Page 119 of Modern Romance December 2025 5-8

‘I was?’ he prompted.

‘It doesn’t matter.’ She had no intention of explaining that because entering the room involved physical contact with him, it had not been an option. They were not touching and the heat rising from the pit of her belly was already shamefully distracting.

He was watching her with an uncomfortably alert expression in his midnight inky stare. When he spoke it was slowly, a discernible edginess in his deep velvet voice.

‘We could always just do it instead of skating around it; just cut to the chase and get it over with.’ He took a step towards her and Amy, engulfed by a wave of sheer panic, mirrored the action, two steps to his one, which took her into the bedroom.

‘Get what over with?’ Her attempt at bewilderment drew an impatient shake of his head and an eye roll.

‘Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about, Amy. Neither of us are starry-eyed kids any more, calling sexlove.’

She stood there, her insides molten, her mind floating somewhere outside her body.

He watched as she bit down on her full upper lip, the soft cushiony pinkness taunting him. Her hurried shallow breaths and dilated pupils sending messages that were louder than words.

He could almost hear his control snapping. He moved and at the last second from somewhere he dug out the strength to control the desire that was pounding at him.

‘You’ve got to stop looking at me like that if you don’t want this to happen, Amy.’

Amy couldn’t have broken free of his hypnotic stare if her life had depended on it. Moreover, she didn’t want to.

‘It is true, I do want sex…with you.’ His inner tension added a sexy rasp to his voice. ‘Are you trying to tell me you don’t want it too?’

She met his hypnotic gaze and said nothing. The only sound in the room was the distant ticking of a clock and the audible breathy rasp of her forced respirations.

‘I… You…’ She shook her head,needingto touch him so much it was a physical pain.

He could see her shaking and had to forcibly stop himself from reaching for her. Knowing a woman wanted you was an aphrodisiac; knowingthiswoman in particular wanted him was an incredible rush.

‘I need to hear you say it. If you want me,cara, come and get me!’ Sweat dampened his skin as he threw out the challenge whilst ruthlessly checking the painful need rising up in him.

Nine years ago, she had sent him away, so it was important,essential,to him that this time she be the one begging him to stay.

She counted the steps as she maintained contact with the molten heat of his stare, only stopping when there was barely an inch of air separating them. The heat coming off his body made it feel like a furnace.

‘I want you.’

The heat burst white-hot around them as their lips connected.

He groaned as she slid her tongue sinuously between his lips and, framing her face between his hands, he plunged deeper into the warm, moist recesses of her mouth.

Her breasts flattened against his rock-hard chest as she strained against him, drawing herself up on tiptoe to link her fingers behind his head.

Desire burned away everything in her head but Leo. They stumbled backwards, lips still connected, to the bed and fell down together onto it.

Leo rolled onto his side, bringing her with him, before he stood up, drawing a cry of loss and protest from Amy until she saw he was fighting his way out of his shirt.

She pulled herself up onto her knees to watch him, taking gloating pleasure from eyeing his lean tanned torso, from the perfect musculature of his broad chest down to the ridges corrugating his flat belly.

His burning eyes left hers to deal with his belt buckle. ‘You carry on looking at me like that and things might be over before they’ve even begun,’ he purred, the molten heat in his stare stoking the fire inside her.

‘You’re shaking,’ she pushed out, consumed by an ever-escalating sense of urgency. ‘Let me,’ she demanded fiercely.

The blood burning in his veins, Leo sank his fingers into her hair as, head bent, she worked on the buckle before she moved to the zip. Swiftly, he caught her hands, holding them wide.

Unable to resist her sultry smile, he bent down, kissing her while he opened her shirt by the simple expedient of pulling hard, sending a shower of buttons across the room as he peeled the fabric off her shoulders. She fell back on her bottom and had wriggled her jeans over her slim hips in a matter of moments.

The man who women generally considered a slick, polished lover fumbled to strip off his own trousers, but this was no sex by numbers; it was raw and elemental, no rules, just anger and need. He had never wanted a woman this much in his life.