Page 151 of Modern Romance Collection December 2024 Books 5-8

His eyes travelled down over her plump parted lips. Down over her throat. Over the prominent arch of her collarbone. And he wanted to carry her back the way she’d come. Up to the suite. To bed. And lose himself in her. Silence her lips with his and end these stories of hers he didn’t want to hear. Didn’tneedto hear.

But he didn’t. He remained still. Let the thud of his heart beat ferociously beneath her fingertips.

‘I figured it out.’

‘What?’

‘Our marriage,’ she replied. ‘It makes sense now.’

His frowned. ‘What does?’

‘Both our childhoods were...unstable. And we found stability in each other. A frantic all-consuming stability.’

He clenched his fists at his sides to stop him reaching for her. To stop him from spanning his palms around her waist to explore the dip before he came to the arch of her hips. To stop him from tugging her body into the groove of his to show her just how well their bodies fitted together. To prove to her she needed no more words. No more talk. Not whateverthiswas.

Only him.

‘Youare my garden,’ she concluded, and her words shredded his resolve to be slow. To ease her into the physicality of his desire. Of hers.

He was not her...garden.

He had to tell her everything.Everything.The contract. The rules...

He couldn’t allow her to speculate, to come up with her own truth.

He’d seduce with the truth she needed to hear. Why she trusted him. Why she’d married him.

He needed to end whatever fantasies she was creating about their commitment to one another.

‘Our marriage has nothing to do with...gardens,Emma,’he stated. ‘It has everything to do with how I make you feel. How you make me feel.’

Her eyes narrowed and moved over the hard jut of his jaw to the flickering pulse in his cheek. ‘How you make me feel?’

‘We have a contract.’

‘A contract?’

‘A purely-for-passion marriage for as long as we both see fit for it to continue. We agreed to one year originally. Planned for another three years if we were still content. Happy in the confines of our contract. And wewerecontent,’ he assured her, because they had been. He was sure of that. Or at least he had been.

But she left. The contract has technically expired.

Semantics. There was no need to press on the separation between them. He’d tell her the facts. Facts as he knew them. And she needed to hear them; he had no other choice but to tell her. Because he could not allow her to turn them into something else. Something he didn’t want. Something that needed to be fed and watered and nourished emotionally.

He didn’t want it.

And neither did she.

‘There was no chance of you ever becoming your mother, Emma,’ he told her, because he knew this was the way now. The only way to re-establish what they were. What he wanted again. ‘Because we both wanted the same thing from our marriage. Each other. Without emotional attachments. Without love. We do not know how to love, Emma, because we understand it as the lie it is. But we trust each other. To stick to the terms in the contract,’ he said, her breaths coming in quick sharp rasps.

‘Terms?’

‘Yes, a simple contract, to take what we wanted from each other,’ he reiterated, ‘Until we were sated.’

He was not sated. And he didn’t believe she was either.

‘What happened when we were done?’ she asked. ‘When it was over between us?’

‘We’d divorce and you’d receive a settlement. You’d be financially secure for ever.’

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