Page 13 of Modern Romance September 2025 1-4

‘In a few days. I’m hoping we’ll hear search planes. We’ve got to allow that time for a search to begin.’

He settled upright just in front of her and braced his big hands on the pier either side of her. Spectacular dark eyes gazed down into hers.

‘You’re remembering stuff,’ she murmured. ‘You’re different.’

‘How different?’

‘More impatient, bossier…bouncing off the walls with surplus energy,’ she muttered with rueful amusement.

‘I don’t like being in situations I can’t control.’

‘This experience could teach you patience.’

Disconcerting her, Sebastian turned away. ‘I’ll swim for a while, work off that energy.’

Her brow indented and then she dropped back into the water and swam back to shore.

What the hell was he doing with her? Sebastian was asking himself.

She wasn’t up to his weight. She wasn’t fragile or lacking in confidence like Ariana though.

She was her own woman and she didn’t trust him.

And why should she? Practising withdrawal as a means of contraception?

Really? He knew how unreliable that was.

What had possessed him? And why was he so drawn to her?

He needed to give her some space and work out what was happening to him before it all blew up in his face.

He wasn’t himself, particularly with her.

He felt that down to his very bones and the feeling unnerved him.

Yet he still couldn’t make himself step back from her.

Bunny went back to the house and, to keep occupied, changed the bed.

The linen cupboard was full, as if waiting for a full house of guests, and yet there was only that one bed.

She missed books. The few books on shelves were of the ornithology variety, not very tempting to someone like her who liked fiction and history.

She located the cushions for the outside furniture in a cupboard and grabbed one to sit and survey the tiny view of the beach, which was mostly screened by trees that needed to be cut back.

Eventually she dozed off, reflecting that she already missed Sebastian and that there was no way she was going to stop whatever they had started up.

Life was simply too short to be that cautious of something or someone new.

‘Time to eat,’ Sebastian told her, shaking her shoulder.

‘You…cooked?’

‘Yes, and you’re not allowed to criticise,’ he warned her, herding her back into the house and the kitchen where he set a plate of pasta in front of her with a flourish.

Still waking up, she ate, deciding that Sebastian could be a little bit annoying because he was good at so many different things. The food was excellent, if spicier than she would have dared to make it.

‘I’m going for a shower,’ he told her while she was clearing up.

‘I’ll be in bed.’

He stalked back from the doorway and pulled her into his arms. ‘Tell me I can kiss you.’

‘You can do anything you like,’ she murmured, lifting her head high, clear green eyes striking his levelly. ‘And we’re not about to stress about that any more.’

‘Did it hurt when you fell from heaven?’ he teased, dark-as-night eyes glittering like stars as his tension vanished.

For a split second, relief flooded him and he just wanted to grab her and whirl her round the kitchen.

It was a weird urge and it knocked him off balance.

Possibly he was more stressed than he had been willing to admit but resisting the urge to put his arms round her was still a challenge.

Why was he getting these insane feelings of affection that had nothing whatsoever to do with sex?

Why wasn’t he exasperated with her for playing hot and cold?

Why wasn’t he offended that she had had to put so much thought into being with him? Had that ever happened to him before?

She groaned and laughed almost simultaneously at that corny line. Her big green eyes sparkled. His big hands cradling her cheeks, he kissed her, fast, hard and full of dark promise, making her shiver with anticipation. ‘Later,’ he husked with a brilliant smile.

Yes, he wanted her fiercely and she would let herself enjoy that, revel in being desired, truly desired for the very first time.

In her one and only relationship, she had been a useful stopgap, a temporary convenience for student life, never the girlfriend Tristram had planned to stay with long term, for all he had once said that she was.

After that experience, Sebastian’s desire, his bluntness about what he did and didn’t want were exceptionally appealing to her.

He wasn’t telling her any lies, he wasn’t faking anything.

He didn’t want love or commitment. It was honest. They had no future!

They were having a fling and, goodness knew, she was old enough to have a fling without agonising about it and beating herself up.

There was just something about her, Sebastian reflected in the shower.

He wondered how long it would take him to persuade her into the shower with him.

He smiled. Having the lights on had been a big enough deal for her.

She could be shy. She took for ever to make major decisions, and sex was clearly a major decision for her.

She could be impulsive, though, and when she was, she was incredibly sexy.

At the same time, she didn’t back down with him when he crossed or criticised her and he was beginning to appreciate that quiet, firm, non-combative peace she emanated when he got difficult.

She was his polar opposite. So why did they work so well together?

He was volatile, had always been volatile and inclined to brood.

He was a science geek and when he was a child his social skills had been abysmal.

He wasn’t a party person. He didn’t do drugs or drink much.

His family background had ensured that he knew enough to avoid the obvious pitfalls.

He liked sex but he didn’t like the complications it brought, the women who demanded more than he had to give, the women who wouldn’t give him space to breathe.

Thinking about it, and the very idea made him want to laugh at the insanity of it, he realised Bunny was probably his very first relationship.

He had had next to no relationship with the relatives who had sent him away from them rather than take him into their own homes and families.

Even his parents had been distant in his memories of them.

Nobody had ever got really close to him, certainly not a woman.

He had never lived with a woman before, seen her day after day, looked for her when she wasn’t there, eaten her cooking, cooked for her.

It was scarily intimate, he acknowledged, the sort of set-up he usually avoided like the plague.

That in mind, why was he still enjoying being with her? Why wasn’t he keeping his distance?

Bunny slid into the cool bed and shivered and a moment later Sebastian rolled over and caught her to him.

The heat of him infiltrated every inch of her and liquid warmth stirred between her thighs.

Her fingers slid up into his damp hair, the curls of black hair on his chest abrading her tender nipples as his mouth came down on hers with a hunger that both shook and thrilled.

She wasn’t about to catch feelings for him, she swore to herself, she wasn’t going to get attached.

Yet deep down inside her a little voice whispered that she was lying to herself and that it was easy to decide to live wild and free, but it would be more of a challenge to hold to that goal.