Page 68 of Modern Romance September 2025 1-4

There was no preamble. They returned to the villa late afternoon and went straight up to the bedroom, Lydia’s hand caught in Alexis’s possessive hold.

He held the door open for her, then closed it firmly behind them, shutting out the world, narrowing it down to just the two of them.

Blue-grey eyes locked onto hers.

Lydia could no longer feel the individual beats of her heart. All efforts to clear her body and mind had come to nothing. The sickness in her stomach was like no sickness she’d ever felt before.

His stare fixed firmly on her, Alexis removed his watch and cufflinks and placed them on his dresser, then his fingers pinched the top button of his shirt. Working methodically, he undid the buttons one by one and shrugged his arms free.

She could swear her whole body contracted, and she drank him in, helpless to turn her stare away, helpless to stop her tongue tingling with the remembered taste of that glorious body, her breasts tightening in anticipation of being flattened against it.

There was a buzzing from inside the bag she was holding to her chest as if it were a life raft.

His eyes narrowed. ‘Ignore it. You spent long enough on it in the car.’

Call it defiance, stubbornness, fear, anything, but she wrenched her stare from his and pulled her phone out. Before she could swipe to answer it, the phone had been plucked from her hand.

‘Give it back, that’s my mother calling.’

‘No.’ He placed it beside his watch on the dresser.

Fear turned to an anger she couldn’t begin to understand. ‘Give that back!’

‘No. I have been more than patient but enough is enough.’

Anger morphing into fury, she charged past him, her stretched fingers about to clasp hold of the phone when an arm hooked around her waist and she was spun around and hauled flush into bare solid torso.

‘What are you so afraid of?’ he demanded harshly, his features as tight as she’d ever seen them, his stare boring down on her.

Everything.

‘Nothing,’ she spat, raising her arm; would have slapped him away if he hadn’t caught her wrist.

‘Good, then there is nothing to stop me doing this.’ There was no time for her to even breathe let alone brace herself before his mouth came crushing down on hers.

In an instant, the foundations of Lydia’s world moved as Alexis’s dark taste filled her, his kiss a skilled, ruthless assault of the senses that knocked all the air from her lungs and all the sense from her brain.

His features were still taut when he broke the fusion, but his eyes…his eyes burned with an intensity she’d never seen in them before, trapping her even more tightly to the force of his will.

Nostrils flaring, he clasped her waist and lifted her off her feet, wordlessly carrying her to the bed where he laid her down and pinned her beneath him.

His gorgeous but implacable face loomed down on her. ‘I ask you again, what are you so frightened of?’

But she was too choked on the heat his savage kiss had unleashed in her and too overwhelmed with all the other feelings careering through her to answer.

His face contorted although with what she couldn’t say, could only feel it, almost like a pain in her heart.

‘No more hiding from me, Lydia. No more fighting me. We made our vows and now you are mine, do you understand that?’

The brutality of his words and ferocity in his stare should have made her quail but instead it melted something in her, something deep in her core that made her breathe out a sigh and mutely plead with him to understand that it wasn’t him she was fighting but herself because…

Because he was going to break her heart.

The realisation hit her straight in the heart he was going to break.

Staring with equal intensity into the eyes boring into hers brought another truth.

She was already in too deep. Even if she hadn’t conceived his child she would have struggled to forget him, but she had conceived, a part of him combining with a part of her and taking life, and now she carried him everywhere she went.

In her womb, in her blood, in her head, in her dreams.

It was all too late. Alexis was already a part of her and he was going to break her heart and there was nothing she could do about it because this was the deal she’d made.

He was giving her everything she’d asked for.

He’d married her when he could have said no.

He hadn’t disputed their child’s paternity, hadn’t even questioned it.

The only thing he’d played hardball over was their marriage being a real one, and she’d agreed to it.

She’d agreed to this because, deep down inside, it was what she wanted too.

She’d just been too frightened to admit it to herself, and now all she could do was her best to protect the parts of her he hadn’t yet touched because she couldn’t keep fighting against a future that was already written, a future she’d agreed to, sealed with a kiss that had burned her into fondue and which still lingered in her veins.

Her throat still too choked to speak, she raised her hand and cupped his cheek.

He closed his eyes and breathed in deeply.

After long, long moments, he recaptured her stare.

The hard intensity that had blazed in his eyes softened.

‘Our families might be at war, but I am not your enemy. I never have been. I am your husband and you are my wife. It’s you and me now, Lydia, and that’s how it will always be. ’

When his mouth came back down on hers it was with a driven sense of purpose. Fingers dragged through her hair as his tongue parted her lips in an intimate, demanding exploration that sparked electricity into all her senses and opened her up like the petals of a flower blossoming under the sun.

Alexis was her sun, she thought dimly as their kiss deepened and all the passion she’d tried so hard and for so long to contain ignited into an inferno. The sun that breathed life into a body that had never known such pleasure existed.

