Page 146 of Modern Romance January 2025 1-4

She shivered. Had he done that for her?

As if reading her thoughts, he said, ‘Whenever I am on the island, it is monitored. Even before I was a prince, I held the kind of net worth that might make me a target. It seemed a sensible precaution to take. Now it is doubly so.’

‘Yes,’ she said, feeling the pepper grinder in her hand, running her fingertips over the smoothness.

‘Though I’m glad to see you armed yourself for potential danger,’ he drawled. ‘And even more glad that you didn’t use it against me.’

Her lips twisted in a self-deprecating grimace. ‘It’s just a pepper grinder. I doubt it would have inflicted much damage.’

‘It’s heavy and easy to wield. You did well.’

Her stomach swooped at the casually delivered praise. They were standing so close together, she could feel his warmth and solid body and all of her was on fire with how much she responded to him.

She swallowed past a throat that was thick, and turned to look back down the corridor, towards the kitchen. ‘I just made a pot of coffee, if you want one?’

He lifted his hand as though he couldn’t help himself, his fingers curving around her cheek, so her eyes fluttered shut; the sensations were too overwhelming to add sight into the mix.

‘Sure,’ he said, but his thumb swiped across her lower lip and Rosie’s insides tightened with a sparkling of desire that threatened to burn her from the inside out. ‘But I might take a shower first.’

His thumb lingered in the centre of her lip. She resisted the urge—but only just—to lightly bite down on it.

‘Care to join me?’

Water rained over them, plastering Rosie’s fine gold hair to her face—making her look somehow even more beautiful, highlighting how fine her features were. She reminded him of a mythical creature, one of the fairies he remembered his mother telling him about, that as a girl she’d believed existed in the forests to the east of the country.

He found it impossible not to touch her. Being in the shower together, covered in droplets, her body was so tempting, and so close. His fingers traced lines over her arms, then found her breasts, circling her nipples, before running lower, to her hips.

She gasped as he gripped her on either side, her eyes startling to his, her head tilting, so it would have been a sin not to kiss her. Water doused them as he claimed her mouth, his body pressing to hers now so she was hard against the tiles, and he could wedge one knee between her legs. Rosie cried out, moving her hips, as if to satiate herself there, and he grinned against her mouth, the pleasure from her delirium almost unmatched.

He had no protection, and having not resolved the issue of pregnancy, he knew they couldn’t be together here, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t have fun. What had started as a spur-of-the-moment offer for her to join him had morphed into the white-hot desperate need that always flamed between them the moment he’d touched her. Or had she touched him first? A tentative hand, lifting to his chest, her eyes trained on the gesture. Yes, she’d touched him, almost as if she didn’t dare, and her uncertainty had broken something inside of him, some last vestige of control, so he’d sought to explore every piece of her, to feel her anew. And now this. Unmistakably, unsurprisingly, the culmination of any time they seemed to give in to this, there was an overwhelming need, building to a crescendo that simply had to be met.

He cursed inwardly, moving his hand between her legs, finding the part of her that offered satisfaction and teasing it at first, kissing her languidly, enjoying her rapturous little moans issued against him, her fingernails digging into his shoulders. Moans turned to pleas, and her head tilted back removing her lips, and he moved faster, glad they weren’t kissing, because watching her climax was one of the most beautiful things he’d seen in his life. Her whole face seemed to glow when she cried out on a wave of euphoria. He smiled slowly, his hand still between her legs, even after her frenzy had slowed and she was looking at him again completely dazed and confused by why this kept happening.

‘Better?’ he asked, arching a brow.

Her gaze skimmed his face, something shifting in the depths of her eyes that he didn’t understand, reminding him a little of the five months they’d spent married—and estranged—and how little he’d understood her. He hadn’t known that beneath that buttoned-up exterior was a wild, passionate woman. He’d seen her as money-grubbing, social climbing, someone who had done all they could to ingratiate themselves with the king for their own personal gain.

He’d been wrong about her.

The thought was as surprising to him as this sexual chemistry; he pushed it aside. He’d been wrong in some ways, but that didn’t change the fact that her loyalty lay with the king, and the king was not a man Sebastian could trust. Ever.

‘For me, a little.’ Her fingers lifted to his chest, tracing the droplets of water down the central line of his abdomen, stalling a little where his dark hair thickened at the top of his arousal. ‘But not for you.’

His smile was tight. ‘Unless you can see a condom somewhere...’

Her cheeks flushed pink, and she hesitated before speaking. ‘I can’t see one, but I suspect there’s one available?’

Pleasure burst through him. At her wanting him. At her feeling confident to tell him she wanted him. At the prospect of being with her. ‘Hold that thought,’ he promised with a darkness to his voice that was at odds with the relief he was experiencing. He strode from the shower completely uncaring for the pools of water he left in his wake.

Mere moments later, like a moth to a flame, he returned to her, sheathing himself as he stepped past the glass wall, reaching for Rosie immediately afterwards. She came as he reached—it was just like that. An echo of one movement creating a wave of another. Her skin was so soft, reminding him of rose petals in the early morning dew. He lifted her even as she seemed to almost climb his body, her legs wrapping around his waist, her back against the tiles, so he could enter her and support her on the wall, his frame shuddering with relief as he felt her muscles tighten around his length, welcoming him back. All of him, buried so deep inside of her, and yet they both moved with a desperation that spoke of needing more. Somewhere in the back of his mind it occurred to him that he might never get enough of this. That if he had a billion days on this planet, and could spend them doing this with his wife, it might never be enough.

Ridiculous.

He dismissed any idea of a billion days, or even the next day, and focused instead on the delightful, intoxicating here and now...

CHAPTER TEN

ROSIE’SCOFFEEWAScold when she was reunited with it, but what did that matter? She could easily make more coffee. It had been so completely worth it for that. Her cheeks flushed as she replayed how they’d spent the last hour—in the shower, fast and desperate, and then in his bedroom, wet and uncaring, slow and languid, an exploration that had left her breathless for how thorough they’d been. When he’d caught her hands and pinned them above her head with one of his much larger hands, she’d felt imprisoned for his pleasure, and hers, in a way that had seemed to melt her spine.

---