Modern Romance October Books 1-4. Miranda Lee

of their one coupling there in every step and every breath she took.

      The detachment he’d been waiting for before making love to her had never felt so far away.

      But his need for her had never been so great.

      Dios, his skin burned through his shirt under the gentle weight of her hand on his shoulder.

      He snatched at her hand and covered it tightly. ‘Do not expect more than I can give you, carina.’ He had to drag the warning from his tongue but he had to make her understand.

      If any other woman had offered herself to him like this he would already have taken her but this was no ordinary woman and it wasn’t just because she carried his child.

      Sophie was like no one he’d ever known before.

      Her face drew closer to his. Her lips parted, brushing against his like a sigh. The sweetness of her breath mingled with his as she whispered, ‘I want no more than you can give.’

      His heavy heart lightened although the beats continued to thump against his ribs.

      The relief when Javier returned the pressure of her lips was so immense Sophie could have wept.

      She’d never known she possessed the courage she’d found to strip completely naked for him. Nudity was nothing to a ballerina but this was different.

      This was her opening herself to him and the very real danger of his rejection but she had known she had to keep going, known that Javier had the strength of mind and the willpower to lie beside her every night for the rest of their lives without making a move on her, and now she understood why.

      He did not trust her to take him at his word that their marriage could never be about emotions.

      In his own way he was trying to protect her.

      She did not need protecting. Once, she’d had romantic dreams and ideals about this man but her eyes had been opened. To fall for him would be to have her heart broken.

      But her desire for him had never dimmed. This was the man she had taken one look at and felt something inside her move as it had never moved before. Javier had awoken something in her. When he’d made love to her, that awakening had become a life force that refused to go back to sleep.

      She didn’t want it to go back to sleep. She wanted this. All of this.

      When the hand holding her hip slid round her waist and splayed on her back, the little control she had was lost. Suddenly it was Javier setting the pace, kissing her, sweeping his tongue into her mouth and filling her with his dark taste, holding her so securely that when her knees weakened at this wonderful assault on her senses there was no danger of her falling.

      Such wonderful, heady kisses, deepening, tongues entwined, lips moving in a dance of their own creation, sensation fizzing through her all the way to the fingertips of her arms that looped around his neck.

      Her mind closed to everything but Javier.

      She shivered to feel his fingers spear her hair and then his mouth caressed over her cheek and dipped down to her neck, the stubble on his jaw rubbing against flesh she’d never known could be so sensitive.

      And then she was lifted off her feet, her stomach swooping with the unexpected motion, and carried effortlessly to the bed she’d been losing hope would ever be used for anything but sleeping.

      He laid her down with a gentleness that belied his strength and knelt beside her, upright, magnificent. Beautiful.

      Nostrils flaring, he gazed down at her through his hooded eyes, deftly unbuttoned his shirt and threw it onto the floor.

      Her heart expanded as she drank in the rugged hardness of his torso. Javier was the epitome of masculine. Whorls of dark hair covered his darkly tanned, muscular chest and thickened over the flat plane of his abdomen where his strong hands were pulling apart his belt.

      Her own abdomen contracted and filled with fresh heat that burned like molten liquid inside her.

      There was such sensuality to his movements and such arrogant confidence too as, his eyes not leaving hers, he pushed his trousers down and revealed the erection she’d touched and had buried deep inside her but had never looked at.

      Everything inside her seemed to melt into a puddle.

      With a sigh that seemed to come from her very soul, Sophie watched him rid himself of the last of his clothing and then he was as naked as she, but dark where she was light, hard where she was soft...

      Those whirling eyes were devouring her in the same way hers devoured him, sweeping over every inch of her naked form.

      For years Sophie had worked hard sculpting her body to be the best it could be. It had never been enough. She had never been the best.

      Pregnancy had liberated her in so many ways, more than she could ever have expected, and now, for the first time in her life, under the weight of Javier’s sensuous stare, she felt beautiful.

      She felt like a woman.

      It came to her then that she’d been waiting her entire life to feel this way but then the thought was swept away before it had fully formed as he leaned down and set her mouth on fire with his kisses all over again.

      She closed her eyes and embraced it, wrapped her arms around his neck to embrace him.

      And then he made his way down her body to kiss her in places even fellow dancers’ eyes had never seen.

      Over her swollen, sensitive breasts, kneading them, caressing them, so close to her he would be able to see and hear the jagged beats of her heart. Over her thickened stomach, a circle around her belly button, his tongue and mouth leaving trails of fire in their wake. He kissed and touched her everywhere with such expert precision that when he parted her legs to bury his face into her pubis her eyes flew open and, chest shuddering, she was pulled back to reality.

      Sophie stared at the ceiling, a feeling rushing through her that she was part of a game that involved painting by numbers.

      She was in danger of losing her mind but from Javier there was no sound other than his lips against her flesh.

      The thought dissolved when his tongue flickered against her most feminine nub and then she did lose her mind.

      Squeezing her eyes back shut, she submitted to the pleasure he was evoking in her, submitted to the pulses thickening and swelling deep inside her and let go, letting him take her high into a land where nothing but white light shone.

      Only once the sensations had abated did he move back up her body and position himself between her legs.

      Again came the distant thought that this was painting by numbers for him.

      There was no danger of Javier losing his control.

      He was going through the motions.

      He had given her pleasure and now it was his turn.

      But, again, the thoughts were pushed away as he covered her with his glorious body and drove himself deep inside her, filling her so completely that she was helpless to stop the cry that flew from her mouth at the sudden drive of pleasure.

      Javier adjusted himself so his elbows lay by her shoulders and began to move, concentrating hard as he thrust deeply into her.

      He had to keep his concentration.

      Otherwise...

      A black void beckoned him. It was a void falsely dressed in sunlight, a trick, a mirage, a promise of...something beautiful but which was a lie. It was a void with razor-sharp teeth hidden beneath its seductive exterior.

      He had to concentrate.

      He wanted Sophie to have the pleasure. All of it belonged to her. He would take his too but his would be the release of sex. He would not allow it to be anything more. He could not.

      And so he gritted his teeth and kept his head exactly where he needed it to