Page 164 of Modern Romance Collection February 2025, 1-4

He felt his eyes drift over Siena’s face. Memory came, infusing the present with the past.

The dangerous past.

Theverydangerous past.

The past that had brought him to this very moment, sitting opposite her in this Devonshire hotel, late in the evening, after a leisurely dinner, comfortable and replete, his appetites sated.

Except for one appetite.

An appetite he could feel rising within him. Welling up in him, reaching out into his limbs, his whole body.

He let his gaze rest on her. The dress she was wearing, which she’d told him she’d bought in a charity shop, might not be a designer number like the one she’d worn that night at the Falcone, but it was every bit as effective. With a scooped neckline and cap sleeves, worn with a lacy wrap around her shoulders, it had a blue floral print that brought out the haunting colour of her deep-set eyes, the long lashes dipping on her silky skin. She’d left her hair loose, fastened at each side with a small clip, exposing the tender lobes of her ears.

He took another slow mouthful of apple brandy, letting it warm his blood. His eyelids drooped, his gaze resting on her as he leant back in his chair, fingers curved around his glass.

Looking at her...

Desiring her...

He should not let himself...should not indulge himself. Should straighten, look away, make some anodyne remark to break the moment.

But he did not.

He tried to think of all the reasons why he should keep his guard high—all the reasons that had pressed upon him every time he’d caught himself looking at her, remembering that searing night he’d spent with her. They were good reasons—he knew they were. His brain knew them at any rate.

Because the situation between us is complicated—uncertain—unprecedented. Because so much is at stake and I have to tread carefully, watching each step.

But right now he didn’t want to think of all that. He wanted only to go on doing what he was doing, letting his gaze rest on her, absorb her, linger on her...

His gaze dipped to her neckline. It was hardly a dramatic decolletage, but for all that it shaped the swell of her breasts...breasts that were now more generous. His eyes narrowed infinitesimally as he took another slow, leisurely mouthful of the potent apple brandy. Her whole body was more generous too, rounding and ripening. Making her even more beautiful than ever...

He felt desire rise within him, quicken in his heated blood.

She swallowed her truffle, opened her eyes.

Looked straight into his...

CHAPTER TEN

WEAKNESSWASHEDTHROUGHHER. It was as if every bone in her body were dissolving...as if the room around them were vanishing...the whole world vanishing...evaporating...and all that existed was Vincenzo’s gaze on her...consuming her.

Memory flared, hot and instant, sending colour coursing into her cheeks, then draining it from them just as swiftly.

He had looked at her like that before, with those long-lashed, hooded eyes of his, so dark, so impenetrable, yet with an open message in them that had made her very bones, then as now, dissolve... He’d looked at her as they had finally finished dinner that night at the Falcone,knowingthere was only one way the evening was going to end...and that end was coming. Coming as he had got to his feet, his eyes never leaving her, their sensual glance weakening her, so that when he’d held out his hand to her she had put hers into his, and he’d drawn her to her feet, and she had gone with him...

And now it was happening again...

She felt the fatal weakness wash through her, more dissolving still...

She must fight it. Surely she must give it no room, no space. She must deny it...resist it. Because how could she not? How could she let happen again what had happened before? She must reject it...find the strength to do so.

But she had no strength—none...

His lidded gaze was on her still, holding hers, and heat flushed through her still. She was helpless to pull her eyes away. Quite helpless...

A voice beside her spoke. ‘May I offer you some coffee?’

It was one of the waitresses, coffee jug in hand, smiling politely at her.

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