Page 126 of Modern Romance December 2025 1-4

‘Maybe mine aren’t pure, either.’ I take another sip of my drink. It’s cold and delicious and tastes like a tropical night.

‘Olympia,’ he murmurs, making a poem out of my name.

Some part of me knows what he’s talking about and I can’t pretend that I don’t. I can feel the electricity moving over my body when he looks at me, when his fingers touch mine, when our eyes meet. I can feel the tension.

Sexual tension.

‘What do you want?’ I ask and not because I don’t know, but because I want him to say it. So I know that it’s not just me who’s feeling this pull between us.

‘You,’ he says, the dark intensity in his voice matched only by the dark intensity in his eyes. ‘I knew from the moment I saw you.’

CHAPTER THREE

Rafael

Olympia’s amber eyeswiden as I give her the truth I hadn’t meant to say tonight. No, tonight was supposed to be about connection, that’s all. I intended to make the introductions and ease her into conversation, whet her appetite for me and make her hungry for more. I wasnotsupposed to tell her I want her within the first hour of meeting her.

But she’s nothing like I expected and everything I didn’t know I wanted.

She’s perched on the bar stool, her red lips wrapped around the straw in her glass, and she has no idea how impossibly sexy she is right now. She has no idea that what I’m thinking about is her mouth wrapped around my cock, leaving that pretty red lipstick on my skin.

I’m a rough man. Unsophisticated and unrefined, and this woman sitting on the stool is the very opposite. She’s delicately beautiful, intensely feminine, and yet the glitter in her amber eyes hints at a passion locked away. A passion that would burn me alive if I wanted it to. And I want it to.

Except my revenge plan is a series of measured meetings, of her slowly but surely falling for me, not a headlong tumble into lust. And even if it were, the person who should be falling is her, not me.

Still, that lust can certainly be used to cement an obsession, so why not use it? I have no time for second thoughts, not when the opportunity is sitting right in front of me, so unguarded and open, with a hint of innocent wickedness that I find unbelievably tempting. The women I’m used to know the score with me and there’s never conversation. Never flirtation. Only sex, hard and rough the way I like it.

None of them ever treat me the way Olympia’s treating me now, as if we’re old friends, taking my hand and teasing me, smiling at me so brightly it’s almost impossible to look at her.

As we drove over the bridge in my car, I could barely keep my eyes on the road, distracted by the expression of absolute wonder on her face.

I’d only bought the McLaren the day before—my love of super cars is a vice I indulge in from time to time—and I’d found myself ridiculously pleased to take her for a drive in it.

I touched her when we arrived at the hotel, unable to help myself, because I could see the glances cast by various men as we got out of the car. They were all looking at her, drawn to her as I’d been drawn to her, so I put a possessive hand at the small of her back to show them she was mine. She didn’t pull away, her skin so warm beneath my palm.

Somehow I managed to take my hand away in the bar, though it was far more difficult than it should have been, and now all I can think about is how long it’s been since I was with anyone who looked at the world the way she does. With awe and wonder. As if there are nothing but good things waiting out there and not monsters ready to tear you into pieces.

She’s looking at me now as if I’m one of those good things, and the whispers of my long-dead conscience are telling me that using her to take my revenge is wrong. But they’re only whispers and so I ignore them. She is a hibiscus in full bloom, all brilliant colour and unknowing passion, while I am the cold hand that will crush her, and I am okay with that.

She’s blushing and yet she doesn’t look away. ‘You say it like that’s a bad thing.’

‘It is a bad thing.’ A good man would have told her everything about his plans for revenge, and how he was going to use her. But I am not a good man. ‘It’s not what Georgios would want, I’m sure.’

She tilts her head, a hint of a smile curving her mouth. ‘Fuck Georgios though, right?’

Her conscious imitation of me earlier and that smile are inviting me to smile back, but I don’t. ‘It’s not what your brother would want, either.’

‘I don’t care about him.’ She is looking at me steadily. ‘What about if…if I wanted you too?’

The honesty of the question and that slight hesitation send a shock of heat through me, my muscles tensing, my cock hardening. It would be so easy to take her upstairs, to the suite I’m staying in, and lay her out across the big four-poster bed. Unwrap her like the gift she is. Take my time enjoying her body, see what makes her gasp, what makes her moan, what makes her scream my name. I have scarves with me, soft ones that I could tie around her wrists to hold her gently while I set her passion burning, then make it explode as I—

No. I can’t let myself get distracted by the sex when the sex isnotthe goal. Teaching her brother a fucking lesson is the goal. Taking everything away from him the way he took everything away from me is the goal.

I don’t answer her. Instead I say, as a test, ‘I should give you back to Georgios when you’ve finished your drink.’

Unexpectedly, small golden sparks light her eyes. ‘No one “gives” me back to anyone,’ she says, a hint of steel in her tone. ‘I’m not an object.’

This small glimpse of anger is just as intoxicating as her wonder. Good. She’s a woman of spirit, and I love a woman who can stand up for herself, who gives as good as she gets. My brain won’t stop thinking about what that would look like in bed, no matter how much I tell myself that sex is not the goal.