Page 74 of Modern Romance September 2025 1-4
Moving downstairs, she continued studying them.
They suited the man who’d bought them and it made her heart pang to think of him fighting fires to save a business he didn’t even want for the sake of his father and siblings.
The businesses he did own and from which he’d made his personal fortune were all in hospitality, an industry that suited him much better than shipping, which to Lydia was the least exciting industry going.
He even made suits sexy, which she’d never thought she’d find herself thinking.
Suits, she’d always believed, were for serious-minded and dare she say boring men like her father and brother, and it had been this association that had actively seen her choose arty, poetic men as her partners; men who wouldn’t know one end of a tie from the other and who considered reciting sonnets as romantic and the creation of pop art as frivolous.
In her quest to not wake up married to a version of her father or brother, for whom the business was everything, she’d inadvertently found herself with men for whom themselves was everything.
Alexis was everything those men were not and far removed from her father and brother. He wouldn’t know one end of a sonnet from another but he had a sense of humour and a zest for life which, combined with his drop-dead gorgeous looks and sexiness, made him irresistible.
But the man who found the shipping industry as exciting as she did was having to delegate the running of his own business to staff so he could concentrate his forensic mind on saving his father’s business from the bankruptcy Antoniadis Shipping was headed for.
In just two days, Lydia’s brother would sit in his boardroom with his main investors knowing it would likely be for the final time.
Shockingly, despite all the bad blood between their two families, Alexis had promised not to let her family fall into poverty. More shockingly, she believed him. What she didn’t believe for a second was that her family would accept his help. Her mother, she knew, would rather starve.
On impulse, she pulled her phone out of her back pocket and was a fingerprint away from calling him when she stopped herself. Alexis was working; fighting the fires that he’d never started even if he had stoked the flames…
Damn it, what had she been doing eulogising him? Yes, he had good traits, many of them, but she didn’t need to reinforce them to herself in some kind of daydream like some kind of moon-eyed teenager with a crush. At this rate she’d talk herself into falling in love with him!
‘You look like you’re arguing with yourself.’
A small scream flew from her mouth as she whipped around and found Alexis standing at the doorway of the dining room where she’d been absently studying a wacky painting of an iconic sixties actress with a cigarette holder in her mouth, the limited palette all fluorescent colours. ‘What are you doing home?’
‘I live here.’ His lips quirked at the corners. ‘I had a few hours free of meetings and thought I would join my wife who is suffering from cabin fever for lunch.’
‘Lunch?’ Where had the morning gone?
His lips quirked again. ‘You know. Food.’
God, he was gorgeous, she thought. Just look at him in that dark green suit and with his black hair sticking up on end from all the times he must have run his fingers through it. Alexis was a walking stick of testosterone and to look at him was to make her pulses soar.
Barely aware of her legs moving, Lydia crossed the room, grabbed hold of his tie and yanked him into the room. Pointing to a chair, she barked, ‘Sit,’ and then firmly shut the door.
The one rule she’d learned in her short time living with Alexis was that when a door was closed it meant the staff were not to enter.
She would not let herself think why that was…
Actually, she would let herself think it.
Alexis liked his privacy for sex, and at the moment she was his willing partner for sex because she was there and he wanted her, and now he was here and goddammit she wanted him and she didn’t have to be in love with him for that.
She was just as capable of separating sex from emotions as he was.
‘Is this position to your liking?’ he asked, seductive bemusement lacing his voice. He’d pulled a dining chair out and placed it against the wall.
‘Yes. Now, take your jacket and tie off, and sit.’
He obeyed and then, his eyes alive with sensual anticipation, summoned her with a crook of his finger.
Ignoring his directive, she lifted her top off and chucked it on the floor, stepped out of her sandals and then undid her jeans and pulled them down before stepping out of them too.
She made no effort at turning her undressing into a strip show for him but from the expression on Alexis’s face, the effect would have been the same, and a giddy sense of power flowed into the hot blood rushing through her.
When Alexis had made the impulsive decision to return to his apartment for lunch, something he’d never done before in the whole of his working life, he’d had dreams of seducing Lydia into the bedroom, of working out all his stress by losing himself in his beautiful wife and her beautiful body.
Not once had he imagined this kind of reception and damn if it wasn’t as sexy as hell.
She was as sexy as hell, and now she was prowling across the floor to him wearing only her white lace underwear and with a determined, lascivious glow in her eyes, and it was like he’d woken to find himself in the middle of an erotic fantasy.
When she reached him, she sank straight to her knees and deftly unbuttoned his shirt before reaching for the button and zip of his trousers.
Without any ceremony whatsoever she undid them and then tugged them down with his underwear to his hips.
A quick lift of his buttocks enabled her to pull them down past an erection that had gone from zero to sixty in seconds, and down to his ankles where she pulled them off and threw them to one side.
And then her lascivious stare landed back on him.
Cheeks heightened with colour, her breathing heavy, she parted his thighs without saying a word, then positioned herself between them and made a fist around his arousal.
