Page 168 of Modern Romance June 2025 5-8

She reached for his hand and pressed her mouth to his palm, the tenderness of the gesture spreading warmth between the two of them. Warmth enough to melt the ice that had held Antonio stiff.

The hardness in his gaze softened into heat, and he reached for her, pulling her across him and arranging her legs either side of him. Straddling him like this, she relished the feel of the hard length of him, his need for her so much more obvious but equal to her own. She reached for his other hand and pressed it against her breast, Antonio not needing any further encouragement to palm it and then tease her nipple taut with deft fingers.

He reared up to take that same breast in his mouth, hot, wet, over her linen shirt, his arms wrapped around her, holding her to him desperately. In these moments it was impossible to remember that there was no future for them, that there was no love, because what else was this when she felt worshipped by him? Wanted to the point of madness. Desired in a way that made her see herself differently.

A hand swept up beneath her skirt, stroking the outside of her thigh, sweeping between them to find the ache at her core, sparking quivers that pulsed and throbbed and fizzed and hissed across her entire body.

He swept aside her panties and teased her, keeping her on the exquisite edge of pleasure. Her body rose to meet him, to take what it needed, urged on by some hedonistic instinct. Sensations were all she knew, the feel of his mouth around her breast, his hand between her legs, his length beneath her, impatient and straining.

He thrust from beneath her, mimicking what she wanted more than her next breath, and he growled as she moaned, his mouth finally moving up from her breast to her lips as his tongue took full possession of her. Her hands flew to his hair, holding him in place, needing just this moment…a kiss, to taste, to tease, to fill him as much as he filled her. To show him what he meant to her.

His hands stilled on her body as if he—just for this moment—was willing to let her show him, let her body tell him, what he refused to hear in words. Cradling his head between her hands she kissed him, possessed him, consumed him as he had done her. Her fingers scratched against his skull, unable to rest until they had shaped his head then, hungry for more—just like her lips—explored the rest of him.

She pulled his shirt free and tore the buttons, needing to feel him, to memorise every inch of his body. The dips and hollows of his collarbone, the swirls of hair over his pectorals… Her hands followed it down to the buckle of his belt. She pulled it apart and reached further still, wanting to feel him, hold him, grasp him. He growled into her mouth as she took him in her hand, squeezing as he thrust into her palm. She wanted him to feel this, needed him to feel what she felt for him.

Antonio let her have her way with him for as long as possible. It had taken all his restraint to let her lead, let her explore…but the moment she wrapped those cool fingers around his length, the shivers that rippled across his skin became a violent need. To participate, to act, to taste, to touch, to possess.

Antonio drew her shirt to the side and bared Ivy’s breast to his mouth. Heaven. He was in heaven.

‘Up,’ he commanded, the words pressed against her lips. ‘Up,’ he repeated with gentle impatience.

He helped her rise to her knees as he pulled her knickers down her thighs, supporting her as he slid them from her legs. He fisted her panties in his hand and thrust them into his pocket, before retrieving his wallet and the condom from within.

‘Cara, you have me behaving like an untested youth,’ he complained as he tore the corner of the foil packet with his teeth. ‘Taking you here? Amongst the trees and the grass?’

She looked down at him, settled further back on his thighs as he covered himself with the condom.

‘I wouldn’t have it any other way,’ she said, and he felt it. The truth of her words. He wanted to tell her that neither would he. That she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever been with and that he was half convinced that she’d ruined him for ever, but the words clogged his throat, unable to get out. He couldn’t give her the words she needed, the ones she so deserved to hear. But he could give her this…he could give everything he had tothis.

He lined himself up and despite everything in him urging him to possess, to take, to have, he forced himself to show restraint. Slowly, taking in every single change of expression on Ivy’s face, he entered her, filling her, stretching her, luxuriating in the way she came down onto him, taking what she wanted… He’d let her. He’d let her take all that he could give, even if he couldn’t give her more than that.

Her head fell back and he pressed open-mouthed kisses to the long slender column of her neck, his hands palming her breasts as she moved over him, driving him out of his mind. His hands, desperate for more, fell away from her breasts and anchored on her hips, holding her in place, in that one precise point that made her breath hitch and her cries moans and her body tremble and her muscles tighten around him. And there, under the clear blue sky, there was no one but him to see how glorious Ivy was as she rode him to the end of an orgasm so sweet he’d feel it even after she had left Italy for England.

CHAPTER TEN

Ivy frowned, foldinga beautiful cream jumper with flashes of fuchsia woven into it. It was gorgeous. But would she wear it back home? The thought of it in her tiny little shared flat made her quite sad. And she told herself off for being foolish.

She’d take it because it was beautiful,pretty, and it would make her happy. But some of the others…the red dress she’d worn to their first dinner out, that would stay behind.

‘What are you doing?’

She felt his presence hover in the doorframe of the room she’d slept in only a handful of times while she’d been here.

Forcing a smile on her face, she turned and said, ‘Packing,’ with an ease she didn’t feel. He watched her with hooded eyes. He’d been like that since they’d returned from the glade yesterday. Guarded. Resolved.

She bit back the breath that shuddered in her lungs. The hurt. It wasn’t his fault that she’d fallen in love with him. He looked away as if he’d somehow read her thoughts, seeming to take in the clothes on the bed.

‘You’re not taking the red dress?’ he asked, stepping into the room.

‘No,’ she replied. ‘It’s not exactly suitable for an assistant librarian to wear to shelve books, clean up after kids and help people find their email accounts on the shared computers,’ she said wryly, before adding, ‘as much as I’d like to see it.’

‘And this?’ Antonio said, picking up a navy-blue jumpsuit with a deep V neck.

It had been her favourite piece, one she’d not got to wear. ‘It can go back,’ she explained. ‘It still has the tags.’

‘These were bought for you. You should take them with you,’ he said, as if speaking to a recalcitrant child. She didn’t understand why he was getting so upset.

‘They are beautiful clothes, I would love to keep them all. But I don’t have the space to fit them. Or,’ she said, placing a hand on his arm to try and soothe him, ‘the lifestyle to wear them.’

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