Page 103 of Modern Romance September 2025 5-8

‘That must have been a huge adjustment,’ Jane murmured, though there was something in her voice that still spoke of hesitation.

‘She took it in her stride, apparently,’ Zeus said.

‘But she never forgot her roots, and my grandfather didn’t want her to.

They came out onto the bay often. Not in a boat like this— yaya would turn over in her grave,’ he admitted with a throaty laugh.

‘This is not her idea of a boat. For her, you had to be able to feel the movements, touch the sea, to know that the ocean is a living beast, requiring respect and fear, awe.’

Jane sighed. ‘That sounds so romantic.’

‘It might sound romantic. In reality, I spent a lot of the time that first year hanging over the edge, losing my lunch to seasickness.’

She laughed at that. ‘Less romantic.’

‘A lot less.’ He flashed her a grin. ‘But she was determined to turn me into a fisherman, of sorts.’

‘What about your father?’

‘It was never his thing.’

‘And you?’

‘I loved it. After I got over the shock of the open waters in a boat not much bigger than a car,’ he laughed.

‘I swear she did it just to throw me in at the deep end. But it worked. There was something so thrilling about being out there with them, feeling the turn and churn of the waves, knowing that I had to keep my wits about me and rely on the people I was with.’ His voice took on a slightly harder edge then, because he’d often reflected on how false the message had been that his grandparents had taught him.

To rely on your shipmates, and everything would be fine.

Even when it simply wasn’t possible to give such a guarantee in this life.

Zeus’s expression tightened but he quickly dispelled the thought, because Jane’s breathing was growing slow and rhythmic, her head heavy against his chest. He reached down beside him to a basket that held several rolled-up blankets and unfurled one over her. Anything to keep her just like this.

‘What else?’ she murmured groggily, so he resumed the gentle rubbing of her back, even as her eyes drifted shut.

He began to speak then of the time their boat had almost capsized, but he kept his voice soft and low, and after a few minutes she was fast asleep, and he was glad.

He rested his head back into the pillows and tried not to think about his childhood anymore.

Not about those halcyon days, when the sun had shone, and the water had been cool and reassuring and everything had seemed impossibly perfect.

Not about the way his mother’s diagnosis had dislodged every bit of his certainty and overpowered him with anger and doubt.

Not about the way her death had changed him, permanently.

He tried to focus purely on the here and now, on how good Jane felt pressed to his side, and as he drifted off to sleep, whilst his brain was occupying that liminal space between waking and not, he let himself imagine that she was the woman he proposed to, after all, and that rather than a cold, practical marriage of convenience, he ended up with someone warm and perfect, in all the ways he’d long ago learned to mistrust…

The lightest breeze rustled her hair, brushing it over her shoulders and face, making her reach up and scratch her nose, and then, when her hand fell back down, it connected with a warm, bare chest, and her eyes flared open in confusion for a moment.

She was disoriented. One part of her was in her flat in London, one part in the hotel in Athens.

Then she remembered, and she blinked her eyes around them, smiling a little to realise they’d fallen asleep on the deck of the boat.

It had continued to travel through the night; the mainland was now in the far, far distance.

She sighed; the sense of freedom she’d begun to enjoy the night before exploding through her in waves now.

It was barely morning. The sky was a hue of pale silver with touches of peach and orange, and the water had a steely grey colour.

The moon was still overhead, shimmering like a splotch of white paint.

She angled her face, studying Zeus still asleep, and something in her chest twisted hard and plummeted all the way down to her toes.

She didn’t want to think about the future.

She didn’t want to think about Lottie, about the marriage clause in the family business’s contracts; she didn’t want to think about anything outside of this bubble.

Maybe it was naive of her, but she needed to believe they could enjoy this week without any of those complications having an impact.

And more than that, she simply needed him.

Her cheeks flushed as she remembered her dreams and how they’d been flooded by wild, and very not PG images of Zeus.

Partly memories, partly fantasies. She moved her finger over his chest, idly drawing circles around his nipples, before she smiled again, this time a smile of pure impishness, and moved her naked body over him, straddling him, before quickly leaning down and kissing his lips.

