Page 32 of Modern Romance July 2025 #4-8

CHAPTER TWO

I F IT WAS a mistake, Rebecca was determined to enjoy it. And she was gratified that it didn’t feel like some kind of misplaced revenge.

No, she was excited. She didn’t give much of a passing thought to Patrick once Theo opened the door to his rental house. She thought of the way this man’s hands had felt on her bare skin as they danced. The way he smelled of expensive cologne, but something else. An earthiness. A realness .

Maybe it was in reaction to her life falling apart, but she wasn’t doing it for that. This was for her.

“Can I offer you a drink?” he asked in that low, rumbly accented voice of his. Very polite.

Rebecca decided she didn’t want polite. She didn’t want patience or control. She wanted to shed everything she’d held on to—certain it would give her the life she wanted.

She wanted to be bold. Reckless. She wanted to lean into every impulse instead of always fighting them—for better form on a horse, a higher jump, Patrick’s ridiculous approval.

“No, thank you,” she offered. Pausing in the prettily appointed living room. Wealthy, but cozy. And just a rental, so it didn’t really matter, but she liked it. “You didn’t wish to stay in one of the hotels? A B&B?”

“I like my privacy,” he returned, easily enough, but he also turned to look at her. And she was done with small talk. She had come here for a reason, and she wanted to have it.

Keeping his gaze, she reached behind her and began to unzip her dress. He did not move, as she shimmied out of it. His eyes flared, as he stood there, looking like some kind of bronze god, angry and vengeful, but she knew it wasn’t anger that stamped itself across his austere face.

It was desire. She did not wear a bra, and the underwear left little to the imagination.

Rebecca was no shrinking violet, but she’d never allowed herself to be so bold. Maybe she never would again, but for tonight, it was everything she was. She was determined, and Rebecca determined was always a dangerous thing.

That choice was rewarded when he stepped toward her. He murmured something in a language she didn’t recognize. Maybe Spanish, but she didn’t think so. And she didn’t have the wherewithal to puzzle it out when he crossed the little distance between them and put his hands on her.

Everything in her body seemed to sigh with relief. As if he was the great antidote to all she’d been feeling. As if something special existed in sharing her body with a stranger.

And then he kissed her, and it was a revelation. Something different from anything she’d ever experienced. There was no hesitation, no carefulness.

He swooped in. He took. He conquered. His mouth was hard, but his lips were soft. He demanded, and she still had enough athlete in her to relish meeting every demand. To push it, every line, every end goal.

And as his mouth found new and inventive ways to send her body into overdrive, his hands did the same. Moving over her, molding over her. So she did the same. Reaching up to unbutton his shirt, push it off his tall, broad shoulders.

A sound escaped from low in her throat. He could have been an athlete himself with how carefully each muscle was honed.

He was hard and rangy. A testament to raw, masculine power.

She let her hands revel in it, then moved lower, even as his hands cupped her breasts, teased until she was as breathless as if she’d run a mile.

She did not manage to get his pants unfastened and lowered before he whisked her up into his arms and was moving with purposeful strides through the house. He took her into a dark room and laid her out on a soft bed that smelled of laundry soap.

She expected him to join her, quickly and assuredly, rush this along, but he did not. She moved up onto her elbows, somewhat confused, but he switched on a lamp, filling the room with a warm low light.

He stood there at the end of the bed, his gaze raking over her like a touch. When the dark depths met hers, he nodded shortly. “Take the rest off.”

He did not phrase it as a question. His tone brooked no argument. A man used to issuing orders and having them obeyed. Rebecca had become accustomed to orders—both at work, and in her former life as an equestrian, but she also gave them. She believed in partnerships and equality.

And still, she shimmied out of the lacy underwear so she was completely naked on the bed, waiting for him, and not demanding anything of him at all.

His eyes took her in. “What a gift you are,” he murmured, some awe in his tone rather than the hard-edged order from before.

The words landed somewhere in her chest, where they shouldn’t.

The words of a stranger couldn’t—wouldn’t—matter.

And it was easy to believe that when his body ranged over hers.

His hands, his mouth. He seemed content to explore every inch, to drive her desire to a fever pitch until she found herself begging.

Even when he laughed darkly against her neck, the sound reverberating through every point their bodies touched.

Then he finally touched where she needed him to.

