Page 248 of Modern Romance November 2024 5-8

The first thing Victoria did when she woke the next morning was look out of the bedroom window. There had been another flurry of snow overnight but nothing to write home about. Nothing that promised another shutdown of Manhattan.

This time tomorrow, they would be in their office on the sixtieth floor of the skyscraper the Guardiola Group occupied, preparing for the scheduled board meeting.

Their short but beautifully hedonistic and sweet affair would be over.

She couldn’t even begin to think about how she was going to cope.

Slipping her arms into Marcello’s robe, she set off to find him.

She didn’t have far to go. Her early bird was in his home office answering emails, wearing only a pair of boxer shorts.

His face turned to hers and lit into the dazzling smile he always greeted her with. She’d never noticed how heartbreaking it was before.

Pulling her onto his lap, he kissed her deeply, hands already breaking through the sash of the robe to roam over her body.

‘Dio, I thought you would never wake up,’ he murmured, burying his face between her breasts and manipulating her so she straddled him. His hardness pressed right at the centre point of her own arousal, feeding a hunger that had sprung from nothing but his first touch. If he didn’t have the barrier of his boxers, he’d be inside her already.

‘Did you bring a condom?’ he asked with a groan, sucking deeply on her nipple and thrusting upwards.

Holding his head to keep him exactly where he was, rocking against him, she managed to gasp a, ‘No...’ at the exact moment movement from the main living area below caught her attention.

In utter horror, Victoria watched a member of the cleaning crew drag a vacuum cleaner across the room, but it took seconds before what her eyes were seeing connected with her body, and she scrambled off his lap, frantically tying the robe back together to cover her nakedness.

Marcello followed Victoria’s flame-faced stare, laughed a curse and muttered, ‘I need to buy a new apartment.’

Oblivious to what she’d disturbed on the overhang above her, the cleaner plugged the vacuum in just as Christina joined her from the kitchen door. She, too, was oblivious to them. That didn’t stop Victoria shrinking even further back.

‘They wouldn’t have seen us,’ he assured her.

‘Yes, they would. Your balustrade is glass.’

‘Tempered glass,’ he corrected.

‘Well, that makes all the difference.’

Amused at her unnecessary embarrassment, he reached for her hand. She dodged out of his reach.

‘I don’t want Christina to see me like this,’ she hissed.

‘Like what?’

She patted the robe. ‘Likethis.’

‘Victoria, you spoke to her just last night.’ The two women had had a long discussion about their respective illnesses.

‘I was wearing my own clothes then—’

‘Clothes she laundered for you,’ he pointed out.

‘Because she knows I’ve been ill!’

‘She knows we are currently lovers.’

If he’d thought she was embarrassed before, that was nothing to the colour her face turned now.

‘She’s not blind,bella.’ Or deaf, something he failed to add in case Victoria took it on herself to dive out of the window and into the snowdrift still piled high against the side of the building to cool her flaming face off in.

‘That doesn’t mean I want her to see me wearing your robe!’ she spluttered, before turning on her bare heel and fleeing back to the bedroom.

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