Page 143 of Modern Romance December 2025 5-8

‘I want you inside me!’ She nipped his lower lip, drawing a pinprick of blood in her frustration.

‘Hang on, let me check…’ He rolled over and reached for his shirt and pulled out the wallet he had shoved into his pocket along with his phone.

He emerged triumphant with a silver foil packet.

She smiled and snatched it off him. ‘Let me.’

She took her time moving down his body, using his knee as a useful aid to her rising frustration.

His body was slick with salt by the time she took him into her hand. The sinews in his neck distended with the strain he was under as he lifted his head. ‘Just do it! I…’

Tipped onto her back, she looked at him, challenge glowing in her eyes as, feet flat on the ground, her knees open in carnal challenge, she waited to be claimed.

It was not a long wait.

A second later, sheathed in her tight slickness, every muscle in his body pumped and primed, he began to move.

Each thrust drove her deeper into herself, and she was aware of him at a cellular level. Each thrust was more pleasure and more torture, the pressure building and building before exploding in a stunning shower of stars.

She floated back to her body slowly, the image of their entwined bodies imprinted behind her closed eyes.

He rolled off her with a grin. ‘Witchy woman,’ he said, touching the white-blonde streak in the dark of her hair.

‘That was…’

‘Sex does not have to be complicated.’

‘No, it doesn’t,’ she agreed sadly.Lovewas complicated.

‘Shall we take this to a bed? Or do you fancy a swim in the pool?’

‘Another time, maybe.’

They ended up in her bed, the transfer taking a little longer because she made him go back and gather their clothes from the poolside, even though they were both more than adequately swathed in towels.

The second time in a bed was gentler, less rushed, more tender, but not any less intense.

Sex for Leo did not usually involve any kind of aftermath; he was an expert at silent dressing in the dark.

So as he lay there in the dark, making sleepy conversation with Amy about modern vinery techniques, which somehow led on to discussing his relationship with his grandfather, he didn’t immediately register what was happening.

He was breaking all the rules that he had established over the years for a very good reason—to keep sex a million miles away from an emotional connection.

She sensed his withdrawal and immediately misunderstood the reason for it.

‘It’s fine, I understand. It’s hard; family is so complicated… I wish I had more of a relationship with my mum before she became so ill.’

About to roll away, there was something in her voice that made him lie still. He threw an arm over his head and listened to her soft voice talking in the dark.

‘The doctors said I wasn’t responsible for the first heart attack. That it was a genetic defect she had been born with.’

He turned on his side to look at her face. ‘Why would you feel responsible for her heart attack?’

‘I’m not… I wasn’t…’

‘Amy?’

His tone of voice was uncompromising, and she sighed. It was probably past time to tell him.