Page 71 of Modern Romance July 2025 #4-8

CHAPTER FIVE

T HE HUGENESS OF what she was about to do made Cassie freeze for a couple of seconds but she liked that he wasn’t rushing her, that he was taking his time. He was being patient.

Maybe it was because he wanted the experience to be good for him—maybe it was all about him—but maybe it was because, underneath the bitterness and the toughness that had come with age, that same streak of consideration that had been there eight years ago was still there.

If she commented on that, she knew he would burst out laughing and give her another pep talk about not having any illusions about him.

Her hand hovered on the waistband of her jogging bottoms but, before she could begin wriggling out of them, he stepped fractionally closer, inserted his fingers under the elasticated waistband and tugged.

And then he lowered himself so that he was kneeling in front of her, sliding the joggers down, down, down until they pooled in a bundle at her feet and she stepped out of them.

She reached for her panties, more lace and rudely skimpy, but he stayed her hand and raised his eyes to hers.

‘I really like what I’m seeing,’ he said, kneeling at her feet as she gazed down at him breathlessly. ‘I’d wondered,’ he confessed hoarsely, ‘Whether my memories might have been wrong. God, they weren’t. You’re as beautiful as I remember; as delicately, gloriously, sexily beautiful.’

She reached down to sift her fingers through his dark hair and felt a shudder of absolute, erotic, heady giddiness.

She was so damp between her thighs that she wanted to rub them together to alleviate the itch, or at least get rid of the damn thing altogether, but before she could do that he gently pulled aside the crotch of the panties and flicked his tongue against her crease, tasting her just a little bit.

It was just enough to make her want to collapse as her legs turned to jelly.

Just enough that she remembered it all too, and those memories flooded through her, memories of that one and only time when he had tasted her untouched femininity and had sparked a conflagration inside her that had blown her apart.

Her fingers tightened in his hair and she drew in a sharp breath as the questing tongue made deeper, more insistent inroads inside her, searching for the nub of her clitoris and finding it.

She groaned. Her legs trembled. She was barely aware of him pulling down the panties or of her stepping out of them so that they could join the discarded jogging bottoms to the side.

Through glazed, half-opened eyes, she looked down at her own nakedness.

She was tall but she wasn’t slight. Her breasts were more than a handful, the nipples two big, circular pale-brown discs.

Her waist was slim but her hips were generously rounded and her legs were long and strong.

She absently took in all this, as she did the broad width of his brown shoulders and the intense darkness of his hair.

She couldn’t see what he was doing exactly but she didn’t need to. His tongue flicked the sensitive bud, driving sensations to screaming pitch. She could hear herself moaning and see herself writhing as she lost herself in what was happening with her body.

When he parted her thighs with the flat of his hands, she obediently allowed him to so that he could burrow deeper against her core, driving her to a fevered pitch of wanting.

‘Not yet,’ he murmured unsteadily when she would have climaxed against his mouth. ‘I want to savour every morsel of you.’

He laid her down on the mattress and looked at her with hot desire, loosening any inhibitions she might have had. She was still throbbing between her legs from where he had caressed her. Now, she parted her lips on a sigh as he lowered himself to continue caressing her body.

She arched up as he swirled his tongue over her nipple, licking and suckling until she was moaning with wild pleasure.

She clasped his head, driving him to take more of her into his mouth, to suckle harder until she was on fire, burning up inside and out.

She pushed her hand down, down to where the orgasm he’d denied her was building again with hungry, demanding impatience.

He rubbed there, found the perfect rhythm and touched her until she could no longer withstand the crescendo building inside her. She spasmed against him with a long, loud cry of pleasure, head flung back and eyes tightly shut.

When she opened her eyes to look at him, his dark eyes were hot with satisfaction. ‘We’ve only just begun, my darling,’ he whispered. ‘I had a taste of honey eight years ago. I won’t be rushing this banquet now.’

‘Do you think I want to?’ She reached up to nuzzle the thick column of his neck, hands lightly clasped around him. ‘Don’t forget I had the same taste of honey as well…’

He’d satisfied her and now it was her turn.

