Modern Romance October 2016 Books 1-4. Julia James

settled himself completely against her, stretching her. Anais could see the tension that corded his neck and made his arms like granite. She could see the mad glitter in his eyes that reminded her of the whole of Manhattan outside that window in his old apartment, and she could feel him, bold and male and uncompromising, so deep inside her it was hard to tell which one of them was which.

      As if it was her first time all over again, she felt moisture gather in the corners of her eyes. And the way she had then, she moved her hips experimentally, to see if it made him blow out a breath the way it had before.

      When it did, that mouth of his crooked up in the corner.

      “This is no time for games, Anais,” he told her in that gorgeously dark voice of his that swept through her like a new caress, setting her alight.

      And only then did he begin to move.

      He set a hard pace, and she met him. He dropped down to take her mouth again, slipping his hands beneath her bottom to lift her and hold her precisely where he wanted her as he thrust into her.

      She clung to his shoulders and she wrapped her legs around his hips and she knew this dance. She knew precisely how they fit together, exactly how they moved. As if they’d been made for this. As if no time had passed.

      And it took no time at all, or it took a lifetime, before Anais was strung out on that same high cliff all over again. She heard her own voice calling out wordless prayers into the dark, and she heard his low laugh, and then she was shattering all around him all over again.

      And this time, he followed her over the edge—and she was sure she heard him shout her name as he fell.

       CHAPTER SIX

      ANAIS WOKE TO find the sun streaming across her face and the sound of the surf in her ears. She blinked in all the brightness and then sat up too quickly, taking in the vast room, the sleek furnishings, the astonishing softness of the dizzyingly high-thread-count sheets against her skin.

      She wasn’t particularly surprised to find herself alone. She wasn’t necessarily happy about it, of course, but she couldn’t claim she was surprised. No matter the places they could take each other in bed, out of it she and Dario seemed destined to do nothing but hurt each other.

      Over and over again.

      Anais moved very slowly, very carefully, to the edge of the bed and was faintly disappointed that nothing sang out in pain as she did. No twinges or tugs to remind her in that raw, physical way of how she’d spent most of the previous night, or with whom. Nothing that would last.

      She told herself that was better. Memories were bad enough. They could lurk about for years, as she knew all too well. They snuck into the corners of things and blended into the shadows. They could ruin a woman without her even realizing it, popping up in dreams whenever she closed her eyes and making her unwilling to even consider moving on the way she should. No matter that he had, and years before.

      But this was neither the place nor the time to worry about the ways Dario would likely haunt her now. Besides, she’d had six years to find a way to handle it before and she’d managed it. This would be no different. She’d be fine.

      Eventually, she assured herself, you’ll be perfectly fine.

      Her clothes were draped over the chaise in the corner near the open glass doors, the screen letting in the ocean’s song and the summer sunlight but none of Hawaii’s less pleasant realities.

      Reality is better, no matter how unpleasant, she told herself firmly as she dressed. This place—Dario—it’s all a fantasy that has nothing to do with you or your actual life. It never did. It all might as well be another dream.

      That made her feel better—or at least ready to face him. She raked her fingers through her hair, letting it fall where it would and happy that it conformed to its usual sleek, straight, depressingly unchangeable style without her having to do anything more than that. She’d never before realized how lucky she was to have such hair that allowed her to look a lot more pulled together than a woman wearing last night’s outfit should.

      She slipped her shoes back on as if they were armor and she then squared her shoulders before she pushed through the door and marched out into the vast living area prepared to do battle—but it was empty.

      That confused her. It seemed so unlike him. She stood there for a moment, listening for the usual sounds that indicated Dario was near—the brusque clicking of the keys on his laptop, the sound of his voice issuing orders on the phone. But there was nothing. The villa was hushed. Still.

      Empty, she thought. But she couldn’t quite believe that.

      There was what looked like a stack of papers on the kitchen counter, but she ignored it as she walked to each of the bedrooms and looked inside. Each was as beautifully decorated and as empty as the next. He wasn’t in the little den with its massive flat-screen television, or in the separate office space equipped with a massive steel desk. He wasn’t on the lanai or out on his secluded beach. He wasn’t in the private pool on the far side of the villa, either.

      He was gone.

      Almost as if he’d never been here on Maui at all.

      And Anais could admit it. It surprised her. And, more than that, felt a lot like a slap. The hurt feelings were silly, she recognized, but the other feeling bubbling up inside of her was a complicated sort of disappointment—as if she’d wanted what would likely have been another tense, unpleasant scene with Dario.

      “Surely not,” she murmured to herself, her voice the only sound in the villa.

      She shook her head as she crossed the living area again, amazed at herself. At her own capacity for self-delusion and what amounted to self-harm. And she knew—she knew—there was a storm waiting there in the distance, bunched up on the horizon, dark and menacing. Thunder rolled deep inside her and the skies were threatening and low, but she was ignoring all of it. She was refusing to play through the images in her head of last night’s abandon.

      The way he’d touched her, the ways she’d tasted him—no.

      She was pretending everything was fine—that she was fine. She was pretending that she could handle what she’d done last night and the fact he’d disappeared this morning, even though she’d half expected he would. She was desperately pretending she couldn’t feel that cold harbinger wind on her skin, making every hair on her body stand on end, letting her know in no uncertain terms that there was no outrunning the storm—the terrible reckoning for all her recklessness—that was headed straight for her.

      But maybe she could delay it awhile. Just a little while.

      At the kitchen counter, she picked up the bag she’d forgotten she’d even brought with her last night and pulled out her car keys. And she couldn’t help but glance over at the stack of papers, which it took her a beat or two longer than it should have to realize was actually a legal document.

      With her name on it.

      Her stomach flipped over, then plummeted straight down to her feet.

      She reached over and pulled the papers toward her, and felt something like frozen solid as she scanned the first page. Once. Twice. It was only the third attempt that she was able to really, truly comprehend that she was looking at divorce papers.

      Divorce papers for her and Dario, to be precise.

      All drawn up and ready for her signature, demanding the divorce on the grounds of Anais’s infidelity and naming his brother Dante as her lover. Just as he’d promised before in what she’d truly believed was simply a hateful, throwaway comment.

      It took her another long moment to realize she was shaking. That the words were blurring there before her on the page.

      There was a single sticky note attached to the last page, where the line for her signature sat, blank and cruel, next to the bold dash of Dario’s name in an offensively