Page 91 of Modern Romance September 2025 5-8

Hell, if Jane hadn’t already been committed to this, then she was doubly so now. She would move heaven and earth to secure Lottie’s birthright, even just so Lottie could sit at the top of the tower and look down on Zeus and their father for a time. She’d earned that right, damn it.

‘Modesty, Mr Papandreo?’ she asked, pleased that she was able to continue acting flirtatious when she was feeling anything but.

Except, that wasn’t strictly true. Regardless of how much she hated and despised this man, because of what he’d had that Lottie should also have had, her body seemed to have its own ideas.

‘Honesty. I’m secure enough in my achievements without needing to exaggerate them.’

She arched a brow, and out of nowhere, she imagined that if he was anyone else, she might actually have been halfway enjoying herself. He was such a consummate flirt; he made this easy.

‘So, Jane, you’re on holiday in Athens?’ he prompted after a beat’s silence.

‘Yes,’ she said, trying to remember the fib she and Lottie had concocted.

They figured they needed three months to give Lottie enough time to find someone to marry and put everything in motion.

Three months lined up with summer and, as luck would have it, the maternity contract Jane had been covering had finished two weeks earlier, so she was at a loose end for the next little while, anyway.

‘For any reason in particular?’

‘I’ve never been.’ That, at least, was true.

‘How is that possible?’

‘Well, I hate to break it to you, but it’s not actually the centre of the world.’

He pulled a fake wounded expression. ‘But surely it’s one of the most beautiful places.’

‘I’ll have to take your word for it,’ she murmured. ‘I only arrived this afternoon.’

His brows shot up. ‘And you’re wasting time in a bar, rather than exploring?’

‘I was thirsty.’

He laughed. ‘And hungry?’

‘That depends. Are you asking me for dinner?’

His eyes bore into hers. ‘Unfortunately, I have plans tonight.’ Her heart dropped to her toes in an unexpectedly real response.

Plans? She panicked. A date? With someone else?

Another contender for his bride? Desperation made her lean a little closer, and she realised she still had her hand on his knee from earlier.

Go big, or go home , she thought, gliding it just an inch or so higher, as her eyes hooked to his and held.

His pants were soft to touch, but his leg muscle was tight and strong, so she couldn’t help but imagine him without these pants. Imagine the way he’d be all tanned and hair roughened and… The image was making her insides swirl uncomfortably.

What are you doing? her inner Jane cried.

The inner Jane who’d kept her safe for six years by urging her to avoid men, and particularly men like Zeus. Not only was she flirting with him, baiting with him, she was also walking right into a fire, seemingly uncaring about getting burned.

‘That’s a shame,’ she murmured as her glance fell on his lips. Her whole body tingled.

‘Is it?’

‘Well, for me,’ she murmured, unconsciously moving closer. ‘I would have liked to share dinner with a local. I’m sure you could tell me the best sights in town.’

‘Like a tour guide?’

‘Something like that.’

‘Jane,’ he said, moving then so their legs brushed beneath the table, and his much larger frame suddenly seemed not only to trap her but also to envelop her completely.

In that instant, she was overwhelmed by her senses—his smell, his warmth, his closeness, the feeling of his trousers beneath her palm.

But not fear. Again, she marvelled at that, because fear had seemed to be such an ingrained response in her, with so many men since Steven.

Why not Zeus? ‘I’d like to see you again. ’

Her gut twisted. ‘I thought we just agreed you’d be my tour guide.’

He nodded slowly. ‘But we both know that’s not what I’m talking about.’

Her heart stammered hard into her ribs. ‘Isn’t it?’

He arched a brow. ‘Unless I’m mistaken…’ And then, he mirrored her gesture, putting his hand on her bare leg just above the knee and moving a little higher.

The contact was both completely welcome and utterly shocking—shocking because of how her senses screamed in immediate recognition and want. Need.

She blanked thoughts of Lottie then, trying not to imagine what her best friend would say if she knew how much Jane was enjoying this lothario’s attentions.

Jane! Who’d thought no man on earth could stir anything like interest in her any longer.

