Page 52 of Modern Romance Collection December 2024 Books 5-8

‘I can’t... It’s too much.’ She panted, clinging to his shoulders, and tried to prevent the wall of pleasure from barrelling towards her at breakneck speed.

‘Yes, you can,’ he demanded, still thrusting heavily inside her, working all the places he had discovered over the past week that would trigger her release.

Her back thudded softly against the stone of the power shower. She threw her head back, stared up through the room’s glass ceiling, and the sprinkle of snow in the night sky, and tried to focus on holding back, holding on. But the coil drew tighter as the heavy thrusts became faster and more frantic.

Her skin sparkled and glowed, still alive from the steam room, and the cold plunge before they had ended up in the shower... And things had heated up even more.

But she couldn’t focus on anything but the power of him, stretching her, pushing her, remaking her, caressing that spot inside her that ached for him, always.

Her sex tightened and pulsed, clamping down on his as the unstoppable pleasure crested, bright, beautiful and never-ending, bursting through her body.

She sobbed as the brutal release overwhelmed her.

‘Yes!’ he shouted out, climaxing too, as they flew over together.

The storm of sensation sent her tumbling into the abyss she had become addicted to in the last week and the only thing tethering her to the earth was him.

‘Water off.’ He barked out the command.

She flinched, as she released the still firm erection with difficulty.

‘You good?’ he murmured, as he so often did, while holding her.

Her heart swelled in her chest as she nodded, but she kept her eyes closed, the emotions still swirling inside her—incandescent joy followed by crippling fear.

A reaction she knew she needed to contain—if she didn’t want to lose even more of herself.

Just sex, just endorphins, no biggie.

She tightened her arms around his neck, too wobbly and needy to stand as he carried her out of the shower. She buried her head against his shoulder, waiting to regain her equilibrium, and the sense of self she always seemed to lose in his arms. But as she breathed in the delicious scent of cedar and soap and he held her so securely, so tenderly, her heart grew so big it began to push against her throat.

He put her on her feet beside the vanity to grab them both a towel.

She stumbled and he grasped her arm. ‘You okay?’

‘Yes, of course.’ She braced her knees and wrapped a warm towel around her aching body, still too tender. And exposed.

He hooked a towel around his waist as she crossed to the door, needing the safety and security of her own bedroom—the bedroom she’d abandoned a week ago. But before she could make her escape, he grasped her arm.

‘Hey, where are you off to so fast?’ he asked, calmly.

Toocalmly, while her heartbeat continued to rabbit in her chest. And scour her throat.

How could he be so collected, so casual, she wondered, when she was always in bits after they made love? And how could their physical connection have become even more intense—for her at least—when she had been trying to wean herself off the endorphin fix for days?

‘I should sleep in my own room tonight,’ she said, taking the coward’s way out, even as the pain in her chest refused to subside. ‘We have a long day ahead of us tomorrow and I need to pack.’ The thought of which suddenly seemed overwhelming, too.

‘Don’t go,’ he said, tugging her around, his rough palm warm on her cheek. ‘It’s our last night here before we have to return to the circus,’ he murmured, with the sting of bitterness that had begun to disturb her, too.

They’d spoken a few times over the past week about the duties he would need to perform as her consort once they returned to Androvia. But there had been so little time for the practical—in between their hastily prepared meals, the days spent out on the slopes messing about in the snow like carefree children, and the increasingly intense bouts of lovemaking.

She understood his reluctance, of course, because she had been guilty of avoiding those conversations, too—to indulge in all the ways he could make her feel so good.

The sex had been a revelation for her. She had never imagined she would find it so energising and exhausting and yet also so utterly addictive. Every time he looked at her now with that hooded gaze, the desire in his eyes unmistakable, she could feel her body softening as it prepared itself for him...

But as the riot of sensations rippled over her skin again, her body no longer felt like her own.

Why couldn’t she resist him, or the things he could do to her? Or control the increasingly confusing emotions making her ache for so much more than just sex?

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