Page 57 of Modern Romance January 2025 5-8
Her breath locked in her lungs now as he raised himself onto his elbows over her.
‘I should take more victory in this beyond the sublime pleasure of being inside you. Instead, I crave your pleasure.’ His jaw tightened. ‘Even above mine.’
The gruff, stirring admission lassoed several strings around her heart. Even from the first, she’d known he wasn’t a man who readily admitted to being bested, either by the demons that kept him awake in the night, or the fact that something had driven him from his stone-and-concrete home into a floating palace. Or something as base as carnal pleasure.
Knew that this declaration was just as important as an emotional one.
She framed his face in hands that trembled, daring to look into his pain. To attempt to absorb some of it into herself. ‘Don’t you see why you can’t? Is accepting that you’re a good man so hard?’
He sucked in a long breath. ‘I’m not a good man. My ultimate goal hasn’t altered. Don’t be fooled into thinking otherwise.’
She wanted to believe strongly enough to tell him that it was only a matter of time before it did. But she knew his formidable willpower. Chemistry may have applied the brakes on his intentions but it was only temporary. She couldn’t stay on his yacht, sharing his bed forever. Her hand drifted down his face and throat, over his clavicle to rest on the strong, steady, thumping heart. ‘I wouldn’t dare. That will have entirely come from here.’
She expected another scoffing remark or at the very least a brusque denial. Instead, a shaft of bleakness swept across his face. ‘You put too much store in an organ that malfunctions,tesoro.’
‘It sounds perfectly fine to me. All you have to do is listen to it.’
CHAPTER NINE
YOUCAN’TUSEsex to shut me up every time you don’t like something I say.
The indictment reverberated through his head long after another explosively sublime sex marathon had left them blissed out. The culprit of his restless mind was passed out beside him, her sex-tousled hair half obscuring her face. Even as he resented her pointed words, he was gently pushing back her hair so he could stare at her. To attempt to figure out how...why everything she did affected him so viscerally.
He’d stopped trying to convince himself it was because of her father.
Willow was very much her own person with a complex ability to delve into his psyche that left hollowed-out spaces within him he wasn’t keen to peer into.
But she’d forced him to face a few. His own father’s decisions, for instance. She’d dug up Jario’s previously muted resentment for his father’s naivety and blind trust in his business partner; made him accept that his father wasn’t entirely blameless. That perhaps the anger Jario carried was partially misplaced.
That he’d been entirely too quick to pick up on her suggestion to suspend vengeance in order to get some peace?
Question was: How long was he prepared to tolerate this? Especially after overhearing enough of her phone call with her father and knowing, even now, she refused to take a stance against him.Thatcontinued to slash at a place deep inside he didn’t want to examine. And even as another, far too reasonable, voice questioned why he, Jario, was owed her loyalty when he would’ve probably done the same in her shoes, and not turned on his own father, no matter what.
She arched into his touch in her sleep and his breath stalled, a flare of something he was loath to labelpanicwedging in his chest at the thought that she might never side with him. That he would lose...this.
He could deliver thecoup de grâcehe’d been savouring for years now to Chatterton Financial and be done with it. Watch it burn to useless ash as a final homage to his father so he could move on with his life.
But if he did, would he find peace then...or be left with a purposeless existence propped up with hollow billions? If...whenshe left, would his nightmares return? Join forces with the phobia that kept him wandering from sea to sea?
His brain rebelled at completing that desolate picture.
She’d flatly refused to burn the bridge between herself and her father. Any further push from him might trigger her immediate departure from his yacht and his bed.
But did he even deserve to have her stay?
Merciless rejection clenched his belly. He surged upright and planted his feet on the polished floor, eager for the calming hum to soothe him.
It was quite ridiculous how much he resented her leaving. But perhaps it was a good thing. Even before her arrival, hadn’t there been times when he’d wondered if he’d dragged out this revenge for far too long?
Was it time to draw a line under this?
Digging deeper inside himself past the point of resistance, he reached beneath his pain and brought up the image of his father. The times they’d played catch in the front yard of his family home. The subtle ways his parent had approached a know-it-all teenager and attempted to guide him the best way a father could.
Be your own man, no matter what influence anyone tries to impose on you.
It doesn’t matter how you succeed, but do it in a way you can be proud of.
Family is everything, mijo, but I’ll be proud of you no matter what you do with your life.