Page 214 of Modern Romance Collection February 2025, 1-4

And it still hadn’t been good enough for him.

The thought was snide, stealing through his brain, but he shoved it aside. Then he let go of her and stepped back, because maybe, after all, he didn’t want to know what kind of man she thought he was.

‘Don’t answer that,’ he said smoothly. ‘And I should leave. You’re a pretty thing, but I’ve already had everything you have to offer. I don’t need to revisit it.’

It was a cruel thing to say, but he had to put some distance between them. She also needed to know that he wouldn’t allow anyone to have power over him that he didn’t grant them. And the only thing he’d granted her was that she could stay here. He hadn’t given anything up.

He thought she would back away, thought that she would be hurt, and he’d intended both. Except she didn’t back away and it wasn’t hurt that glittered in her eyes, but anger.

‘Is that right?’ She reached down to the tie of her dress and casually pulled it. ‘I suppose you won’t care about a reminder, then.’

The fabric fell slowly open, revealing the fact that she was wearing nothing underneath it. Not a stitch. Only warm golden skin, pink nipples and the sweetest thatch of golden curls between her thighs. Only the swell of her stomach where their baby lay.

Your baby.

She lifted her chin and stared straight at him, openly challenging. And Dominic found that he’d been right, shehadwon this little game they were playing, and that he didn’t know quite as much about sex and seduction as he’d thought he did.

Because right now, he couldn’t move. He couldn’t breathe. Desire and hunger had tightened their grip around his throat and were slowly, relentlessly squeezing. The raw possessiveness of that night in the forest was welling up inside him, an animal feeling, turning him into nothing but instinct.

He knew he should turn around and walk away, prove to her once and for all that she had no power over him, and especially not sexual power.Hewas the master of that, not her, and yet...

She let the dress fall slowly off her shoulders and flutter to the ground, and then she closed the distance he’d put between them, not once taking her gaze from his. As bold as she had been that night in the woods, only this time it was bright daylight and he could see her. He could see every bloody inch.

Christ. He wanted her.

She halted in front of him, and laid one small hand on his chest. ‘I think you’re a liar, Dominic Lancaster,’ she murmured. ‘I think revisiting it is exactly what you want to do.’

CHAPTER EIGHT

MAUDEWASN’TQUITEsure what she was doing. Somehow the conversation had got away from her and somehow her control had got away from her, too. Somehow he’d taken it and he’d done it simply by existing. By being close. By telling her she could stay at Darkfell, that he wouldn’t sell it after all, and without demanding anything in return.

Her honesty, that was what she’d given him apparently, and that was what he’d been happy with, or so he’d said.

Except she didn’t believe him. He’d told her that he was a businessman and that he exploited every weakness, and yet he hadn’t exploited hers. He could have used her love of the forest against her to get her to do anything he wanted, but he hadn’t.

She knew what he wanted though, and a part of her wanted him to admit it. To test whether she actually had the power she thought she did, power over him. He’d tried to distance her with words, but he hadn’t meant them, she knew that. Not when she could see the blatant heat in his eyes.

It was bold of her to strip naked before him, but it wasn’t anything she hadn’t done before. He’d seen her by the pool and, in the forest that night, he’d run his hands over every inch of her. So she felt no embarrassment or shame, even though perhaps she should have felt both.

She only wanted to see if she was as powerful as she felt in this moment. Prove to herself, and maybe to him too, that the power she remembered from that night in the forest was still hers. The power of a primal goddess.

She needed it. Needed to know once and for all that she could unsettle him as badly as he unsettled her.

Desire flared in his dark gaze now, like embers of a banked fire igniting into life, and it made her heart race. The heat of his body burned through the cotton of his shirt and into her fingertips where they rested on his chest. He smelled so good, like all the wild places deep in the forest, where she could lose herself if she wanted...

‘You shouldn’t do this,’ he said softly.

‘Why not?’ She lifted her other hand and placed that on his chest too, testing the hard muscle she could feel beneath his clothes. ‘It’s nothing we haven’t done before.’

‘Sex will...complicate matters.’

‘Really? I thought you were an infamous playboy.’ She stepped even closer, the tips of her breasts grazing the cotton of his shirt. ‘You’re not supposed to care about sex complicating things.’

The fire in his eyes leapt higher and yet still he didn’t move. ‘Consider the last time we did this.’

‘I am considering it.’ She ran her fingertips down the front of his shirt, to the waistband of his trousers. ‘What’s the problem? It’s not as if I’m going to get pregnant again.’

The breath hissed in his throat as her fingertips dipped lower, over the hard length of him she could feel through the wool of his trousers.

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