Page 147 of Modern Romance March 2025 (5-8)

“The animosity between us is sexual tension. Aren’t you curious to see what happens when we release it?” He uncrossed his ankles, but stayed leaning on the desk.

She stiffened, bracing herself for whatever move he might make.

“I’m not going to chase you,” he chided softly. “Consent and all that. But let’s at least talk about it.”

Her nostrils burned as she sucked in a breath, ready to deny it, but she held her breath until her lungs were filled with fire. She couldn’t make herself lie to him. How infuriating.

“Fine. I’m attracted to you,” she gusted out. “Obviously.” Now she was going to combust with sheer embarrassment.

She looked toward the windows, hoping he couldn’t see how extravagant her dreams about him had been over the years because she didn’t need her degree in hospitality to know he was only in the market for temporary entertainment, most likely because he was stuck with her right now.

Thus, the real question became: Did she want a fling with him? One that lasted only long enough for this publicity storm to die down?

“What’s going on behind those beautiful blue eyes?” He still hadn’t moved, but he somehow loomed larger. More impactful as he leaned on the desk, relaxed and watchful.

Her gaze slid down to his throat where his top button was open, then to the wide shoulders straining his shirt. His hands rested on the edge of the desk, but she remembered how they’d felt roaming her back and the sensual glide of his touch under her shirt.

Her nipples stung in reaction. With anticipation.

For all these years, she had longed to know what might have happened if they hadn’t been interrupted.

“I am curious.” It hurt to make that admission. She cleared her throat, writhing inside with self-consciousness. She wondered why she only reacted to him and she wondered what sex would be like. With him. “That doesn’t mean I want to have sex, though. There’s a big difference between thinking about it and doing it.” She had thought about it many times. She’d never had the nerve todoit.

Because she’d never wanted sex in the same way that Atlas made her want it.

“A kiss then. I’ve wondered all this time whether it would be the same.” He lifted his hand, inviting her to come to him.

It was a few steps and a journey across a desert and an ocean and a continent. A galaxy.

Then his strong hand was closing over hers, drawing her to stand between his feet. She thought she might be shaking. Dreaming.

Perhaps he noticed because he cupped the side of her neck and just looked at her, expression very somber. His narrowed gaze left pinpricks of sensation each place it touched—cheek and brow and lips. Shoulders. Throat. Breasts.

Time stretched out with excruciating tension. She couldn’t have felt more exposed if she’d been naked. She closed her eyes, but that only made her more aware of the way her body was flooding with heat. Of the way his hand shifted to cradle her jaw. His body heat was like a physical aura that radiated across her skin. Her heart began to stumble and race.

Then his mouth brushed hers, tickling and sharp. A tease. A test? She didn’t know if she passed. She only knew that her hands were closing into his turtleneck. She kept her eyes closed, but leaned in, seeking the smoothness of his lips. The firmness she recalled so vividly—

With a gruff noise, he slid his arms around her and pulled her deep into the vee of his legs, lashing her to his chest as he claimed her with a powerful kiss.

She was instantly overwhelmed, yet greed rose like a monster from within her. Without conscious awareness, she found herself responding urgently, pressing into the kiss and seeking his tongue with her own.

Thiswas the kiss she’d been chasing since their first one, the kind that swallowed her whole. The kind that seemed to lift her from the floor and pull her into a maelstrom of sensations—firm hands shaping her back and hips, the hard plane of his chest crushing her breasts, theheat. Her arms curled themselves around his waist and her fingers found the bumps of his bowed spine. His thighs were such a hard cage against the outsides of hers, they hurt to press against, but she did it anyway, liking that sensation of his indomitable strength.

The plunge into this wildness should have terrified her, but beneath her overwhelmedness was familiarity. This wasexactlyhow it had been before. They were picking up from where they’d left off. Everything felt good and right and necessary.

He grasped her plait and dragged it down her back, forcing her to lift her chin and expose her throat to his hot breath and the scrape of his teeth and a lick against her carotid artery. Heat flooded into her loins and some primal instinct made her seek relief by pushing her mound against the thick column behind his fly.

With a growled noise, he straightened and twisted. In a powerful move he sat her on the edge of the desk.

Now he was between her legs. Her knees lifted of their own accord, tilting her pelvis into a more welcoming angle. Her calves found the firm shape of his buttocks and pulled him in, urging him to settle the ridge of his erection against the ache in her core.There. She moaned into his mouth.

He muttered something in Greek and pulled her hips closer to the edge, then swept an arm behind her. There was a tumble of something heavy and the smash of broken glass. She thought she smelled the pungent scent of alcohol, but she only hugged his hips with her knees, rising into the slow, rolling grind of his sex against hers.

His hand burrowed beneath her top, pushing aside the cup of her bra so he could capture the naked swell of her breast in his hot palm.

She arched, startled by how sensitive her skin was to his touch, as though she felt the whorls of his fingerprints. Then she did what he’d asked her to do five long years ago. What she had wanted to do that night. She dragged the hem of her sweater up, exposing her bra-covered breast.

His nostrils flared. The lust in his eyes scorched her swollen breast. He dragged the cup further away and exposed her distended nipple, then dropped his head to capture it with the hot pull of his mouth.

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