Page 51 of Modern Romance September 2026 Books 1-4

He went upstairs, where he knew Amelia would have put Hope in the main guest room. The door was slightly ajar and Axel pushed it open. Hope was a slight figure on the bed under the sheet. She was asleep, lashes long on her cheeks.

Heat sizzled along Axel’s veins just at the sight of her. He wanted her. He wanted to scoop her up into his arms and transport her to his bed. But he couldn’t have her. She wasn’t his to take. To turn into someone like his mother. Brittle and cold. Not that Hope could ever be like that. But he wouldn’t do that to her. She wasn’t from this world and that was a good thing.

After tomorrow evening, when Baros would agree to do business with Axel—he refused to contemplate failure—and thereby guarantee Drakos Solutions success into the future on a global scale, Axel would let Hope go, to get on with her life, and he would get on with choosing someone who was from this world.

Someone who could understand and accept the life he’d been born into—one with rules and privilege but also heavy responsibility. Someone who wouldn’t have their light dimmed or spirit crushed by the weight of it all.

Someone who didn’t appeal to the deepest part of Axel, where he found himself resenting the constraints put upon him. And resenting the distance enforced on him and his siblings. Someone who didn’t make him ache and burn and want more at the same time.

Someone, in other words, who was as far removed from Hope Smith as possible.

He turned to go but when he was almost at the door he heard his name.

‘Axel?’

He stopped. Slowly turned around. Hope was sitting up in the bed, illuminated by a shaft of moonlight. And everything he’d just been saying to himself dissolved in a rush of heat.

She said, ‘Where are you going?’

He came back towards the bed, and stood at the end of it. The ache inside him warring with the burn.

He said almost harshly, ‘You know that I can’t give you any more than this?’

Hope looked at him and then after a few seconds she said nothing, just pulled the sheet back. Axel—a man who’d prided himself on his strength of will and discipline his whole life—couldn’t fight the base need to take what this woman was offering. Even though he knew he should walk away. He simply…couldn’t. And he knew he’d go to hell for it.

He shed his clothes and came over Hope on the bed. She reached for him, putting her hands on him, exploring, touching and testing, wrapping her hand around his hardening flesh, making him suck in a breath.

They kissed, clumsily, hungrily. It was as if they’d been apart for a month. Hope scrambled out of her underwear and vest top. Blissfully naked, he joined his body with hers, seeking that moment he’d come to need more than anything else, when he was seated deep inside her and she was so tight around him that he thought he might die. Before he started to move. This…this moment was as close to a sense of peace as he’d ever had.

* * *

The following evening Hope waited for Axel in the main reception room of the villa. Amelia had just seen her and had exclaimed something in Greek, which Hope understood to be a universal sort of compliment.

A veritable entourage of people had come to the villa earlier and had preened Hope to within an inch of her life.

She was wearing a black dress and she couldn’t help the butterflies at the thought of the stakes. Everything she and Axel had done was for this moment. To impress this…guy he wanted to impress.

The dress was strapless and a deceptively simple design. A sheath of silk that nipped in at her waist and fell in a column to the floor. She was wearing pearls and diamonds at her ears, wrists and neck.

Her hair had been tamed into soft waves. Hope noticed it was getting longer, turning into a short bob. She was wearing gloves. And had a matching clutch bag. She’d never felt so…elegant. Her, the little girl who’d been left behind and then abandoned again by her adoptive parent and who’d never found a home anywhere—

Hope whirled around when she heard a sound and saw Axel framed in the doorway in a black tuxedo. Her heart thumped. She hadn’t seen him since that conflagration last night. When she’d woken up and he’d been in her room, walking away, she’d wondered if she was dreaming but she’d called him and he’d come back.

She would never forget the way he’d looked at her—as if he was haunted—and said, You know that I can’t give you any more than this? Hope had known she had a choice in that moment to try and protect herself, to say, OK, please leave. But she hadn’t been able to. She’d wanted him. The truth was she would take him again and again for as long as she could. Like a miser.

The sex had been urgent and frantic. And it had only been when Axel had emitted a curse and pulled free of her body and climaxed against her belly that she’d realised that he’d forgotten protection. And so had she. Too caught up in the moment. Or had she known but relished the skin-on-skin contact too much? Or, worse, had she subconsciously wanted to risk a pregnancy? When she was the product of perhaps something similar? An unplanned pregnancy?

She’d felt so guilty, as if it had somehow been her fault. She’d apologised but Axel had told her it had been his fault. She’d heard that note of self-censure in his voice and knew that he wouldn’t forgive himself for such a careless omission. Especially with her. Not appropriate.

She’d lain awake for a long time after Axel had taken her into the shower and washed himself from her. Thinking about the woman who would get to be with him like that, skin to skin, but not have him curse and pull free. Have him spill deep inside her and claim her as his utterly. And for the first time in her life she’d felt the ugliness of jealousy. And envy. She’d hated that future faceless woman.

When she’d woken late this morning, Axel had left for work again and for a moment Hope had wondered if she’d imagined the previous night. But she knew it hadn’t been a dream.

Axel stepped into the room now just as this memory of rawness was prickling over her skin. He said, ‘Hope, you look stunning.’

‘I…thank you. So do you.’

‘Ready?’