She might not have his vast experience in the bedroom but her body knew what it wanted and, guided by instinct and desire, she reversed position so that she was the one in charge now.

She licked him as he had licked her, flicking her tongue over his flat, brown nipples, then she trailed her mouth and her fingers lightly along his muscular torso.

She grazed his skin with her teeth and felt him shudder under her.

She reached to circle his thick erection with her hand and then slowly began caressing his stiffened member with strokes that were firm, slow and sure.

He covered her hand with his and half-groaned, ‘Okay. Any more and I won’t be able to help myself.’

‘I’d like that…’ Cassie breathed. ‘To see you helpless.’

‘You already have, once upon a time.’

‘You don’t want to rush this, Leo, and neither do I.’ Cassie moved lower, her body sliding against his. She angled herself over him so that she could take him in her mouth, so that he could taste her at the same time and so that they could satisfy one another slowly and seductively.

Leo was the first to break their erotic contact with a hoarse groan.

‘Cas-s… I can’t stand any more. I need to feel myself in you now—right now.’

He adjusted himself so that he could fumble for a foil packet containing protection, finding it in the nick of time, because he was so on the brink of losing it.

He breathed in deeply, gathering some of his self-control, then it was his turn to lie over her, raised on both hands so that he was looking down at her.

‘That first time with you, Cassie… It was unmatched.’

‘For me as well.’

‘This time round?’ He laughed huskily. ‘Concerns about disappointing me were vastly misplaced…’

He could barely rip open the packet and when he entered her, seconds later, feeling her tightness around him was bliss.

He’d died and gone to heaven.

He didn’t want to rush. He thrust long, deep and slowly, moving rhythmically and feeling the excitement rising in her as he continued to move inside her. The past collided with the present. He was touching the girl she had been and the woman she had become. It was…perfection.

He came and it was an explosion, sending him soaring into orbit, forgetting everything but being in the moment, and knowing that he’d never had such a powerful orgasm before in his life.

Spent, he lay back and stared up at the ceiling, enjoying the weight of her against him as she lay in a similar position with her head on his shoulder.

One week… He had never felt so good, so complete. He’d thought he might have to revisit the crazy benchmark from all those years ago; surely his memory had played tricks on him, and time would dim the ferocity of her appeal?

But making love to her just then… He felt the stab of disappointment that a timeline of only a week had been set, but just as fast he dispelled that weakness, because how could he ever trust her?

He couldn’t. She’d walked away once and there was nothing to stop her doing it again.

After his mother’s betrayal, after Cassie’s, trusting a woman again would never be an option for him. A week would be plenty.

‘What sort of food do you do?’ He opted for harmless conversation because the alternative would be to disappear down a rabbit hole he didn’t want to explore.

‘When?’

‘For your catering business.’

‘Every possible kind of food,’ Cassie said sleepily. ‘Although, Frankie is the pastry queen, so I leave all the desserts to her. I enjoy making savoury food and the more complicated the better.’

‘Do you enjoy what you do?’

‘You’re being very polite.’ She stifled a yawn.

‘And you’re sleepy. You also haven’t eaten.’ He absently pushed her hair from her face. ‘I would suggest we have a shower together, and then you can get some sleep, but I might get turned on under running water and then who knows where that’ll lead us?’

Leo paused, waiting for a response that never came. When he shifted and looked at her, she was sound asleep. It had been under a minute.

Just for one second, one fleeting second, he felt happy …happy and at peace.

This was exactly the right thing to have done.

This was what it felt like to scratch an itch he’d never known he had.

Stupid concerns about timelines had been put to bed.

By the end of the week, he would be a very contented man indeed and, after months of working all hours round the clock and dealing with an increasingly demanding and indignant ex-girlfriend, contentment couldn’t come fast enough.

Cassie stretched.

It took her a couple of seconds to register that she wasn’t in her own bed; that striped curtains weren’t opened onto a wintry Canadian sky outside and that the noises weren’t ones with which she was familiar: the whirring of an overhead fan; the chirrup of birds…

And, when she opened her eyes, sunshine found a way through the white shutters and filtered into the bedroom.