Page 169 of Modern Romance Collection December 2024 Books 5-8

He didn’t like that thought, he realised. It made his nostrils flare with disgust.

He liked his ring on her finger. He liked that she was his. That she belonged to him. Because she did. And he liked that she was here. With him. Wearing her ring in this place he’d never shared with anyone else. It felt warm to have her with him. It felt...

Right.

No, that couldn’t be it, could it?

‘Are we getting out?’ Her voice slid into his ear.

He was not so naive. He was still obsessed with her. His crush. His wife.

More obsessed than he’d ever had been, because now he wanted the thoughts in her head. Wanted her to ask questions, wanted to answer them. Despite the rules. The playbook.

Maybe they could write their own playbook. Get to know one another outside of the sex. Not love, never love. But introduce emotions.

Because her desire for stability, normality, did things to him, didn’t it? Those were things he didn’t know how to define or if he liked them. It was different. She was different. And she made him feel...different.

Was she right?

Had he married her for the normality it offered, a normal he’d never truly known? Stability, sameness, one woman in his bed, in a house they shared—was that why he’d missed her? Been so displaced without her? Was this pain inside him more than a sexual ache? More than a need to possess her physically? But to...

What?

He was not normal. He wasn’t raised to be normal. He could never be those things for her. And she deserved them, didn’t she? This normal life she craved. A man she came home to, who was her constant. He wasn’tthatman.

Then why are you still here?

‘Dante?’ His eyes met her questioning ones.

‘Yes, we’re getting out,’ he said, and removed his hand from beneath hers as he stepped out of the car, resisting the urge to recapture it and hold it tight.

He didn’t know why he was holding his breath. Why he waited with his lungs burning for her to follow him. But he did. He waited on the pavement of this ordinary street for her to join him.

‘In there,’ he said, and nodded towards the two black double doors to her right.

She looked at the doors. No sign to indicate what lay on the other side. To indicate if she was allowed inside. But she moved towards them and pushed one open without hesitation.

Perhaps the threat had never been outside the doors of their Mayfair house.Perhaps he was the threat. She had trusted him to keep her safe and he’d hurt her, hadn’t he? By not considering what it meant to Emma when he left her behind.

Door ajar, one pointed heel inside the door, she waited for him. ‘Are you coming?’

His body answered for him. A tightening in his solar plexus. Because still it lived inside him. The overwhelming need to be close to her, to be near her, to keep her close to him.

He could adapt, he knew. He could change the rules. He could show her that he hadn’t listened to her stories with complete emotional detachment. But did he want to? That was the question.

Dante followed her into a place that he had thought to be his alone. A place he didn’t think she belonged. He’d brought her halfway around the world to be here with him. And he could have taken her anywhere. He’d planned to seduce her with adventure and newness.

He could have taken her into Shinjuku City, dazzled her with the noise, the bustle, the lights, the smells unique to the little alley that was so big in atmosphere and its exotic food offerings, it rivalled London’s Soho.

But he’d chosen to bring her here, to a place he didn’t share with anyone. Not with clients. Not with anyone. It washis.It was not a garden. It was not a romantic place of pink petals and green grass. It was a building made of brick without windows and closed doors with locks that bolted shut behind him.

Tonight, he wasn’t taking her to bed. He was taking somewhere where it would only be them.

Dante followed Emma inside.

The jolt of metal reverberated in the silence.

‘You’ve locked the doors?’