Page 12 of Modern Romance September 2025 5-8
‘What makes you so sure?’
‘Because you have integrity. You’re honourable and upstanding. I’ve always admired that about you.’
‘Anything else?’
Well, there were his spectacular looks and his powerful physique, but hell would freeze over before she admitted how weak she went at the knees every time she looked at him. This arrangement would become even more one-sided than it already was. ‘Your sense of duty and responsibility and your equanimity.’
‘Is that why you agreed to marry me? Because you admired me?’
‘That and a strong desire to save the crown from your cousin,’ she said, determined to keep her love for him firmly to herself for the safety of her heart.
‘How flattering.’
The dryness of his tone lifted her eyebrows. These were traits to value. How did he not see that? ‘Do youwantflattery?’
‘What I want is irrelevant,’ he said, not quite answering her question, she noticed. ‘But forget it. This conversation is over. We have a constitutional obligation to fulfil, and as you observed, time is marching.’
Sofia took a deep breath and braced herself for fifteen minutes of complete and utter torment made worse by the knowledge that he’d be operating under duress. ‘OK, then,’ she said, swallowing hard as she undid the belt of her robe and slipped it through the loops. ‘Let’s get it over and done with.’
Despite his best efforts to remain ruthlessly unaffected by everything that happened here tonight, Ivo’s eyes nearly fell out of their sockets when Sofia shimmied out of her nightwear and sidled over to the vast mahoganylit-en-bateauin all her nearly naked glory.
Not that he’d been doing a particularly good job of detachment before then.
He’d been clinging onto his control by a thread ever since he’d opened the door to her room. At the sight of her standing by the window he’d nearly swallowed his tongue. The vision of ethereal loveliness that had walked down the aisle had long gone. So too had the white high-necked, low-backed evening gown she’d changed into for the reception. The cream slinky column of a slip overlaid with a matching robe clung to her curves and seemed to move like liquid in the moonlight. Her hair, which he’d never seen down before, tumbled over her shoulders as if she’d just got out of bed.
It had struck him then like a blow to the head that the woman in front of him—his queen, hiswife—was about as far from his uber-efficient Communications Secretary, who favoured sober suits and never-a-hair-out-of-place updos, as it was possible to get. He’d been gripped by the urge to stride across the room and haul her into his arms. To take her right there up against the wall. But with superhuman effort he’d banked it. He had to start as he meant to go on.
With that uppermost in his mind, he’d resolved to keep his eyes on her face and off her body. But her features were so exquisite—how he could ever have considered her ‘passably attractive’ he had no idea—he’d had to avert his gaze just to stop himself staring at her like a drooling adolescent. As if magnetised, his eyes had automatically landed on the rest of her, lingering on her lush curves and intriguing dips, and that hadn’t helped his resolve at all.
She, on the other hand, simply admired hischaracter. His integrity, honour and his sense of duty and responsibility. Which piqued his vanity, and that annoyed him because he hadn’t thought he had any. If he’d been asked, he’d have said that character trumped looks any day of the week. But now, frustratingly, he found himself wondering what was wrong with him physically.
Of even further irritation was the fact that the equanimity she also lauded seemed to be so under threat he’d actually—for the first time in his life—fished for a compliment. For reassurance. And all that had come on top of, not only the realisation that once again he’d found himself delaying the inevitable by asking her about her parents but also the strangely fierce and faintly disturbing surge of primitive satisfaction he’d experienced when she’d observed that this would be the first time she’d have sex as a wife.Hiswife.
This evening was not going as he’d anticipated. He didn’t recognise himself and he didn’t like it. He was rapidly reaching the end of his tether, and now, to add insult to injury, she wanted the consummation ‘over and done with’ as quickly as possible.
Were those really her feelings on the subject?
Was this simply a chore to be borne?
Well, he wasn’t having that, he thought, his pulse thudding hard and fast as she climbed beneath the covers and pulled them up to her chin. Forget that he too had once considered what was about to happen in those terms. He’d changed his mind. This would no longer be a purely perfunctory coupling. He was going all in. He would do his utmost to reduce her to a puddle of need within minutes. He’d dispel her nerves and shatter her cool and she’d be writhing and panting in his arms, gasping his name when she came, way before midnight.
And then, after the clock struck twelve, he’d do it all over again, only slower. And again and again, until dawn. Ruthlessly. Dispassionately. Not for himself.Neverfor himself. But to secure the line of succession. To ensure stability. For the sake of the monarchy, he would have her at his mercy, crying out with pleasure and begging for release while he remained totally in control—unmoved, focused, invincible.
Relieved beyond belief to be finally back on track by deploying the pragmatic approach he swore by, Ivo shed his dressing gown and stalked to the bed.
With every step he took, Sofia’s eyes dropped a little bit lower and widened a little bit more. A flush hit her cheeks and he thought he caught the sound of soft gasp, which meant she wasnotimmune to him, and his integrity and sense of dutyweren’tthe only things she admired about him, thank God. He didn’t repulse her at all, and he could work with that.
She would find this no chore, he swore to himself as he threw back the covers and stretched out beside her. By the time he was done with her she’d be limp, sated and boneless with satisfaction. He might not have played the field all that much over the years but he’d always valued quality over quantity and he’d make sure this was an experience she’d never forget.
‘Could you turn off the lights?’ she said breathlessly as he ran his gaze over the stunning length of her and assessed where he was going to start.
‘No.’
‘You promised to minimise the ordeal.’
‘I know,’ he said, rolling over to spear his fingers through her hair and setting his mouth to the soft, warm, fragrant skin of her neck. ‘But I lied.’
Sofia’s fifteen minutes of torment had started the second Ivo dispensed with his robe. She’d often fantasised about the body beneath the suits but her imagination had been woefully inadequate on that front. He belonged in a museum. She’d never seen such perfect proportions. And where on earth he found the time to keep all those muscles in such good shape she had no idea.
