Page 92 of Modern Romance Collection February 2025, 1-4

She was loading the dishwasher now. He didn’t even know where his dishwasher was, and he felt a dart of shame.

She was barefoot. But not even the loose casual clothes could hide her beauty. Hair up, tendrils falling down. Face clear and fresh. It reminded him of how she’d looked on the horse...so happy.

He could get used to making this woman happy.

The thought appeared unbidden in his mind. He told himself it was an entirely legitimate thought to have about one’s wife. But on a deeper level Primo knew that it wasn’t necessarily just about making her happy for the sake of the relationship. It had something to do with makinghimhappy too.

Happy. Since when had he needed to be happy?

He wasn’t averse to the idea, obviously, but it wasn’t something he’d ever given much thought to. And he realised now that perhaps there was something a bit sad about never acknowledging the need for happiness...

Faye was looking at him and waving a hand. ‘Hi, where did you go?’

Primo shook his head. He was losing it. And it was all this woman’s fault.

He stood up and topped up the wine glasses before giving one to Faye and taking the other for himself. Then he took her free hand and led her out of the kitchen, back through the castle to the bedroom.

She said, ‘You haven’t answered my question...where are we going from here?’

Primo brought them into the bedroom and closed the door. He put their glasses of wine down and stripped until he was naked. He directed an expressive look at Faye, and she slipped out of her clothes too.

A flush was rising over her skin and her nipples pebbled. Primo looked his fill, as she did him, and as the hunger clawed and bit at his gut, demanding to be slaked, he felt a frisson of unease. Shouldn’t the edge have been taken off by now? But it was as if the more he had of her, the more he needed.

He struggled to control himself. His body was betraying him spectacularly. He dragged his gaze up and all he could see was gold and green, mirroring back the hunger he felt.

‘You asked me where we’re going from here?’ he said.

‘I did?’

He nodded.

Faye said, a little breathlessly, ‘I’m not sure I care all that much any more.’

‘That’s good,’ he said, and he moved forward and caught Faye’s hips, pulling her towards him.

The moment her softer body touched his, he felt the beast roar within him.

Just before he kissed her, and threw them both back into the inferno, he said, ‘That’s good, because there’s nowhere else I want to be other than right here, right now.’

‘I have to go to London to take a meeting,’ Primo said.

Faye tried to hide her disappointment. They were having breakfast in the formal dining room of the Irish castle the following morning. It was making Faye nostalgic for their cosy, informal dinner in the kitchen the previous evening.

And what had happened afterwards.

She fought down the inevitable reaction of heat rising in her body.

Every time they made love it seemed to eclipse the previous time and she couldn’t figure it out. Surely it was meant to go the other way? That was how it had always happened for her before. Even with her first husband she couldn’t remember it being like this... So intense. So urgent. Maybe it was no harm that this spontaneous honeymoon was coming to an end.

He said, ‘You could come with me, and we could go back to New York together from there.’

She needed to get her wits back.

Faye shook her head. ‘No, it’s okay. I think I’ll go back to Dublin for the day and check out some galleries—they have some really interesting artists showing at the moment.’

‘London has galleries too,’ Primo pointed out.

‘I like to know what’s going on outside of the big art hubs.’

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