Dani Collins - Modern Romance March 2019 5-8

She focused on the immediate priorities. Bathing and feeding Jamie were top of the list, after which he’d immediately fallen asleep.

A hot shower was calling her. It was a relief to strip off her creased clothes and step into the shower after resisting the temptation of the massive antique copper bathtub. A long luxurious soak was for an occasion when Ivo was not likely to appear to bear her off to the awful interview with his grandfather.

When she walked back into the sitting room, wearing a soft robe from the bathroom, there were hot coffee and tea, tiny sandwiches and a selection of pastries on one of the tables.

She poured a black coffee, took a sip and, picking up one of the sandwiches, she went to the bedroom and walked over to one of the massive wardrobes. The scent coming from the lavender sachets that were hooked around the rail tickled her nostrils as she opened it. Someone had unpacked her clothes before she’d even reached the room and they looked pretty lost sitting there in the cavernous scented space.

Eating the rest of her sandwich, which was very good, she selected a dress similar in design to the creased one she had just taken off, though the neckline on this one was squarer and the fabric plain white with a discreet diamond pattern picked out in silver.

She fished out some fresh underwear and wriggled her way into it. It required a few contortions to reach the zip but once on she smoothed down the fabric and looked at herself in the mirror. She was playing a part. Did she look like the sort of woman a man like Ivo Greco proposed to?

The answer was quite obviously no, not when you considered the long-legged model types she’d seen hanging on him, quite literally in some instances, in the collection of photos available online for anyone interested enough to type in his name.

Now, if you were talking taking to bed...?

Fastening onto the unbidden thought came a flashback to that kiss, as her gaze drifted to the big bed that dominated the room. She walked across and laid her hand on the smooth, pristine silk quilt.

Through half-closed eyes she visualised two figures lying there, limbs entwined. She shook her head to clear the erotic, illicit hallucination. A shiver ran through her body as she lifted a hand to her lips, running her finger along the outline, her eyes half closed.

What was happening to her?

Her breath came shallow and uneven as she fought against the pressure exerted by the knot of tangled emotions, among them a yearning she didn’t want to acknowledge, all lodged behind her breastbone. It was as if that one kiss had released something inside her. Something she didn’t seem to have any control over.

She wandered across to the dressing table and picked up a silver-backed brush. Removing the pins that had held up her hair in the shower, she began to brush it, focusing on the long soothing strokes and not the depressing realisation that that kiss had been the most mind-blazingly erotic experience of her life. Which had to make her one of the saddest twenty-five-year-olds in the world.

How many twenty-five-year-old virgins were left in the world, outside convents?

‘You’re an anachronism, Flora...and yet,’ she told her mirror image, ‘you look quite normal.’ She waved the brush at the mirror. ‘Freckled, and very ginger, but normal.’

She brushed until her hair prickled with static, a fiery nimbus around her face.

And she could still taste that kiss.

With a small, angry cry of self-disgust she threw the brush across the room. It landed bang in the middle of the big bed.

‘This has to stop, Flora!’ she told herself as she stalked across to retrieve it.

For some reason Flora found herself reluctant to put a crease in the pristine bed linen so, leaving one foot on the floor, she pushed her other knee through the folds of the dress and put it on the bed before she stretched out to reach the brush.

She was in this position when Ivo walked into 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.