Page 94 of Modern Romance Collection December 2024 Books 5-8

Because if she couldn’t havehope, she might as well havehim.

In whatever way she could manage.

CHAPTER EIGHT

HEDIDN’TBELIEVEa word she said.

But this last, best battlefield did not require words. Words had done their worst. Now there was only the enduring truth of this connection he was certain neither one of them wished to feel.

The time for wishes was past, too.

He spread her out on his bed, aware of a great, glowing thing inside of him—as if the fact of her presence alone set alight something in him he wasn’t sure he could identify. It made sense, he assured himself. Once he had reluctantly accepted that there was no way out of this marriage, he had always assumed that this moment would come. Sooner or later.

Now it was here.

Apostolis could taste her in his mouth. And her kiss had been a revelation, again.

And now he had to wrestle with that great glow within, the greedy demands of his sex, and the simple fact that he had wanted her almosttoolong.

They all crowded together inside of him, as if jostling for position.

If he was someone else, Apostolis thought, he might well have found himself paralyzed now that this moment had arrived.

But he felt as if he’d spent his whole life getting ready for this. For her.

Jolie pushed herself up onto her elbows, shaking back that golden hair that he thought about far more often than he should. He did not let himself think too much about the things she’d told him, and not only because he didn’t believe her.

But because the very last thing he wished to think about just now was his father.

Or anyone else, for any reason.

Something that might have alarmed him under different circumstances.

“Are you having second thoughts?” she asked, back to that arch, mocking voice of hers that he found still set him on fire. As if he needed more encouragement to let the flames in him reach high. “Or is it...” She smiled, benevolently, which between them was akin to a sword strike. “It’s all right. It happens to everyone from time to time, or so I hear. Despite their best intentions, they just can’t manage to make the equipment work.”

“I think,” he said as he crawled onto the bed and sprawled himself out beside her, at last, “that I’m finished with all of thistalking,Jolie.”

Before she could argue about that—because he knew that she would argue about that—he set his mouth to hers once more.

And this time it seemed impossible that anything, even the end of the world itself, would stop them.

Apostolis would see to it personally.

He kissed her again and again, taking note of when she kissed him back even more fiercely. Of how and when her lips clung to his. Or how and when she became more urgent, more demanding, pressing her body into his until he let her push him over to his back so he could hold her above him, feeling her body all over his, and this time, not while dancing on a terrace packed full of people.

This dance was far more intimate. And only his.

Her hands moved over him the way they had once before. But this time he could also feel the press of her soft breasts as she unbuttoned his shirt, tracking her way down the length of his chest until she could shove aside the sides of his linen shirt and bury her face between.

She made a low noise of pleasure, as if she’d been waiting to do that for a very long time.

He stopped her when she got to his trousers, hauling her up again then sitting up as he set her astride him. So he could help himself to the hem of the gown she wore and peel it up and then off her body, revealing her to him at last.

It was different than the times he’d seen her by the pool or sunning herself on a boat, in even the skimpiest bikini.

It was different because he was touching her this time. And she was spread open before him like an exquisite feast.

Best of all, the hardest part of him was pressed into the V of her thighs, and he got to watch the way the feel of him against her softest parts made her sigh.

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