Page 16 of Modern Romance September 2025 5-8

She was wrong. She was far more to him than a competent PR and the future mother of his heirs. Yes, much of this last week had been for the cameras, and yes, it had caused him an abominable amount of grief, but it had also proved that they were a team. In sync. A partnership that could be dynamite.

As for her view of the wedding night, well, that cut him straight to the bone. He’d hurt her? He’d made her feel used and rejected? How on earth had he allowed that to happen? More importantly, what was he going to do to rectify it?

Ivo wasn’t used to explaining himself. Not only was it the unofficial policy of the royal family never to do so, but also he’d never been questioned about anything ever before, until he’d decided to find a wife.

Furthermore, life in the public eye had made him an intensely private man, and he took immense care to keep the majority of his thoughts and opinions to himself.

However, communication went both ways, and if ever there was an occasion to break the habit, this was it.

He couldn’t have Sofia continuing to believe he was merely using her when he wasn’t.

Where was the integrity and decency in that?

Besides, if he stood any chance of finishing this tour with his reputation intact, he still needed to get her into his bed, and right now, that looked as though it was insanely far from happening.

He shoved his hands through his hair and cleared his throat to release the words he was nevertheless going to have to push out.

‘I had no idea you felt that way,’ he said, choosing to ignore the inconvenient fact that that was probably because he’d never asked.

‘But let me clear up a few misunderstandings under which you seem to be labouring.

‘Firstly, it was never my intention to hurt you on our wedding night. I was spooked by the strength of my response to you. What happened was totally unexpected. I lost control, which has never happened to me before. It wasn’t part of the plan and it threw me for six.

But I didn’t handle it well and for that I apologise.

Which leads me onto my next point. Namely that my interest in you is not purely practical.

In fact, it is anything but practical and has been for days.

I want you, Sofia. Like I’ve never wanted anyone before.

You’ve been driving me wild ever since we kissed at the altar.

It rocked me to my very foundations, which was why I needed time and a drink to pull myself together before coming to your room.

But that was a pointless endeavour as it turned out because it didn’t work.

Nothing has. This last week I’ve never felt less pulled together. It’s been complete and utter torture.’

Ivo thrust his hands into the pockets of his trouser and began to pace around the lobby, as if movement would ease the heated restlessness of his body and brain.

‘I’ve tried my damnedest to ignore my desire for you,’ he said, his voice low and tight as he sought to undo the impression he’d deliberately given her.

‘It’s crippling and I can’t afford the distraction.

I have work to do that needs my full attention, and you know what happened the last time a king allowed himself to be bamboozled by desire.

An attempted coup and the near collapse of the kingdom.

You mess with my head. You make me forget who I am.

I’m not thinking straight. Yesterday, I fired a bishop.

This evening, for the first time in years, I tossed aside protocol to take the air on a bloody terrace. It has to stop. I need it to stop.

‘But getting you out of my system so I can focus on the job isn’t the only reason I want you in my bed,’ he said, on a terrifying roll he could not seem to stop.

‘You asked me earlier if I ever do anything for myself. I said no, and that’s been true for years.

Until now. I’m doing this for myself, Sofia.

I want you for me . Like I wanted those fifteen minutes earlier for me .

Which is all kinds of wrong. I know that, in the marrow of my bones.

But at this precise moment in time I don’t care.

All I can think about is making the most of tomorrow’s twenty-four-hour break in our schedule and revisiting my original ideas for the wedding night.

I want to take things nice and slow and explore every inch of you with my hands and mouth until neither of us can take any more.

‘But I now realise that these desires of mine are entirely self-centred. I haven’t considered yours at all, which is hardly a mark of the respect I promised you, and that’s another apology I owe you.

So while sticking to the current arrangements is obviously the very last thing I want, if you do, that’s fine.

It’s fine . Really. Truly. I won’t bother you again. You have my word.’

With nothing left to say, Ivo closed his mouth and came to a halt.

He was sweating. Breathing harder than he ever had before.

He’d never delivered such a long speech without prior preparation.

He’d never had such an out-of-body experience.

Felt so crazed. So horrified. Or been so desperate for a reaction.

Now was her chance to say something, he thought feverishly, his eyes boring into hers, the tension gripping his muscles so immense it hurt.

Anything. But she just stood there, staring at him wide-eyed, as rigid as a statue in the deafening silence that stretched and stretched, and the wrecking ball of disappointment and frustration that slammed into him nearly took out his knees.

‘Right,’ he said gruffly, fighting back the urge to drop to his knees and beg, all out of heat and adrenaline, and needing to get the hell out of here while he still had a shred of dignity and self-possession left.

‘Well. I’m glad to have got cleared that up.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, there’s a cold shower with my name on it. Goodnight.’

Sofia watched in a state of utter stupefaction as Ivo clicked his heels together, nodded curtly, then strode across the lobby in the direction of his suite.

Surely she’d stepped into a parallel universe these past five minutes.

Had that conversation really happened? No.

It couldn’t have. She had to be dreaming.

