Page 93 of Modern Romance Collection December 2024 Books 5-8

Apostolis ran a hand over his face. Then he let out a dark black laugh that filled the hall, and worse still, filled her as well.

Then he pushed off the wall and came toward her—all of one step, then another.

Her throat seemed to clench tight at that, because he was as close as he could get. Because he wasright here, and not one part of her body cared how dark the expression on his face was.

What she wanted, more than anything, was to pretend that this was a part of the dancing they’d been doing all night—

Especially when he slid an arm around her waist and hauled her even closer, so she sprawled into his chest and had to prop herself against that hard, muscled wall when all she really wanted was to melt into all his heat and strength.

“Jolie,” he murmured. Then he said her name a few times, as if he was chanting it, like some kind of prayer, a breath away from her lips. “I don’t believe a word you say.”

She jolted, as if he’d tossed her off the cliff and into the sea far below. “But—”

“Not one single word,” he said, his voice a rough thread of sound.

And then he closed what distance was left and licked his way to her mouth.

Making everything within her, everything she was, nothing but fire and desire.

It was a punch of need so bright and so hot that it threatened to take her down.

So wild that she was tempted to forget that he could hear the truth from her own lips and doubt it—

He kissed her, then kissed her again, as if he didn’t mean to stop.

And she understood that despite everything, she didn’t want him to.

Apostolis pressed her back against the wall and held her wrists beside her head, and Jolie arched up against him, exulting in this. In every bit of heat and dark need and wild temptation. As if only when this man held her still did she feel most free.

His mouth moved on her, consuming her, and she knew that she should fight him. That she should push him away and gather up her weapons, point them in his direction and start firing them, one after the next.

She knew that she should handle this the way she’d handled everything since she’d married Spyros. He had called it hermaddening dignity. He had never come close to piercing it in all their years together.

He had never gotten past her walls.

She had let him play his puppeteer games and had smiled through it all. And never, not ever, had she let him see that he got to her. Jolie couldn’t tell if he’d loved her for that or hated her for it, toward the end.

But she didn’t know if she had it in her to keep that up. Not with Apostolis.

Not with the man who kissed her like this, as if devouring her whole. The man who could say, straight to her face, that she was a liar and he didn’t believe her—then kiss her as if he couldn’t bear the thought of another breath without the taste of her in his mouth.

This was the one game she didn’t know how to play.

So she kissed him back.

And she told herself it wasn’thopethat swelled in her, but that fascination that—if she was scrupulously honest—she’d always felt toward him. From the very start, there had been something about the way Apostolis disliked her. The way he’d made sure she knew it.

This dynamic between them had always excited her.

She could admit that tonight.

And she had five years of this ahead of her. She had told him the truth, he didn’t believe it, and now there was this.

She kissed him back, their tongues started their own war, and this time she knew that there was no winning. That either way, win or lose or draw, it was the same thing—and maybe it needed to end up naked. Maybe it had always needed to go straight to bed.

Maybe this was seven years overdue.

So when he swept her up into his arms and carried her up the stairs, then down the hall to his bedroom—where she had refused to set foot—she let him.

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