Page 33 of Modern Romance December 2025 1-4

‘Are you okay?’

She shook her head and confessed, ‘I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.’

He could think of a few things…

But no, he needed to pull his head out of the sex and Athena stupor it had fallen into and put it back in the game. That didn’t stop him swinging his feet to the floor and opening his arms to her. ‘You can start by coming here.’

Obeying, she stood between his feet and rested her hands lightly on his shoulders.

Squeezing her hips, he gazed into her eyes. ‘What happens now is that you and I take a shower and go to work. When we’re done for the day, we come back home and do whatever you want to do.’

‘So you think you might want to share a bed with me again?’

If she hadn’t been still so shy and uncertain he would think she was joking.

He pulled her closer and trapped her between his thighs. ‘If you thought you were tethered to me before, you have no idea what it’s going to be like now. I’m not letting you out of my sight for a second, and if you weren’t likely sore from what we just shared, I’d make love to you again right now…’ He gripped the top of her towel and pulled it down, exposing her succulent breasts. Taking one into his mouth, he sucked the rosy-pink nipple, bringing it to arousal.

Gazing back into her eyes, he slipped his hand between her thighs and lightly cupped her sex.

She swayed, her fingers tightening their grip on his shoulders.

Gently massaging her nub, already lubricated from their earlier lovemaking, he closed his lips over her other nipple. Her moan of pleasure landed straight in his groin, but he ignored it. Between licks and sucks of her breasts and with a steadily increasing pressure of his thumb, he whispered, ‘What you and I did earlier is only the beginning. A taster.’ He turned his hand so the top of his palm was doing the massaging, and slipped a finger inside her sticky heat. ‘There is a whole world of pleasure out there, my sweet…’ her hips were rocking against his hand ‘…and I’m going to teach you all of it. Now, let yourself go…’ Her breaths shortening, she cradled his head and pressed her cheek to his. ‘That’s it, my princess,’ he encouraged hoarsely, maintaining the pressure but letting her find the rhythm she needed, entranced at how damned responsive she was to him. ‘All the way. Let yourself go.’

When she came, it was with a long cry before her lips found his cheek and sucked, and her whole body spasmed until, finally, she went limp.

Moving his hand, he held her tightly, stroking her back, thinking he might have to consider having her moved to a different office because he didn’t know how the hell he was going to concentrate on a damned bit of work with his beautiful, sexually receptive Athena sharing the same walls as him.

‘Draco?’ she whispered a long while later.

‘Yes, my sweet.’

‘Can I ask you something?’

‘As if you need my permission.’

She finally pulled her face away from his cheek and gently replaced it with her hand, kissing him with a reverence that made his heart sing. And then she grinned. ‘Now that I’m sleeping with the boss, does that mean I get a pay rise?’

Laughing, he wrapped her back into his arms and kissed her hard. ‘Only if you do some bloody work.’

He was still laughing to himself when he stepped under the showerhead in his bathroom, having thought it best to shower separately to Athena, seeing as he’d just proved he was already incapable of keeping his hands to himself when he was with her.

For the first time in his working life, he didn’t care that he was going to be late for work. The only thing he cared about was how the hell he was supposed to keep his hands off her in the office and keep things professional enough that no one suspected what was going on between them.

Athena replaced her mascara with her lip gloss and smeared it over her lips, then stepped back to check her appearance from all angles. She’d chosen a grey scoop-necked dress that fell to mid-thigh and would fit in any office environment but, so Draco didn’t think she was going soft, paired it with a three-inch thick hot-pink leather belt with diamonds studded into it and purple tights. For her feet, she chose a pair of six-inch red heels that even she had to concentrate to walk in. She had a feeling she was going to have to do a lot of concentrating that day, mostly in an effort to stop her face showing her feelings.

Reminding herself that she was a professional at hiding her feelings didn’t bring any solace. For the first time since she was a little girl, she didn’t want to hide them.

It was imperative that she did, for Draco’s sake.

Just to think his name was to make her heart skip.

Just to spend forty minutes getting ready for work in a different room was to miss him.

Hadshe fallen in love with him?

When she’d climaxed the first time, her heart had spoken it to her, but now her brain was engaged and she had to remind herself that falling in love with him was the worst thing she could do. Draco wasn’t hers to love and he never would be.

But he was hers to love for now, she decided, cheering herself up, and she would love him until her contract ended and she returned to her old life. That was if she even went back to her old life. For the first time since her brother had laid down the law, the thought of returning to her old life with all its riches and splendour and backbiting and bitching—and she was well aware that she was the cause of much of that backbiting and bitching—made her feel queasy.