Modern Romance Collection: June 2018 Books 1 - 4. Miranda Lee

at least tell me why you’re so scared. Were you assaulted? Hurt?’

      ‘No...no.’ Freddie tried and failed to swallow, fighting to gather her wits. ‘But, you know, I saw things...when I was living with my sister...and it put me off...er...sex,’ she mumbled as he embarked on her leggings, tugging them down to expose her legs.

      ‘Anything you don’t like, you only have to tell me,’ Zac told her thickly. ‘Any time you want me to stop, I will.’

      ‘O-Okay,’ she stammered, barely grasping how she had arrived on the bed and wondering if she should be moving away, reminding him that he had agreed to wait until they were married. Only that restriction seemed so petty now in retrospect that she couldn’t make herself voice that reminder. Tomorrow they would be married and all such restraint would naturally be at an end.

      Her leggings went flying and she gulped, feeling overpowered and out of her depth with her rather shabby cheap knickers on view. And she was with a guy who loved luxury lingerie, she recalled in intense mortification, yanking her tunic down to cover herself again.

      ‘Fique tranquilo...don’t worry,’ Zac urged, convinced she was ready to flee at any moment. ‘I’m worrying enough for both of us.’

      Taken aback, Freddie gazed up at him in astonishment. ‘What do you have to worry about?’

      A flashing grin softened the taut line of Zac’s mobile mouth. ‘I’ve never been with a virgin before. I want to make it good for you but I don’t know if that’s possible.’

      ‘Kiss me,’ she heard herself say.

      He pressed a soft kiss to her lips and she stopped breathing, her heart hammering a frenzied beat.

      ‘Once more...with enthusiasm,’ Freddie whispered uncertainly.

      And Zac laughed and covered her mouth again with his to extract a forceful, demanding kiss. He nipped at her lips, stroked her tongue, flicked the roof of her mouth and she started trembling, liquid heat rising from the heart of her.

      He lifted his head and, gathering her tunic in his hands, he lifted it up and off her. She crossed her arms over her bra. ‘I’m not very big,’ she warned him apologetically.

      He released the catch at her slender spine and she bowed forward as if to hide herself from him but he pressed her back against the pillows as he whisked the garment away. Her hands fell away because she felt foolish trying to conceal her body from the man she was about to marry. She closed her eyes tightly, fearful of seeing disappointment in his gaze when he realised that she wore a padded bra and was in truth more fried egg than full English breakfast.

      ‘You have very pretty breasts,’ Zac husked appreciatively, scanning the pert swell of her dainty curves and the pale delicate pink nipples adorning them.

      ‘You forgot to say little,’ she muttered awkwardly.

      ‘Not the first thing that comes to mind,’ Zac confided, lowering his dark head to apply his mouth to a quivering pink bud and lash it hungrily with his tongue.

      Freddie jerked, her hips rising involuntarily, her whole awareness suddenly centred solely on what he was doing to her. Long skilled fingers skated a pattern over the stretched-tight fabric between her legs and she held her breath as he freed her of that final barrier. She shivered as he explored her with gentle fingers, stroking, teasingly probing, setting off screaming nerve endings and tingles wherever he dallied. She hadn’t known she would be so sensitive that the gathering tide of pleasure would almost hurt with its intensity, and then he was rising over her and peeling off his shirt.

      Nervous tension tugged at her because he was so much bigger and stronger than she was, his biceps bulging, his splendid torso a masculine vision of sleek bronzed and inked skin stretched over a solid wall of muscle. He rolled off the bed to remove his jeans, peeling them down, exposing the intimidating bulge at his groin outlined by his boxers. Then the boxers went and his long, hard length jutted out, clearly primed and ready for action, and she gulped, wondering how he was planning to fit that inside her without hurting her.

      Freddie lay rigid, assuming they were in the final phase of intimacy and that it would all be over soon. Zac came back to her and kissed her with a devastating off-the-charts hunger, his tongue delving and teasing, mimicking a far more basic action. Her body softened in the momentary hard embrace of his and then he was sliding down over her, toying with her on the way, a tongue flicking a straining nipple, a kiss bestowed on her belly button, his hands closing over her thighs to part them.

      ‘What are you doing?’ she gasped when he kept on moving.

      ‘Trust me,’ Zac urged thickly. ‘You can’t have sex without foreplay. The more ready you are, the less it will hurt.’

      Shut up, shut up, she told herself in feverish embarrassment. After all, he knew stuff she didn’t. There had been nothing delicate or seductive about the sleazy encounters she had unwillingly witnessed when she was young and impressionable. She shut her eyes tight, surrendering control, banishing the images that had frightened her off sexual experimentation. Contrary to her expectations, Zac was being neither rough nor crude.

      His tongue swiped over her and her hips lifted off the mattress in response. Nothing had ever felt so shockingly good and the ache deep inside her intensified its grip. Her legs trembled in his hold as he continued and the building tide of warmth and excitement made her shake. A bone-deep hunger was coalescing at the heart of her and surging higher and higher until at last she reached the pinnacle and the world exploded in glorious colour, leaving her quaking and breathless, absolutely wrecked by the intensity of her first orgasm.

      ‘You are very, very sexy,’ Zac growled as he came over her, all virile power and strength, his eyes luminous in the sunlight falling over the bed. ‘But we have to go slow now...’

      Freddie wasn’t quite sure what planet she was on at that moment or what they were to go slowly with but that mental blankness evaporated as he spread her wide and sank into her, slowly stretching her with his fullness. A pinch of discomfort made her grimace and he froze.

      ‘Don’t move,’ he told her raggedly, his big powerful body arrested over hers as he struggled to resist his need to plunge deep and hard.

      Wide-eyed, she stared up at him, her face hectically flushed as he pulled back from her and then shifted forward to sink deep. A hot slice of pain pierced her for an instant and then faded away again.

      ‘Think that’s the worst over,’ she mumbled.

      ‘And now for the best,’ Zac grated, circling his hips to stretch her with a hungry groan about how tight she was and then moving with a fluid rhythm that her body seemed to know as if it had been born for it.

      There was no more pain, only gathering passion and increased sensation. She arched up in response as he plunged deeper with every thrust, sending pulsing, voluptuous waves of pleasure surging through her laced with mounting excitement. Her heart pounded so loudly she thought she could hear it and the edgy building tension in her pelvis was rising again until she couldn’t hold it back any more and she reached another climax. He thrust into her weak, unresisting body one final time and then stilled with a deep masculine growl of satisfaction.

      By the time that Freddie registered that the main act was over, Zac was already out of the bed and striding towards the bathroom. ‘Do you want a bath?’ he called over a muscular brown shoulder.

      Freddie watched his bare bronzed body disappear from view, the intimacy strangely shocking even after what they had just shared.

      ‘Do you?’ Zac prompted.

      ‘Yes.’ Finally recalling the question and registering that it was broad daylight, she retrieved her brain, but still could not help feeling that it would have been lovely if Zac had held her close for a while after the sex.

      But that was being silly, wasn’t it? Practicality, not sentiment, she reminded herself in reproof, fearful of attaching any deeper significance to what they had shared. Sex didn’t mean anything special to