Page 32 of Modern Romance June 2025 1-4

Oh, but he would, he thought—almost grimly—he most definitely would. It was unbearably erotic to feel the rub of lace against his skin and he could feel the liquid heat at the very heart of her. Shifting her weight to accommodate him, she wrapped her soft thighs around his back as he went deeper, impaling her against the mattress. And suddenly he was lost. It was all about sensation as he felt her body beneath his. Her soft lips covering his with kisses. Her throaty sighs urging him on. He teased her for as long as it took for her to shudder out her orgasm—her petite frame quivering ecstatically. And then all last vestiges of control fell away as he bit out his own incomprehensible words of surrender.

Afterwards he lay there, his mouth still buried in the softness of her hair, his arm slung tightly around her waist, and she turned her head a little, so that he could feel the warmth of her breath against his cheek.

‘Can I ask you something, Odysseus?’

‘Anything,’ he said recklessly.

‘Does it feel…different?’

Still basking in the glow of what felt like the most incredible orgasm of his life, he indulged her a little more. ‘What, specifically?’

‘That’s what you said when you found out I was a virgin, because it was the first time,’ she added shyly, and he could hear the softness in her voice. ‘And since neither of us have been married before, I was just wondering whether the sex felt different. Now that it’s legal.’

A flicker of alarm whispered over his skin as he met her complicit smile and suddenly his satisfaction evaporated. Yes, he conceded grimly. Ithadfelt different.

It had felt as if she had ripped something from deep inside him. As if she were determined to destroy the control which was the only thing he had ever been able to rely on.

‘It was good,’ he said, but the cool compliment was deliberately dismissive and he registered the flash of disappointment in her eyes before she closed them. And Odysseus was grateful for the temporary respite. He didn’t want that amber gaze surveying him with a tenderness she was so bad at hiding.

He thought about everything he’d done differently since he’d met her, starting with having sex with a total stranger. He’d brought her here and married her. He’d told her about his mother. Was it her gentle probing or her innocent allure which had made him confide in her? Which had allowed her to peel away his armour with such ease and expose the darkness beneath.

Too late to regret it now, for it was a done deal. She was dangerous, he recognised, with a sinking heart. More dangerous than he could ever have anticipated. And something took his mind back six years, when the most hard-hearted man he knew—a man who didn’t evenlikecats—had been captivated by a helpless kitten left half dead on the side of an Athens road. Odysseus remembered his sinking sense of responsibility as he’d plucked the weightless scrap of black and white fur from the roar of passing cars, but mostly he remembered the purr it gave when he stroked its ear, just after it had bitten him. He was intending to pay handsomely to have it adopted by a charity had it not mewed so piteously whenever he’d tried to get rid of it. In the end, he had given the cat to Evangelia but the damned thing would still insist on butting her head outside his office door whenever she got the opportunity, trying to get in to wind her tail around his ankle.

And wasn’t Grace just like that damned kitten? Trying to burrow herself further and further into his life. Attempting to take from him things he wasn’t willing to give up. She needed to understand his boundaries, he reminded himself grimly, and there was only one way to do that.

His mouth curved into a smile he knew was cruel—he had been told so often enough by women. Only this time the smile felt like a life raft, rather than a deliberately distancing measure. He was a master of pushing women away but never had it been more vital than now. Because he would hurt her if she took him into her heart. And he really didn’t want to hurt her.

‘Odysseus?’ she whispered, her soft voice redolent with pleasure and something else—something which was making those alarm bells ring even louder. Any minute now she’d be telling him she loved him, because women had a terrible habit of mistaking orgasm for emotion. Yet once those words were spoken, you could never go back. You could never unsay them.

‘Hold that thought until I get back,’ he murmured.

‘You’re…going?’

‘Mmm.’ Yawning, he stretched his arms above his head. ‘I need to look through a few papers,’ he added, dropping a careless kiss on top of her ruffled hair. ‘And then I’m going to take a shower.’

But he had to steel himself against the disappointment which darkened her amber eyes as he threw back the covers and got out of bed.

CHAPTER TWELVE

‘Doyouhaveto workallday?’ Grace tried to remove the pleading note in her voice as Odysseus rose up from the breakfast table, but sometimes it was hard to pretend to be contented when inside you were a bubbling mass of conflicting emotions. When you were trying like mad to temper the stupid feelings which kept growing inside you, no matter how much you knew that it was pointless to care for such a stone-hearted man. She shrugged her shoulders slightly and gave him a hopeful smile. ‘Couldn’t you at least bunk off for a couple of hours so we could go swimming?’

As the glorious sunshine dappled over his powerful body, he gave her that look she knew so well. Slightly regretful and slightly resigned. As if he could do nothing about the many work-related demands on his precious time, despite being the boss of a massive global business. ‘You know I can’t. There are a dozen things I must do before we leave for Tuloranka and, unfortunately, these are things I don’t really want to delegate. Now come here,poulaki mou, and kiss me before I go.’

She wanted to tell him that she wasn’t hislittle bird. She was his wife, and she was becoming increasingly frustrated. Not sexually. Oh, no. She certainly had no complaints in that department. How could she when she melted with intoxicating pleasure whenever he so much as laid a finger on her? It was everything else. But she raised her face to his all the same, while he planted a lingering kiss on her lips and told her he would see her later.

As she watched him walk across the beautiful grounds towards his office, she acknowledged a certainty which was growing by the day.

That there were always serpents in paradise.

Always.

Putting the spoon back in the jar of honey, Grace stared out at the unremittingly blue sea. Not that she had anything against the island of Kosmima itself. Her view that this was the prettiest place she’d ever seen remained constant—and if there was a nicer spot to sit eating your breakfast, she couldn’t imagine it. And who in their right mind would turn up their nose at the massive infinity pool, stunning grounds and endless beaches of fine sand so close to Odysseus’s sprawling villa? Throw into the mix a massive library, a friendly housekeeper who would rustle up anything Grace wanted, no matter how many times she protested that she was perfectly capable of doing it herself, and it felt as if she were staying in a five-star luxury resort.

On her own.

Once again she was the recipient of someone else’s wealth and once again she was nothing but a kind of functionary…only this time she wasn’t a servant, but a makeshift wife.

It didn’t help that she couldn’t drive and although her husband had put his chauffeur at her disposal, she hadn’t taken him up on the offer. She didn’t want to be driven around, sitting like a lemon in the back seat, like some bizarre curiosity as the powerful car moved through the countryside.

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