Page 131 of Modern Romance Collection February 2025, 5-8

I am Clemmie, short for Clementine—my mum couldn’t stop eating them when she was pregnant. Who are you?

If she’d said it out loud he would have been justified in thinking she had lost her mind—and maybe she had? Bombarded by his overwhelming maleness at a cellular level, she quivered—and drew in a sharp breath as he dragged his knuckles gently across the softness of her cheek, making a detour around a bruise. The contact felt like raw electricity prickling along her nerve-endings, disconnecting her body from her brain.

The attraction of not being in control had always eluded Clemmie. She considered it a form of insanity, and it was scary to know that at this moment she was on the brink of embracing that particular form of insanity. But there was another part of her that wanted to retreat behind the safe security of her emotional excess filter.

Her nostrils quivered as she breathed in the scent of him greedily. Her eyelashes fluttered like trapped butterflies against the curve of her cheek as she put a fight against the sensory overload.

‘I wasn’t... I’m not...’ she protested weakly, forcing the words past the aching occlusion in her throat. Her attempt at a laugh failed on every level, emerging as a strangled croak. ‘I have a concussion...’ she reminded him.

The glitter in his eyes damped down a few degrees. ‘I thought they gave you a clean bill of health?’

The concern in his voice wrapped inside its interrogative harshness was at some level even more dangerous to her state of mind than the idea that he was going to kiss her... It made her ache for something and she didn’t know what she yearned for.

‘They did,’ she admitted, fighting a sudden strong urge to burst into tears.

‘Truth? Or is this you being stoic?’ he asked, sounding scornful of this tendency.

‘I’m fine...a bit sore. I don’t even have a headache.’ She sketched a smile. ‘But the day isn’t over yet.’

‘So, you were suggesting that I have a problem?’ he framed, and a mixture of hauteur and amusement quivered across his firm, fascinating lips.

Clemmie was rapidly ditching that particular theory.

She had always been aware of the inherent sensuality he possessed...the aura of maleness he exuded. You’d have to be dead not to. But it wasn’t until this moment that she realised she had never experienced its full force—only a dilutedjust friendsversion.

She had been shielded. And now she wasn’t. It was as if someone had just opened the door on a flaming furnace. She was no longer warm, but burning.

‘You’re right,’ he murmured. ‘I do have a problem. I have a very big problem.’

His devilish white grin flashed and she could feel the warmth of his breath on her cheek as he leaned down.

‘But not the one you are talking about...’

He had been shifting his stance in slow increments as he spoke, moving closer, and he was close enough now for her to feel not just the heat of his lean, hard body but the quivering tension that was coming off him in waves, making her think of a stallion being held back at the starting line, all hard sinew and rippling muscles, strength and power restrained—just.

The perfect symmetry of his face, its slashing angles and hollows, all blurred as she was hit by a wave of dizziness. She could hear her heartbeat in her ears, its dull pounding like waves crashing and retreating onto a rocky shore, an elemental sound she had always found soothing.

Except Clemmie didn’t feel soothed.

She felt out of her skin, simultaneously excited and scared.

His fierce, blatantly carnal smile sent her insides into meltdown. Her heart continued to hammer. Her legs felt as though they did not belong to her.

‘Point p-proved...’ she stuttered out.

‘What point would that be?’

She shook her head. She had never seen that look of hard intent on his face before. A look that stretched the golden skin tight across his perfect bones and emphasised the sharp carved angles.

Joaquin didn’t need to prove a thing. This was not about his fractured ego. It was about need. The sort of need that for the first time in his life sidestepped logic. The tabloid frenzy that frequently surrounded his love life made him the first to admit that love had nothing to do with it! But he was not indiscriminate. Aside from natural lust, there was always an element of cold logic to his choice of partners.

His parents’ marriage, and the total lack of honesty involved, had given him a pathological loathing of hypocrisy and keeping up appearances. Even less cynically based marriages seemed to him ultimately to become prisons as the chemistry that had brought two people together faded, all too frequently turned to bitterness and dislike or even—in many ways worse—indifference.

He had never bedded a woman who expected more than he was willing to give. They didn’t want a piece of him. They were not interested in what made him tick. They wanted sex and the boost to their profile that being seen with him would give them.

He could see the logic of that and even admire it.

Clemmie belonged to a different part of his life. Their shared past was not something that could be replicated. The onlyhonourablething he had ever done in his life was not acknowledging the physical attraction between them, let alone following through with it. It had been his way of protecting her and preserving their friendship.

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