His eyes widened at the rush of adrenaline that shot through him.
Still not speaking with anything but her bright, lust-filled eyes, she began to masturbate him, her fist moving up and down his length, slapping his hand away when he reached for a breast.
‘Lydia…’ Theos , that thick voice was his.
With one hand now pressed firmly on his chest to keep him still, she bent her head and took him into her hot mouth.
Submitting to her will and the exquisite sensation of what she was doing to him, Alexis groaned loudly and rested his head back against the wall.
Slavishly she made love to him with her mouth and hand, erotic pleasure thrumming through his every cell…
She cupped his balls.
‘God, Lydia…’ Her name on his lips morphed into another groan.
Tighter the pads of her fingers pressed into his chest, tighter her hold on his arousal, her movements increasing, and when he raised his head and saw her beautiful blonde head bobbing up and down on his lap, the telltale tugging of his loins was almost more than he could control.
As if she sensed he was on the brink of coming, she pulled her lips up his erection one long last time and then she was on her feet, freeing her breasts from her bra and yanking her knickers down her legs and kicking them away…and then she was straddling his lap.
Clasping his cheeks in her hands, she gazed into his eyes with an intensity he’d never seen in the hazel before, and with a loud moan of pleasure sank down on his length.
Theos , she was more than ready for him.
With only a fleeting kiss to his lips, she dragged her fingers to the back of his head and pulled his face down to her breasts.
It was the only control she ceded to him and he took complete advantage, sucking one then the other in the way that drove her so wild.
She’d barely started riding him when he felt her thicken around him and then she arched her neck and ground herself down, holding his head tightly to keep his mouth at her breast as she convulsed around him.
It was the most beautiful, perfect moment of his life, and he savoured it, letting her take every ounce of her pleasure before grabbing hold of her hips and thrusting himself hard up into her, his own climax coming in quick succession as he spurted his seed deep inside her and their mouths finally fused as the last of their orgasms ripped through them.
Lydia couldn’t catch her breath. Couldn’t think. No, was afraid to think. The beats of her heart weren’t just racing from the thrilling power of what they’d just shared but from fear.
Where had that sensual, demanding woman come from?
She’d only met her once, her weekend with Alexis, when she’d been completely unafraid and had made love to him with the same intensity that he’d made love to her.
The very fact that she’d been so unafraid that night proved she should have been terrified, and now she was afraid to unwrap her arms from around his neck or move her cheek from his, terrified of what he’d find in her eyes.
More terrified of what she wouldn’t find in his.
Whatever point she’d been trying to make to herself had backfired, and she had to plead with herself to keep it together, to remind herself that when her skin was no longer pressed to Alexis’s and the heavy beats of his heart were no longer dancing with the beats of hers and he was no longer inside her, this rush would pass and all these emotions that had sprung up from nowhere would go back to the nowhere from where they came.
She wasn’t falling in love with him. She wasn’t. It was just a chemical rush.
Mercies came in unexpected places and hers came from the ringing of a phone.
‘That’s yours,’ she said, climbing off his lap and grabbing his discarded suit jacket where the ringing was coming from and passing it to him, then used the excuse of gathering the rest of their discarded clothes to avoid eye contact a little bit longer, using that fragment of time to pull herself together.
Whoever was calling, he didn’t answer. Nor did he mention who the caller had been. The tightness of his mouth, though, told her whoever had called had been unwanted.
He’d just finished tucking his shirt in when his phone buzzed with a message.
Lydia, having pulled her top back over her head, saw the fresh tightening of his lips at whatever was on his screen. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing.’ The way he said it made her stomach plummet and when she recognised the phone, it plummeted some more. Alexis had two phones, one that was strictly for business and one that was friends and family. It was his personal phone in his hand.
‘I thought that was my stock answer,’ she chided lightly. ‘Is it something or someone important?’
The blue-grey eyes fixed onto hers with a gravity she couldn’t remember seeing in them before. ‘If I tell you, it will hurt you.’
Alarm shot through her veins. ‘Is it about my family?’
His expression didn’t change. ‘No.’
Now her blood pressure plummeted too. Or did it rise? She didn’t know, knew only that she felt suddenly light-headed, and not in a good way.
With his no hanging between them, poisoning the air she breathed, she somehow managed to hold onto the airiness of her tone. ‘Shouldn’t you reply to it?’
Grimness crept into his voice. ‘No.’
‘It’s bad manners to leave a lover hanging.’ She slipped her feet into her sandals and added, ‘Not to mention cruel.’
The tightening of his lips and the flickering in his eyes told her she’d hit bullseye. Smiling to show she didn’t care, Lydia strode to the door. ‘Call and put her out of her misery. I’ll order lunch for us.’
The gravity in his expression didn’t change. ‘It was over long ago.’
She shrugged and gave another bright smile. ‘Then deal with it however you see fit. Just remember she’s a human with feelings.’
Only after she’d popped into the kitchen to order food for them did Lydia lock herself in a bathroom and throw up what remained of her breakfast.