Page 74 of Modern Romance Collection December 2024 Books 5-8

He loathed it.

In his dreams, that scene in the library did not end where it had that day. In his dreams he lifted her up into his arms and took her down onto the library floor. He stripped her of those clothes she wore—all that casual, offhanded elegance, no match for the real Jolie there beneath the things she wore.

In his dreams, he tasted every centimeter of her flesh and drank deep between her thighs until he had her moaning and writhing in his grip.

And his dreams never stopped there, either.

Every night, his dreams presented him with another way to slake this wildfire in him. Every night, he found that there was no balance to his imagination and no brakes besides. Not when it came to her.

As if, all along, he had not so much hated her for all the appropriate reasons, but desired her—

But no. He could not accept it.

And it made interacting with her in the light of day a challenge.

She would stand before him throwing all her usual barbs and all he would think about was how deep inside of her he’d been in last night’s deliriously hot dream. How she had arched her back and pressed her breast to his mouth. How she tossed back her head in abandon when she rode him hard and deep.

Are you listening to me?she had asked a bit sharply this morning.

But he’d studied the way her gaze widened as he looked at her.

And he’d wondered if she’d had an idea what he was thinking about without him having to say a word.

Of course I wasn’t listening,he had told her, after a fraught moment or two passed.I never listen when you’re insulting me. Which means, my darling wife, it’s as if we live in this lovely spot in perfect silence. Nothing but the waves and the wind.

He had been proud of that.

She had looked rather more incandescent, though she had walked away before he could see if she might truly lose her cool at last.

Apostolis was enjoying imagining how else that moment might have ended when he heard a knock at the office door. He turned, aware that something in him leaped a bit at the notion it might be his wife.

But he tempered that reaction almost as soon as he had it. Because, for one thing, Jolie rarely knocked on any door at the Andromeda, since she was half owner of the hotel. As she liked to remind him daily. And for another, that was not the reaction he should have been having where she was concerned.

And besides, it was Dioni. He smiled at his sister with genuine warmth. “You don’t have to knock, Dionimou. This is your house as well as mine.”

Dioni inched into the room and he felt the same swell of affection and bafflement that he always did at the sight of his sister. Their mother had been exquisite. A woman of such impeccable taste and glorious style that, to this day, he had never met a person who’d known her who didn’t mention those things immediately.

And yet this was her daughter. His sister, the jewel of the house of Adrianakis, who scurried about like some kind of woodland animal.

“Well, that’s a lovely thing to say but it’s not really my house, is it?” If someone else had said something like that, it would have been a complaint. But this was Dioni. He had never heard her complain. Because a complaint was part and parcel of some kind of darkness, and as far as he was aware, she had never known even the faintest shadow. “It’s your house. And Jolie’s house. Father did not leave me anything.”

“He left you me,” he corrected her, surprised when perhaps he should not have been. “And I will see to it, as he did, that you will never want for a thing.”

His sister made her way further into the office and sat in the chair before his desk. And he looked at her, struck by the notion that he hadn’t really looked at her closely in some time. Not since the wedding, which was weeks ago now. She looked...

Different,he thought. It took him a moment to realize why. Her hair wasn’t falling down all around her. He could see no stains or tears in her clothing.

He frowned. “Are you all right?”

He could have sworn that she flinched then, though she hid it in the next moment. But then again, this was his sister who had never hidden anything from him. He was certain that he must have been mistaken.

She frowned at him. “Why would I be different? What do you mean?”

Apostolis had always thought that his role as her brother was not to mention her appearance, which he knew everyone else harped on. Or worse, tried tohelp her, which she always suffered with good grace only to turn up disheveled just the same.

He had always found it charming.

“Only you can tell you’re different or not, little mouse,” he said, and again, she did something out of the ordinary. It was as if she bristled, but then caught herself.

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