Page 134 of Modern Romance Collection December 2024 Books 5-8

A part of her still sensed there was more to the story of their marriage. But her mind was begging her in this moment to close the door on whatever that was. Because if everything he was saying was true, everything she believed about marriage—believed about herself—was a lie. It was simpler to believe that this really was about passion, desire and nothing more.

‘There are so many unanswered questions,’ she said, her fingers clinging to his shirt. ‘And not knowing the answersto so many important questions...It feels like such a heavy thing,’ she admitted, and her mind whirred with the heaviness. It pressed down on her sternum. On her lungs.

‘It’s okay to be scared, Emma.’

‘I’m not afraid.’

‘Liar,’ he softly called her out, because he knew her, didn’t he? And he was right; she was scared of the instinctive and knowing chemistry between them.

‘But allow yourself to feel the anticipation of it,’ he coaxed, and his words bloomed inside her ears. ‘To be seduced by the unknown, to discover it piece by piece.’

The hand on top of hers moved to the base of her throat. His grip feather-light, his fingers skirted the flesh of her throat until the hilt of his hand met her chin, and lifted it.

‘Allow yourself to feel the excitement of knowing the answers are coming.’ Steady and intense, his gaze burrowed inside her. ‘And embrace the journey of rediscovering yourself and our marriage.’

Dante was her only guide in these unfamiliar times. But his words, his advice, the connection crackling between their bodies, it was all too much. They made her tremble. They made her want all the things he’d told her she could have: financial security, protection, adventure. All in a home they shared, all because he’d put a ring on her finger and she’d let him do it.Claim her.

Emma’s eyes travelled downward. Across the noble bridge of his nose to the dip above his top lip. It was the size of her fingertip and her hand itched to touch it. To smooth her finger across it to measure the indent.

Had she done that before? How many times had she tasted his mouth with her tongue, slipped her tongue between the slight opening between his thinner upper lip and fuller counterpart?

It was a mouth made for kissing.

Her insides tightened and squeezed on a breathless exhale.

With effort, she dragged her gaze away from his mouth to her hand which still sat against the hard muscle of his chest. It would be so easy to pull him closer, to surrender to instinct, use the fingertips clinging to his shirt to pull her closer and test how competent his mouth was.

She closed her eyes.

It felt reckless to put herself in his hands. To trust him to deliver his promises, when her logical mind told her his words were nothing but a seduction.A lie.

Her father had made countless promises to her mother and delivered on none of them. But still her mother had waited for the day he would keep his promise to protect her. Emma. His family.

And now she was dead.

Emma understood she owed it to herself, and to Dante, to rediscover their marriage. But marriage felt so final. The end—death—to the woman she thought she was.

Emma had had the courage to leave Dante once, for whatever reason, but she hadn’t been strong enough to sever the tie between them completely. That intrigued her the most. Had she been waiting for Dante to return to her?

He’d said he wasn’t holding her hostage, that she could leave at any time, and that gave her a strange sense of comfort. It softened the hard edges of her fear.

And she felt the sudden need to confirm that his intentions were true.

Emma opened her eyes. ‘If I decidethisisn’t what I want anymore...’ Her fingers unfurled and splayed on his chest, steadying herself.

But his hand stayed where it was beneath her chin, keeping her head in position. Her eyes found his and she held his gaze.

‘At any time,’ she continued, her chest tight, her stomach in knots, ‘you’ll let me go, Dante,’ she said. Because she may not remember the version of the Emma who’d married him, or why, and she wasn’t in a position to walk away right now, but she knew twenty-two-year-old Emma would want this. However intensely she longed for his kiss, his body,shewanted an escape plan. In case she needed it.

‘You’ll give me a divorce?’

‘Divorce?’ Dante echoed, a slow, agonising breath flooding through his nostrils.

‘Neither of us know the reason I left...before. ButIdid leave. And—’ she swallowed, and he watched the delicate tendons in her throat constrict ‘—I want to give this life a chance,’ she explained when he didn’t speak. ‘Usa chance,’ she corrected, ‘to rediscover our marriage. I owe that to you, as much as I do to myself. But I need to know if I want to walk away,again, that it’s really an option. That a divorce...’

‘Will finalise the end between us?’ he finished for her.

‘Yes.’

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