Page 95 of Modern Romance September 2025 1-4
Regardless of their poisonous family histories, she would never have been that woman. Lydia’s pride and self-respect were the only things she’d ever earned on her own and she would not compromise them for anyone, not even Mr Sex on Legs.
She’d walked away and so bruised his overinflated ego, and now he was snatching at the opportunity their carelessness—and as hard as she tried, she couldn’t pinpoint when, exactly, throughout that long, glorious weekend the passion had made themthatcareless—had provided to make her pay.
He beckoned her with his finger.
This was her last chance. Prove her commitment or he would walk.
But to prove her commitment she had to walk to him. She wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d clicked his fingers to lay a path of hot coals for her to tread to reach him.
Heart racing, pulses jumping, she lifted her chin and took the five steps needed to reach him.
His lips tugged into a knowing smile. ‘Here first,’ he said, lowering his face to nearer her level and lightly tapping the only thing close to a blemish on his face. Not liking the constriction in her chest to be forced to look at that blemish and to remember the blood that had poured from it, she gritted her teeth, and rose onto her toes.
Holding her breath, she pressed her lips swiftly to the side of Alexis’s mouth where the cut lay, then stepped back before her lips had the time to register any connection between them.
It didn’t stop her heart racing even harder and faster.
His eyes gleamed as he placed his finger to the centre of his mouth. ‘And now here.’
She clenched her jaw to rise back onto her toes and press an even more fleeting kiss to the lips that had kissed her in places she hadn’t even known were places. Before she could dart back out of his reach and thank years of yoga and Pilates for giving her a core that could lift itself to kiss a man over a foot taller than herself without having to lay a finger on him for support, an arm hooked around her back and pulled her flush to him.
‘You call that a kiss?’ he whispered huskily. His other hand clasped the back of her head and gently tugged her back, forcing her to meet head-on the blue-grey eyes that had haunted her waking and sleeping dreams for three months. ‘Let me show you the kind of kiss I was thinking of…’
His mouth closed in on hers and with her heart now a thrumming burr and her mouth filled with a moisture that had come from nowhere, Lydia closed her eyes. Before she could clench her hands into fists or do any of the other things necessary to keep her senses dulled, there was a gentle, featherlight pressure on her lips and a scent filled her nostrils that made every cell in her body cry.
Determined not to react, she held herself like a statue. Of all the things that had made her recoil from committing to a proper marriage, the strongest had been Alexis’s devastating physical effect on her. So powerful had it been that dragging herself out of his bed had been the hardest thing she’d had to do in the whole of her life. She could not imagine what a month of waking in his arms would do to her, never mind a lifetime. Telling herself that this was all a power play and that she’d probably only share his bed for an extremely limited time before he bored of toying with her and bored ofher—a goldfish had a greater attention span than Alexis Tsaliki had with women—didn’t make her feel any better. Somehow it made her feel worse.
She had no choice. Alexis held all the cards and when you made a deal with the devil you had to pay the price. But that didn’t mean you had to pay a cent more than he demanded, and if she could make it to the point where he discarded her with her pride and self-respect intact, then she…
The distraction of her thoughts evaporated under the heat of the slow, seductive movements of his mouth and the gentle massaging of his fingers to the back of her head.
With skilful mastery, he coaxed her lips apart and slowly slid his tongue into her mouth.
Her entire system short-circuited.
She swayed, suddenly filled with the dark, exotic taste that had been part of the whole magical Alexis Tsaliki package, and a flame of raw desire pulsed from the spot between her legs and darted straight into her veins, weakening her legs.
The probing of his tongue deepened, the fingers clasping her head moving up to the band holding her hair in place and then gently sliding it down to the tips and flicking it away. Her hair tumbled down at the same moment her throat betrayed her with a treacherous moan and suddenly Lydia was gripping his strong shoulders and moulding herself to the hardness of his chest, not just responding to the demands of his mouth and tongue but making demands of her own.
With his fingers now threading through the strands of her hair, his other hand clasped her bottom, holding it possessively, the fusion of their bodies as tight as that of their mouths. Arms now wrapped around his neck, she kissed him as if she’d been waiting her whole life for this moment, and when she felt the hard ridge of his arousal against her abdomen she moved restlessly against it, rising onto the tips of her toes in a desperate effort to lift her pelvis closer.
His hand crept up, beneath her cotton top, the heat of his skin burning into her flesh, moving higher to the clasp of her bra. With a practised flick of his fingers and wrist, he undid the clasp, making her a hundred times more aware of the weight of her own breasts crying out for his touch, and when his fingers skimmed her ribcage and then covered one, she cried into his mouth and scraped her nails down the nape of his neck to dip beneath the collar of his polo shirt, a fever inside her, needing to touch him as much as she needed to be touched…
With no warning and no ceremony, he dropped his hands and pulled away from her, mouth and body.
‘Wha…?’ She tried to snatch a breath, her dazed, unthinking word fading into nothing.
Muscular arms now folded across his broad chest, his face lowered to hers. The lips that had just kissed her senseless smiled cruelly. ‘That, my angel from Hades, was a much better effort. Our deal is now sealed. Can you get yourself to Kos tomorrow?’
She nodded dumbly. She could barely stand never mind speak, had to ground her feet in the sand to stop her legs from giving out on her.
‘Good. My plane will leave for Agon at four p.m. If you’re not there then I will assume you have changed your mind and our deal will be terminated.’
With those parting words, he turned his back and walked away. Lydia was still fighting to find breath when he was swallowed by the darkness.
CHAPTER FOUR
ALEXIS TAPPED HISlong fingers on the armrest and gazed out at the seemingly endless stretch of tarmac. Five minutes until take-off and no sign of Lydia.
