Page 232 of Modern Romance Collection March 2025 (1-4)

And yet he was consumed by it. Filled with it.

Was this how it began? The slow stripping away of your power?

He refused to call it love. He didn’t believe sexual obsession was anything like love, and yet people liked calling it that to make themselves feel better. He had engaged in any number of physical-only affairs. And no one had ever gotten their hooks into him quite like this. It was because she was different. It had to be because she had saved his life. Perhaps because she had been a virgin.

It was easy to develop this strange savior complex. Where he believed he had introduced her to the desires of her body. In this feeling of protectiveness, because she was precious in some ways. Coming from a life that he couldn’t even imagine. And she had been brought into his, which made him feel like he owed her his life the way that she had saved his.

And suddenly, all became clear to him. He reasoned that while he wanted to ensure that he maintained control over his emotions, the way that he was handling things now did not demonstrate control.

If he could not manage to treat her as his princess, then what was the point of control at all?

It was not real control, it was simply avoidance. And if there was one thing that Adonis had never done, it was avoid something. Not conflict, not pleasure, not hardship. He was a man who faced all things head-on. Including plane crashes. And most definitely including his fiancée and her feelings.

That was how he found himself following the same path she had just taken to her room. He did not knock. It was his palace, after all.

Stevie was standing at the window, and she turned abruptly, her breath sharp as she did so.

“Stevie, what can I give you?” he said.

Stevie only stared at him in silence, and then screwed up her face, staring hard at him.

“What?” he asked.

“Is this your way of apologizing to me?”

“What… What gives you that impression?”

He was utterly taken aback.

“Why do you want to know what you can do for me if you don’t feel sorry for what you did earlier?”

He scowled. “If I had wanted to apologize to you I simply would have.”

“I don’t think so. I think you feel bad.”

He gritted his teeth. Because of course he did. It was why he had come.

“Do you want a gift, or not?”

She wrinkled her nose. “I would like a gift. Who wouldn’t?”

“Then tell me what you desire.”

“A tiger.”

“I will find one.”

She rolled her eyes. “I’m kidding. I don’t want a tiger. But you don’t know me.”

“Then allow me the opportunity to know you. By telling me what you want, instead of lying like a little weasel.”

“Why would a weasel ask for a tiger, Adonis? That doesn’t make any sense. It would be eaten.”

“I know you’re just being deliberately difficult.”

“Maybe. But I’ve been known to be. I’ve spent the last six years playing the part of mother to six sisters. You learn to be a little bit difficult as a matter of necessity.”

“I’m quite certain you do.”

---