Page 165 of Modern Romance March 2025 (5-8)

But there was no easing her into the afterglow this time.

When the tension began to leave her body and she dragged her eyes open, she found his were alight with a feral gleam. In a move that reminded her he’d been an Olympian, he rolled her beneath him, and thrust once, deep, to secure their connection.

She cried out as fresh nerve endings were seared by steel and friction.

“Too hard?”

“No.” She brought her knees to his waist and locked her ankles in his lower back. “More.Harder.”

He was no delicate novice at this. He wasn’t brutal, but he unleashed his strength, making love to her in a way that did nothing less than claim her. While his kiss stole her breath and his arms caged her, he built one powerful thrust on another until sensations were twisting through her like forked lightning, making her writhe at the intensity of it. The pleasure was too much to bear.

She was trapped, though. Trapped in a world that had shrunk to him. Only him. The damp heat of his chest rubbing her breasts, the tension of his shoulders, the crash of his pelvis into hers. His smothering mouth and the scrape of his teeth at her jaw and the incredible tension that gripped them both.

When they were both sweating and making animalistic noises, when the ferocious pleasure was threatening to kill her, Atlas rasped, “Come now, Stella.Now.”

She did.

* * *

Atlas managed to get them both between the sheets and should have passed out the way Stella did.

Hellfire, she was beautiful, looking like Aphrodite with her hair spilling around her generous curves and her skin still flushed with orgasm. Her face was serene, innocent if not for the lips that were swollen and pink from their kisses.

He pushed the sheet down to his waist, still hot. Still recovering. Not just physically, but mentally.

He had known sex with her would be spectacular. He hadn’t expected it to bethat. She was completely uninhibited, bringing out a primal side of him he’d taken pains to bury deep in the back of the cave.

An undeniable possessiveness had been expanding in him since the photos had come out. Sooner than that, probably, but the moment he realized she was under threat, he had felt compelled to protect her. There was a disconcerting other side to that coin, however, one that recognized the threat she posed to him. In the last hour, she had taken him to his breaking point and would continue to do so. He was vulnerable to her now and, because she was his wife and he was obsessed with her, she made him vulnerable to anyone who might attack her.

His practical mind had seen this marriage as a single path to several benefits: a wife he genuinely wanted, sex with a woman who had quietly obsessed him for years, and proof that he wasn’t his father. He hadn’t seduced a virgin while married to someone else. He married the virgin he wanted. He intended to treat her like a goddess.

Marrying Stella had been the right thing to do. He couldn’t regret it, but he recognized that things had changed forhim. He wouldn’t remain faithful out of an arrogant desire to prove he was better than his father. It went far deeper than that. He tried to imagine wanting someone besides Stella, anyone, and it didn’t compute.

Shewas the one he wanted. The only one. He had her and that should be enough to satisfy the beast within him, but there was an itch to hunt still pacing within him. He wanted more from her. He wasn’t sure what it could be, but it bothered him that this craving sat in his gut even as his blood was still slowing from being inside her.

He wasn’t aware of falling asleep, only knew the waterfall he heard didn’t make sense. He was in a hotel in Denmark. Married. Wasn’t he?

He snapped his eyes open and found her side of the bed empty. Her jewelry sat on the nightstand.

“Stella!” He came up on an elbow and there she was in a hotel robe, hair piled atop her head in a messy bun.

She finished pouring oil into the running tub and closed the bottle. “Do you mind?”

“No.” He sat up, letting the covers fall to his waist. “How do you feel?” Sore enough she needed the bath?

“Embarrassed,” she admitted in a voice he barely heard over the rush of water.

“Why?” He threw off the covers and stood. “There’s no shame in what we did. Even if we weren’t already married.”

“No, but…” She bit her lip, rueful. Her lashes flickered, suggesting her gaze had gone to the twitching flesh between his thighs.

“What?” he prompted, stalking toward her, growing smug.

She lifted a defensive shoulder, so damned cute with her blush and pert smile, he wanted to kiss her before she could reply.

“I woke up and thought, ‘Why isn’t he awake? I want to do it again,’” she confessed.

Oh. Conceit poured in a line of heat from his throat to his torso to his loins, pulling him into arousal as he drew her into his arms. “You can always wake me for that. I’ll never be mad.”

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