Page 68 of Modern Romance March 2025 (5-8)

But when I accompanied Gavriil to California after Lucifer’s passing and stood with him on a hotel ballroom stage, heard the passion in his voice as he spoke about upcoming projects up and down America’s West Coast, I knew. Knew the company could go under tomorrow and I wouldn’t care.

Yet another thing that widened the ever-growing chasm between my brother and me. Not that we had a good relationship to begin with. We had almost nothing, save what had been our mutual interest in Drakos Development.

Now we don’t even have that.

I swirl a bite of duck through the mustard sauce as I resist the weight trying to press on my chest. It’s only natural, I remind myself, to experience apathy toward something one cared about after loss. Even if the loss was not unexpected, and even if the person who died was a detestable human being who deserved a far worse fate than passing away surrounded by luxury, it’s still a loss.

In a few months, I’ll feel differently. As I settle into my new role, as I grow and expand the company under my own terms, it will get better. And even if I don’t feel anything at all, I’m capable of moving forward. Emotions have no place in business.

But if Tessa doesn’t agree to wait until after our anniversary to pursue the divorce, I’ll have my own substantial wealth, my investments and properties…and nothing else. My mother has been dead for years. Even when she was alive, she kept her distance from both her husband and her son, going so far as to move to Madrid to live out her final days. I have no relationship with the brother I kept at arm’s length for over twenty years. If I can’t make amends with Gavriil, a sibling I’ve lived and worked with, I see little point in trying to establish a relationship with Michail who clearly stated he wanted nothing to do with the Drakos name.

The weight presses down harder.

“I stay married to you through whatever date you set,” Tessa says suddenly, “between now and one month after our first anniversary. In that time, you agree to introduce me to sex.”

It takes a few seconds for her words to sink in. It wasn’t an empty challenge or a last-ditch attempt to make me leave.

Tessa is serious.

My imagination grabs the reins and takes a hard left into a vivid image of me sliding that blue dress down, revealing her bare breasts, her breathing erratic as I trail my lips from her mouth down to her jaw, then lower still over the elegant column of her neck.

“Is that it?” I reply, mentally applauding myself for keeping a steady voice as I try to dismiss the pictures filling my mind.

Try and fail, as I see myself kissing the swells of her breasts, then sucking one nipple into my mouth as she arches against me.

She frowns. “What else is there?”

God, I would laugh at her naivete if it wasn’t alluring in its own way. Her blatant confidence entwined with her innocence is intoxicating. The few women I’ve been with over the years—I hesitate to even call them relationships—were in it for the same reasons I was: mutual pleasure. Satisfying urges, spending some time with an interesting companion, and then parting ways. I liked them, enjoyed our interactions. But there was always that safety net of distance. Physical desire without the interference of unnecessary emotions. No risk of falling into the type of hell that had been my parents’ marriage.

Yet just a few minutes with my wife, seeing her and the woman she’s become in our months apart, has left me throbbing with lust. But her innocence is also the lifeline I need to grasp on to. A reminder that her inexperience is a severe detriment. She might have developed considerable grit since coming to Paris. But if I know one thing about Tessa, it’s that her heart is far too big for this world. I have no illusions that I’m her prince in shining armor. A woman like her, one who can’t hide the stars in her eyes or how brightly they shine when she thinks no one’s looking, deserves to have her first time be with someone who can at least give her the potential of a future.

Even if the thought of it being someone other than me is enough to make me set down my knife and pick up my bourbon.

Focus on the bourbon. The duck. The damned chandelier. Anything but her.

“How many times, for example,” I say as I raise my glass to my lips.

“Given I’ve never done this before, I’m not sure what’s reasonable.”

It is only through sheer willpower that I don’t snort the bourbon out my nose. She’s not trying to be manipulative or amusing. She’s simply stating facts.

The strength of my reaction is a telling sign that the control I exude in my life would be nonexistent. If there’s one thing I have left that is solely mine, it’s my control. I will not cede that, not for anyone.

Turning her first time into a business agreement is also an issue, one that leaves me with a vaguely nauseous feeling in the pit of my stomach. The same feeling when I proposed and I’d told myself I was doing the right thing, not just for the sake of the company but for Tessa. That anything was better than her sitting in that house day after day with no one but her controlling mother and a housekeeper for company since her sister had left for university in France. That the friendship we had established over the years would be enough.

I lied.

I had known, even then, that Tessa would want more. Deserve more. Even though I felt more for her than most, I would never be able to let myself feel enough. The last time I tried, it nearly ripped me apart.

“Tessa—”

“Garçon?”

I frown as Tessa interrupts me to signal our waiter.

“Tessa?”

“Oui, mademoiselle?”

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