Modern Romance June 2019 Books 5-8. Andie Brock

hugged herself and rubbed her arms, even though she wasn’t cold. In fact, she grew warm. Empty in a way that longed for him to hold her and kiss her and fill her with all those sensations that made the world a magical place.

      “What’s so bad about that?”

      “You said you were saving your virginity,” he reminded. “For who?”

      “I don’t know. You? You’re supposed to wait, aren’t you? For your wedding night?”

      A long, tense silence.

      “I haven’t,” he finally stated.

      She sighed, admitting heavily, “I thought it might mean something to whoever it was. Have value. Maybe even if I was desperate—”

      “Your virginity is not a commodity, Luli,” he cut in sharply. “Your body isn’t. Save yourself for a relationship that matters. Someone special.”

      “So you don’t...” She swallowed. “Want me? Because I’m a virgin?”

      “Have you looked in a mirror? Of course I want you. I’m saying don’t have sex with the first man you marry.”

      She choked on a laugh, recognizing it as a joke, but they were married.

      “You talked about becoming a trophy wife and that led me to believe you were experienced. Given that you’re not...” His voice became tight with reluctant honor. “I don’t know that we should go there. You would want what every woman eventually asks for and I can’t give you that.”

      “Children? I don’t want them. Not for a long time, if ever. That’s totally fine if you can’t make them.”

      Another pointed silence, then a husk of a laugh.

      “I was going to say love, but you continue to confound me.” He straightened and leaned his hip against the low wall. “Why don’t you want children?”

      “I can’t even take care of myself!” She waved a helpless hand through the air.

      “You’re so blind.” He reached out and gave a tendril of her hair a small tug. “My grandmother employed two hundred people directly, not to mention the ten or so thousand who work for companies in which she invests. Who looks after all of them? Her? No.”

      “That was with her money and resources. I don’t even have pajamas. I’ll be sleeping in the clothes you gave me on the airplane.” She wondered where they were.

      Wondered why he couldn’t love her. Far above Paris and freedom and all the other fantasies she had ever had was the dream that one day she would be loved. Was she not worthy of such a thing? Why not?

      “Silly girl,” he said. “You have six cases of ready-to-wear in the guest room. Didn’t you hear the bell when the concierge delivered them?”

      “What bell? Six? Gabriel, I can’t!”

      “Don’t start hyperventilating again. Come on. I want to show you something. You’ll like it.” He took her hand in his warm one and drew her inside.

      Her heels clicked on the herringbone pattern in the parquet floor of the hall. The penthouse was bigger than the bottom floor of Mae’s sprawling mansion, but this was located atop a skyscraper. It was modern, but filled with old-world touches in the wainscoting and crown moldings. A castle in the sky.

      “Your room,” he said, pushing open a door into a darkened room where a half dozen suitcases stood at the foot of a wide bed. “But come into mine.”

      Her heart rate picked up.

      He didn’t turn on any lights as they entered the massive room with the massive bed. She barely looked that direction or took in anything else. She was drawn to the primordial glow of the floor-to-ceiling aquarium.

      She gasped, pulled forward by the muted burble to feast her eyes on the iridescent blues and neon pinks, the fierce reds and flashing yellows. Spots adorned long lacy tails that swished in slow motion while striped orange missiles darted into crevices in the colorful fingers of coral and swaying blades of sea grass.

      She didn’t know where to look and grew dizzy trying to take it all in. She wanted to lean against the glass, breath fogging upon it as she watched.

      “You like?” His arm came around her waist and she leaned into him, overwhelmed, but this time in a way that was gentle and full of wonder.

      “Your grandmother’s pond only had koi. They were pretty, but nothing like this. It’s so beautiful.”

      “Can you see the tub on the other side?” he pointed. “I’ll run you a bath and you can watch the fish, then dream all night that you’re swimming with them.”

      She wanted to laugh, but his arm around her felt so nice her own arms reached to encircle him on instinct, needing to cling to him for fear of going adrift.

      “No one has hugged me since—” She couldn’t remember. A long, long time ago. She welled up and began to shake.

      “Shh.” His hand offered a soothing caress against her ribs. “Keep it together, Luli. I’m useless with tears.”

      He wasn’t, though. As she began to sob in earnest, he shifted so she was pressed fully to his front. He held her in a firm embrace that kept her from breaking into a thousand disjointed pieces and spoke against the part in her hair.

      “It’s okay. You’re not in there. You’re out here. Breathe.”

       CHAPTER SEVEN

      DESPITE A LONG BATH after her breakdown, Luli didn’t dream of the fish. She dreamed of Gabriel’s arms around her and his soothing voice and his strong hand rubbing her back. She dreamed he was beside her in the bed, his hands on her breasts and seeking their way into other secretive places.

      But he wasn’t. And she woke in a sweat, loins aching, embarrassed with herself for such erotic fantasies.

      The lingering memory made her self-conscious as she emerged from her room, dreading making eye contact, but Gabriel was on the phone behind the closed door of his office—which perversely made her disappointed.

      A servant invited her to a table in a nook that caught the morning sun and overlooked the Seine. She brought her a blessedly familiar breakfast of rice porridge and kaya toast with soft eggs. Afterward, Luli took her second cup of French-press coffee to the balcony where she listened to the city noises that were both the same and different from the ones she had heard beyond the garden gate.

      “Good morning.”

      Gabriel’s voice sent a rush of startled pleasure through her, along with a rush of memory at her subconscious yearnings. She blushed.

      “Good morning,” she said shyly, turning to catch his gaze lifting from her thighs in the jeans she’d put on with a T-shirt, something she hadn’t worn in years, but that felt comfortable and right.

      The way his expression flickered made her smooth an uncertain hand down her hip. “I thought we were just going to the showroom so it didn’t matter what I wore.”

      “Small change of plan,” he said with a humorless smile. He tsked as his phone buzzed in his hand. “The press release is out. This is turning into something I want to drop off that balcony.” He held up the phone and nodded at the half wall she leaned against.

      “What’s the new plan?” She folded her arms, bracing herself.

      “Apparently newlyweds go on something called a honeymoon. I have been asked a thousand times where ours will take place.”

      A pulse of anticipatory heat struck her loins. She blushed even harder, with guilt, as if he could see into her filthy mind and know what she had imagined. Could tell what she longed