Page 90 of Modern Romance November 2024 5-8

It was creepy, and the candelabra was so heavy. And then it puffed out, so she left it on the first turn.

What if she was wrong?

She persisted on the slim chance that she was right.

She climbed up, ever up, and then she came to a door. Pushing it open, she came to a platform with four small arched windows and the whole of Janana stretched out below...

‘Hey!’

He startled her. She was breathless from the climb.

‘You...’ she gasped, and then his arms were around her waist, as he held her from behind. ‘I’m sorry if I said the wrong thing back there.’

‘Stop,’ he told her, lifting her hair, his hands on her breasts, naked beneath the sapphire gown. ‘I’ve been thinking of you.’

His mouth was hot on her neck, his hands rough, pinching her nipples. And then his hot palms smoothed over her breasts, making her ache for the fabric to dissolve, so much... He was slipping a hand in the neckline. Only it was too high...

His growl was impatient as he dropped contact, and then took her wrist to guide her back to the stairwell.

‘What if we get caught?’ she asked.

‘We won’t if we’re quiet.’

‘But...’

His jaw gritted, and he looked at her, and she saw the glint in the eyes of a man who did not want to sneak like a thief in his home, even if it was a palace.

She watched him walk to the door she’d just come through, and he lifted the latch on the heavy bolt. She heard the scrape of it closing.

‘It’s just us,’ he said.

She smiled.

The moon was behind her and she could see her own shadow on the stone wall. She stood, aroused, flushed and breathless, as he approached.

He gathered her into him, his body a wedge of muscle. His tongue prised open her mouth, and she kissed him back with all her might.

‘I thought...’

She was panting, on the edge of crying at the final bliss of this day, at how she’d thought she’d be on her way home.

‘We can’t last,’ she said, as his hands clasped her bottom. ‘I know that.’

She was frantic. His hands had pulled up the velvet material and she could feel the cold night air on her bottom as she searched for the opening in his robe.

‘Sahir...’

She did not know it could be this urgent—that she would choose a cold stone stairwell to be devoured in, rather than be made love to under a starry sky.

Their mouths were one...his hands were still on her bottom, pressing in and then stroking.

‘Take me...’ she said, and he lifted her. ‘Ow,’ she said, for the muscles of her inner thighs were too taut to stretch.

And yet they did so, because she ordered them to, wrapping her legs around him, sobbing as he smoothly entered her. Her back was to the wall and he was wild, tearing the front of the sapphire robe. His mouth was hot on her breast, and then he moved it back to her lips. That was foreplay, and all she required.

‘I want to...’ She held on to him. She wanted to stay. She did not want to be sent home. She was sobbing as he took her.

‘Sahir...’

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