Page 123 of Modern Romance September 2025 5-8

‘That’s it?’ she asked.

He nodded.

She scrambled off his lap and concealed her breast. He was grateful she did before he could pull her to him again. Bury his still hard flesh inside her body. Break his promise and have her again.

But his hands didn’t release her. They guided her hips, steadying her as she found solid ground. Only then did he release her. And his hands ached with the absence of her.

‘Thank you,’ he rasped, the finality of his dismissal stinging his ears.

Her chest still rising and falling rapidly, she held his gaze. ‘Thank you?’ Her mouth grappled with what to say next. ‘That’s all you’ve got to say?’

He gritted his jaw. Nodded. And he looked away. It hurt. He wanted to learn every line of her face and commit them to memory. But he already had. She was seared into his retinas.

He tucked himself away. Zipped the fly. Fastened the button. Buckled his belt. And only then did he look at her again.

‘It’s time to go,’ he said, and his body rebelled. He’d given her what he’d promised, taken what he’d needed.

A moment’s reprieve.

‘Go?’ she repeated.

‘Leave,’ he told her with a voice too thick, laced heavily with a need he wouldn’t recognise. A need to stay in her arms and press his forehead against hers. To listen to the husk of her breathing. To feel it, gentle and hot, feathering his skin.

‘But I want to hold you,’ she admitted. ‘I want to be held.’

He ignored the hurt in her eyes. The confusion.

She was not his to hold.

‘No,’ he said. ‘Once was promised, and it is done. It is finished.Leave,’ he said again, and he did not answer the need of his hands to reach for her. To hold her gently.

He was not that man. He might have been, once. But he had nothing to give or to offer now. He didn’t need anyone or anything.

He did not need her.

‘Please,’ he begged. ‘Leave.’

Something caught in his chest.

He closed his eyes. Shut out what could have been. He shut her out. This creature sent to torture him with her softness. Her courage to change things. He was too old to learn anything new. To change who he’d made himself be. A man who was not gentle. A man who didn’t care. A man who would not care now.

And so he did what he’d done for decades. He defaulted to what he knew. He closed down. Because this was too much. She made him feel too much.

She wasn’t his to soothe.

She was not his to protect.

He heard her move. The pads of her feet scraping over stone as she did what he’d asked. And only when he heard her no more did he open his eyes. They searched for her, found her at the bottom of the broken stone path. On she ran through the black gates, and out of sight.

He leant forward and claimed her mask. His hands trembled violently.

The rain had taken her back to where she belonged.

Far away from him.

CHAPTER FOUR

Six Months Later…