Page 187 of Modern Romance Collection February 2025, 1-4

Marissa gave a little shiver—one of her trademark moves—then she reached for the small clasp on the shoulder of her tunic and undid it, letting the fabric flutter to the ground. ‘Well, here I am,’ she said softly, standing naked before him. ‘You can contemplate me.’

Since she was right in front of him, he could hardly do anything else. She was beautiful, he couldn’t argue with that. But he’d spent the last twenty-five years of his life contemplating the mysteries of the female gender and, as he’d already thought to himself, there was nothing about this particular example that intrigued him.

Perhaps that was why he felt bored.

There was no mystery in anything any more.

Dominic was an expert in the art of dissembling, yet Marissa must have picked up on his lack of interest, because she suddenly darted forward, leaning over him and brushing her mouth over his. Then she backed away, giving him a sultry smile. ‘You can have me if you catch me.’

Then she turned and ran off naked into the forest.

Maude Braithwaite stood in the darkness, pressed against the trunk of one of Darkfell Forest’s ancient oaks, and held her breath as the naked woman ran past her, barely a metre away.

The woman must not have seen Maude because she didn’t pause, giggling as she disappeared into the darkness.

Maude let out the breath she’d been holding, shivering a little in her bare feet and nightgown. It wasn’t exactly cold—it was midsummer—but it was still one in the morning and pitch black, so not quite warm either.

She’d been asleep in her little bedroom in the gamekeeper’s cottage right on the edge of the forest, and had been woken abruptly out of a dream by the sound of someone screaming.

Tonight was the night of the Midsummer Bacchanal, and while she’d been told that the guests had been warned to keep away from the cottage, she supposed some of them hadn’t followed the rules.

This was deeply annoying because, while hauling herself out of bed in the middle of the night to investigate wasn’t mandatory, management of the forest was one of her responsibilities and she did want to make sure that her employer’s rich friends hadn’t accidentally set fire to something they shouldn’t.

Maude was one of four women who ran Your Girl Friday, a company that offered speciality services to those rich enough to afford them, and her area of expertise was landscape design and forest management, anything to do with the natural world basically.

She loved nature, so when a groundskeeper contract for Darkfell Forest had come in, she’d jumped at the chance. Groundskeeper work had sounded intriguing, with the bonus of being responsible for the management of the forest. Her personal goal was rewilding a piece of land that her grandparents were going to leave her, and for that she needed, not only a touch more expertise, but also money. Handily, the contract she’d signed, which was for a year, paid exceptionally well.

However, what she had not loved was preparing a section of said forest for the bacchanal, since it involved turning a beautiful, wild place into what was essentially a party venue, i.e. making nature palatable for a whole bunch of rich people who didn’t care.

It was always this dichotomy that bothered her while working for Your Girl Friday. Despising the rich and privileged, while also taking their money. She’d early on decided that money would go back to her rewilding project, and in return the people who employed her could stand to have a few lessons in caring for nature. Most of the time they were grateful, so she couldn’t complain.

She was definitely going to complain about the drunken idiots currently cavorting around in these woods in the middle of the night, though. The forest wasn’t inherently dangerous, but the fools could hurt themselves and someone had to make sure they were okay. That someone being her.

Anyway, she hadn’t found anyone injured in the vicinity of the cottage, so she’d ventured a bit further into the forest itself, just to be certain.

She’d moved as many of the animals away from the bacchanal area as she could, but animals didn’t obey human rules and one of them could have strayed somewhere it shouldn’t and frightened someone. Not that she cared about humans. They could look after themselves. It was the animals she was concerned for.

The bacchanal was supposed to be a very private affair, with a specially curated guest list, and she’d been told—all the staff at Darkfell Manor had been told—that they shouldn’t go into the forest while the bacchanal was being held. Maude hadn’t wanted to anyway—she didn’t care about bacchanals—and she’d been on the pointing of turning back to the cottage when the naked woman had run by her and she’d been forced into immobility.

The sound of the woman’s progress gradually faded and Maude glanced back in the direction she’d come from to make sure no other naked people were in her immediate vicinity. Then she glanced back to the clearing beyond, where the torch flamed, causing dramatic shadows to leap and flare. A Roman-style couch had been placed artfully near the torch, beneath a pavilion of white silk, the curtains of which had been pulled back and held with jewelled ties.

A low table containing goblets, a bowl full of grapes, a jug of wine, and a platter of various finger foods had been placed near the couch, along with another low chair.

A man lolled indolently on the couch, on his back. He wore nothing but a white toga draped around a body that could have belonged to a Greek god, all hard, sculpted muscle and smooth tanned skin. A crown of golden laurel leaves rested in his hair.

He held a goblet in one large, long-fingered hand, the light of the flaring torch outlining the perfect lines of his face. Like his body, he was beautiful, but not in the way, say, Apollo or Hermes was beautiful. This man wasn’t a boy. He was Zeus or Poseidon, or even Hades. An older god, stern, ruthless. Utterly masculine and completely in control of the universe he ruled.

Straight nose, long ink-black lashes, high cheekbones. There were lines around his eyes and his mouth, and through his short ink-black hair—from the severe widow’s peak of his forehead all the way to the back of his head—ran a white stripe.

Maude’s breath caught.

That stripe was famous. She didn’t keep track of celebrity gossip and barely even checked social media. The world of humanity didn’t interest her. Yet even so, that stripe marked him.

Dominic Lancaster, one of Europe’s most notorious playboys, if notthemost notorious. Owner of Darkfell Manor and the forest that surrounded it.

Also, her boss.

She’d never met him, only one of his assistants. She’d seen a few pictures of him—she didn’t much care about the people she worked for, it was the landscape that mattered—but those pictures hadn’t done him justice.

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