Modern Romance March 2019 5-8. Dani Collins

soft keening moan of protests when his head lifted dissolved into a deep moan as he cupped one breast in his big hand, and, drawing a thumb up to the aroused rosy peak, he covered it with his mouth. By the time he moved to apply similar treatment to the other breast, she was writhing. The only thing stopping her floating away was his hand on her hip.

      ‘Look at me, cara,’ he slurred thickly.

      His searing stare held her blue eyes tight as his hand slid between her legs.

      ‘You feel ready for me,’ he said, stroking her.

      ‘I feel on fire,’ she rasped. ‘This is too...too...much!’ Her eyelashes fluttered against her cheek as he eased a finger into her.

      ‘So tight,’ he murmured against her ear. ‘Incredible.’

      She moved restlessly, pressing against his hand, not realising what else he was doing until he curled her fingers around him.

      A choking sound of shock vibrated in her throat.

      ‘That’s how much I want... I need you. I want to be inside you, cara.’ He could not remember wanting a woman this much in his life. It felt like a fever roaring in his blood, driving him to the act of possession. Teeth clenched, he fought the need, wanting her to need this as much as he did. His skin was slicked with sweat by the effort of staying in control.

      No woman had ever tested his control this much.

      The dark, driven need in his face increased her excitement. Her skin was on fire...she was burning up with need from the inside out. ‘I need you too,’ she gasped faintly.

      As he rolled her beneath him she arched up into him. The touch of his body against the curls at the apex of her legs brought her eyes wide open and on a collision course with his hot, hungry stare.

      ‘Please,’ she said simply.

      She felt the deep, animal groan building in the vault of his chest and it emerged at the same moment he slid into her.

      She jerked, gasped and wrapped her legs around him. Eyes tight, focused on each advance and retreat, each thrust taking her deeper into herself. She focused on the places he was touching that had never been touched, the muscles that clenched by instinct, building the pressure, the pleasure, the nerves that were singing, the tension that was building and building.

      She forgot where she ended and he began and it felt as if she couldn’t bear any more, and then she saw explosions behind her closed eyelids, bursts of light as the heat and pleasure rocked through her body, as the pleasure centre in her brain went into overload.

      The floating back to earth was gentle, as was his kiss before he rolled off her. They lay there, side by side on their backs, fingertips touching as their sweat-slick bodies cooled.

      ‘So.’ He propped himself on one elbow and looked down at her deliciously flushed face, remembering the look of concentration on her face as the heat had built inside her. His body stirred lazily, and then not so lazily as his glance slid a little lower. The sheet ended just below her coral-tipped, perfect breasts; they quivered as she covered her face with both hands.

      The lazy element vanished at the quivering. His hunger for her had flared into full, hot life.

      ‘Look at me, Flora.’

      She dropped her hands and did. It would always be a pleasure to look at him, but right now it was a struggle to meet his gaze.

      ‘I suppose you’re talking about the virgin stuff.’

      ‘You suppose right...’ He adjusted a pillow and put it behind his head. ‘I was under the impression that you’d had a love affair, were engaged.’ He’d certainly not imagined there had been only one man in her life, so the discovery that he was her first lover had been one of the biggest shocks of his life.

      He looked down and found she was looking up at him quizzically. ‘Do you mind?’

       Mind?

      On one level it was possibly the most erotic thing in the world to know you were a woman’s first lover...maybe modern man was a myth?

      He swallowed. It fascinated him that this seemed a bigger thing for him than her. ‘A heads-up might have been an idea. It’s not usual to be a virgin at your age unless you have just come out of a nunnery.’

      ‘Or you had a Callum in your life.’ She sighed, with an eye roll and a supple feline stretch that sent a fresh slug of lust through his sated body.

      She made him greedy.

      ‘Callum?’

      He’d never liked that name.

      ‘All the girls at my school had a crush on Callum. He was seven years ahead of me, so he left as I arrived at high school. But his dad was our postman and his mum worked in a chemist in Portree. You’ll ken that Skye isn’t such a big place.’

      ‘I ken.’

      ‘Are you mocking me?’

      He held up his hands in mock horror and promised solemnly, ‘I wouldn’t dare.’ It flickered through his head that sleeping with a virgin wasn’t the only first for him today; he’d never enjoyed, and, yes, he was enjoying, a post-coital conversation quite like this before.

      Actually, his experience of post-coital conversations was pretty limited. His lifestyle was not about lingering, more perpetual motion. Lingering for him generally involved checking his emails.

      ‘Anyway, I had a massive crush on him.’

      At this artless confidence Ivo felt some of the pleasure of the moment slip away.

      ‘We all did. I was in my second year at uni when I bumped into him, and, well, a month later we were engaged.’ She closed her eyes. ‘I know it sounds crazy. And it was. It turns out we expected very different things from marriage.’ Callum wanted kids and she couldn’t give him them.

      Ivo caught her hand and nudged the diamond on her finger with his own. ‘We were engaged in one day.’

      She pulled her hand away and bent so that he couldn’t see her face as she twisted the diamond around on her finger. ‘That’s not the same. This—’ her clear blue gaze lifted to him ‘—is a...not a real...not real at all,’ she finished awkwardly.

      What had just happened felt very real. It felt very right.

      ‘So, we just had imaginary sex.’

      She flashed him a look. ‘You know what I mean.’

      He knew more than she realised. Reading between the lines it was pretty obvious that she’d told this Callum guy she couldn’t have kids and he’d said, thanks but, no, thanks!

      The bastard, he thought viciously.

      ‘Well anyhow he...’ She hesitated, after the Callum fiasco she had told herself that in the future she would tell any potential partner upfront that she couldn’t have children. She hadn’t quite worked out the timing yet, should it be on the first date, third, before you’d got to like him?

      But she reminded herself before self-pity kicked in that timing was not an issue here. Ivo wasn’t a potential partner, he was her lover. Her marvellous, incredible lover, but this was just sex, at least for him.

      She felt a sudden spurt of panic and she didn’t want to go where that acknowledgement was leading.

      ‘Dumped me.’

      Ivo’s jaw began to ache as he watched her produce a smile that invited him to share the joke. Ivo did not feel in a joking mood, he recognised there was no reason for her to confide in him, he was the last person in the world to advocate trust, which begged the question, why? Though for a while there he had been holding his breath willing her to.

      ‘I suppose it turned me off the whole dating thing, and since then I’ve been too busy to do