Page 72 of Modern Romance Collection December 2024 Books 1-4

She flushed almost as pink as her robe, and yet she didn’t look away. ‘As it happens, I wanted sex tonight, too. But the man I was going to have it with ghosted me.’

Another thing he didn’t understand. How could anyone have ghosted her?

‘Why?’ he demanded, suddenly enraged at the thought.

‘He said I was too uptight.’ She kept on staring at him, throwing the words at him like small hard stones. Challenging him, he thought. ‘That I wasn’t what he was looking for.’

For once, Aristophanes didn’t think about the words that came out of his mouth and asked the question that had been taunting him all night. ‘Was that why you weren’t wearing any underwear? Was that for him?’

She flushed even deeper, making the darkness of her eyes even more apparent. ‘Yes. But he never got to see under my dress because he ghosted me before I could show him.’

‘Good,’ he said fiercely. ‘His loss is my gain. Why don’t you show me, instead?’

She searched his face for one long moment, an emotion he couldn’t name flickering in her gaze. Then her hand dropped from his cheekbone to the tie of her robe and she pulled it. The fluffy fabric of her robe slowly slid open.

And she was indeed as pink as her gown, her skin gloriously flushed from her shower, all freshly scrubbed and glowing and silky. Her breasts were as full as her curves had promised, and everywhere else she was gently rounded. She was biteable, lickable, and the sweet little thatch of auburn curls between her thighs...

God save him.

Satisfaction unfurled in him, lazy and hot, and he almost bared his teeth in yet another primitive growl. Yes, she wanted him. She wantedhim.

She had her head half turned away, as if afraid to see his expression, so he reached for her chin and gripped it, turning her back to face him. ‘Don’t look away from me,’ he ordered. ‘You have nothing to be ashamed of.’

Instantly that little chin hardened in his grip. ‘I’m not ashamed, I’m—’

‘You’re as beautiful as I said you were.’ He wasn’t sure why it was so important that she understand that. Perhaps it was only that the thought of a woman as gorgeous as this one being ghosted by some bastard who didn’t realise what he had was insupportable. ‘Shall I prove it to you?’

She took a breath, the pulse at the base of her throat racing frantically. Her eyes were dark as midnight and he couldn’t stop himself from closing the gap between them, easing himself against her silky little body.

She shivered all over at the contact. ‘Yes.’ The word escaped on a breathless puff of sound, and he’d never heard anything so sweet. ‘Please.’

He took one hand from beside her head then reached for one of her own, drawing it between them, looking into her face as he held her palm down over the front of his trousers, where he was so hard he ached.

Her eyes widened and her full mouth opened, her fingers giving a small convulsive squeeze that sent the breath from his lungs.

All rational thought had left his brain, all his higher thought processes non-functional. He was nothing but primitive hunger and base instinct now, and, for once in his life, he didn’t care. So he didn’t hide his reaction. She should know what she did to him. Especially when he was going to do the same to her.

Holding her gaze, he lifted his other hand from the wall and gently laid it at the base of her throat, fingertips brushing the frantic beat of her pulse. She shivered, gasping softly, her head falling back slowly against the door, lashes lowering as he let his hand slide from her throat to the luscious curves of one breast. Her skin felt like silk, smooth and warm, the soft weight of her breast as his palm cupped it literally perfect.

She made a sound deep in her throat, her back arching as she pressed herself into his hand. Her nipple was hard and when he stroked his thumb slowly back and forth across it, teasing it, she made another of those passionate, wanton sounds.

Beautiful little woman.

Perfect little woman.

He bent his head and kissed her, taking one of those breathless moans into his mouth. She tasted exactly the way he’d thought she would, so sweet. No, she tasted even better, and now he was hungry. Starving.

He kissed her deeper, hotter, and she let him, arching against his hand as he teased the taut peak of her breast, and then kissing him back. She was unpractised, but that only added to the sweetness, and when she squeezed him again, slightly harder, the last trace of rational thought left his head.

There was only one thing he wanted now. Only one.

He wanted to be inside her and as quickly as possible.

Nell had no idea how it had happened. How she’d got herself to this point, her dressing gown open, pressed up against a door as the world’s most incredible man cupped her bare breast, turning her into a starving beast. But, however it had happened, she didn’t care.

She should be resting and nursing her head, yet all that pain had vanished, lost under the onslaught of the most overwhelming tide of pleasure. She’d never dreamed her body would be capable of this, and yet she couldn’t deny what she felt now. It was glorious.

Aristophanes Katsaros was better than any drug.

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