Page 107 of Modern Romance July 2025 #4-8

“I mean… Do you really have any doubt? You look just like him.” She compared the carefree smile in the image to his somber expression as she handed back the tablet.

“He’s agreed to a DNA test, but he wants to tell his wife and family first. Don’t say anything to Zoia.”

“No. I wouldn’t,” she said faintly, then added, “He has children?”

“Two girls and a boy. They’re all in their twenties.” His expression was so stiff, she thought his face would crack.

“Are you okay?”

“Of course. But there are things I need to look at with Pirro today. I’ll see you later.” He rose and didn’t kiss her the way he had been doing most mornings before he left.

She tried to work, but couldn’t concentrate. When he didn’t come back for lunch, she gathered a few things into her shoulder bag and asked Lethe to text Pirro so she would know where to find Damian.

He was off in a corner of the estate alone, rebuilding a rock wall. When she found him, he gave her a look of irritation.

“What are you doing here?”

“I brought lunch. Your knuckle is bleeding,” she noted.

He wiped it on his trousers, then dusted his palms.

She ignored his mild hostility and unrolled the straw mat inside the wall, where the overhanging branches from a nearby olive tree cast dappled shade on the ground.

“I’m not hungry.”

“Have some water, at least.” She opened the water bottle and watched him drain half, then she held it so he could rinse his hands and splash his face.

“I don’t need you to look after me,” he stated as she offered a cloth napkin from the bag so he could use it as a towel.

“My motives are a little more selfish than that.” It was a half-truth, but still true.

“I thought bringing food and water was the decent thing to do, if I plan to seduce you.” She withdrew the condom from her bra cup and showed it to him.

“If you’re not into it, that’s fine.” She tossed it onto the mat. “I can leave you to your work.”

He caught her wrist in his damp hand before she could turn away.

“Are you sure you want this? Because I’m not in a mood to be tender.”

“I know.” She cupped the side of his stubbled jaw, reading the conflicting thoughts and emotions swirling in him. “But why waste all of that energy on building a wall?”

He yanked her close and his mouth came down on hers, hot and rough.

Her pulse leaped in surprise, but if there was one state of mind she understood very well, it was the need to escape when emotional stakes felt too acute to bear. When it felt as though you were drowning in thoughts too stormy to articulate. When you felt like you needed to fight just to breathe.

She understood what it felt like to be alone in that and how badly he might need someone to swim all the way out to the middle of his personal lake and grab on to him and drag him to shore, whether he wanted to come in or not.

It was always a dangerous prospect to save a drowning soul. In their desperation for survival, they could pull you down with them.

Which was what Damian did in these first seconds. He locked his arms around her and smothered her mouth so she could hardly breathe. His fingers dug into her hips and shoulder then buttocks as he pulled her in tighter and ground himself against her.

He was so hard! She didn’t understand why she responded so carnally to that. It was a deeply primitive instinct, she supposed, but she groaned and moved against that hard shape, opening her legs for him to settle between them as he carried her down to the mat.

She wore her sundress and he yanked the strap off her shoulder, baring her breast so he could suck her nipple with enough aggression to make her gasp.

“Too hard?” He reared onto his knees and brushed her skirt up to her stomach, yanking her underwear down her legs and tossing them away. “I need you to catch up, omorfiá mou .”

Kneeling between her splayed thighs, he tucked his hands beneath her butt and lifted her hips as he bent to claim her tenderest flesh with his mouth.

She flinched at the sudden intimacy, the spike of acute pleasure, the rawness of how deliberately he prepared her for what was to come.

And when she was arched with only her shoulders touching the ground, heels digging into his back, so close to climax she was incapable of speech, he lowered her hips to the mat.

His expression was feral, his movements urgent as he yanked at his fly and released himself, then tore open the condom with his teeth.

“Roll over,” he said gutturally. “I want you on your knees.”

She did, equally frantic now. Animalistic in her desire for their joining.

He swept her skirt into the middle of her back and caressed her hips and buttocks with one hand while guiding the dome of his sex against her folds, seeking her entrance. Then he clasped her hip and entered in a smooth, forceful thrust.

“Touch yourself. Stay with me,” he demanded.

