Page 175 of Modern Romance December 2025 1-4

“Itisan ugly house,” I breathed, my heart still too loud in my chest. “You have no idea how long I’ve been waiting for someone to say it. I think the Emperor has no clothes, but in this case, the Emperor is the house, and the clothes—”

“Shut up, Rux.”

He said that so calmly. That was actually what made me go quiet. The simplicity of it. The quiet command and the fact he said my name.

Weak men shouted and lashed out. Weak men always showed their hands—usually in the form of fists.

It was crystal clear to me that Jovi was not a weak man.

“You are different, so I will explain this to you,” he said.

“I’m not like other girls?” I asked brightly. “I don’t know if that’s a compliment or an insult.”

“Most women who find me in their vicinity in this way faint,” he told me in that same low voice. So mild. So devastating.So delicious.“Sometimes from pleasure, it is true. Sometimes from terror. I’ll be honest with you, I expected you to do the latter.”

“I would love to faint,” I told him, and if I was a little breathless from thesometimes from pleasurepart, well. I could lie to myself about that. “It sounds like a lovely escape from the pressures of daily life, don’t you think?”

His voice was like the night, his gaze darker still. “I do not.”

“Out of curiosity, how many women have you abducted?” I tried to sound nothing but politely curious, the way I might at a dinner party. “It’s not that I’m checking your references or taking a hard look at your résumé, but you know how it is. Many have tried, none have succeeded, so what sets you apart?”

I thought he shook his head, slightly. When he continued speaking, it was as if I had never said a word at all. “We will exit this house. We will not make any noise. I cannot trust you to remain quiet, even if you promise to do so, as that is the nature of your situation. You may therefore choose a gag, or I will knock you out.”

And when he lifted a dark brow at me, I decided that my genetics were making themselves known after all.

Because the things he was saying to me should have made me feel sick. I should have been horrified. I should have flinched away from him as he prowled closer to the bed.

I should have screamed the house down all around me the first moment I saw him.

I felt that treacherous heat move all over me, wrapping me up and burrowing its way deep inside. Deep between my legs, I felt a heat unlike any other, a kind of ripe weight, and a slickness.

And I might have been more upset about this, but I was too busy seeing myself for who I really was at the worst possible moment. All this time I had convinced myself that I was nothing like my father. That I had nothing in common with him. That I was a pure, clean,normalperson where it counted.

But the truth was here. Right here in my bedroom, stalking toward me. Then towering over me, a column of finely wrought sculpture made man with those flashing dark eyes of his, that impossible, disastrous mouth, and this throbbing thing between us and all over me that I was afraid to name.

Jovi leaned in closer, until his face was so close to mine that I couldn’t tell if he wanted to—

But he didn’t.

I should have beenhappyhe didn’t.

He only watched me, even closer now. He smelled like pine and spice. And he was only more beautiful up close.

Jovi looked at me like I was a puzzle that needed solving, but I told myself that had to be a good thing, because I knew too many terrible men already andtheyonly looked at me like I was meat.

He shifted slightly. His gaze moved all over my face.

I held my breath.

“Rux,” he said, like my name was some kind of prayer. “Is something wrong with you? I mean this on a deep level. Your brain. Is it functional?”

“I…don’t know how to answer that.”

His mouth curved, but it was not a smile. “Why aren’t you afraid?”

CHAPTER THREE

“IAM!” IREPLIED, STUNG. “Who wouldn’t be afraid of a strange man in their room, no matter what he was there to do?”