Page 26 of Modern Romance Collection February 2025, 1-4

Her body knew how to do it. Why shouldn’t she let it take her where she wanted to go?

And the more she thought about actually doing such a thing, actually getting up and going to him andbeing seductivebecause he wouldn’t, the more she found herself something like incensed. What was the point of them being married at all if she was simply sent off to some far reach of his massive house? What was the point of any of it if she was simply expected to accept what everyone else said about him, this place, and her future here?

Not to mention the implications for their son.

Dioni had never thought that she would get a chance to touch Alceu, and yet she had. She had certainly never expected to fall pregnant, or to marry him. Those things had happened, and she wasn’t precisely upset about either of them.

How could she be when even now—while his mother slunk about muttering her dark incantations all over the place and everyone here seemed entirely too preoccupied with their expectations of woe and lamentation—she still felt that same clear stillness inside.

Nothing had changed that.

If anything, it was stronger than it had been in New York.

And Dioni had grown up in the shadow of a man who thought entirely too much of himself and what he believed others thought about him. She had learned quickly that if she wished to claim any space for herself, she would have to go ahead and do it.

She was the one who had prevailed upon her father to send her away to school in the first place. If she hadn’t, she was fairly sure that Spyros would have forgotten to bother, and who knows if she would have ended up with any kind of education at all? And she was the one to insist that she should stay at home after school. Partly because she loved the hotel and her family’s legacy, but also because she wanted the opportunity to continue to live with Jolie. To maintain their friendship despite the unusual circumstances.

After all, she had told her friend on the night before her wedding,not everyone gets to call their best friendstepmother.

So tonight she’d gotten out of her bed and put on that nightgown she’d been wearing in the ballroom. And then, even though it was a long walk, she’d wound her way through the hallways, moving quietly so that she attracted no notice from anyone. Not even the staff.

It was like she was one of the ghosts of this place. And she liked the feeling of it, almost as if she was light on her feet, when she knew better.

She had passed his office, there at the start of the hallway that she’d been told led tothesignore’s private rooms, and had seen him working there, though it was late. He’d been frowning down at his laptop while making notes on a pad in front of him and she could have stood there, looking at him, forever. But she’d moved on before he could look up and see her, slipping down the hall and beginning her search for the man’s bed.

Because even the unknowable Alceu must be in possession of a bed.

Dioni had never been this deep into his private area of the house before, but she would have known these were his rooms even if she was blind. It all smelled faintly like him, that hint of citrus and spice. She’d felt her breath go shaky and her whole body shiver into awareness as she padded her way through the suite until she eventually found his bedroom, set there at the corner of the house.

Inside, she’d paused to look out the windows that, like hers, opened up onto the walls. She could see little but darkness, and the lights of the villages clustered down at the foot of the mountains.

By day, she was certain that he could see almost all the way to her island.

And somehow, thinking of home made her feel at home. She’d pulled the nightgown up and over her head and then she’d made her way to the bed, a large, imposing affair set against the far wall, while carefully aesthetic antiques stood about like sentries.

First she’d gotten under his sheets, but then she’d thought that she would make far more of an impact if they were tossed aside, so that the point of this gambit was immediately clear.

That being her nudity, which, now, she could see was doing exactly what she’d wanted it to do.

“Is it working?” she asked him.

But she could see that it was. That arrested look was all over him. He could not seem to keep his eyes on her face, too busy with drinking in her curves. And she was certain she saw his hands twitch as if they wished to reach out on their own.

“Is what working?” he managed to get out, though he hardly sounded like himself.

“My seduction.” She moved to prop herself up on one elbow, a perilous affair given that her center of gravity had shifted. Then she lifted a hand to her hair, shaking out the knot she’d put in it, so that the black mass of it tumbled down all around her. She could smell the scent of her shampoo filling the room and she could see that he did, too, because she watched it work its way through him—from the flare of his nostrils to how he shifted the way he stood.

And that dark, furious, glorious look he aimed at her, as if he wasn’t sure if he was dreaming, Dioni knew that she would remember forever.

It wouldn’t be possible, no matter what he said, to feel more beautiful than she did now.

And that was a good thing, because he did not exactly start singing hosannas.

“I thought we agreed,” he gritted out instead.

“We did not agree,” she corrected him. Gently, she thought, for a naked woman who clearly deserved a different response. “You made a great many decisions and then left the room before I could respond.”

“Surely you heard me, all the same.”

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