Page 139 of Modern Romance Collection February 2025, 5-8

‘It’s never nice, making a total fool of yourself. When I think back to the things I said...’ She screwed up her eyes and winced. ‘You know that nightmare about being in a supermarket in your undies and not the good set, the mismatched greying bra and knickers? Times that by a billion.’

‘I have no matching set of any colour, and I see no reason you should feel...vulnerable.’

‘You are joking!’ She snorted. ‘How did things get so complicated?’ she despaired.

She lifted a hand to her lips, which still hadn’t lost the tingle left by his mouth.

‘Sex,’ she said.

‘I’m not talking about sex.’

The patronising edge to his smile made her want to swat at him for real.

‘Sex is not complicated, it is as basic as breathing,’ he observed, staring at her mouth.

‘Don’t look at me like that.’

‘I can’tnotlook at you like that,’ he said.

The devastatingly simple statement drew a sound of protest from her lips.

‘You wanted the truth,’ he reminded her. ‘Doesn’t mean you’ll like it.’

It was beyond disorientating to have Joaquin talking about sex in this way to her.

‘I wish I could go back.’ She paused, took a breath, and lifted her eyes to his. ‘I wish everything could go back to normal.’

With a despairing shake of her head, she threw herself down into one of the very uncomfortable armchairs that were set beside the window embrasure. She let her head drop and her hair fell like a flaming curtain against the ugly tapestry upholstery.

‘To when, precisely?’ he asked, staring at the exposed length of her pale throat, remembering how she had tasted. How she had smelt.

The strength of primal need to possess her was something he had never experienced in his life before. It was insane—a form of insanity that was pure Clemmie—but maybe that was why? He’d spent years thinking of her asjustClemmie,and now she had stepped outside the box in his head and become not ‘just Clemmie’ but a warm and incredibly desirable sexual woman.

He thought of the untapped passion in her.

Playing the part of her fiancé had felt a good fit, and he had found himself envying the man who would truly earn that title. The idea of anyone but him unlocking that passion felt like a dark cloud over his head.

His stare had the hallmarks of compulsion as he watched her shake her head, before straightening with a little wince. She drew her knees up, rocking on her behind as she pushed her fingers into her hair, cautious around the wound. Slim and pale, they instantly vanished into the fiery mesh.

Clemmie held her tongue. But she knew exactly when she wanted to go back to—the moment in the car when she had related her retrieved memories, the ones that revealed she had lusted after him.

She sighed. Shedidlust after him.

That was the moment it had all started to unravel and the nice, neat lines around their relationship had become a maze where one misstep could take you off the edge of a cliff.

‘What a mess,’ she said.

His broad shoulders lifted in an expressive shrug as he studied her downcast features. ‘Looking backwards and wishing is not a very practical use of our time. How about we move forward? Accept this as the new normal?’

He made it sound so easy—but then it probably was for him, she thought, refreshing her resentment as she thought of the way he had just switched off the heat of that kiss like flicking a switch, while she had been left a bundle of frustrated, lustful longing.

‘Do you want me to ring your mother back and tell her the truth?’

‘She started it—you finished it. You wanted to teach her a lesson.’

She grimaced, but felt relieved. ‘I suppose so.’

‘I’ve frequently felt that way, but I’ve never quite... That was inspired,’ he observed as he savoured the memory, Clemmie mad and fired up was better than any firework display. ‘I’d love to see the family’s faces if we did rock up for real, all loved up.’

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