It was only when Lydia’s fingers burrowed into his hair and clasped his skull to fuse their mouths even tighter that the last of the tightness in Alexis’s chest breathed free and he allowed himself to let go.

Burrowing his face into the delicate skin of her neck, he breathed Lydia deeply into his lungs, filling himself with the scent and taste he’d been unable to shake since she’d left his bed, and when she gave a soft moan, he drank it through his pores with the same greed.

She was his now, and he was going to make it so damned good for her that she’d never want to leave his bed or his life again.

Lifting himself off her, he straddled her thighs and, without any ceremony, unbuckled her belt.

That discarded with, it was easy to slide the sleeves of her dress off her shoulders and then pull it down…

Theos , she wasn’t wearing a bra. Her succulent, perfect breasts with the rosy-red peaks were bare.

A deep throb of lust speared him and, unable to resist a taste, he swooped down and captured a breast in his mouth in the way that had driven her so wild before.

Lydia arched her neck and cried out at the tight sensation, and she thrust her chest up and cradled his head, but he was intent on torturing her, moving his mouth down and trailing his tongue over her stomach as he tugged her dress over her hips.

With a lift of her bottom, he pulled it down, past her thighs and then roughly dragged it to her feet and threw it to one side before sliding her knickers down and discarding them too.

Making quick work of his remaining clothes, he stretched out on top of her, the tips of her breasts jutting against the hardness of his chest as he cupped her face.

‘You will never know what you do to me,’ he whispered, and then his hands and mouth were everywhere, touching, kissing, biting, inflaming her skin, inflaming her veins, seeking, searching…

and the hot restlessness deep in her core took possession of her until she was nothing but a boneless mass, a creature of pleasure, created for this man and this man alone.

Hands capturing her wrists, his mouth found her breasts again, and all she could do was writhe helplessly as his tongue encircled her peaks, licking and tasting, teasing, teasing, teasing…

‘Please,’ she gasped. ‘Please.’

Just when she thought she couldn’t take the torture any longer, he took a peak into his mouth and released her wrists to slide his hands down the curves of her inflamed body as he suckled, giving her the pleasure she so craved, a pleasure she’d never even known she could feel until she’d fallen hedonistically into Alexis’s bed and he’d shown her just how exquisite pleasure could be.

Moving his attention to her other sensitised breast, his fingers trailed over her stomach and then slipped between her legs.

There was a moment of delicious anticipation where she stopped breathing entirely, a faint groan from his throat as he cupped her heat and then he slid a finger inside her and she couldn’t hear anything above the roar in her ears.

It was as though she were caught in a fever with his mouth moving relentlessly over her breasts and his fingers sliding in and out of her until, as if he really had been teasing her, he found the centre of where she throbbed unmercifully and, with barely any pressure from his thumb, she erupted, crying out, her hands flailing as her climax took her to the dimension only Alexis could carry her to.

The waves of her climax hadn’t even begun to subside when he snaked his way back up her throat to kiss her, reigniting her passion with little more than his taste.

Mouths fused together all over again, she raised her hips and writhed, desperately seeking his full possession, barely felt him capturing her wrists again and pressing them at the side of her head until he broke the fusion of their lips.

Opening her eyes, she found his hooded gaze boring down on her, his breathing heavy.

‘Tell me you’re mine,’ he demanded roughly.

Her throat caught.

He brought his face right to hers so the tips of their noses touched.

His arousal was pressing where she most needed it to be but no matter how much she strained her pelvis in a silent plea for him to just take her , his stare continued to uncompromisingly drill into her.

‘Say it. Say it, Lydia. Tell me you’re mine. ’

In such a fevered state she’d have said anything, promised anything if he would only just take her , she parted her lips.

‘I…’ And then her words cut away as she found herself trapped in his stare, not just trapped in it but carried into it, like an invisible piece of herself had dislodged and transferred into his possession.

She lifted her head and pressed her mouth to his. Eyes still locked together, she whispered, ‘I’m yours, Alexis.’

There was a long moment of stillness before he expelled a long groan into her mouth, and then buried himself deep, deep inside her.

Lydia had carried the sensation of his lovemaking all these long months but time must have diminished it because this …

His hot, demanding tongue danced into her mouth and she was lost.

Closing her eyes, she returned his kisses with the same passionate intensity, holding him tightly as she spread her legs even wider and submitted herself to the magic of his lovemaking.

Alexis could hardly hold on. All these months he’d carried their lovemaking in his head but memory had nothing on reality and now he was an electrified coil straining against release, but, Theos , the sensation…

She was close to the edge. He could feel it, the delicious tension coiling through her body, the heightened colour on her cheeks when she flung her head back, the tightness of her fingers when they gripped hold of his biceps, the straining sinews of her delicate neck, the growing thickness around his arousal as he drove in and out of her… and then her eyes flew open.

With her lips parted and her hazel stare locked onto his in wonder, the contractions of her release pulled him deeper and deeper until he was thrusting into her with all his frenzied power and his own coil snapped and he came with a load roar of her name.