Page 62 of Modern Romance September 2025 5-8

CHAPTER TWO

A URORA’S HEART RACED , but she hesitated to step forward and embrace the electricity charging the small space between them. Embrace him .

It was too intimate. Too real. The space between their lips was too far and yet too close.

His mouth was beautiful. It was a mouth made for kissing.

What if she was wrong? What if this didn’t make her feel better, either? What if she regretted her boldness? Her awareness of her body, of what it needed in this moment?

But what was one more regret?

She was full of them.

And wouldn’t it be worse to have the opportunity to take something she truly wanted when it was within reach, but walk away?

Her gaze lifted to his, and her breath caught. If she balked, if she let doubt in, she’d never know if his kiss was as intense as his voice.

His eyes were not the same as they had been in Eachus House.

Somehow, he looked deeper. Saw more. And her body liked it.

Responded to it and to him . She liked his eyes on hers.

Holding them captive with their intensity.

And these feelings inside her were preferable to the pain he’d witnessed her scream into the trees.

She wasn’t embarrassed he’d watched her, though. She didn’t feel judged. She felt seen. Understood.

She swallowed and then stepped forward, the energy between them turning the air heavy and hot, making all the little hairs stand tall on her body.

It was only a kiss.

It would be fleeting.

She just needed it to ground her. Needed somewhere to channel the electricity coursing through her.

Aurora took in the slope of his gold nose, his uncovered upper lip. Her eyes locked on to the pout of his bottom lip, a stranger’s lip that was waiting for her to kiss it.

A stranger she hadn’t touched, and who had not touched her. Physically, at least. But he had touched her. Reached inside the twisted parts of her and loosened the knots making her lungs burn.

It would be more than a kiss, she knew. She wouldn’t lie to herself tonight. His kiss would be the beginning. It would turn this night from a failure into something else, into something more. Something that was only hers. Something she’d chosen because it felt right, and she wanted it.

She wanted his lips on hers.

His hand slid to her lower back. He didn’t apply pressure. Didn’t pull her closer, but waited for her to lean in. Ready to welcome her body against his.

It had to be now. Otherwise, it would be a betrayal to herself, to the woman she wanted to be. A woman who made choices and stuck to her convictions.

A brave woman.

She placed her hands on his shoulders. Used the solid strength beneath her fingertips to keep herself steady and rose on the balls of her feet.

The tips of her braless breasts brushed against him. Aurora gasped as the touch of him, the feel of him teased her body, made her ache for a firmer, heavier embrace.

Her hands moved to stroke the back of his neck, then moved upwards over his hardened jaw.

She rose as high as she could on tiptoe, tilted her head and offered him her mouth. His hand pressed deeper into the dip at the base of her spine, lifting her slightly to meet him.

Aurora brushed her mouth over his. And it was powerful, intoxicating, the gentleness of it. His mouth on hers.

Aurora felt his breath quicken against her lips.

Her open palms cradled his jaw, and she pressed her mouth to his to finally taste him. To revel in the power, the control, he radiated.

Slowly, she pushed the tip of her tongue into his mouth. Feathered it against the inside of the warm, wet walls.

And he tasted of everything she didn’t recognise, couldn’t describe, but knew she wanted.

‘ Ahh ,’ she moaned into his mouth.

And he growled. It vibrated against her chest, inside her mouth.

Deeper she pushed her tongue. And there was his. Firmly it moved against hers. Danced to a tune only the two of them knew. And her body started to ache. Her skin. Her breasts. Lower.

Harder she pressed her mouth to his. Needing more. More pressure. More of him. But the lips against hers were unmoving now. His body against hers was rigid steel. Tight. Wanting.

She stopped. Opened her eyes. And there were his staring back at her. Vacant. Empty.

Aurora dropped her hand from his face and pulled away. She lowered onto the balls of her feet. His hand, so strong, so wide, fell from her back. And she felt rudderless.

‘I’ve never kissed anyone,’ she suddenly had the compulsion to explain.

‘There’s never been an opportunity. I’ve never longed for it.

Until tonight. Until you.’ She realised she was babbling.

Overcorrecting a mistake that had made him stop.

She wasn’t sure what the mistake was, only that she’d made it.

Her skin was too hot. Her chest was too tight.

‘Did I—’ She inhaled, made her lungs suck in air. ‘Did I do it wrong?’

A pulse flicked in the side of his cheek.

She stepped back. Away from the man watching her with an expression she didn’t understand.

She swallowed. Took one last look at the masked stranger in the dark who had let her kiss him. And she felt too many things. Not success. Not failure. But something in the middle, where again she stood alone, regret so close to claiming her and this night as a disaster.

‘Goodbye,’ she said as she turned her back on him.

Fingers, firm but feather-light, caught her wrist. She halted. Turned. Raised her gaze to his. And what it was in his eyes, she didn’t know, but it made her gasp with its visceral intensity as he said, ‘Stay.’

Sebastian’s eyes dropped to where he’d caught her. To where he’d wrapped his fingers around her small, delicate wrist and held her to him. And despite everything, every instinct telling him to let her go…he couldn’t.

‘Why?’ she asked. ‘You don’t want me here.’

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. One he needed 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.