Page 92 of Modern Romance September 2025 1-4

Her reaction to him, and how much it roared through him, was a temptation he had never thought he’d feel again.

He had thought about sex up there on his mountain over the past two years.

There had been days he’d awoken hard and wanting, some lurid dream in the recesses of his mind and his past. But this was rare, and easily dealt with.

There was nothing easy about the increasing tightwire desire toward Amelia. He had no defenses for this. Before his isolation, he had given in to whatever desires ruled him. After the accident, he had rejected all his desires and had thought easily enough.

But temptation had never been so tantalizingly close up in that stark cabin.

Amelia had dragged him through the market, buying treats and trinkets, chattering incessantly and pretending the moment over the pandoro had not happened. She acted as if there was nothing but a pleasant kind of amiable friendliness between them. Slightly warmer than colleagues, but only slightly.

He wanted the same ability. To shove it and his reaction to her out of this moment.

Out of all moments. This was…disorienting.

And worse, it was like suddenly there was too much being shoved at him.

He could not input it all. He wanted nothing more than to return to his isolation, where everything made sense .

But it was that want that had him going along with the trip through the market. That had him eating dinner with her back at the castello rather than hiding in his room. It was the want of solitude that had him forcing himself to do the opposite.

Now it required him to ignore the way candlelight played over her face at dinner, the way her gray eyes changed depending on the topic she regaled him with, the thorny push and pull of want and refusal.

Bitter and painful, reminders that he lived , as she had said to him, but with the punishment of refusal he was so used to.

He’d planned to return to the mountain. Let her sell whatever she wished, even if it would produce his father’s ghost. Perhaps that was the right choice.

He would have left the castello, then and there, and never seen her again. He would .

Tomorrow… Tomorrow he would return to his penance.

When he informed her of this as they stood from the dinner table, she studied him with those damnable eyes. Then she nodded slowly.

“I suppose it will be easier to return,” she offered. Gently.

He blinked at her, wholly taken aback by the word easy . She was constantly saying these words not delivered as accusations even though they were accusations. Offensive ones at that.

There was nothing easy about the life he’d built up there. That was the entire point. It was a challenge. It was pain. It was sacrifice .

Then she laughed . “Oh, you look so grumpy with me.” She reached across the space between them, gave his shoulder a friendly kind of shove. Which only stoked the flames of his insult higher.

Friendliness. As if they were…siblings or some such. As if she had not watched him walk across the room, naked, with avid eyes and heat in her cheeks.

“I guess easier isn’t the right word,” she amended, attempting to look both contrite and like she was putting that repentance on.

“I should like to see you do half the manual labor required of living the way I do,” he said stiffly, unable to let the insult just sit .

She made a kind of face then, as if she was trying not to laugh.

Laugh.

At him .

He could only stare at her. How dare she.

But she nodded, looking almost solemn. Almost. “You’re very right. I’m sure it’s physically challenging, and perhaps mentally as well. Not the kind of thing I’d choose to do, for certain.”

Perhaps. “Yet you call it easy,” he reminded her, not sure why he needed her to agree that what he’d done was far harder than staying , but he wanted to see her realize she was wrong. He needed her to admit that she did not understand in the slightest.

“Well…” She gave a little shrug, then met his gaze straight on.

“It allows you to ignore all this.” She made a gesture toward the tree, the house, who knew what all that gesture encompassed.

“You claim these…challenges up on the mountain are your punishment for being responsible for the deaths of your family and my father, but it seems to me it’s just made it very easy for you to forget about all you’ve lost. I mean, the physical labor alone must take a toll that makes it very easy to sleep at night. ”

He had no words. Shock muted him. Paralyzed him.

She’d called him responsible for the deaths, hadn’t even tried to argue with him this time. No supposition is life and whatever rot she’d said at the Christmas market. Just responsible for the deaths this time around.

She was right , of course, but he’d expected her continued absolution. Not admittance of his crimes.

She was accusing him of sleeping easy despite this. Of taking the easy way out.

“You see, I chose to live with what I lost,” she continued, and this time her solemnness did not seem so put on.

“It did not require carrying water from a stream or cosplaying the nineteenth century, no. But it did require a different kind of fortitude. Perhaps fortitude is not what you’re looking for, and that’s fine enough. ”

She shrugged again. “It is your choice, of course, what punishments you see fit. My feelings on the matter are rather inconsequential, don’t you think?”

She didn’t wait for him to find an answer. She wafted out of the room, leaving only her scent and infuriating words behind.

And he stood there…seething. Furious. Because…he could not find a way to argue against what she’d accused. He had considered his sacrifice to give up the monetary luxuries his position, his family name, had brought him to be pain, suffering, punishment .

But he had not faced the pain of what he’d lost by being away from all these reminders. He took a slow look around the dining room, where he’d eaten many a holiday dinner with his family in his youth. He had pushed this away.

He did not want to come out and say she was right , but there was a part of what she was accusing that was not wrong .

If facing this room, Christmas, his memories was pain, and it was pain, then it was what he should do.

He would stay, let her shove Christmas and memories down his throat until he drowned. Only when the comfort of his luxurious surroundings outweighed the emotional pain of memory would he leave.

She was right. It would have to be this way.

Pain. Pain. Pain.

His due.