Page 205 of Modern Romance October 2025 5-8

‘It’s fine. It came with the place.’

He made a sound of disgust. ‘Charlotte, you cannot be serious.’

‘It’sfine,’ she repeated. ‘Far better than lots of women have.’

‘So you’re going out in sympathy with Britain’s unhoused population?’

She pulled a face.

‘Because I can’t see how you having a bad back and sleepless nights does anything to help anyone...’

‘You’d be surprised what you can get used to. I don’t even feel the springs any more.’

He shook his head. ‘You can afford a new bed, can’t you?’

‘It’s not about that.’

‘This doesn’t make sense.’

‘Of course it doesn’t make senseto you,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘Dante, tell me this,’ she posited. ‘How many cars do you own?’

He shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’

‘But more than one,’ she said, with confidence.

‘Cars are collectible.’

‘Cars are a terrible investment. They lose value the second you take them out of the showroom.’

‘I don’t collect them to make me money. I collect them because they’re collectible.’

‘And I’m not casting aspersions on your lifestyle choices, even when I fundamentally disagree with them. I’m just saying—we’re different people. And that’s okay.’

‘Good quality sleep is important for your health,’ he continued, in a tone that reminded her a little of a headmaster. ‘I don’t know how you get anything done in the day after spending the night on that piece of junk.’

She laughed again. ‘You’re ridiculous. It’s totally fine.’

‘It is not—,’

She pressed a finger to his lips. ‘You’re forgetting that I probably weigh half what you do,’ she said. ‘The bed really doesn’t bother me like it does you. But if it makes you feel any better, you don’t ever have to be in my bed again.’ As soon as she said it, she felt a strange, twisting ache, like she’d just closed the door on something that she’d actually really enjoyed. Having him in her space. Having him in her bed. Warning sirens blared, but she ignored them. She was in total control of this.

‘Deal. My place it is from now on.’ He looked down the plane and nodded slightly. ‘Take your seat, Shaw. It’s show time.’

In Dante’s opinion, Charlotte Shaw always looked good enough to eat. Scratch that. Pretty much any man on earth would share that same view. But today, of all days, she looked particularly, mouth-wateringly delectable, in skin-tight white pants and a silky blouse that was just the perfect fit on her slender frame, tucked in at the waist, but billowing a little above, so he caught a hint—but not quite enough—of the outline of her breasts. Her feet were encased in her usual sort of shoe—heels—and her hair was long and loose around her face, all fiery and wild, in a way that made him ache to drive his hands through it.

Unbidden images of her from the night before raced through his head. Just inside the door of her flat, for Christ’s sake he hadn’t even been able to get three steps in the door, down on her knees. Taking him deep in her mouth, those perfect lips wrapping around him. He’d thought he’d died and gone to heaven.

Had she honestly been planning to marry someone else? Any guy who’d agree to her proposal? The thought turned the blood in his veins to ice. It was interesting to contemplate how much he hated that idea, even when he knew that their relationship was shallow, limited to sex, by mutual agreement.

‘Hello, earth to Dante,’ she clicked her fingers in his face, her expression now one of schoolmarm impatience. ‘Are you even listening to me?’

‘I wasn’t,’ he said, without a hint of apology.

Her brows lifted.

‘Don’t be hurt. I was thinking about you instead,’ he said, voice gruff and deep, laced with the desire that was flooding his body.

Her cheeks glowed pink and her tongue darted out to moisten her lower lip, before she dragged it between her even white teeth. ‘Down, boy,’ she muttered, but her pupils were huge and he knew—because they’d been doing this for long enough—that she was finding it as hard as he was to ignore the sexual chemistry that fogged the air between them. ‘This is study time,’ she reprimanded in a mock cross tone.