Page 133 of Modern Romance Collection December 2024 Books 5-8

‘Place your hand on my chest.’

Frowning, she asked, ‘Why?’

‘I promised I’d help you remember,’ he reminded her. ‘So let me show you how it began between us,’ he explained.

She lifted her hand. Touched him, tentatively.

‘Can you feel it?’ he asked.

Deep and steady, his heart thrummed beneath her fingers. ‘All I can feel is you.’

He covered her hand with his and heat crept into her fingers. Up into her arms. Her chest. Until breathing became difficult. Too tight. Too shallow.

‘And now?’ he asked. ‘What do you feel, Emma?’

Connection pulsed through her. A type of chaotic harmony. An illogical knowing her hand belonged there. Beneath his.

‘Heat,’ she breathed.

‘It is a flame,’ he said, and his voice was rough.Deep. ‘The night we met, when you raised your hand to my wine-drenched chest and touched me, right here, that flame ignited. Until it roared inside me. Unit it roared inside usboth.’

Want pulsed inside her.

‘Did we have a one-night stand?’ she asked.

‘We did. That night—’ he leaned into her until their bodies stood millimetres apart ‘—and every night after,’ he said.

It was difficult to focus her mind and listen to his story—their origin story—and reclaim it as her own lived experience. Especially when the compulsion to press herself against him, to touch him was clamouring for attention.

‘Why did we get married?’ she asked, her voice not her own. ‘Why didn’t we just have an affair?’ she pushed, because she wanted to understand the choices she’d made. Because here she was, a girl from an industrial city who had moved from estate to estate when the rents were raised and they could no longer afford to stay. They’d had to relinquish their home so newer, younger, more prosperous families could move in with their two-point-four kids and domesticity.

A domesticity her mother had craved and Emma despised.

And yet here she was.

Domesticated.

‘We did.’ His breath feathered her lips. And she wanted to meet his breath with her own. Surrender her mouth up to his.Kiss him.‘Our affair lasted a month.’

Her fingers clenched at his shirt. ‘What changed?’

‘It wasn’t enough.’

‘What wasn’t?’ she husked. One night had always been enough.For her.An affairshouldhave been enough.She still couldn’t understand that.

‘The stolen moments between us,’ he said. ‘I wanted no more borrowed beds,’ he continued, ‘however soft the sheets or exclusive the hotel. But a bed we could call ours.’

‘And what didIwant?’ she asked, because she’d never shared anyone’s bed for longer than was necessary. And no one had ever stopped her from leaving. They would feign sleep as she collected her things and disappeared without a backward glance.

But he’d wanted her to stay, to have a place they would meet and touch that was only theirs.

Had she wanted the same?

‘You wanted me,’ he said, and she heard it. Felt the unsaid part.

You want me.

‘I asked you to marry me, and you said yes,’ he finished. If she felt back then anything like she felt now, she could understand why she’d so readily agreed. Her body begged to be touched, to give in to the heat between them. To drown out the doubt, the questions.

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