Page 222 of Modern Romance September 2025 5-8

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 isyourbody,’ 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.

CHAPTER EIGHT

ThelastthingZeus felt like employing was restraint. From the moment he’d first seen Jane Fisher, he’d wanted her. He’d imagined her naked in his bed, utterly at his command. But even that night in the bar, he’d sensed a fragility to her. Despite her over-the-top beauty, her apparent confidence, something about her had urged him to be cautious. Careful. As though he might break her; as though she’d been broken before.

And she had been.

She’d been broken, and no one had helped put her back together again. She’d done that all herself, and even though she was strong and living her life, she wasn’t fully embracing all of herself, nor all aspects of her life.

For that, she wanted him, and showing her what sexshouldbe like would be one of the greatest privileges of his life.

So long as he could be true to his word and slow everything down. The last thing he wanted to do was overwhelm her with his own needs.

This wasn’t about Zeus, but Jane.

He pulled her against his chest and kissed her. Slowly. Gently. His mouth probing hers. Tasting, teasing, tempting, until she was moaning against him, the softness of her body, the way her curves pressed to his chest, the warmth of her skin, her fragrance. It all hummed and buzzed and made him feel as though he were walking on a tightrope with a death-defying fall in both directions.

She said his name, a groan, a plea, a curse, and he felt it. He felt it deep in his soul; her tone matched his own.

Her hands pushed at his shirt, lifting it, her fingertips brushing his bare skin, pushing the shirt until it lifted higher, her palms flat against his hair-roughened chest, his nipples, so he bit back a curse in reflexive shock at how damned great that felt.

‘Jane.’ His voice held a warning, because he was not actually a god, and maintaining control when she touched him like that would take every ounce of his strength. But then he looked at her and realised: it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter how much it cost him; he would do this for her. She could touch. She could explore. She could feel. Be curious, taste, touch, and he would let her, even when he was holding on by a single thread, because she deserved that. Because he’d promised it to her.