Page 19 of Modern Romance July 2025 #4-8
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘N OT FUNNY . Tragicif you really believe that.’ Adonis had stopped laughing and looked inexplicably annoyed. ‘What have the men in your life been doing if you don’t know that you are gorgeous?’
‘I don’t need men to tell me—’ Lizzie stopped, colour flooding her face.
Gorgeous?
He made a sweeping motion with his hands, his dark eyes lingering on the sensual curves of her lush body.
‘You are sexy, you have tremendous legs that you never allow anyone to see, you envelop your figure in tents and dull colours, but your body issues aside—’ He pushed away the subject as though it had been nothing more controversial than the weather forecast.
‘Aside from my grandfather, my two aunts will be there and their husbands, or in Elena’s case not her husband yet, her divorce has not come through. Elena and Lydia are my father’s twin half-sisters, considerably younger than him. They both have daughters, a set of twins apiece, teens.’
Lizzie blinked, taking the details on board. ‘So what did they say when you told them we were coming, that we are…’ she cleared her throat, finishing on a shrill ‘…married?’
‘Nothing.’
She looked at him blankly.
‘I didn’t tell them and I hadn’t confirmed I would make it for the birthday party.’
‘Birthday party?’ she said, trying to stay calm.
‘My grandfather is eighty today.’
She stared at him, then gave an incredulous bubble of laughter and sank back into her seat.
‘So you are just going to walk in and announce…?’ She gasped, shaking her head in disbelief.
‘You really do like making an entrance, don’t you?
’ Not for one second did she think the timing was accidental.
‘For the record, I don’t.’ But then she reflected, shaking with the strength of her feelings, Adonis was not interested in what she liked, wanted, or needed.
Before he could respond, Jenna and Dmitri reappeared.
Adonis turned his head. ‘How was Robert?’
Jenna nodded and smiled. ‘He’s settled in really well. Right,’ she added with a grimace. ‘Time to belt up?’ She sighed and closed her eyes. ‘Wake me when it’s over.’
‘Adonis.’
He turned back to his bride and found azure-blue eyes fixed unblinkingly on his face. ‘Lizzie.’
Her lips tightened. ‘Let me get this right—we are going to crash a birthday party and tell your nearest and dearest we are married.’
‘That’s about right, though first you can get changed. I picked out a couple of possibles and laid them out on the bed.’
‘I’m not letting you pick out my clothes!’ What her voice lacked in volume, it made up for in outrage.
He responded with a teeth-grating gorgeous smile that made her want to hit him.
‘Why would you do this?’ she despaired. ‘Why land me on them this way? Couldn’t you come up with something less…dramatic?’
‘You forget that our engagement has already been announced, even if not by us, so it’s hardly going to be a drama.
There might be some ruffled feathers that we robbed them of a wedding, but eloping has the cachet of being romantic,’ he drawled with a lip curl that suggested he did not share this viewpoint.
‘The old man had the element of surprise. He’d taken control of the narrative but now it is our turn. ’
‘Don’t include me in this,’ she said, leaning forward in her seat to fix him with a killer glare. ‘It has nothing to do with me.’
‘The ring on your finger says otherwise,’ he countered. ‘Look, what is the issue? Keeping this a secret rather defeats the object of the exercise.’
‘Obviously I didn’t want to keep it a secret.’
He arched a sceptical brow. ‘So what is the problem?’
‘You playing some sort of game with your grandfather, proving you are in charge, watching people dance to your tune. You are as manipulative as he is.’
Her chest heaving as she struggled to contain her feelings, she slid a cautious sideways glance at the other couple in the cabin and was relieved that they seemed oblivious to the war of attrition being waged across the aisle.
‘Did it occur to you for one second to imagine how I am going to feel being thrown to the lions this way?’ she hissed resentfully. ‘A family party!’
‘No one is going to eat you. You will be fine,’ Adonis said, his infuriating attitude of lazy indifference tipping over into impatience as he advised her to, ‘Just relax and fasten your seat belt.’
A glance through the window told her the tarmac was empty apart from another jet with the distinctive gold Aetos logo on its side.
It would seem that there would be no massive queues to negotiate and the only officialdom for a man who literally had his name written on everything would involve bowing and scraping, she concluded cynically.
