Page 101 of Modern Romance September 2025 5-8

Overhead, stars glittered brightly against a sky that was all black velvet, and Jane sighed a happy, contented sigh as the boat seemed to glide atop the water with effortless ease.

She was so focused on the boat’s journey that she didn’t notice Zeus’s approach.

It was only when he came to stand behind her and slid his hands around her waist, eased her hair over one shoulder so he could press his lips to the sensitive flesh in the curve of her neck, and she shivered.

Not from cold, but from a total bodily awareness of him.

A need that was in overdrive. It was as though being here, on the open water, somehow freed her from all restraint.

Not just of the conundrum of her deception, but of the hurts of her past. Finally, for the first time in years, she felt almost liberated from the shadow of what Steven had done to her, of how he’d made her feel.

She felt, simply, free.

She turned slowly, smiling, unaware of the way the silver light of the moon caught her face and made it shimmer, the way her eyes sparkled, and her hair seemed to glow. ‘Tell me something,’ she prompted, linking her hands behind his back.

‘Anything.’

Her heart trembled with a rush of power. ‘Anything? Hmm. Perhaps I’ll change my question, then.’

His gaze roamed her face in a way that pulled at her stomach. ‘What would you like to know, agapiméni ?’

‘Your name,’ she said. ‘It’s kind of unique.’

He grinned. ‘You don’t think it suits me?’

‘On the contrary, there is something kind of godlike about you,’ she murmured, then laughed at his raised brows. ‘You have this kind of…all-powerful vibe going on.’

‘Do I?’

She nodded.

‘In what way?’

‘Fishing for compliments?’

‘Curious as to how you see me.’

‘Well, like the fact you’re happy to let me call the shots with what happens between us, erm, physically.’ She glanced over his shoulder, cheeks flushing with warmth. ‘I think a lot of guys would have egos that were too fragile for that.’

‘Maybe you haven’t been involved with the right kind of men before,’ he said gently, though, so her heart trembled. The boat glided out of the marina fully and into the bay. She leaned back against the railing, eyes hooked to Zeus’s face.

‘Well, that’s definitely true.’

‘Including the man who hurt you?’ he prompted, his tone light, but she felt the push of his enquiry, his desire to know and understand her.

‘Definitely him,’ she murmured.

‘And since him?’

She shook her head a little. ‘No one serious.’

His eyes bore into hers like beams. ‘Why not?’

She stilled. The feeling of freedom wavered a little. Her throat tightened. She blinked away from Zeus, but he squeezed her waist. ‘He can’t hurt you anymore.’

She shook her head. ‘It’s not that.’

‘You don’t want to talk about it?’

She shook her head. ‘I don’t want to think about him,’ she said, pulling a face. ‘He’s ruined enough of my life. I’m not going to let him ruin this, too.’

‘Jane…’ His hand moved over her hip gently. ‘What did he do to you?’

She opened her mouth to tell him she really wanted to talk about something else, but then her eyes found his and something strange happened. Something powerful and altering. She looked at him and felt that bubble of freedom again, or rather, a bridge to freedom.

Maybe talking about it would help? Maybe talking about it was what she needed?

Lottie was the only person she’d spoken to about it in the past, and even then she’d found it hard to give more than a cursory explanation as to what had happened.

She’d lived with a sense of all-consuming shame and grief, rather than admit how awful it had all been.

‘We were dating,’ she said with a rise of her shoulders.

A breeze lifted off the ocean, so her hair shifted around her face, and she smelled the salt of the sea and the sweetness of her conditioner.

Zeus caught the blond hairs and tamed them behind one of her ears, his hand remaining at her shoulder.

Warm, silently encouraging her to continue.

‘I met him through a mutual friend, and I liked him straight away. I was seventeen, he was older, so naturally, I thought he was way, way cooler than me,’ she said with a hint of self-deprecating humour, even though it wasn’t remotely funny.

‘A lot of my friends had started seeing guys, hooking up at parties. I kind of felt weird that I wasn’t into hooking up or whatever. ’

‘You were only seventeen,’ he pointed out.

