Page 48 of Modern Romance September 2025 1-4
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Katla
I open my eyes and stare at the ceiling, wondering why it doesn’t look like the ceiling of my apartment in LA. It seems higher and the water stain in one corner isn’t there.
Then I remember. I’m not in my apartment in LA.
I’m in Ulysses Zakynthos’s house in Greece, in Ulysses Zakynthos’s bed, and I am naked.
Perhaps I should be unhappy about that, especially considering all that’s happened in the past day or so, but I’m not unhappy.
In fact, a delicious little thrill arrows through me.
After I ‘distracted’ him down in his study, he took me upstairs, stripped me naked and then returned the favour he promised me, with ‘added interest’—his words—as a ‘special Christmas treat’.
It’s been a revelation, being in his bed.
I’ve learned more about myself and my physical feelings in these past few hours than I ever learned in a year’s worth of marriage with John.
John called me frigid and cold, but I know now that I’m not either of those things.
Ulysses told me I was a volcano and whenever he’s around I certainly feel like one. As if I could erupt at any moment.
He’s merciless with his pleasure, though, and quite ruthless in giving it, not that I’m complaining at all. Especially when it’s clear to me that he needs something to take his mind off whatever is happening with his sister.
I thought when he said he wanted distraction that he meant something other than sex, which was why I told him about the shell. Which had then involved talking about my collection. I didn’t know what had possessed me to tell him, initially, and when I did I then kicked myself for saying it.
My mother hated my collection, because I’d been doing it since I was a child, and it made it difficult when we moved on to the next town.
I had to get it all together before we left and even one thing missing made me anxious.
Mum would get impatient and annoyed, and she was always throwing bits and pieces of it out, much to my distress.
John thought it was stupid, too, so I was sure Ulysses would think the same. I don’t know why his opinion mattered to me, but it did, and I was waiting for him to tell me it was silly too. Yet…he didn’t.
If it pleases you, who cares what other people think?
I roll over in the vast bed, piled high with white pillows and crisp, white linen sheets, and stare out of the window instead. It’s dark outside and I can hear the roll and crash of the waves on the shore.
Ulysses is a man who doesn’t care what people think. I knew that about him immediately, and part of me wants to be like that too. I don’t want to care that other people find me quirky, and I don’t want to care that they think my little collections are silly.
If it pleases me, he said. And the things I collect do please me. But I got rid of them after I left John. I threw them all away, because I too thought they were silly, and that maybe if I got rid of them that would make me more acceptable to people. That would make me more ‘normal’.
Yet every time I went home after work I would sit in my apartment and nothing in it pleased me. Nothing in it made me feel at home. I told myself that it would take time to become a normal person, but now…
Coming into Ulysses’s house felt instantly welcoming. He has little collections too and some of those items felt pleasing to me as well—the shell that his sister gave him, with that perfect spiral.
Once again, he thought about my pleasure, about what pleases me, and he made that important I can’t remember anyone who felt that pleasing me was their priority. Certainly not my mother or John. I like that feeling a lot.
The bed is empty and so is the bedroom, and I want to find him to tell him how much I like the way he makes me feel.
So I slide from the sheets then take a cursory look around the bedroom for my clothes.
I can’t find them, so instead I pick up his discarded shirt and put it on, rolling the too-long sleeves up to my elbows.
The hem reaches the top of my knees, so I’m well covered, not that I care about that right now.
I pad out into the hallway and wait there a moment, listening for any sound.
I can hear someone talking, low and deep: Ulysses.
I follow the sound down the stairs and into the high-ceilinged hallway.
He must be in the living area, so I go down the hallway to the large lounge at the back, with its tall and beautifully decorated tree.
He’s standing by the tree, talking on the phone in Greek and looking out of the windows into the dark night beyond the glass. His back is to me and he’s wearing a pair of worn jeans that sit low on his narrow hips and nothing else.
My heart clenches. He’s beautiful like this, all velvety olive skin over rock-hard muscle, each line sharply delineated. I know how that skin feels against mine now and I know how he tastes—salty, masculine and delicious. I want him again, my hunger for him seemingly endless.