He moaned, his hands instinctively coming to rest at her hips, his fingers pressing into the top of her bottom, so she dropped her waist, her sex connecting with his still-clothed erection, and she smiled against his mouth at the proof of how much he wanted this.

Despite his patience. Maybe because of it?

‘Jane,’ he said, eyes bursting open and landing on hers.

‘You said I’d still be ready today, and you were right.’ She dragged his lower lip between her teeth, then deepened their kiss. ‘I’m so, so ready, Zeus.’

His hands began to stroke her naked back, her bottom, her thighs, touching her all over, both gentle and demanding, the perfect combination; she pressed herself hard against his arousal, finding her sensitive cluster of nerves and shamelessly using him to stimulate that pleasure centre until it was almost impossible to breathe, and her eyes were filled with stars.

His hands brushed over her breasts, and she cried out, because every part of her was so overly sensitive.

It was like she was a forest of dry wood, and he’d struck a match, so bit by bit, she was burning up, and all she could do was admire the ferocity of the fire.

‘Please,’ she said, simply. ‘I want you.’

He stilled, staring up into her face and then, to Jane’s relief, he nodded once, kissing her as he began to remove his trousers, kicking them off before reaching for them as an afterthought and removing a condom from one of the pockets.

‘You came prepared,’ she said with relief.

‘Naturally.’

Her cheeks flushed pink, because she hadn’t even thought of that.

He placed the condom on the edge of the mattress and went back to kissing her, but with Jane on top, she felt so powerful, so in control of where she was touching him, of how fast they were going, and that control was addictive.

His trousers were removed, but his boxers were still in place, and suddenly, she wanted, more than anything, to see him.

To touch him. Her hands caught at the waistband of his shorts, and she began to push them down, but he stilled her to say, ‘Jane, I should warn you—’

She glanced up at him.

‘I’m big.’

Her brows shot up.

‘I promise I won’t hurt you.’

Curiosity now had her moving faster, pulling his shorts down just low enough to see that he was not exaggerating, even a little bit. He was huge. Long, wide and rock, rock-hard.

Her jaw dropped.

‘I—see what you mean.’

‘We’ll take it slow,’ he promised.

She couldn’t look away from him.

‘If you keep staring at me like that, Jane, this really isn’t going to last very long.’

Reluctantly, her gaze travelled the length of his body.

‘I’m— To be fair, I haven’t seen a man’s body in a very long time—’

His expression darkened then, and she knew why. Neither of them wanted to contemplate Steven in the context of this. He moved then, catching her and flipping her onto her back, bringing his body over hers.

‘Remember, agapaméni , you are in charge. Always.’

She nodded, her heart soaring towards her throat as he unfurled the condom over his length.

But rather than separating her thighs and taking her, instead, he returned to kissing her, then her breasts, then her sex, until she was incandescent once more and so wet for him, she could feel it between her legs.

‘God, Zeus,’ she cried out, and only then did he nudge her legs apart and press himself to her sex, holding there a moment as he wrapped her into a hug and pressed her to his chest, whispering Greek words in her ear.

She stared above them at the dawn sky, painted the kind of palette she would never forget, even if it weren’t the backdrop to such a moment, and slowly, gently, he pressed into her.

It had been so long for Jane, and she’d built it up to be such a terrifying event, she’d been so worried she might never have sex with anyone ever again. But in the end, in Zeus’s arms, it neither hurt nor terrified her. It simply felt…perfect.

He was big, and at first, she experienced discomfort to accommodate him, but only at first. He gave her space to get used to his strength and size before he began to move, and all the while, he alternated between whispering in her ear in his native language and kissing her throat, her lips, her earlobe; and his hands—those awesome, talented hands—roamed her body, enslaving her breasts before one moved to her sex and began to brush over her there, in the same tempo as his movements, so whatever his arousal had been stirring within her, it was no longer possible to take it slowly.

She was tumbling headfirst into a star-filled abyss, flooded with light and sparkle, magic and warmth, and she revelled in the cataclysmic explosion, with the fading stars above, the pale moon, the peachy-pink sky the witness to the most sublimely blissful event in Jane Fisher’s entire twenty-four years.