She hadn’t felt a rush of physical attraction for anyone since that awful night when she’d lost control—had it taken away from her—and been truly terrified.

It was as though her whole body had been put into stasis, yet now it was waking up, and waking up fast.

He moved his hand higher, slowly, eyes watching her the whole time, silently inviting her to stop him, to ask him to stop, but she didn’t.

Just knowing that he was watching for that relaxed her enough to enjoy this.

She felt safe. Her lips parted and she moved a little closer, dropping her head near the curve of his neck.

His fingers crept towards her inner thigh, to the expanse of flesh revealed by the very short skirt she wore, and higher still. ‘Tell me to stop,’ he said, inviting her to pause this madness, his voice low and throaty.

‘We’re in a bar,’ was all she said, but it was hardly an answer, or a problem, because they were hidden away in a corner of the bar, and his frame was large enough to hide her entirely from view.

‘So we are,’ he agreed, before dropping his head and finding her lips, kissing her as though it was what he’d been born to do, kissing her so that her breath burned in her lungs and her whole body exploded in an electric, binding flash of light.

Kissing her at the same moment his fingers brushed the silk of her underpants and found her most sensitive cluster of nerves, teasing her there through the fabric; teasing her until she was moaning into their kiss, and her body was awash with a strange, overwhelmingly heady rush of adrenaline.

The fact they were in a bar no longer mattered—Jane couldn’t have said where she was in space, time or life.

She knew only that if he stopped touching her, she might scream.

Fortunately, he didn’t stop touching her, nor kissing her.

She writhed her hips, eager for more, wanting him to really touch her, no longer conscious of who she was, who he was, nor what she was supposed to be doing.

He moved his kiss lower, to her neck, and then held her tight against him as his fingers began to brush faster.

The waves that had been building inside her hit a peak and crescendoed, and then, because she’d lost all sense of time and place, she moaned loudly, so he kissed her again to swallow the sound, kissed her as she moaned into his mouth, as sanity and pleasure seemed to burst apart, forming a thousand droplets inside her.

Making her whimper, making her weak, when she’d sworn she’d never be weak again.

She pulled away from him quickly, staring at him with a look of absolute shock.

He couldn’t blame her.

When was the last time he’d done anything like that?

Years. Years and years. Maybe as a younger man, he might have given in to the temptations of his body and found a woman who was as driven by a need for pleasure as he was, enough to throw caution—and geography—to the wind, but Zeus was thirty-three now, and in far greater control of himself.

Or so he’d thought.

But one look at Jane…hell, he didn’t even know her last name. No matter. One look at her across the room and something had slipped into place inside him; and it didn’t take a genius to work out why.

The marriage ultimatum.

Zeus was not a man who enjoyed ultimatums, nor did he relish the prospect of marriage, particularly not with the woman—or the sort of woman—he had in mind.

So Jane, whoever she was, was simply an act of rebellion, of acting out while he was still free to do so.

A last hurrah, so to speak, before he turned his mind to what he absolutely had to do.

‘Give me your number,’ he demanded, pulling his phone from his pocket and putting it on the tabletop. Her cheeks were flushed, and her fingers shook. She glanced around uncertainly. Shy. Like a sweet little innocent, when he suspected the opposite was true.

But she nodded then and quickly tapped something into his phone. He took it and for good measure, pressed the call button. He heard hers begin to trill and hung up, satisfied that he would see her again.

‘I—that—I don’t—’

He pressed a finger to her lips, the same finger that had just been so achingly close to her sex. ‘Don’t explain. I felt it, too.’

Her eyes widened and her tongue darted out to lick her lips but instead connected with his finger. His gut felt as though it were filled with stones. Suddenly, the date he’d organised in response to his father’s revelation was the very last thing he wanted to do.

‘It’s just not—’

‘No explanations,’ he insisted. ‘I’ll call you.’ And because he suspected that if he were to remain for even five more seconds, he would lose the willpower to walk away altogether, he stood and left in one swift motion, refusing to look back even when he desperately wanted to.

He had more important things to consider than indulging his suddenly voracious libido. Like getting married just as soon as he could possibly arrange it.