Page 20 of Modern Romance July 2025 #4-8
Maybe the colour caught her eye. It was a deep jewelled turquoise blue; the heavy silky fabric skimmed elegantly and didn’t cling but managed to show every dip and curve of her body.
Still feeling dazed, she glanced in the mirror and a stranger looked back at her.
She would have walked past this Lizzie in the street and not recognised herself, not that walking past yourself was an option unless you had a twin.
With a supreme effort she closed down her tangled jumble of thoughts and looked properly.
Ignoring the sultry glow in her eyes and the light all-over flush on her skin, she took in the simplicity of the dress that ended with a sensual swish four inches above her knee.
It was a simple tunic in cut but subtly shaped to show her narrow waist, the deep vee on the back showed her shoulder blades, and it was high in the front but still revealed the delicacy of her collarbones. The pleated cap sleeves that floated when she moved provided the drama.
She had never imagined she could look either elegant or sexy, but in this dress she looked both. The spiky heels with the pointy toes and the frivolous bow didn’t diminish the effect. She really did have quite decent legs, she decided as she contorted to see her rear view in the mirror.
The effect could have given her confidence, and it did, to a point.
It helped with the illusion she was acting a part.
The problem was that she hadn’t been acting just then.
Her stomach flipped, and her body thrummed with the memory and intensity of those moments.
She had felt attraction before but not the inexorable tug of animal magnetism, chemistry.
Come on, Lizzie, she told herself impatiently. Sex.
She was inexperienced but she was not stupid or blind and he had felt it too, or something. Even as she remembered the feral heat in his eyes, the tension that surrounded him like an aura sent an illicit thrill of fluid heat through her body.
She exited the plane alone, apart from Mouse in her basket.
Lizzie held onto her tight, as though she were her only link to reality, to who she really was.
Adonis was already in the sleek car waiting for her.
Thinking he might be watching made her determined not to trip, so she focused on putting one foot in front of the other.
So long as she thought about feet she would be OK.
‘That cat travels well.’
Her eyes flickered to the basket wedged by her feet.
‘She is resilient, one of life’s survivors.
Are there any other cats in the…?’ She paused and realised she didn’t have a clue where they were headed.
The sun was dropping, the sky illuminated by streaks of gold, and every so often she had a glimpse of the sea tinged with gold.
‘Villa,’ he supplied, aware in the periphery of his vision as she crossed her legs; the silky rustle that went with the action aroused him to a painful degree.
‘I really don’t know. When you hand him over to the kitchen staff…’
Lizzie embraced her anger with a kind of relief. It was marvellous to be able to think he was shallow and lacking in any sort of empathy, not how gorgeous and incredible he smelled.
‘I am not about to hand her over,’ she snapped, outraged at the suggestion.
‘You do know that you are being ridiculous.’ The residual tension from the moments when she had been standing there in her very provocative underwear had lessened but not diminished. It had more coalesced into a tight fist of frustration and resentment in his gut.
Lizzie turned her head, intending to project cold ice queen, but an iceberg could not have cooled the angry frustrated heat inside her. If her eyes had been lasers his perfect profile would be seriously damaged. ‘I’m not discussing this.’
‘Fine, my suite… The sitting room opens out onto a quadrangle, totally enclosed. Will that suit you and your blasted animal?’ he asked in a clipped tone.
Lizzie’s lips tightened in response to the sarcasm in his voice. ‘Yes.’ She stopped. ‘Your suite? Where will I be?’
‘We are arriving a married couple. Where the hell do you think you will be?’
Her breath coming in shallow laboured puffs, she didn’t say a word for a moment. ‘I hadn’t thought that far ahead.’
‘Sometimes it is better not to. Thinking is not all it is hyped up to be. You can’t always factor in the…’ The fact that he wanted her, so badly that it felt like a weight in his chest. ‘Look, we are married. We will be sharing a room. Let’s work out the logistics later. It might not be an issue.’
She let the heavy silence lie for a moment. ‘What do you mean?’
An exasperated hiss emerged through his clenched teeth. ‘You know exactly what I mean. I am attracted to you and you feel the same way. It could make the next few weeks enjoyable or it could make them a lot less comfortable. Frustration makes you quite tetchy.’