I must give myself away somehow, because he turns abruptly, and his golden eyes meet mine. Flames leap in them and I feel a rush of satisfaction because I know those flame are all mine. I lit them and they burn now for me.
But competing with those flames is a hard, cold edge that makes me shiver.
It’s the ruthlessness inside him, the piece of him that brooks no argument, and it’s dangerous.
Strangely, I find that danger exciting, which makes no sense, especially after John.
Then again, I know this man won’t hurt me.
This ruthlessness is for other people, those who took his sister, and part of me finds that incredibly attractive.
He will go to any lengths to get her back;I can see it in his eyes, the depth of his feelings for her obvious.
The strength of that love is intoxicating.
No one has ever felt that way about me and something in my soul longs for it.
Eventually his conversation ends and he lowers his phone, putting it into his pocket. ‘You should be asleep,’ he says. ‘It’s late.’
‘I know,’ I reply. ‘But you were gone and I wanted to know where you were.’
A muscle flicks in his jaw. ‘You should go back to bed.’
I debate whether I should obey, but behind the flames in his eyes there’s something else, something that looks like pain, so I stay where I am.
It doesn’t come as a shock to find that I don’t like the thought of him being in pain. That, in fact, I hate it. It feels wrong that a man so beautiful, so powerful and so in control should be in pain about something. Yet it also makes him seem more human, and it tugs on my heart.
‘You told me that I should do what pleases me and not care what other people think—and, since staying here is what pleases me, that’s what I’m going to do.’
The muscle in his jaw flicks again. ‘Katla…’
‘We’ve had this discussion, remember?’ I come over to where he’s standing and look up into his face. ‘Are you still thinking about your sister?’
‘Yes.’ He bites off the word, as if it tastes bad. ‘One of my staff has just found out where she is and it’s not in Greece. She’s in Sicily. I’m going to get the jet ready so I’ll be able to leave tonight.’
I frown. ‘You’re going to get her?’
He nods. ‘The man who has her is dangerous and I can’t leave her with him—’ He breaks off and reaches into his pocket for his phone once again, and this time his expression darkens as he listens to whoever called him.
His Greek is sharp and hard as he argues, and then abruptly he tosses the phone onto the lush white sofa and turns away, giving me the powerful, tense lines of his back.
He’s angry, his anger bright and intense, yet it seems to burn out quickly.
‘What happened?’ I ask.
He curses under his breath in a stream of furious Greek. Then he turns back to me, his eyes lambent with fury. ‘The jet can’t leave. There are weather issues. Some kind of storm happening along the Italian coast.’
I study him for a moment. He isn’t a man who sits around waiting for things to happen, he is the one who makes things happen. He’s a man of action, so being unable to help his sister or even go to her must make him feel so powerless. And he’s not a man used to being powerless, I think.
I want to offer him my help, or something that will make him feel better, but I don’t know what. Earlier, he showed me what kind of help I could give him, which was sex. I could certainly offer him that again—I want to, even—but maybe he’s had enough of that. Maybe this requires something more.
I think of myself, and what I need when I am feeling powerless against the slings and arrows of the world.
For me it’s numbers, the sharp edges of the universe.
They’re dependable and they never change, despite what happens to me or to the rest of the world.
They are eternal and infallible. However, I don’t think Ulysses would find the same kind of solace in them that I do, so I say, ‘The weather is always changeable, and by tomorrow it might be better.’
‘She might be dead by tomorrow,’ he snaps, running a restless hand through his coal-black hair.
My heart clenches tight at the look on his face, fury and frustration with a cold, sharp edge. Yet my brain is being its usual logical self and sorting through what he said about his earlier call with what’s happening now.
‘That’s being very dramatic,’ I say levelly. ‘She’s pregnant and with the father. He’s not going to kill the mother of his child.’
Ulysses’s golden gaze locks onto mine. ‘I’ve learned that people are capable of anything,’ he growls. ‘Even that.’
There’s a warning in his tone, and part of me wants to know how he learned that, but I don’t want to be dismissive of his concerns now, no matter how dramatic they are.