensuous mouth that had been her gateway to heaven inched forwards. Lips buzzing with the same franticness as the beats of her heart, Rose closed her eyes.

The brush of his lips against hers sent a shock of electricity through her…and an equal bolt of terror, strong enough to make her turn her face so their cheeks came together instead of their mouths.

This was how she must protect herself, she realised dimly over the pounding in her head and heart.

She’d lost control, heart, body and soul to Diaz before. Her body was beyond her control but her heart and soul needed her to do everything possible to protect them from the fresh agony only he was capable of inflicting on her, and of everything she’d spent so long trying to forget, his kisses had haunted her the most. The tenderness and passion contained in them had opened the gateway to her heart when all along they’d been speaking his lies the loudest.

There was a long moment of stillness before he moved his head back and locked his searching gaze to hers, an infinitesimal hold but one that stretched to the moon until she placed a finger to the lips sheachedto kiss and gave a small shake of her head.

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