Page 135 of Modern Romance September 2026 Books 1-4

Her eyes widened as the possibility unfurled before her like a magical golden path of pleasure. His fingers slid inside her warm, moist sex and she whimpered. Nerve endings that had only just started to come back to earth suddenly flirted with heaven all over again.

‘What if I were to stay right here, doing this, with you, whenever we could make it happen?’

Another guttural, animalistic sound emerged from deep in her throat.

‘All I would need is your assurance that the marriage to Otto is off the table. Once and for all.’

‘Are you jealous?’ she managed to ask, surprised that even then she was capable of offering something slightly pithy in response. After all, he was using her own body against her. Her innocent, inexperienced desire was being manipulated to his ends.

He moved quickly then, withdrawing his fingers from her sex and bringing his body over hers, one hand braced on either side of her face. ‘He would make you miserable, Astrid. I’m trying to protect you from a fate you can’t comprehend.’

His certainty was undeniable. This was not jealousy then, but something else. Protectiveness? Her insides softened at the thought of that. How long had it been since she’d had someone to look out for her, besides Anja?

And how dangerous was it for Astrid to want it?

‘I hated seeing him talking to you,’ Javier muttered. ‘I wanted to storm across the room and throw you over my shoulder, to hell with the cameras. I wanted everyone in that room to know that you, Queen Astrid Thyra of Norvenheim, are utterly and completely mine.’

She surrendered to that even as she fought it. What a strange duality to know that he spoke a truth she couldn’t accept.

She pressed a hand to his chest, needing—for the sake of her survival—to get this out properly. ‘I am not yours,’ she contradicted, wishing the words rang with more confidence. ‘Any more than you are mine. And I will only allow you to stay if you agree that this is purely physical. I am not interested in a relationship with you, Javier. I’m not interested in anything other than sex. Understood?’

CHAPTER SEVEN

HE DIDN’T FLINCH. He’d laid out exactly the plan he would have wanted. Sex, no-strings, no complications. No promises for either of them to break. It was exactly the sort of involvement he usually sought out.

And it never bothered him.

Perhaps because he was generally the one laying down the rules, giving the ‘no-strings’ line. Hearing it from Astrid…felt weirdly like a punch to the chest. Weird, because he knew it was how it had to be with them.

Something about her cold insistence though reminded him of Carlotta. Of all the ways she’d refused to let him into her life when he’d still wanted to be there. Of the way she’d patiently, unemotionally insisted that he was not her child and, therefore, she didn’t care what he did with his spare time, nor how he got to school, or home in the afternoons. Why should she turn up to his school awards night, even when he’d topped three subjects? He was not her child.

The implication was always one of boundaries and limits. Limits that now, with Astrid, he felt himself paradoxically wanting to test, even when they were the exact limits he would himself choose to set.

Fine.

He was messed up. He knew that. He’d known it for a long time. How could he be anything but, given how his childhood had been? But he was no longer a vulnerable, unwanted little boy. Nor a grieving seventeen-year-old who’d been turned out in the cold, forced to fend for himself.

Javier was a success in his own right and he’d come back to Norvenheim for one reason only. To triumph over Carlotta, and Otto, to right the wrongs of his long ago past.

Even though they’d never find out that he was sleeping with Astrid, he’d know. He’d know he’d taken something his brother coveted and claimed it as his own. And he would claim her over and over and over again. She might think this was just sex but she didn’t yet understand how much sex could stamp your soul. He would make her want him to the point she never forgot him. He told himself it would be the ultimate punishment of Otto, but really, it had far more to do with what Javier wanted for himself than he would ever admit…

So he thrust into his queen, aware that he was making a deal with the devil, that this had the potential to burn them both if they weren’t careful. Aware, but not caring. What cause was there for worry when pleasure such as this existed?

* * *

Her text message came through the next morning, only a moment before a knock sounded at the door. He was still reading the words on screen as he paced across the room.

I’m having some things dropped to your place today. Hope you’re home…

With a frown on his face, Javier wrenched the door inwards. The frown turned to a bemused smile, as several delivery men began to shuffle inside, one holding a signature pad towards him to acknowledge receipt.

A large, fresh Christmas tree was the most noticeable. ‘Where would you like it, sir?’

He raised his brows. ‘How the hell should I know?’

‘You are not Javier Diamandi?’

‘I am.’