Page 18 of Modern Romance Collection February 2025, 5-8

She was in bed, waiting.

A siren.

He swallowed.

No, certainly not that. A siren would have removed those pyjamas and been lying there, artfully posed, with all her delightfully naked flesh on display, while all he could see of Kelly was the spill of red hair over those cherry-covered shoulders. Yet that didn’t seem to matter. His stomach curled as he acknowledged the blatant temptation she exuded, propped up against a bank of white pillows, looking impossibly tiny in the four-poster bed.

‘You left your light on,’ he observed softly.

‘That’s right,’ she said, but he noticed that her voice sounded a little shaky.

‘You’ve still got time to change your mind.’

‘Will you only be convinced if I hold up a placard saying,yes, please?’

With a powerful beat of anticipation, he walked over to the bed and sat down on the edge, idly lifting a handful of bright curls and letting them fall again so that they caught the light from the lamp like a flame. Slowly, he traced his finger along the line of her jaw and the quivering curve of her lips and felt her breathing quicken. He took his time before he bent his head to kiss her, for as long as it took her to dissolve all over again, which wasn’t long. Within seconds she was moving restlessly in his arms, running her fingers frantically through his hair, and he felt his groin grow even harder. Disbelievingly, he shook his head. Had he ever been this hard before?

With a groan he disentangled her arms and stood up so that he could begin to undress and this, too, was different. He had undressed before countless women in the past, usually to murmurs of approval or very graphic descriptions about the generous dimensions of his manhood. But never had he been so painfully aware of his audience. He wanted to tell her to stop looking at him like that, with that curious mixture of hunger and shyness, as he carefully slid the zip down over his aching hardness. Was that how she operated in the bedroom? he wondered with a grim kind of resentment. Providing her lovers with the ultimate fantasy of innocence and experience in order to turn them on? If that were the case, it was certainly working.

Climbing into bed, he pulled her against him and her lips sought his almost clumsily as he began to remove her pyjamas. Yet for once he was clumsy, too. There was none of his usual finesse as he roughly dealt with the offending garments and threw them to the floor. Not that she seemed to mind. Or even to notice. Her attention was focussed totally on him. She was all soft and responsive flesh, moaning a little as his thumb circled each nipple and moaning some more as he slid his hand between her legs.

‘You’re going to need to keep the noise down,’ he warned her softly as he stroked the firm silk of her thigh.

‘I will,’ she whispered.

He found the liquid heart of her. Began to beat a steady rhythm against her molten skin. Saw her bite down on her lip as he felt a rush of honeyed heat against his fingertips. Suddenly she was writhing her hips with urgent and purposeful frustration and when he glanced down at her face and saw what was about to happen, he had to claim her lips in a crushing kiss to quieten her. He felt her spasm around his finger, over and over again, her little bleats of fulfilment absorbed by the pressure of his mouth, until finally she grew still.

In the apricot lamplight he could see two flares of colour arrowing her high cheekbones as she slumped back against the pillows. ‘Oh,’ she whispered, her eyes wide and dazed as she stared up at him. ‘That was…’

‘Quick?’ he murmured.

She nodded. ‘Did you…mind?’

‘Your enthusiasm is…refreshing,’ he observed cryptically.

It was a remark he had never made within the bedroom before and it appeared to have given her the green light because suddenly she came at him like a little dynamo, kissing his nose, his eyelids and jaw and softly nipping his earlobes in a display of what felt almost likegratitude. Her unconstrained zeal was wildly arousing but Romano knew he needed to take command. If she didn’t slow down and continued to move against him like that, there would be consequences and he was a man who always prided himself on his pace and performance.

He reached for a condom, but after he’d stroked on the protection, she climbed on top of him and suddenly his control was slipping away. The warm, sweet weight of her was irresistible. Her breasts were swaying against his skin as he curved his fingers possessively over the pert silken globes of her buttocks and suddenly he was rocked by the urgent need to possess her.

‘Kelly,’ he groaned.

‘What?’

‘You’re so…’ But for once he was lost for words.

‘So are you,’ she whispered back, using that same erotic verbal shorthand as she stroked her fingertips over his back.

He had intended to flip her over so that he could drive deep inside her—demonstrating his preferred position of dominance—but his swollen tip was so tantalisingly close to her wet folds that he found himself edging inside her. He swallowed, compelled by an urgent need to possess her. He just couldn’t stop himself.

But something else could.

Romano wasn’t sure exactly when he realised.

When he met that first resistance, or when she gave a tiny yelp of pain?

It was heaven to be inside her, but hell to realise the significance of that small cry. He tried to withdraw but by then he was too far gone. He lifted his head to kiss her and slowed his movements down, so that her body could learn to accommodate his, and once she had relaxed, he filled her completely. With a fierce and primeval need he moved inside her molten heat, aware of the encroaching sensation of something he couldn’t define. Something he’d never experienced before.

Was it because she felt so tight that this felt so overwhelming, or because for so long it had formed the basis of his most forbidden fantasy? Suddenly he realised that for the first time in his life he wasn’t going to be able to wait for her. That he was powerless to stop himself coming and it was happening now. He was falling from a great height. He wasout of control. His seed was being torn from a body which felt as if it were being splintered into a million pieces, and Romano choked out his shattered disbelief as he orgasmed.

---