Page 150 of Modern Romance Collection February 2025, 5-8

‘I can’t!’ she cried in frustration as the sensations continued to drive her wild.

‘You can. We’re doing this together. Relax... I am very good at this.’

‘You’re so arrogant,’ she said, biting his lip a little too hard.

He bared his teeth in a provocative smile, running his tongue over the pinpricks of blood. ‘And don’t you love that about me?’

‘Yes!’ she groaned out. She loved everything about him.

‘Your voice is so sexy it hurts,’ he crooned huskily. ‘Now, wrap your legs around me.’

She did, her fingers tightening on his shoulders as she felt the imprint of his erection first against her lower belly and then, as he kissed her, lower still.

The external friction was exquisite and frustrating in equal measure.

‘God, youaregood at this.’

‘Just relax,’ he breathed, fighting the overwhelming urge to thrust into her. ‘Let me do this...stay with me...’

She tensed a little as she felt his first intrusion, but quickly relaxed, sinking into herself as he entered her slowly. She took a little more of him with each thrust, until he slid a hand under her bottom and lifted her hips to take him fully.

She had never imagined anything could feel this way. She had never imagined the sheer, intense excitement of him inside her, the pleasure building and building, the sensation growing more intense until suddenly she wasn’t staying with him. She felt as if she was losing herself. And then, just when she could not bear it, she was whole again, and the dam inside her broke, releasing wave after wave of toe-tingling pleasure.

She was conscious at some level of a feral groan as he sank heavy and hot against her...

Joaquin looked at her, marvelling at how anyone who looked so fragile could be so fierce and so strong. He waited for the post-coital sense of dissatisfaction to hit him. It didn’t. And as he looked at her lovely flushed face he was conscious of a surge of possessiveness he’d never experienced before. But then he had never slept with a virgin before...

He rolled onto his side and pulled her across him until her head lay on his chest.

They lay there, the sweat on their skin cooling. And lying there naked, with the most beautiful man on earth, Clemmie thought she’d feel self-conscious—but she didn’t. She just felt a glow and a sense ofrightness.

‘We don’t want to fall asleep here,’ said Joaquin.

‘It sounds like a good plan to me.’

He laughed as she attempted to burrow into him. ‘I think we should make it to the bed this time.’

Her head lifted. ‘This time?’

‘This time. Next time we’ll play it by ear.’

Laughing at her expression, he thought he couldn’t remember the last time he’d laughed in bed with a woman, or even smiled. It had all become a purely mechanical exercise, he realised.

He slid out from under her and stood there holding out his hand. She took it, marvelling at his lack of self-consciousness.

‘I can walk, you know,’ she said without much enthusiasm. It was not an unpleasant sensation to be lifted into the arms of a naked sex god.

‘Humour me,’ he suggested as he strode off, Clemmie in his arms, through to the house, where the only sound was their combined heartbeats, the tick of a clock and the odd creaking floorboard.

Joaquin was just about to fall asleep when he heard a phone. He glanced at the time and grimaced. The sound of a soft grunt beside him came as a shock. He reached out and felt a warm, squirming body next to him, and he felt something that came close to sleepy contentment despite the screaming phone.

It took Clemmie a few seconds before she came fully awake too. With a gasp, she slid out from under his heavy arm and, rolling onto her side, reached for her phone.

He watched her dropping it. He lay back with a sigh. The view of her bottom, the dip of her narrow waist and the smooth elegant curve of her back was a good way to start the day—and itwasday. The sun was filtering in through a gap in the heavy drapes, casting a pool of light close to her head, sparking fiery lights in her hair.

‘Let me.’

He pushed up against her back, leaning over her to grab the phone and hand it to her before settling back, his face pressed to her neck and his body pressed hard against hers.

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