Page 115 of Modern Romance September 2025 5-8

He lifted his eyes, watched her shoulders rise—stiffen. And then he met her gaze. Saw the tethered pain. The rejection she felt mirrored there. Something foreign spread over his skin. Something he didn’t like.

‘You didn’t want to kiss me,’ she said, and he felt the hurt in her words. ‘I’m sorry I made you.’

‘You made me do nothing.’ He spoke through gritted teeth. ‘You asked. Persisted,’ he reminded her, reminded himself. ‘But I said yes, because I wanted to.’

‘The only reason you let me—let me kiss you,’ she stuttered in an exhale, ‘was because you pitied me. I don’t need your pity kisses. I don’t need you to pretend you liked it. I might be inexperienced, but even I know a man shouldn’t react like that. Shouldn’t freeze in response to a woman’s touch.’

He could make her hate him, he knew. Make her feel worse. He could give her someone to blame for tonight. Could allow her to blame him for the hangover of regret and loss she’d wake up with tomorrow.

But he couldn’t.

‘I did like it,’ he said, his voice rough, not his own. ‘Too much.’

‘Liar,’ she whispered.

‘I do not lie,’ he said. It had been his choice to allow the kiss. It had also been his choice to place his hand in the dip at the base of her spine and lift her against him. And he had liked it. The taste of her. The heady moan she had made against him.

He should have let her run off into the night. Watched her as she went. But once upon a time he had been just like her. So alone, with no one to blame but himself for the failures of his mother and his stepfather, the man who was also his mother’s pimp.

His stomach roiled. He had only himself to blame for Amelia’s death. Only he could carry the burden of that. And this woman was burdened too.

Her load too heavy for someone so young. She was not to blame for the death she’d told him about. Her parents were, for not protecting their child from the drudgery of the streets. From the coldness, the loneliness. When they’d had every opportunity—every privilege—to save him.

‘You’re doing it right now,’ she said, interrupting his thoughts. ‘A man who wants to kiss a woman does not react the way you did.’

He swallowed thickly. Felt the drag of his Adam’s apple inside his too dry throat. She was wrong. Their whole interaction had been honest. Too honest. He owed her that honesty now.

‘I’ve had many opportunities to kiss…’ he began,

‘And mine just didn’t compare.’

‘I have no idea.’

‘It was so bad—’ she tugged her wrist free ‘—that there is no basis for comparison?’

He dropped his hands to his sides. Despite every bone in his body that demanded he recapture her, trap her here with him. To soothe her, to change the look of confusion in her eyes and bring back the heated look of pleasure she’d raked over him before.

‘I don’t need you to pretend. I don’t need you to make me feel better,’ she said. ‘I don’t feel better. I feel stupid for thinking—’ She exhaled heavily. ‘I feel so stupid for thinking I felt a connection to you. That I could have something that was mine, if only for a moment.’ She straightened, her spine now ramrod-straight. ‘I want to go back to England. I want to—’

‘Do you want to know the truth?’ he asked. ‘Feel it? The truth of my desire?’

Their eyes locked. The silence pulsed for a beat too long.

‘Yes,’ she breathed.

He took her hand, and she let him claim it. Hers so small, delicate, and his so big, rough.

He didn’t know why it was important for him to make her understand she was wanted. But it was. It was a truth he knew she needed. Oneheneeded to prove.

He guided her hand towards his groin and released his hold of her.

‘You want me to touch you?’ she asked.‘There?’

The length of him hardened even more then, and it stole his breath.

‘I understand why you asked me to kiss you,’ he said. ‘Probably more than you do. And if you touch me, it’s not my intention to seduce you, but to show you that you’re not stupid, nor are you wrong.’ He made himself breathe in and out.Slowly.‘I’m just the wrong man for you to kiss.’ He straightened, planted his feet and waited.

He did not reach for her hand again. He didn’t place her fingers on him. Although he wanted to do just that. Wanted to guide her to him. Instead, he waited for her to place her open palm on the heat of him. To touch him. Intimately.