Page 214 of Modern Romance September 2025 5-8

‘What?’ Her eyes widened in surprise. Had she done something wrong?

‘I’m holding on by a thread,’ he muttered apologetically. ‘When you touch me…’

‘Oh.’ Pleasure made her smile. ‘I’m glad to hear I’m not alone in that department.’

He grimaced. ‘You said you wanted coffee?’

‘Coffee?’ She pulled a face. ‘Believe me, that’s the last thing on my mind.’

‘A cold shower?’

She laughed. ‘Nope.’

‘Jane—’

‘Come here.’ She patted the bed beside her, but he stayed where he was. ‘What if,’ she said, thinking aloud, ‘I promise not to touch you?’

His eyes flared.

‘But you can touch me,’ she said slowly, seductively. ‘Anywhere, any way you want to.’

His Adam’s apple throbbed.

‘No sex,’ she reiterated, because he was right: that was a step she wanted to think about. And be completely sober for. Even though she’d only had two glasses of bubbles with dinner, her experience with Steven had been traumatising enough to know she would only ever make that choice when she could 100 percent trust her judgement.

‘I’ve never met anyone like you,’ he said, but to her immense relief he began to stride back towards the bed—and her.

‘I think that might be mutual,’ she confessed, swallowing a sigh as he sat beside her and then kissed her hard, fast and hungrily, just how she wanted him to be with her.

CHAPTER SIX

Forthesecondnight in a row, Zeus couldn’t sleep. It had been hard enough the night before, when they’d kissed in the bar, but after everything that had happened between them in her hotel—and what specificallyhadn’thappened—he had a raging hard-on and an insatiable need for a woman he hadn’t even known for seventy-two hours.

Right when he needed to be his most pragmatic self, it was like the universe, or fates, had conspired to send him a vixen—a woman who pushedallof his buttons. Sexy, beautiful, intelligent and vulnerable, so that he felt those warrior instincts he’d honed during his mother’s cancer fight burst back to life. Even when he’d told himself he’d never care enough about another human to want to fight their battles for them. Even when he knew the cost of caring too deeply for anyone.

As the sun began to creep towards the cityscape, Zeus gave up on even attempting to sleep, slipped into a pair of shorts, a T-shirt and some joggers and let himself out of his mansion. Running had long been a balm to his busy mind, a way to not only calm his thoughts but, more importantly, to also bring order to them.

It wasn’t like being attracted to a woman was new. Zeus had made an artform out of the three-night stand. One night was too short—he liked to get to know the women he slept with. Anything more than three nights was way too long, because he didn’t like to risk caring too much about them.

Until Jane, he’d never found it hard to live by that creed.

He supposed he bored easily. Or perhaps the women he’d been dating had been wrong for him, in terms of being able to hold his attention. Except, wasn’t that exactly what he’d been aiming for? To be able to enjoy a woman’s company for a brief while, then walk away without a backwards glance?

Something crept up his spine and left the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end, because when he imagined walking away from Jane, he didn’t feel as though it would be easy, and he didn’t feel as though he’d be prepared to do it in two nights’ time. Which surely gave him all the more reason to do precisely that.

She was dangerous to him—he’d thought that before. He’d known it from their first meeting. She wastoobeautiful, too sexy, too alluring, too vulnerable, too everything, and suddenly, all of Zeus’s carefully laid boundaries were being pulled at and weakened by a woman he knew virtually nothing about.

Except, he did know that she wasn’t planning to be in Athens long-term. He did know that she was as committed to her career as he was to his. And he did know that getting married was as imperative now as it had been since his father told him about his half-sister.

Every day without a marriage licence being procured was a day closer to the risk of losing the company. Was he seriously willing to take the chance of waking up one day to find that he was no longer in the box seat to inherit the Papandreo Group? Of course not. The business was so much more than just a business to Zeus; it had to remain his.

Unless there was a way he could meet his half-sister, he thought, pausing midstride and standing still, hands on hips, breath rushed, as he stared out at the dawn-lit city.

He didn’twantto meet her. He didn’t want to come face-to-face with the evidence of his father’s failings. But maybe he could offer her something to get rid of the threat altogether. Money. Enough money to make her realise that the company itself wouldn’t be worth fighting for.

Except, what fool would take a lump sum, rather than the ongoing cash cow of the Papandreo Group? Was it worth making the offer, on the basis shemightaccept? Or did it risk exposing to her how badly he wanted to retain his position? And once she knew that, might she fight harder to secure the windfall she’d only just learned about?

He made a gruff sound of irritation, wishing he knewsomethingabout the woman his father had conceived behind his mother’s back and realising, belatedly, that hecouldfind out a little more about her. His skin slicked with something like distaste. He was not a man who would ordinarily engage the services of a private investigator, but surely, this was a time for desperate measures. To protect his business, his family’s legacy and empire, to do the right thing for people who couldn’t see clearly enough to do it for themselves, he thought, breaking into a run once more.