Page 163 of Modern Romance October 2025 5-8

‘I was an accident. That’s what they screamed at each other before their first divorce. How they wouldn’t be tied to each other if not for me.’

‘How old were you?’

He frowned, trying to recall. ‘Five? Six? It dragged on a while, so the divorce came through when I was eight. Not that it changed much. They remarried when I was ten, after their second divorce, and then again at seventeen after their third.’

And then the veil lifted and he saw everything in those expressive eyes. Pity, sadness, hurt for him. She hurt for him.

‘Don’t do that, Erin. Don’t pity me,’ he reproached.

Erin watched the man who was slowly unpicking his deepest hurts in the anonymity of the darkness of the night, wondering if he realised how much she could read on his features. Her heart ached for him, for the little boy she’d once thought of as Peter Pan so cruelly, because of that...thatlackof emotional insecurity...

‘Why not?’ she asked, heartsore andangryfor him. Why had no one stepped in? Why had Gio Gallo chosen now and not then to interfere in Enzo’s life, when it felt like far too much and far too late? ‘Iamsorry for you,’ she pressed on. ‘Iamsorry for what you experienced at the hands of the two people who should have protected you most. Who should have considered your needs and wants above their own. Do you not deserve that?’ she asked him.

He threw his head back and laughed. ‘Oh, Erin, I have spent a long time fulfilling my own wants and needs,’ he assured her.

She frowned. ‘I don’t think you have.’

‘Oh, I assure you, I have beenverysatisfied over the last few years.’

‘Don’tdothat,’ she insisted angrily. ‘Sexual needs and day-to-day pleasuresare notthe same thing as love, and security, and safety,’ she bit out so firmly it seemed to shock them both.

Enzo blinked at her once—everything torn away, the mask, the childhood hurts, the near magician-level distraction. Her fingers shook slightly and she fisted her hand, no longer really that shocked by the strength of her own feelings. For him. Her...love.

She had fallen for him, forthe Playboy of Amalfi. She was...in love with him, she realised with a hand pressed to her lips, the pink diamond glittering as her hand shook.

Oh god. What had she gotten herself into?

Even having decided to refuse Gio’s offer, even if she’d decided to give up on Charterhouse, she could see how impossible a future with Enzo was. She had betrayed him in the greatest of ways. Surely there was no coming back from that.

Enzo reached up to cup her jaw, his palm warm against a cheek cooled by the night air and such devastating realisations.

She wanted to apologise for her outburst, for her mistakes, for her betrayal. Her eyes welled.

‘Enzo—’

‘It’s okay,cara,’ he insisted.

But it wasn’t.

She reached out to circle his wrist with her hand when he would have pulled away, her fingers slipping around the space between his watch and his hand with the lightest of touches, with the greatest of impacts.

‘I—’

‘Shhh,’ he said, reversing the hold she had on him, twisting his wrist and instead, capturing hers. He brought it to his lips, pressing a kiss against the soft, vulnerable skin covering her fluttering pulse, sending warning flares across her body that pebbled her skin in goose bumps.

It stopped time, her heart, and any coherent thought she’d had just moments before. He took her with his gaze. It devoured her, penetrated deep into the heart of her. It scoured her, seeking and searching for something she didn’t know.

‘I could show you. How good it can be to satisfy sexual needs.Yourneeds,’ he clarified, as if refusing to allow her to think that he would use her for his own ends.

Oh, the irony, she thought miserably.

‘It is a crime,cara, to see you hiding from your pleasure the way that you do.’

He was distracting her. She knew it. He knew it. And she shouldn’t allow it, but his seduction was working.

‘While I respect and totally understand your need to wait—and we will wait,cara,’ he said, speaking of a future she couldn’t see any more, ‘I would like to show you,’ he said, before sucking gently at her wrist.

He made it sound so reasonable; to indulge, to explore, to discover her own wants and needs with him.