Page 145 of Modern Romance June 2025 1-4

“You will notice that this is a very big estate,” Taio tells me, and when his mouth curves, I smile back at him. “It is very easy to go a great many days at a time without encountering my mother at all. This is how we prefer it.”

“Who does she want you to marry?” I asked.

“It may surprise you to learn that she feels that the gene pool would be improved if we added more Frenchwomen to it.”

“And does she therefore throw them in your path?” I try to imagine a pack ofsoignéFrench girls, all jutting cheekbones and slim hips, smoking their cigarettesatTaio. And how much he would hate it.

“She would never lower herself to do such a thing. She must always be above such petty considerations.” He flips our intertwined hands over and plays with the rings he put on my finger, wiggling them this way and that. It makes me feel…cared for,I think. It’s difficult to name when I have never experienced its like before. I don’t know how to categorize it. “She makes her wishes known in other ways, but believe me, I am never in any doubt.”

I think about my father, and how his body has reflected his choices over time, stooped and tired. I think about my stepmother’s harsh words and insults and the grooves they’ve left in her once-lovely face. I think about the deep chill that Francette seems to exude with so little effort.

“I think we will have to decide, you and me, what kind of parents we will be,” I say, the words spilling out of me heedlessly. “Because I promise you, I will not be cold. I will not be…like your mother. At all.”

“And I assure you that I will not be weak,” Taio tells me in the same fierce way, his eyes on mine. “I will never, ever choose anyone over you, Annagret. This I promise.”

That electric connection we’ve had since the start sizzles, then. It snaps inside me, crackling with intensity. I can see it has the same effect on him.

So I go up on my toes and tilt my face back so I can look him in the eye.

“Taio,” I say quietly. “What if I’m not hungry for food?”

And when he sweeps me up in his arms this time, he carries me back up the stairs and through this grand, sprawling palace of the house, taking me into a part of it I haven’t seen. His part, I understand immediately.

He lays me down on yet another bed, and once again, meets me there.

And as our mouths find each other again, and our hands follow, I acknowledge that I never thought that I would get to taste him again.

It’s like coming home. It’s like being made new.

It’s possible that I’ve never lived until now. That coming back to him is what makes me whole at last.

When he slides his hand up beneath my smooth white gown and finds my soft heat, I believe it.

And everything between us explodes quicker this time. We are wilder. Bolder.

We aremarriedand it makes us desperate. We tear at each other’s clothes. Our mouths fuse together, and it’s feverish.

Even more glorious than I remember.

We are naked flame and we burn bright—again and again—and when we are done, we lie in a panting heap, together. His hand rests upon my belly. I feel him, deep in my soul.

In every breath I take.

And I understand a deep and irrevocable truth.

I am in love with this man I married, despite my best intentions.

But this marriage is precarious, and I know better than to believe in it, because I know where I came from. And I know where I am.

I don’t see how these things can ever go together.

And no matter the glory we find together in this bed or any other, I do not intend to live a lie, ever again.

Especially not with him.

CHAPTER TEN

Taiohandlestheupset of his mother’s appearance—and our nightly experiments in vulnerability and true nakedness—by doing what men always do. He hides behind business.

---