Page 119 of Modern Romance Collection February 2025, 1-4

She’d wanted to move away—there had been no reason not to. But she’d seemed quite paralysed.

He’d given a slight nod. ‘It’s quite a crush, isn’t it?’ he’d said.

Again, she’d heard an accent in his voice—an accent, she’d realised, that went with his Mediterranean skin tone. And there had been something about him—maybe the cut of his tuxedo, or the groomed style of his hair, or just that cosmopolitan air... She’d given a silent gulp. Or maybe it had been the fact that he had openly let those dark, deep eyes rest on her in a way that drove yet more air from her lungs.

‘Yes, it is,’ she’d heard herself reply.

‘There’s more space over by the French windows,’ he’d said.

He’d gestured with his hand—an elegant, effortless movement which had let Siena see that he was also holding a glass of champagne.

She’d moved in that direction, and realised he was moving as well.

‘Definitely better,’ he’d said. And smiled at her.

And the air which had just begun to creep back into her lungs had vanished again...

After that it was almost a blur—and yet every moment was crystal-clear.

He’d asked her name, and told her his own, and then asked if she’d ever been to the city she’d been named after. She’d said she’d never been to Italy, and asked where he came from...

And then, at some point—and she didn’t really know why, or when, or how—she had been walking into the Falcone restaurant with him, trying to move gracefully on her towering high heels. And then, when he’d wined her and dined her, she’d found—though she didn’t really know how—that he was ushering her into one of the elevators and she was going up to his room...

How, she might not have known...butwhy, she burningly did...

She felt her face flare now, even as the rest of her body, naked and bare, grew cold.

Because she had never, in all her six and twenty years, met anyone like him before...anyone who had had the slightest measure of his impact on her—raw, visceral...sensual...

Making her pulse throb, her pupils dilate, her breath catch with an overpowering awareness of his physical appeal—an irresistible appeal...

So she had not.

She had not resisted him.

Because I could not resist him. Because he only had to look at me the way he did, with those heavy-lidded eyes that seemed to be turning me inside out and outside in, melting me down to the core...

Desire—that was what it had been. A sensual white-out...

She felt her cheeks flare again with the memory of it. Never in her life had she done what she had done last night—but then never in her life had she ever encountered a man like that. A man she had been completely, totally enthralled by. Helpless to resist...

Resistance had been the very last thing she’d wanted to impose on herself. Instead, she had given herself, all-consumingly, urgently, to all that he skilfully, seductively, meltingly aroused in her, from his first sensuous kiss to the moment of hungry, almost unbearable pleasure that had flooded her body as it had fused with his, pulsing through her, wave after incredible wave, as her body had arched beneath his, her head thrown back, crying out aloud...

Again, and again, and again...

All night long.

And now...

Now there was no more heat—only a chill spreading through her that was not just physical...

He was gone.

After their night together—afterthatnight together—he was just...gone.

The chill turned to cold. Filled her veins.

CHAPTER TWO

---