Page 105 of Modern Romance Collection December 2024 Books 5-8

And she was so tired of fighting.

So instead, she rose. Jolie found her feet and felt steadier when his gaze changed into something more like...arrested. As if he was no more sure of his power here than she was, no matter what he might claim. She crossed the space between them, moving over to his chair so she could sink down on her knees before him.

And she was glad that she had spent some time in this position, because if she hadn’t, she might not have realized that it was not a surrender. She was not laying herself out before him in submission. Not when both of them knew how she could take her power here, rendering him little more than clay in her hands.

Not to mention what she could do with her mouth.

Part of the power, she understood now, was in the act of the surrender itself—not to him, but to what she believed was more important, here in this moment.

Not just Mathilde. She would always want to save her cousin, and shewouldmake certain she did, but this wasn’t only about her.

It was aboutmaybe.It was aboutwhat if.

It was about the versions of them she glimpsed when they were too busy taking care of their guests to snipe at each other.

It was about the stories she wanted them to tell, years later, about these moments.

She knelt there before him and she reached over to take his hand between hers. It was the hand that wore a wider version of the simple band that she wore on hers. The evidence that they really were married. That it really had happened. That this wasn’t all some fever dream of sex and laughter, golden nights and desperate, needy dawns.

There was so much tension in him. And all of that wild and unconquerable heat.

Jolie looked up at him, holding his gaze as surely as she held his hand. “I’m telling you everything because I want things to be different. I don’t want there to be secrets between us. I want to try, you and me, to make something real out of this, Apostolis.”

He stared at her, looking almost...frozen. But that was better than openly mocking. Or scathing.

So she pushed on. “What if we could start over? Without your father. Without battles and wars, weapons and forced marches and trenches neither one of us wants to be in. What if we could just...be ourselves? Not the people your father made, but whoever we want to be, you and me?”

His laugh was a thread of bitterness. “What an imagination you have.”

“I have always known how you care for your sister,” she said, with a sour hint of desperation in her mouth. “And even if I hadn’t known it, even before we met, I now know that what you do is care for people. You’ve made it a business. You save people from disaster, Apostolis. And you came back home to save this hotel, too.” She thought of all those photographs, lined up just so. “You care so much about these things that matter to you—your childhood home, your sister, the kind of good you do in the world. What if—” and she hated herself for the way her voice shook, or maybe she only wished she could hate the vulnerability that poured through her “—what if you let yourself care about us, too?”

And for a moment, all of those words seemed to dance there between them like their own kind of golden light, even though it was dark outside. It took Jolie a long moment to realize that it was one of the lights she’d switched on herself, flooding the pair of them where they sat.

That was when he leaned forward, flipping his hand so that he was the one holding her fast.

“The only time you tell the truth, my darling wife and favorite stepmother,” and his voice was hoarse and so dark it made her shiver, “is when you come.”

Something in her jolted in shock, as if her very bones were breaking.

Or maybe that was simply her heart.

“Apostolis. Please—”

“There are worse things than death, Jolie,” he told her in that same dark voice. “Remember? Like losing. I hope you enjoy it.”

And when his mouth came crashing down on hers, Jolie knew everything was lost.

But her deep tragedy was that she kissed him back.

CHAPTER TEN

APOSTOLISFLEWTOParis the next day, though he couldn’t escape the feeling that he had not so much settled the issue between him and Jolie as postponed it.

They had exploded into their usual passion, but maybe that had been a mistake. It had all been...too much. Too real.

Or maybe it was his own weakness that so disgusted him.

Because hewantedto believe her. He wanted to believe it when she said those things about who they could be, about the kind of marriage they could have—

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