Page 30 of Modern Romance Collection February 2025, 1-4

Not yet.

He carried her through the dark bedroom and did not turn toward the bathroom suite. Instead, he carried her outside to the battlements. Out on a wide part of the wall, as part of his renovation of the castle, he had put in an expansive outdoor shower. It was more properly several showerheads, there where the dark seemed closer than it was and the stars far brighter. When the water poured out, soft and warm, it was something like erotic.

“Who would have thought that a man so stern and uncompromising was secretly sensualist,” Dioni murmured as he worked up a thick, soapy lather on her skin. He used his own hands, smoothing his way over every part of her voluptuous form.

As if he was not so much washing her as committing her to memory.

And there was something about what she’d called him—stern, uncompromising—that sat on him wrong, though he knew that he went out of his way to appear to be both of those things. That was how he wanted the world to see him. An upright man of fierce morals, despite his name.

It was thatshehad called him that, he understood. That she saw him in that way, when for her, he had already bent far more than he had ever imagined he might.

But he did not allow himself to pursue that line of thought any further. He knew where it would go.

Instead, he lathered her in the thick, fragrant soap that he preferred, until every last part of her skin smelled like him. There was something in him that he did not wish to acknowledge directly that thrilled at that notion. That wanted nothing more than to mark her in every way he could. His ring on her finger. His son in her belly. His scent so deep in her skin that she could not breathe without thinking of him. Of the feel of him moving deep inside of her, haunting her as sure as the tight clench of her haunted him.

He said none of these things either.

Instead, there beneath the stars, he took her mouth beneath the shower spray. He slicked back her hair with his hands, finding his way to the glory of her mouth.

It was carnal, demanding.

And he could not stop himself. He didn’twantto stop, and he knew that was the real trouble. He moved her toward the built-in bench so he could take her hips from behind, then thrust himself deep inside her slick heat once more.

It was a blistering shot straight out into the cosmos, and he wasn’t certain how much of him remained when they were done.

He started the process of washing her all over again. Only this time, when he’d made certain that she was tended to and fully relaxed, he bundled her up the softest towel he could find, carried her back in, and laid her in his bed once more.

Dioni curled into him and was asleep almost immediately.

But Alceu found that he could not rest. Or perhaps he did not want to, because he knew what waited for him once he did. The darkness that knew his name was far too close, and too insistent.

Later he stood out on the battlements, watching dawn break far off in the distance, out where the ocean was nothing but a thick line against the sky.

He was not foolish enough to imagine that he could pretend this had not happened. Or that it had not fundamentally changed them, and more, made a mockery of all the rules he’d attempted to put into place.

There could be no going back, he understood that.

But that didn’t mean he had any idea how to go forward.

He stood there for a long while. And when he finally went back inside the castle, the sun was only just beginning to peek over the horizon.

Dioni was beginning to stir, so Alceu called down to the kitchen, and had food brought up. Because he might have been keeping his distance from her since he’d brought her here, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t fully aware of everything Dioni was doing while under his care.

Alceu took his duties and responsibilities seriously.

One thing he knew was that she was ravenous, particularly when she woke up.

He suspected that she would be even more so this morning. Sure enough, when Concetta wheeled in a cart stacked with plates of Sicilian pastries and pistachio granita, plus Greek yogurt, spanakopita, and other breakfast items, he saw Dioni smiling before she even opened her eyes.

After Concetta left, with only a single dark look his way to indicate that she had feelings about the fact he was not alone, Dioni wrapped herself in the top sheet. Then she pulled it with her from the bed like a makeshift gown as she came outside to join him on the wall, where the day was shaping into typical Sicilian perfection all around them.

She looked out at the landscape that was arrayed before them, treetops and the mountain’s steep slope and the watching, waiting sea, and sighed happily.

And Alceu was tempted to see the world the way that she did, all blue sky and a pretty view. Or maybe it was that once she sat down at the table, looking as if the breakfast before her was the result of a magic spell and she was swept away with joy, he could not help but notice that the sky really was a glorious shade of blue. The great tangle of the trees was green and pretty. The birds were conducting a concerto in the branches, the sun was warm and the breeze was light, and the scent of the sea danced in and around everything, as if making tides from the mountain air.

He almost felt as if he was drunk again as she dug in, tasting everything as if she’d never seen food before, and moaning with that joy that he was always surprised did not occur only when he was inside her.

“I do not think that I am a sensualist,” he found himself saying when he had intended to sit there in a dignified, perhaps appropriately forbidding silence. “Or perhaps I am not the only one.”

---