Page 158 of Modern Romance May 2026 Books 5-8
Drinks forgotten, he led her right back out the way they’d come. He’d leave a hefty tip for the waitress. Later.
He didn’t wait for the valet, found the car himself and eased it out of the parking garage.
“We weren’t there for very long,” she said. She sounded so much like herself, not winded or breathy or moved by the moment while they were dancing. But her eyes were a little wild.
He focused on her eyes. Then the road as he sped through Corfu and back to his estate. Yes, he would have her there. All night. “Long enough to be seen. That’s what is necessary.”
“And what is this?” she asked.
“It feels rather necessary, does it not?”
She let out a slow breath. “It does,” she agreed.
And then said nothing else as they drove back the way they’d come, with perhaps a little shred of recklessness.
When he pulled the car into the garage, nothing had changed in the raging swirl of sensations inside of him. She got out without waiting for him to come around and open the door for her. So they met in the middle.
There was a moment, yet another moment he could not articulate to himself, of standing here in the dim light of a garage staring at her. Her staring back.
He wanted his hands on her, and yet here they stood. Separated by space and something else he couldn’t identify. Like they were standing on opposite sides of a line that they had to choose to cross. A line that couldn’t be uncrossed. That could change everything.
But how utterly ridiculous. He was Zervou Kritikos. He had built himself up into a billionaire. Impenetrable. Unstoppable. He crossed whatever lines he chose and uncrossed them just as decisively.
So he moved to her and felt vindicated when the usual wariness she regarded him with did not appear. Because this was something besides their…business deal, their pretend for the world, for Erjon.
This was just them.
So he took her hand once more and led her through the garage, into the peaceful estate that had begun to grow on him.
This wasn’t wrong or a distraction, because this had been simmering from the very beginning. Always an option. Always a nice little detour possibility. It changed nothing.
He wouldn’t let it, no matter how seismic everything felt inside of him.
Once inside, he pushed her up against the wall. He was bigger than her, no doubt stronger simply because of the size of him. But she knew how to fight. She knew how to land a punch.
But she acquiesced to him. Her mouth, her body. Accepting him, softening around him.
It was a thrill to possess her, to control her. This woman who delivered and accepted punches for a living, writhed against him as though he had all the answers. As though her pride did not matter because she would allow him to take care of everything.
Everything.
“I chose this dress specifically,” he told her, surprised at the unfamiliar edge to his own voice.
She blinked up at him, lips swollen from his kiss, eyes foggy with desire and something else he couldn’t quite put his finger on, but he put that aside for the moment. He lowered to his knees in front of her.
“Did you know I cannot stop thinking about this? Just a tiny little hoop. And it haunts me.” He pressed a kiss at the bared midsection, just below her navel.
She made a noise in the back of her throat. Pleasure and need. And while his mouth played with the soft skin around her belly button, the impressive muscle beneath, his hand slid up her inner thigh, until he felt her tremble. For a moment, she stiffened, clenched her legs together before relaxing.
It was the first little alarm bell, easily flicked away when he reached the heated apex of her thighs. So sweet. So ready.
“I can feel how much you want me. Tell me.”
“I…” She couldn’t seem to get the words out, but she moved against his hand, held onto him. Gaveoverto him as his fingers found his way around the fabric covering her and into the molten heat of her.
It was a power unlike any he had ever experienced. The sounds she made, how easy it was to stir, tease, then send her quick and sharp over that glorious edge.
He looked up at her. She was dazed. Disoriented. Like she didn’t quite know what she’d gotten herself into. Like no one had ever touched her quite like that.