She dropped her forehead onto her forearm and swept her other hand to where he was steadily thrusting and retreating, building a friction that made her feel tighter and tighter. Drawing her into a dark cavern where sparking lights danced on the walls.

She was dimly aware of his hand on her shoulder, the other on her hip, holding her in place for his unfettered lovemaking, but she was bracing herself into stillness, needing those hard thrusts.

Caught in the moment and reveling in his loss of control because it meant the barrier between them was dissolving.

She was dissolving.

“Damian!” she cried as her world imploded at exactly the moment he held himself deep inside her, shuddering and shouting out his own release.

Damian sagged forward and squashed her flat before he made a superhuman effort and rolled off her. He was sweaty and filthy and so shaken, he felt stripped naked.

He was more than half naked. With a twist of his wrist, he removed the condom and left it in the grass next to the mat, then pulled his briefs over his softening erection, still trying to catch his breath. Mildly fearful his heart was going to crash through his rib cage before it settled.

“Why did you let me do that?” he asked when he was able to speak.

She was still on her stomach. Her dress was up around her waist, pale buttocks drawing his hand to pet her and provoke a latent shiver to rock through her.

She turned her head to face him, eyelids heavy with sensuality.

“Because you needed it.”

He rolled onto his back again, wishing he could argue, but she wasn’t wrong. He’d been throwing rocks around as if it was a vital exercise that would save his kingdom from the invading hordes, but really, he was just trying to ignore the fact that he was falling apart on the inside.

He wanted to know if that man was really his father. He wanted to know his father.

It was a very uncomfortable realization when he’d been telling himself something else entirely for thirty-odd years.

Carmel rolled onto her back and brushed her skirt down her thighs, then sighed.

“Did I hurt you?” He searched out her hand between their hips.

“No.” She wove her fingers between his. “I’m just wondering how many of your workmen saw us.”

They’d all gone for lunch and were working in the vineyard anyway, but he said, “I’m sure it was only one or two.”

“Pity. That was a good performance on our part.”

He snorted. She always had to take things a step farther than they needed to go, but he couldn’t help adoring her for it.

He ran his thumb against her skin in appreciation. In gratitude. It wasn’t just the orgasm or the fact she’d let him set such a hard pace. It was the fact she was here at all. That she’d come looking for him when he’d felt so unsettled.

They lay quietly for several minutes with only the soft rustle of a breeze in the trees and a few crickets breaking the silence.

“I think it’s good that he wants to tell his family first,” she said eventually.

“Learning about Atlas was a horrible shock for me because of the way Daddy did it, never giving me any warning. Just, ‘This is Atlas. His mother and I were acquainted.’ That’s the word he used.

For real. Isn’t that hilarious?” Her leftover outrage hovered in the rust of her laugh.

“Perhaps that’s all that was between my parents,” he said, putting voice to some of the thoughts that had been torturing him since he’d decided to look for Nicholas Gatz.

“They were young. They might have been strangers passing in the night. Maybe he’s doing the test because he hopes it will prove I’m not his son. ”

He was aware of her turning her head to look at him, but he kept his gaze on the mesh of the long narrow leaves against the bright blue sky above them.

Then he put voice to the thought that tortured him most.

“Maybe it wasn’t consensual,” he said very quietly. “Maybe that’s the reason she never wanted me to know him.”

Carmel rolled and pulled his arm out of the way so she could snuggle into his side and let her head rest on his shoulder. Her arm and leg went across him.

It was too hot for cuddling. He was sweaty and covered in dust, but he hugged her tight into his side anyway.

“That’s the real reason you’ve never looked for him?” she asked quietly.

“Yes.”

“I don’t think she would have put his name on your birth certificate if that was true.”

“That’s what I’ve been telling myself, but I can’t help thinking it. What if he’s pure scum and I regret telling him I exist?”

“At least you’ll know. You went into this wanting to find out, didn’t you? Otherwise, you wouldn’t have done it. This wasn’t just for Zoia. Was it?” She tilted her head up.

“I’ve spent my whole life telling myself he doesn’t matter. I don’t want him to matter.”

“And now you’re worried he won’t live up to your expectations, so you’re trying to keep your expectations low. You don’t have to invite him all the way into your life. It will start with a conversation. You’ll know pretty quickly whether he’s someone you want to talk to again.”

“I don’t even know what I’d say. I hate talking about myself.”