Page 101 of Modern Romance September 2025 1-4
He doubted his own family would be pleased at the turn of events but, as they were currently beholden to his good will, any fallout would be minor ripples compared to the tsunami of opprobrium Lydia could expect from hers. It was one thing to arrange and agree a temporary marriage to cement a truce, quite another to actually be attracted to each other and conceive a child together. He could still feel the hate Lydia’s mother had fired at him. There was still a faint mark on his lip where her brother had punched him. Forgiveness did not come easily to those people. It never had. Alexis’s father had screwed Lydia’s father over decades before, before Lydia was even born, and still the hate burned.
But the attraction burned brighter and she, the woman who’d walked out on him and whose passion had turned to loathing, would be more beholden to him than even his family were.
She was his now. She was carrying his child and, whether her brother liked it or not, tomorrow Lydia would be his wife, and hell would freeze over before he ever let her go.
Lydia, sitting on the windowsill trying to take in the spectacular view of clear blue seas, turned her head to the opening bathroom door and wasn’t quick enough to avert her eyes when Alexis stepped through it with only a towel around his waist. One quick glance was enough to fill her senses with the hard, muscular body she’d spent the last ten minutes studiously refusing to imagine under the shower. Studiously refusing to remember the sculpted perfection of.
Bodies like his should be illegal.
Funny what the memory remembered best though. For Lydia, it hadn’t been his sculpted perfection that had stuck so close but the texture of his skin and the taste of his kisses. It was a darkly addictive taste that came from the whole of him, a taste she reacted instinctively and primitively to and that destroyed her willpower with one tiny morsel.
She heard the tread of his footsteps crossing the travertine floor and pressed her hand to her thumping heart.
‘Ready for your shower?’ he asked in that infuriating cheerful manner he had.
‘I’ve nothing to change into,’ she reminded him, refusing to turn her head again.
‘I have clothes you can wear.’
‘No, thank you,’ she said stiffly.
‘Afraid that wearing my clothes will feel too much like wearing my skin?’
Unable to think of a retort, she blew out a puff of air.
‘We’ll be married tomorrow, angel. What is mine becomes yours.’
‘No, it doesn’t. I already said I’d sign any prenup you demanded.’
‘We don’t need a prenup.’
That made her turn her head. ‘Why not…?’ The question had barely left her lips when she made the fatal mistake of dipping her gaze and taking in the unmistakable appendage clearly defined beneath the towel. With a pulse of heat throbbing between her thighs, she shot her gaze back out of the window, but not before she caught the gleam in his eyes.
‘You look hot, angel. Sure you don’t want to wear my clothes?’
‘Oh, shut up,’ she muttered. ‘And stop calling me “angel”.’
‘But you are an angel…although I have yet to decide if you come from heaven or only from Hades.’
‘Definitely just Hades.’
He laughed lowly, his footsteps treading away. ‘What would you prefer I call you? Wife?’
‘I’m not your wife.’
‘Yet.’
‘Why don’t you want a prenup?’
‘We don’t need one. We agreed our marriage would be a commitment for life and I am trusting you to stick to your word.’
‘That’s a huge risk you’re taking.’
‘What is life without a little risk?’ His voice came closer again. ‘Now why don’t you take the risk of showering and then change into this shirt? I promise, it will not bite you and I promise you will be a lot more comfortable than you are in those things.’
Wishing she could blame the heat flooding her skin solely on the setting sun’s beams penetrating the window, Lydia jumped off the windowsill, snatched the blue garment from Alexis’s hand and stomped to the bathroom, all without looking at him. His laughter lingered in her ears long after she’d slammed the bathroom door shut.
Where had this late-onset dose of vanity come from? Lydia wondered with fresh despair. She shouldn’t be staring at her reflection wishing for a hairdryer and her makeup bag. She hardly ever wore makeup as it was! And why the hell were her nipples jutting out like that? Alexis would take one look at them and assume she was aroused just from wearing his shirt. Damn him, he’d be right. It really did feel as if she were wearing his skin.