But if she was, why was her pulse thundering like a freight train?

Why was her head spinning so fast she was in danger of passing out?

Assuming that that conversation had taken place, he’d just blown her preconceptions out of the water—the main one being that he didn’t want her. He did . He wanted her. In a way that clearly had nothing to do with duty. He wanted her as much as she wanted him, if not more.

She would never have guessed, she thought dazedly as she tried to process everything else he’d confessed.

His facade was as effective as hers, and she’d been so busy protecting herself that she hadn’t given any thought at all to what might lie beneath it.

She’d been utterly self-absorbed and as guilty as he was of taking things at face value.

But now she was beginning to realise that still waters ran deep, very deep indeed.

All this time, he too had been tormented by excoriating desire.

So much so that he’d had to take preventative action to keep it from devouring him, just as she had.

So much so that this evening, he’d jettisoned the principles of a lifetime.

He’d put himself and what he wanted first for once, which, unbelievably, was her.

She’d always believed him to be pragmatic and level-headed, a paragon of steadfastness and equanimity.

But clearly, that was not all he was. She’d never heard him speak so heatedly.

She’d never seen him look so deranged. He’d certainly never paced like that in all the time she’d known him.

In fact, she distinctly recalled him once telling her that such behaviour represented a loss of control and was therefore totally unacceptable.

Clearly, then, the depth of his feelings for her had taken him by as much surprise as hers for him had taken her.

But if he was more complicated than the saintly ideal she’d placed on an impossibly high pedestal, what did that mean for her love?

That it was superficial and shallow? That it only valued the simple and the good and couldn’t withstand the infinitely more layered and possibly even flawed reality of him?

No.

She refused to believe that.

Her love was true. It wasn’t starry-eyed—at least, not any more. This last week had proved that it was messy, laced with frustration and disappointment, and it hadn’t collapsed. It had survived.

She hadn’t wanted to acknowledge the shift in her feelings because she’d been in search of a relationship as far from her parents’ as it was possible to get.

But now she could see that she may have been a little too harsh on them.

Tonight, she’d felt for herself and witnessed in Ivo how swiftly passion could overheat and spill out as anger and frustration.

The difference was that between them things hadn’t escalated.

Things hadn’t descended into acrimony and hate.

Her outburst on the terrace had come and gone in a flash.

Ivo had walked away from his just now without losing his temper.

Neither of them had delighted in the feelings that had overtaken them.

Both of them had managed to get a grip. And look at how cool she’d been when she’d had to explain how she felt about his behaviour the night of their wedding.

Ever since the crushing aftermath of that experience, Sofia had been doing her best to resist the attraction to protect her heart.

She’d been fighting to keep her admiration for his strong sense of duty from turning into bitterness and resentment.

Relentlessly reminding herself to heed the advice of her mother-in-law, she’d tried to rise above the maddening desire that challenged her sense of self-preservation.

Yet she’d been fighting a losing battle.

The fifteen minutes he’d allowed her on the terrace had proven that.

She’d tried to figure out what was going on with herself but had come up with nothing, which had been as worrying as it had been perplexing because she always had a plan.

The fact that she hadn’t been able to find a way through was why she’d had to cloak herself in extra ice to get her though the rest of the evening.

Now she could admit that it wasn’t just the pressure of the job that had got to her earlier.

It was the pressure of recklessly dreaming of things she knew she couldn’t have, of struggling to keep her feelings under control when they were growing and changing and deepening in a way she’d never anticipated.

But some of those feelings weren’t unrequited at all. The scorching attraction was mutual. What exactly had he planned to do to her, first on their wedding day, then tonight, and after that, tomorrow? How had he planned to drive her wild? She badly wanted to find out.

And, now she was thinking, Why shouldn’t she?

This relationship wasn’t as one-sided as she’d assumed. If one removed love from the equation, it was actually pretty balanced, especially now he’d laid all his cards on the table.

And perhaps passion wasn’t to be feared, after all.

She’d worried about the damage it could do if indulged, but she’d discovered this evening that that didn’t have to be the case.

She could express her emotions, however volatile, and chaos would not necessarily ensue.

If they kept it confined to the bedroom, they could find the physical release they both craved.

The pressure elsewhere would ease. Ivo was right about the unfeasibility of the current state of affairs.

They had to dissipate the unbearable tension somehow.

So why was she dithering? Why did she feel as though she could be playing with fire?

Their connection would be a physical one, nothing more.

She didn’t have to confess her love for him.

She wouldn’t be risking her heart. She could still keep it safe from harm.

She’d just have to double down on her efforts to keep it locked up.

She knew perfectly well that the vision of a proper relationship, which she glimpsed when they were out and about, wasn’t what he was offering for real.

But what he was offering was a safe, contained way to embrace the chemistry that was so real it burned.

A chance to combine love and passion without it descending into chaos and destruction.

So was she really going to stand here all night when she had a husband who wanted her as much as she wanted him?

When the promise of spending the whole of tomorrow testing their attraction to each other hovered in the ether?

When in this at least she was his number one priority?

No, she was not.