She pulled a face. ‘I somehow suspect you’d already notched up some experience by that age.’

His jaw tightened a little. ‘Not as much as you’d think.’

‘Really?’

‘My mother wasn’t well. It took a lot of my focus.’

‘Oh, gosh. I’m sorry.’

He nodded once, dismissively. She felt his pain, though, and moved a little closer to him. He was so warm, so strong, being this close did something to her insides. Somehow, just his proximity flooded her with those qualities, too—warmth and strength—as though they were completely contagious.

‘Anyway,’ she continued. ‘I met him and liked him. He was funny and handsome, smart, and I guess he gave me the one thing I’d been missing.’

Zeus waited quietly.

‘Attention. He made me feel as though I was the centre of his world.’ She shook her head with frustration at how stupid and trusting she’d been. ‘I took everything at face value. I really thought he loved me.’

‘He didn’t?’

She shook her head. ‘I doubt it.’

‘Why?’

‘After…that night,’ she said on a soft exhalation, ‘he was so…’

‘What happened that night?’ Zeus asked, and now his voice had a gruff urgency to it that pulled at her and made her whole body seem as though it were flying.

‘It was another party. We’d all been drinking.

A lot. And I didn’t really drink much at all, so you can imagine how a few glasses of champagne would have gone to my head, let alone the bottle or so I had.

He kept bringing me drinks,’ she muttered, back in time now, in that awful night.

But somehow, the sting of it had faded, and talking to Zeus seemed to be taking away the last vestiges of power of that night to wound her.

She marvelled at that, revelled in the sensation of freedom, even as she continued speaking.

‘I’d told him I wasn’t ready for—sex. I wasn’t.

I liked him. I thought I even loved him, but I didn’t want to just have sex with him.

I wasn’t ready,’ she repeated, as though Zeus understanding that was fundamentally important.

‘Which was always your decision and right,’ he said. Like he had a hotwire into her brain and knew just what to say.

‘I started to feel a little sick. So much champagne,’ she muttered. ‘He said he’d find somewhere quiet for me to lie down.’

Zeus swore, darkness crossing his handsome features. ‘Go on.’ But the words were muted, as if uttered through gritted teeth, and she realised that this was hurting him, more than it was her.

‘I’m okay, Zeus. It was a long time ago,’ she assured him, softly.

‘Go on,’ he repeated as if he had braced himself for the rest and now needed to hear it.

She expelled a shaking breath. ‘I don’t remember a lot of it. The room was dark,’ she said, voice trembling. ‘His hands were rough.’ She swallowed past a lump in her throat. ‘I told him “no.” I’m sure of it, though he disagreed the next day.’

Zeus nodded once, his lips held so tightly they were white rimmed. But his touch was gentle, his eyes sympathetic.

‘I didn’t want it to happen. I know that much.

He was heavy on top of me. He smelt of beer and sweat.

And it hurt. I think I passed out. I don’t know.

’ And even though she felt somehow liberated from the memory, tears sparkled on her lashes now.

She blinked away. ‘So that was my first—and only—time.’

He was quiet and still for what seemed an age.

The hum of the boat formed a background noise; the splashing of the waves against the sides of the craft occasionally flicked them with tiny droplets of salted water, but really, it was just the two of them, in the sort of bubble that was formed by the sharing of one’s deepest secrets.

Then Zeus lifted his hands to her cheeks, cupped her face gently, holding her steady, his own body so powerful and large but not at all scary or intimidating.

‘You were raped, Jane,’ he said, stroking her cheek with his thumb.

‘You were raped by someone you cared for, someone you trusted. It’s the most natural thing in the world that you have carried that wound with you all these years. ’

She opened her mouth to dispute what he’d said.

Rape sounded so jarring, so violent, but of course, that was exactly what had happened to her.

She hadn’t consented to sleeping with Steven; she hadn’t even been able to consent, given how drunk she’d been.

He took what he wanted, regardless of how that impacted her.

