Modern Romance March 2019 5-8. Dani Collins

the room.

      What he had intended when he walked in, he’d never know because the moment he saw her there, the provocative image of her rear, the smooth curve of her bare thigh, the cloud of copper curls, he didn’t fight it. It was a done deal.

      It was with relief that he embraced it, actually ran full tilt at it. He wanted the mindless oblivion of sex, and that was all it was.

      Wanting her.

      She didn’t see him. She saw his reflection in the mirror on the opposite wall and immediately lost her balance and pitched forward to land in a sprawled heap on the bed.

      With a grunt of dismay she fought to pull the dress over her legs as she twisted over onto her back. Levering herself semi upright on her elbows, she looked across the room to where he stood. A combination of shock and excitement slithered through her, the way he was standing, the way he was breathing... She could feel the tension that was written in his face and in the tense muscles on his powerful body; the sense of danger that she’d always been conscious of in him was there but there was nothing potential about it, it was raw and real.

      There was a moment of total silence as their eyes clashed, and connected, and then he was striding across the room, making her think of some sort of ancient Roman warrior.

      He stood for a moment beside the bed, not saying a word. She looked at him, his image filtered through the skeins of hair that had drifted across her face, until he bent forward.

      ‘I want to see you.’

      The contact of his cool brown fingers on her hot skin as he brushed back the hair from her face was like a lightning strike. Every muscle in her body tensed, electrical shocks zigzagging through her.

      ‘That’s better,’ he breathed, drinking in the delicate features turned up to him.

      His voice seemed to be coming from a long way off, but it wasn’t because she could feel his breath warm on her cheek as he pressed the heel of his hand against the centre of her chest and pushed her backwards onto the bed.

      It felt to Flora as though she were in slow motion. Everything had slowed, even her heart; each fresh beat of blood around her body felt like a drumbeat in her temples. She was more conscious of her own body than she ever had been, conscious of everything from the heat pooled between her legs to the fine downy hairs that stood on her arms.

      Arm over arm, he dragged himself up the bed until his face was level with hers. With his body suspended over her she felt cut off from everything but this man, this man who released all these wild, raw, primal feelings inside her.

      She squeezed her eyes shut but the feeling didn’t go away.

      ‘I don’t feel like me,’ she whispered.

      He kissed her paper-thin, blue-veined eyelids.

      ‘I didn’t mean for this to happen,’ he rasped.

      If you didn’t want anything to happen, why walk into the room, Ivo? No, this is exactly what you wanted to happen, what you have wanted to happen from the first moment you set eyes on her.

      ‘I want you.’

      The throaty purr of his words sent a primitive thrill through her body.

      Her blue eyes blinked open; the primal glow in his dark eyes sent her insides melting. Her breath came harder and she could feel his breath hot on her face. Though they were not touching she could feel the quiver of tension in his lean body.

      The leashed power, his sheer maleness, filled her with a longing she had no name for. Every cell of her body ached for him. She had never felt anything like this in her life.

      When Callum had wanted to wait, he said because he respected her, she hadn’t pushed it. She hadn’t questioned it, because there had been a small part of her that had been relieved. She certainly hadn’t felt as though she’d die if she didn’t give herself to Callum. There had been no yearning, no desire to surrender totally to the hunger roaring inside her, to ease a deep, aching inner loneliness she hadn’t even known was there until now.

      She felt frightened and excited, the only reason she held back the burden of her embarrassing inexperience. Should she tell him? It was the possibility that he might reject her that tipped the balance. She couldn’t risk that. She needed this to happen too much.

      ‘I want you too,’ she whispered, as, framing his face with her hands, she kept her eyes open as she kissed him.

      For a moment he did nothing as her lips moved across his, then she felt a groan vibrate deep in his chest and he kissed her back with a frantic hunger, a driving desperation, that forced the air from her lungs and drew frantic little moans from her own throat.

      He slid down beside her and, one hand hooked behind her head, he slid his free hand down over the curve of her body and pulled her hard against him to face him. He stopped kissing her long enough to tangle his fingers in her hair, to pull her face away so that he could look at her. She just stared at him raptly as he swept away the strands of hair from her face.

      She touched his face, smoothing her fingers over the stubble on his cheek and jaw, fascinated by the strength, the beauty, of the angles and hollows.

      Her throat ached as she looked at him. ‘You’re beautiful.’

      His jaw quivered in reaction to her awed whisper. This might be just sex but he needed it—her—as much as he needed the oxygen he was dragging into his lungs. He had never experienced a passion as powerful and as all-consuming as the one that drove him now.

      The whispered touch of his breath on the skin of her face before he kissed her was a delicious torture and she was so ready when he did cover her parted lips with his own that she whimpered with relief, the sound lost in his mouth.

      Still kissing her, his mouth moving in a series of open-mouthed, warm kisses down the graceful column of her neck, he slid his hands under the dress she wore, easing the straps off her shoulders and exposing the angles of her collarbones and the upper slope of her breasts. Her skin had an alabaster glow, the clarity enhanced somehow by the sprinkling of freckles.

      Desire roared inside him like an inferno as he held her passion-glazed eyes and then suddenly, expertly, he pulled them both to their feet so that he could reach around her to ease the zip of her dress undone. He watched hungrily as the garment slid to the floor, leaving her standing in just her underwear. She shivered as the cool air hit her hot skin...and then shivered again when his hooded glance dropped to her chest. Her nerve endings reacted to the sensuous sweep of his hooded eyes as it would a touch.

      ‘You’re beautiful.’ He reached round behind her, unclasping her strapless bra, and watched appreciatively as her breasts were fully exposed to him.

      He tilted her back towards the bed and laid her down. His hands resting either side of her shoulders, his body was suspended above her, not touching... She wanted to touch him.

      Did she say so? She had no idea, but he suddenly kissed her hard and levered himself off her and stood by the bed.

      Her dismay switched to relief as he began to tear off his clothes.

      Lying there, her only covering a tiny pair of pants, her breasts lifting and falling in time with her short, shallow inhalations, she watched him kick himself free of trousers and fight his way out of his shirt. The intoxicating wildness pumping through her bloodstream made her feel light-headed, reckless, unlike herself. She was literally paralysed with lust and longing. It infiltrated every cell of her body, every inch of her skin.

      She ached for him in a way she hadn’t known existed.

      He paused for a moment by the bed, giving her greedy eyes the opportunity to gloat over his streamlined perfect body, every muscle beautifully defined under skin that glowed gold.

      One knee on the bed, he leaned over and ran his fingers under the waistband of her knickers, sliding them slowly down over her smooth thighs.

      The first skin-to-skin contact made her gasp then sigh as he kissed