Page 154 of Modern Romance Collection December 2024 Books 5-8

They’d both been waiting for each other to come back.

So tonight, she wanted to be brave.

She wanted to besensual.

She wanted to be touched by him. She wanted to let herself be consumed by the frantic heat between them. She wanted to throw herself into the intensity of his dark brown eyes and drown in them.

She wanted to do what they had set out to do in the first place: stay until she’d had her fill, until she no longer wanted him. And then she’d walk away, without a backward glance. Whenever that might be.

Dante had promised her financial security regardless of what choice she made.

And she believed him.

It felt powerful to have this choice. To choose to please herself.And him.

Suddenly she felt nervous. Not wanting to bite at her lower lip and smudge the perfectly applied plum lipstick, Emma nipped at the inside of her cheek. The pain was a welcome distraction.

She knew the mechanics of sex. Understood her role in the bedroom. To be a vehicle for someone else’s pleasure and take what pleasure she could of her own.

But Dante was different. How he made her feel was different. She wanted to touch him in ways she’d never touched another. She wanted to be on her knees before him and bring him pleasure with her lips. Her tongue. Her mouth. She wanted him on his knees, wanted to place her calf over his shoulder and allow him to take what he wanted.

And it felt powerful to know it would be this way for them.

No one-sided pleasure, no race to the finish line andWhoops, sorry about that. No apologies at all.

With him, it would be mutual. A shared goal to please one another.

Dante’s eyes moved over every exposed area of her skin. And it heated her from the inside.

She recognised it. The wildfire that would ignite as soon as his lips touched hers.

An ache pulsed inside her.

This time, she’d let him catch fire.

Let it roar inside her.

Let it roar inside them both.

She’d made her choice.

Tonight, she’d be with Dante without emotion. He’d fulfil her every physical desire, and she’d embrace the franticness. The intensity.

What was the harm?

Emma pushed her hand into the hard muscle of his chest. Felt the ripple of the white dress shirt beneath her fingers. Let the heat of his hand on hers warm her. Heat her from her toes to her scalp.

‘Kiss me,’ she demanded, and it felt powerful to demand it. To want him without fear.

‘Emma,’ he warned darkly. And she felt the rumble of it in his chest, beneath her hand.

‘I need more than that. I need you to tell me exactly what you want, what you’re choosing.’

Emma needed to say it out loud as much as he needed to hear it. That she was willing to accept his terms, the terms they had put in place together for this marriage to work.

‘I choose our marriage. The contract. No emotion. Only desire. I choose...’

Slowly, she let her gaze move over his face. It was perfectly symmetrical. Black hair hung at his ears. High cheekbones sat above his powerful jaw and noble nose. And his eyes, a brown so dark, so deep, she could fall into them.