A tear slid down her cheek. Not a tear of sadness, but rather relief, because she felt not only seen by Zeus, but also accepted. Understood. Valued.

‘Have you spoken to someone?’

‘Other than you?’ she asked, the attempt at humour falling flat. Neither of them was in a humorous mood.

‘A therapist. Someone qualified to help you.’

‘No,’ she whispered. ‘It took me a long time to accept what had happened. Longer still to tell anyone—my best friend—about that night. I just couldn’t… I felt…’

He waited, patiently.

‘I blamed myself,’ she whispered, shaking her head, squeezing her eyes shut.

‘But you know now that you weren’t to blame.’ He said it as a statement, but she knew he was asking her.

She bit into her lower lip. ‘I know that if the same thing had happened to my best friend, I would say exactly that to her. It’s not your fault. It’s just hard to look back on that night without regret. Why did I drink so much? Why did I go into a room with him? Why didn’t I fight harder?’

‘You shouldn’t have had to fight. You trusted him. You loved him. He took advantage of your youth, your love, your inexperience, your drunkenness, your trust. It was a brutal betrayal. By every metric, this was his fault, not yours.’

She knew that. Of course she did. But understanding something academically didn’t always equate to how one felt. She nodded slowly, anyway, because she couldn’t fault his logic.

‘I presume you didn’t press charges?’

She shook her head. ‘I wish I had, if only to stop him from doing the same thing to someone else,’ she muttered.

‘But it took me too long to process it all myself, let alone going to the police. And when I confronted him about it when we broke up, he made it clear that he would tell anyone a very different version of that night, paint me as someone who just regretted getting drunk and having sex, rather than what had actually happened.’

A muscle ticked in Zeus’s jaw and the strength of his emotions seemed to barrage across at her.

‘This man is not worthy of the title,’ he spat after a pause. ‘Your body is your body,’ he said slowly, enunciating each word in his deep, husky voice. ‘Yours to pleasure, yours to control, yours in every way. No man has the right to touch you if you do not want that.’

She nodded, a lump forming in her throat. These were all things she knew, but again, hearing Zeus say them was like treacle running over dry wood. It soaked in, softened everything.

‘Afterwards, I just couldn’t be with a man without feeling…

scared,’ she admitted. ‘I tried. I dated. But any time a man would kiss me, I’d freeze up.

I couldn’t bear it,’ she confessed, eyes latching to his.

‘And then, I met you…’ Her voice trailed off, because she couldn’t explain what it was about Zeus that had somehow overcome those barriers.

‘And I just felt…safe,’ she finished huskily, not meeting his eyes, because revealing that to him somehow made a part of her seem too vulnerable.

‘You are safe,’ he promised, dropping his hands to her waist and pulling her against him, brushing her lips with his own. ‘I promised you that, and I meant it.’

‘I know.’ She smiled then, a weak smile, but one that was filled with all the light of her soul. ‘It’s not just that you make me feel safe, though,’ she continued her confession.

‘No?’

‘Honestly, I thought any sexual side of me died that night with Steven. I thought he’d killed the parts of me that were responsible for getting turned on. But then I met you, and everything screamed back to life. It’s like you flicked a switch inside me and I feel…’

His eyes flared when they met hers. ‘If nothing else,’ he said, moving his hands to her back and bunching the fabric of her dress there, ‘let me give you that, this week. Let me give you all the pleasure, all the knowledge, all the awakenings you have missed out on.’

She blinked up at him, something like awe building inside her.

And more than that, she had the strangest sense of fate winding around them, as if each star was flicking a single piece of thread towards them, and as the boat cut through the dark waters of the gulf, those threads landed on Jane, and Zeus, and tangled together, wrapping them up, cocooning them in this place, this time, but somehow, also for all time.

No matter what happened, this week would always be solely, completely, theirs, like an imprint of a moment that simply couldn’t fade.

She nodded slowly, though it hadn’t been a question so much as a pledge. She nodded because with all of her heart, with all of her soul, she agreed with him.