‘I’m not frustrated!’ she exploded. ‘I’m confused. Someone like you does not want someone like me.’
‘For pity’s sake, move on!’ he bellowed.
She closed her eyes until he had negotiated a bend at what felt to her like reckless speed.
‘I don’t know what the guys you have been sleeping with have been doing.
’ His lips curled in disgust. ‘But I promise you they have been doing it wrong if you don’t know…
Theos! ’ he grated. This woman was driving him to places he had never been before.
His brief sideways glance was at the upper end of smoulder. ‘How incredibly sexy you are.’
She sat there, the numb shock giving way to a sense of power she had never experienced before, a power that came from knowing that a gorgeous man wanted you.
Well, he had to. She could think of no reason for him to lie.
‘And you’d do it right?’ she heard herself throw out recklessly.
If the stare he aimed at the road ahead had been directed at her, Lizzie imagined she would have ignited.
‘Damned right I would.’
His arrogance should have offended her. It didn’t because she believed him with every fibre of her being.
The car jolted, sending up a shower of loose gravel as he brought it to a halt.
At her feet the cat squealed, but Lizzie didn’t have time to soothe it.
She opened her mouth but the sound was smothered by his lips, lost in the heat.
The carnality of the way he claimed her mouth, licked into the moist warmth, flicked, teased and sucked.
The sheer undreamt-of dizzying pleasure left her shaking.
Adonis looked into her glazed eyes, gave a fierce nod of satisfaction and restarted the engine.
She had to say something, and he had been upfront about the fact he was some sort of sex god.
‘I’m a virgin.’
The car came to another screaming halt, followed by a stream of invective in several languages that you didn’t need to be a linguist to translate as not polite.
‘You’re a…?’
She nodded, deciding she would remember Adonis looking shaken because she doubted it occurred often.
‘How is that even possible?’
‘It wasn’t a criminal offence last time I checked,’ she snapped back, not enjoying him acting as if she was a freak, even though there were occasions she felt she might be.
‘I refuse to believe you have an issue with sex.’
Well, if she ever had, that ship had quite definitely sailed now, she thought, moistening her tingling lips. ‘No, I have an issue with…well, the emotional bit…love…and I wasn’t sure that I could have one without the other. I might,’ she added, looking at his mouth, ‘have been wrong.’
It was true he was the last man in the world she would have fallen in love with, but she could definitely have sex with him so long as she knew he wasn’t thinking of Deb. That would for sure be a lust killer.
‘Love?’ he said as though he needed her to translate.
‘I am not brave enough to love someone and then lose them for whatever reason. Why would anyone open themselves to that world of hurt?’
‘I don’t sleep with virgins. I have never slept with a virgin.’
She lowered her eyes, making a supreme effort to be adult about the rejection. ‘A bit like skiing, I suppose. Nursery slopes are a bit boring for people used to going off-piste.’
He vented an incredulous laugh. ‘You do know that you say the most… I think an hour in your head would make any man…’ His voice trailed off as his mind made the leap from head to bed, razor blades of lust leaving a zigzagging trail of destruction in their wake.
‘I think we should have this discussion later.’
When he was not fantasising about back-seat or, for that matter, front-seat sex.
What was he, a teenager? A virgin. He had never spent much time thinking about virgins.
There was an abundance of women who were not, and the responsibility was something he had always avoided.
He had always prided himself on being more evolved than men who got a kick from the idea of being a woman’s first lover.
It turned out his smugness had been misplaced. He wasn’t so evolved, after all. All it took was the perfect storm, and a particular virgin.
It seemed to Lizzie that there wasn’t that much to discuss but she shrugged and made no objection when he restarted the car.
Conversation was sparse on the rest of the journey—actually it was non-existent—but as the Aetos residence came into view Lizzie gasped.
The building, a sprawling white affair, had a low profile. It seemed to be built into the hillside, organically almost a part of it, but designed so that most every window in the place, and there were many, appeared to face the sea.
He had slowed, appearing to appreciate the impact that first glimpse offered.
As they got closer she took in the other details in the fading light: the softly terraced gardens that ran right down to the beach, the paddocks below the escarpment the house was built into with horses galloping, tails up, as they passed.
The glimmer of a swimming pool behind a row of sentinel pines against the darkening night sky.