“Ah, yes,” he murmured. “You like to beg, don’t you?” He stroked as he spoke, and she moved against him, desperate. So desperate she wasn’t sure she cared what he said. What she did.

Yes. Please. More.

The orgasm ripped through her like falling into a chasm. Endless. Sightless. Just the overwhelming ebb and flow of a pleasure so bright and bold, she wasn’t sure she would ever fully catch her breath again.

“Theos mou,” he said on a growl. “ Omorfiá mou. What a treasure I’ve found here in Ireland.”

For a moment, his weight moved off her. She almost reached out for him and begged, but he had opened a drawer and pulled out a condom. In quick movements, he had protected them both and then moved back on top of her. His rough palms spreading her thighs wide, settling himself at her entrance.

For a brief moment, a bit of panic had her thinking too much , but then he was deep inside her and it would never be enough. Never.

Since her experience was all of one man, she knew she didn’t have anything to compare it to, but she’d never had any complaints when it came to Patrick. Sex had been good.

Or so she’d thought. Turned out, that had been the virginity talking.

Because this wasn’t just kind of fun and enjoyable. It wasn’t a little sigh of pleasure and one mild crescendo.

This was all-encompassing. This was what those books her mother loved to read spoke about.

Fire and wildness and changing the chemistry within. She didn’t have to know a thing about this man to enjoy the way he seemed to innately know his way around her body, how to stroke sparks into fire, pleasure into ecstasy.

The way he fit inside her like they’d been made to come together. His hands were rough on her, his gaze fierce and a little wild, but each careful thrust was controlled, purposeful.

And when the climax came, it was like that moment of jumping on a horse, when nothing touched the ground, when she was all but flying. It was like that freedom, that thrilling, addicting excitement of not knowing what might happen in the aftermath.

And not caring. Pleasure pulsed, exploded, engulfed. And his eyes burned into hers, two little center points of perfect freedom.

And then he moved them, in easy, swift moments, so that she was sprawled on top of him. Gazing down at the hard planes of his body, him still seated deep within her. But at a new glorious angle.

She let out a little huff of breath, half pleasure, half amusement, all wonder.

Who was this man? Who was she ?

His hand moved, gently, over the scars on her hip. There wasn’t much pain anymore. Not externally. But the near reverent touch made them pulse with something . Not pain. Not pleasure. A strange kind of belonging.

And still he moved her against him. That same inexorable pace. Ruthless, just on the edge of freedom. Of everything they both wanted, but he had control she could not claim to have in the moment. She wanted to race forward, and he would not let her.

She made a sound of frustration, and he laughed . “So impatient.” He murmured a few more words in his own language, and they sounded exotic and romantic.

And since she was just that, impatient and needy despite all the peaks she’d already climbed and flown across, she sought to find something to break his rhythm. His control.

Her nails bit into his shoulder, and he hissed out a breath, then pushed deeper inside her. So this time she used her teeth. The sound he made was primal and shot an impossible thrill through her.

His hand became a clamp on her hip, his movements wild, glorious, perfect. She cried out, shuddering into oblivion. And then she was under him.

There was no more laughter now. There was a fierceness. There was only the race to his end goal and she relished the frantic pace, the way it whipped her back up and exploded…just in time with him.

He didn’t collapse on top of her exactly, but she didn’t quite feel real, pressed between the mattress and his hard, gasping body.

After a few moments, he rolled off her, both of them little more than pulsing bodies and struggling lungs.

She could have left then, once her breath was back. Perhaps that was the cosmopolitan thing to do. Slip out of bed, grab her dress and heels, and disappear.

But his arm was around her, and when she made a move to be that sophisticated one-night-stand woman she was pretending to be, his hold tightened. He pushed up on his elbow to look down at her, eyes dark and fierce and thrilling .

“No, omorfiá mou , I am not done with you quite yet.”

And that sounded perfect .

She was gone in the morning.

Theo had the oddest sensation of not knowing what to do with that , when he knew what to do with everything.

Always.

Luckily, he did not need to worry himself over it. He was leaving today. Back to Greece and work and dealing with all that came with his father’s new leaf .

So it was for the best he didn’t have to extricate himself from an uncomfortable morning after. He had no use for pretty Irish sirens beyond his short visit here for the wedding.

Needs met, he would head back to Athens to attend to business and forget all about the charming Irish woman with her wild hair and sad eyes.

Yes, he’d forget all about Becca whatever her last name was.

He was sure of it.