‘Aren’t you coming with us?’ Lizzie asked, hiding her panic under a smile when Dmitri and Jenna made their farewells.
She struggled to hide her escalating dismay when they explained they would be going straight to the bungalow they were staying in for the duration.
‘We’re officially on holiday now,’ Jenna said, adding a comforting, ‘You’ll be fine.’
Lizzie nodded and made her way to one of the bedrooms—apparently the jet boasted two—where there was a selection of the promised outfits laid out on the bed.
She stripped down to her bra and pants, feeling as creased as the suit she took off and hung on a hanger. After a short internal debate she ignored the shower in the en suite but felt slightly fresher after splashing her face with water and refreshing her make-up.
It didn’t take long—a few minutes later she was viewing the results with a critical eye, the fresh gloss of lipstick, a smudge of shadow on her lids and, because she did look desperately pale, a light dust of blusher on the apples of her cheeks.
She decided she looked less ghostlike, though the sprinkling of freckles across her nose and cheeks still shone through.
Bending her head forward, she shook out her long hair.
The silky and tangled strands almost swept the floor as she bent down and began to brush in long, rhythmic strokes that made her glossy rich hair crackle with static.
After one final brush, she straightened up, pushing the mane of hair back from her face with one forearm as she stepped into the bedroom.
The breath left her lungs in a sibilant hiss as Lizzie found herself looking at her new husband, who was in the act of fighting his way into a fresh white shirt.
It hung open, revealing the carved musculature of his tanned chest complete with a light sprinkling of body hair and the muscle-ridged corrugation of his flat washboard belly.
She licked her lips, unable to stop her eyes following the narrow directional arrow of dark hair that vanished beneath the belt of his dark tailored trousers.
In seconds the creeping heat in the pit of her stomach became a flaming inferno, the tug of her sex between her legs a throbbing ache and inside the silky cups she could feel her nipples shamelessly harden into tingling peaks.
Sensing that his dark hooded eyes had landed on this shameful physical response and painfully aware of the liquid heat in her pelvis—it felt as though she were being attacked on multiple fronts—she lifted her hands in a defensive gesture to cover her breasts, stopping midway when she realised it would make the situation a million times worse by drawing attention to her weakness.
Mortified, confused and angry that it was now of all the times for her libido to come out of hibernation, she drew in a ragged breath and lifted her gaze. Unfortunately the level of her thoughts did not follow.
‘Sorry, I… Sorry,’ she mumbled, not caring if she sounded stupid, just glad whole words came out.
Adonis didn’t hear what she said. His mind was filled with the imagined sound of her gasp as his tongue slid between her lips.
The muscles in his brown throat worked visibly as he held her gaze in a blank burning stare while inside his head he was seeing those soft curves plastered up against him.
There was a whole series of incrementally more erotic fantasy images being projected by his imagination onto his retina.
He had thought of her as a revelation, but now he knew that barely came close to describing her body. How could any man look at her and not think of sinking into the softness, feeling her warmth close around him?
‘I left my shirts in here,’ he finally pushed out hoarsely, glancing at the crumpled discarded shirt on the bed then back at Lizzie, immediately seeing her on the bed, her arms outstretched to him.
Adonis could feel his control unravelling faster by the second. He knew he had to remove himself from this situation or… Before he could come up with the or option, there was a tap on the door.
As he pushed it open to reveal one of the male attendants standing there looking apologetic, Lizzie grabbed for her robe and moved out of view.
The conversation was short and inaudible to Lizzie, who had regained a crumb of her composure. When he stepped back inside, she coached the belt on the robe another painful hitch tighter.
‘Take your time. No hurry, we are not on the clock.’
‘Thanks, yes, of course…’
He vanished and she lowered herself to the floor in a cross-legged posture that spoke a lot for her core strength.
Lizzie was not thinking about core strength, she was not thinking at all, she was stunned, shocked and…
She had never felt anything approaching that before, not the wanting to touch, to taste…
She wanted to surrender not just to the need inside her but to him.
She took a deep breath and told herself to get a grip as, with thoughtless elegance, she rose to her feet and focused on the practical.
She needed to get dressed.
She didn’t take her time. She didn’t even look at the dresses laid out on the bed. Heart hammering—what the hell had just happened there?—she grabbed the one nearest.
Like you don’t know, mocked the voice in her head.