Page 223 of Modern Romance November 2024 5-8

The cold fear broke free and grabbed at his throat.

He took a long breath. Parked the fear. Forced himself to think logically. Panicking did not help anyone. He’d learned that the hard way.

First things first. Painkillers and water.

As docile as a newborn lamb, she let him feed them to her.

Clenching his jaw, he breathed in deeply then said, ‘Victoria, you need to take your sweater off.’ And everything else. He didn’t need Dr Internet to tell him she was overheating.

There was the slightest movement of her head against the crook of his neck.

‘Can you lift your arms for me?’

She could barely raise her hands to her elbows.

There was nothing else for it. He would have to do it himself.

‘We need to cool you down,’ he said in what he hoped was a conversational tone as he manipulated her arms out of the sweater’s sleeves whilst keeping her secure against him. ‘Lift your head for me.’ Her feeble attempt at this fortified him. Somewhere in Victoria’s delirious mind she knew he was helping her and was trying to express her consent.

Refusing to let his mind return to the last time he’d held another helpless, overheating human being, he kept a tight hold of her burning body and used his left hand to pull the sweater over her head.

Although he knew to expect it, it still made his chest sharpen to find her fevered skin drenched with perspiration. Her soaked vest top clung to her.

Don’t debate it, just do it, he told himself firmly. A minute later, the vest was off and discarded with the sweater. A quick pinch of the fastenings and a skim down her arms and her wet bra was removed too. He didn’t even look at it as he threw it on the pile.

Manoeuvring her to the other, dry side, of the bed, resolutely refusing to acknowledge the weighty bare breast pressed against his biceps, he laid her back down, then quickly pulled off his T-shirt and covered her torso with it to protect both her modesty and his eyes.

‘Nearly there,’ he said. ‘Just your jeans now.’

She mumbled something. A hand fluttered to the button and groped ineffectually at it before flopping back to her side.

‘It is okay, I’ve got this,’ he assured her.

Mindset fixed on the job in hand, Marcello unbuttoned the jeans, pulled the zip down then tugged at them. He couldn’t get them or the tights—tights? Was wearing tights beneath jeans even a thing?—past her hips. ‘See, now you know why I work out,’ he told her as he slid a hand under her bottom and lifted it so he could ease the jeans and tights down to her thighs. ‘It is in case a member of my staff is incapacitated by a virus and needs my superhero strength to undress them.’

He needed to keep talking, for both their sakes, and as he pulled the damp jeans and wet tights down her legs, using every ounce of his resolve not to look at the scrap of black cotton covering her pubis, the one item of clothing he would not under any circumstances touch, he kept the chatter going. He hoped like hell that she could hear him and was comforted and reassured by it.

Her jeans became stuck at the ankles, preventing him pulling them or the tights over her feet. Damn it, she was wearing socks over the tights! No wonder she was burning like a furnace.

A minute of intense concentration later and the jeans, tights and socks were all removed.

‘I am going to get you...’

His intention of telling her he was going to get a cold cloth to wipe her face died on his tongue.

While he’d been removing the last of Victoria’s clothing, she’d pulled the T-shirt off her chest. Unprepared, he had nothing to stop his gaze filling with her semi-naked form. Nothing to stop the curvaceous body he’d spent eighteen months pretending was as ordinary as any other body from soaking straight into his retinas.

Victoria opened her eyes. Sharp pain filled them. Her room was in darkness.

Not her room, she remembered through the pneumatic drill pounding in her head. One of Marcello’s guest rooms.

She’d dreamed she was in Dante’sInferno.

She needed to use the bathroom. She reached through her befuddled brain for where it was. All the rooms in the apartment had an en suite, all situated on the opposite side of the room to the bed. She tried to sit up. A pain lanced her head, so sharp she cried out and flumped back onto her pillow.

‘Victoria?’

Marcello?

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