Page 22 of Modern Romance January 2025 1-4

And the substance of her dreams only got better as he moved, withdrawing and then entering again, pushing hard to the very centre of her being. Delight encased her body, a slow roll of delight she couldn’t resist, no matter how hard she tried. Her hands closed over his shoulders, fingers digging in. When the next thrust came, she was so into it, she moaned, and he looked down at her with those glittering golden eyes and she was lost in the sensation, her hips shifting as though to accommodate him although he was managing fine without her input. He was going slow and she wanted more.

‘Speed up,’ she urged without thinking about it.

And he did and it was as amazing as everything else he had ever done with her. Mind-blowing pleasure engulfed her as her level of excitement built and built. With every fibre her body was surging to a peak, and he took her there with effortless perfection. She cried out at the height of a heart-stopping climax and he followed her with a raw male groan of completion.

‘You are so unbelievably sexy,’ he told her.

‘It’s you...as long as I don’t look for anything more,’ she mumbled, her body limp and sated in that aftermath of satisfaction, every defence down.

A moment after relieving Lexy of his weight, Nic slowly levered himself up and gazed down at her with scorching dark golden eyes. ‘And what does that mean...exactly?’ he prompted dangerously.

‘Well, you alreadyknowwhat it means,’ Lexy contributed, struggling to get her brain working again in the wake of that gigantic physical rush of pleasure. ‘You’re useless at the long haul. You’re more about the short, non-committal stuff.’

The gold in his dark eyes flared to a brilliant blaze. ‘That’s not really what you think about me,’ he assured her, seemingly impregnable in his ego.

Lexy leapt out of the bed, driven by pride and nothing else, for she could not abide allowing him to believe that, because he didn’t deserve it after what he had done to her: he had deserted her when she’d needed him most. She yanked the sheet off the bed with an almighty tug and wrapped it round her because she refused to stand there naked and seemingly vulnerable—she refused to be vulnerable around Nic Diamandis again.

She lifted her chin, eyes the colour of tropical seas striking back at him in challenge. ‘Itis,’ she confirmed with near pleasure, because in the moment after all that physical stuff she felt happy to be fighting him again. Indeed it felt good and made her feel better. ‘You let me down when I most needed your help. I had nobody but Mel and, eventually, her parents. But I was alone, struggling through a very difficult pregnancy and unable to work from quite early on. I needed support and you weren’t there for me inanyway!’

‘You didn’t contact me,’ Nic informed her afresh, every syllable one of biting clarity. ‘You didn’t give me the chance! I was not aware that you had ever tried to contact me.’

Lexy’s teeth gritted. ‘That argument doesn’t wash,’ she told him frankly. ‘I phoned your office. I even tried to make appointments with you there and the closest I got to seeing you was getting out of the lift on the top floor before I was discreetly removed by your security guards and taken back downstairs and shown back onto the street. I was very pregnant at the time. It wasn’t the warmest welcome to your workplace.’

‘My security staff wouldnotmanhandle a pregnant woman,’ Nic declared with the utmost confidence.

‘Oh, there was no manhandling involved,’ Lexy agreed. ‘The guards were respectful and polite and, I suspect, very embarrassed, but it was made quite clear to me that I must not return to the premises. And Ididn’t. That was the day I gave up on you showing some spine.’

‘I beg your pardon?’ At that offensive charge, Nic vaulted out of bed in a colossal surge of temper, dark golden eyes now burning like flames, lean, dark features rigid with incredulity.

‘You heard me,’ Lexy said, her mouth running dry but that didn’t silence her. ‘I’m finally being honest with you about how I feel. I was six months pregnant and the size of a house. I was supposed to be on bedrest, but I gave it up that day to make one last attempt to reach you, and you know how that turned out, so please stop trying to pretend that the guy who rejected me and ignored me was a nice guy...because you’renot.’

Nic was studying her with fixed intensity. ‘I cannot believe I’m even listening to this nonsense.’

‘Right,’ Lexy murmured, noticeably unimpressed by that rejoinder. ‘You want me to put all that in the past and bury it because now you’ve changed your mind, but life doesn’t work like that, Nic. People don’t work like that either. You blocked my phone calls, and you ignored my letters and my requests to see you at work—because I didn’t know where you lived in London. Youghostedme, and, no matter how reasonable or kind you are now, it’ll take a long time for me to forget being treated like I was a nobody, a nuisance and a burden youcouldn’taccept!’

Nic breathed in so deep in a visible effort to maintain self-control that she was frozen to the spot watching that struggle. Beneath her stressed-out gaze, he retrieved his boxers and his dress trousers, pulling them on in quick economic movements, lean bronzed muscles flexing as he dressed and reached for his shirt. ‘That’s not what happened and you know it,’ he told her flatly. ‘You didn’t try to contact me. If you’d come to my office even once, I would have been told about it.’

Silenced by that protest but unimpressed, Lexy shrugged a dismissive shoulder.

Nic’s mouth compressed. ‘I’ll use another room tonight,’ he spelt out in a raw undertone, fighting the incendiary urge to call her a liar again. ‘I refuse to exchange words with you when you’re in this mood.’

‘It’s not a mood. It’s an actual sense of bitterness and you made me like this,’ Lexy declared, wincing when her voice almost hit a note of apology because no way was she taking back anything that she had claimed. ‘But perhaps it’s best you sleep somewhere else... Won’t someone notice that the bridal couple are sleeping apart?’

‘What do you care?’ Nic fired back at her, bristling like a panther someone had had the nerve to try and stroke like a pet.

Lexy’s complexion switched from flushed to very pale and she straightened her already stiff spine even more. ‘I’m sorry I haven’t been better at pretending to be a real bride,’ she muttered truthfully. ‘But I have feelings like everyone else and right now I’d prefer to be with my children.’

‘Mychildren as well!’ Nic exhaled audibly, surveying her with hard, dark eyes and a tight mouth, his jawline tight as a bowstring and as hard as a rock. ‘In half an hour a car will collect you at the rear exit. I will send a maid up to escort you there and you can make a discreet return to our children for what remains of the night. But be warned, we all have averyearly start in the morning. We’re flying to South Korea for a week. I have business there.’

Thrown into disbelief by that sudden string of disclosures, Lexy merely watched as he departed.SouthKorea?Her birthplace and her home for years? What was that about?

Nic hadn’t said one word that she’d expected him to say, which both infuriated and frustrated her because she wanted him to frankly admit why he had behaved as he had during her pregnancy. But possibly she was being naïve again. They might have just set the bed on fire together but theirs was not a real relationship. It was a marriage of convenience, not a marriage of true love. Why would he strip himself bare of his pride and admit that he had made mistakes and ignored her when she’d needed him?

Yet only honesty could bridge the gulf of bitter resentment between them. She knew he wasn’t a superhero, and she wasn’t hoping for him to turn into one either but, at the very least, she deserved better than what he had so far given her, she told herself heavily.

She began to look for clothing to put on beyond her discarded bridal regalia. With a grimace, she made use of one of the robes hanging in the sumptuous bathroom. It would do fine for sneaking out some rear exit late at night, she told herself ruefully.

CHAPTER SEVEN

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