Page 63 of Modern Romance September 2025 5-8

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.

And softly, tentatively, she did.

She gasped, and he pulsed. Everywhere.

Her eyes flew wide open. She withdrew the heat of her palm instantly. And its loss made the hard length of him ache in ways he’d forgotten were possible.

‘My body enjoyed kissing you,’ he admitted roughly.

She looked up at him from behind lowered lashes. ‘But your brain didn’t?’ she asked.

‘No.’

‘So you froze,’ she guessed. ‘On purpose?’

‘Yes.’

Her gaze narrowed. ‘Why? ’

‘Just because an opportunity arises to kiss someone doesn’t mean you should,’ he said. ‘Kissing involves touching, feeling.’

‘And you don’t want to feel, do you? Emotionally or physically. You don’t want to get attached,’ she said, answering her own questions.

He nodded. He’d already told her these things. He didn’t need to explain further.

‘I made you feel, didn’t I?’

He lifted his gaze to her face, to her mouth. And heat flooded him in places he hadn’t thought could be heated.

He did not want to need her mouth.

But he did.

And the way she looked at him. All too knowing.

Tension flooded his jaw.

She said, ‘I made you—’

‘ Want ,’ he growled. ‘And I have wanted nothing, and no one, for longer than you have been alive.’

She frowned. ‘You haven’t wanted anyone?’

‘No.’

‘Haven’t touched or kissed anyone?’

‘No,’ he answered. He would have shrugged his shoulders, but his body was so tight, held so rigid. ‘I’m a virgin.’

She blinked rapidly. ‘You’re a virgin?’

‘Yes,’ he answered. He felt no shame. It had been necessary, was necessary. Besides, he knew the truth of it. His body might be untouched, but his mind had seen far too much, had been broken beyond repair before he’d even hit puberty. ‘I’m as inexperienced as you.’

The silence that followed was not unpleasant or pleasant.

It was… thoughtful . Her eyes were too gentle.

She looked at him, and he let her look. He knew she would understand.

He was a man with needs. He was inexperienced because he was a man who did not want to need such things.

He did not want to feel the loss of them.

Human contact. Touch. He had made the choice to abstain.

‘Why did you come here?’ she asked.

‘The same reason as you,’ he answered. ‘To be alone.’

‘But why the auction?’ she asked. ‘Why come here on the anniversary of your family’s death?’

He had not told her he had lost his family.

He’d said everyone . Because it had been.

Everyone he’d cared for. Everyone he should have protected.

But she knew all the same. Knew it was his own flesh and blood he’d failed, because she recognised in him what lived in her.

The effects of severing a blood connection. Specifically with a sibling.

And he knew what it would ultimately do to her.

That loss. It would hollow her out. And the fire he saw burn inside her would be extinguished.

Her desire to shove all the pain, all the darkness into the night sky and fill that place where the pain had been, with hope, with light, would die inside her.

As it had died inside him.

‘Why not here?’ he asked.

‘You came here so you didn’t have to be alone, and you retreated to the gardens when it got too much. When you were surrounded by too many people who wouldn’t understand. But I understand. I’m not the wrong person for you to be with tonight. You’re not the wrong man for me to…kiss.’

His heart hammered.

‘You understand me,’ she said. ‘And we found each other.’

‘To find something means it was lost to you,’ he told her harshly. Too harshly. ‘I wasn’t yours to find. I did not seek you out.’

His brain hiccupped, because he had, hadn’t he? Revealed himself to her when he didn’t have to?

He could have plugged his ears with his fingers. Shut his eyes. Turned away from the vision, this woman who was like a garden of wild flowers, calling to him, singing his name.

But he hadn’t.

‘We did not find each other,’ he hissed, because she made it sound romantic. As if tonight had happened on purpose. As if their meeting had been fate.

‘But we did,’ she corrected him.

‘This isn’t a fairy tale,’ he told her. ‘This is not destiny.’

‘Isn’t it?’

A drop of rain fell then, a single splash on her blue-and-gold mask adorned cheek. Would her legs become a tail now as she got wet? Would the rain return her home? His thumb itched to swipe the drop away. To pretend the heavens wouldn’t open tonight and take her.

He was too fanciful tonight. Too nostalgic. Too something akin to caring.

He was not himself.

‘We are passing ships in the night. Nothing more,’ he said, his voice too deep, too breathy, lacking in assurance. Beneath the words rang a question he didn’t want to acknowledge, let alone hear the answer to.

He’d make them true. His words. She would not make a liar of him.

‘But we haven’t passed yet,’ she said. ‘We are still here, anchored. And tonight could be more than fleeting, for both of us. If we let it be,’ she declared.

She teased him with what she held back, with what she didn’t say.

‘Explain,’ he said.

He wanted to know why tonight he was here with her, and not face-down, drunk, from the bottles of alcohol he’d taken from a passing server and placed next to the stone bench inside the colonnade. They were untouched.

She knotted her hands, wrung them at her waist. ‘We’re both virgins,’ she said quietly, and again the blush took her. Spread across her cheeks.

‘What does that have to do with anything?’

‘Everything,’ she breathed.

She stood tall, all five feet of her, against the silence that hummed between them in this place of walls and weeds.

‘I’m your awakening,’ she declared. ‘And you are mine.’

Laughter spilt from his lips. It was not to mock her, but himself, and the thoughts this creature took from his mind without his permission. Because so close were her words to what he knew she was now. A creature sent to taunt him tonight with all he’d denied himself for twenty-five years.

His laughter stopped. ‘I am not asleep,’ he said, but he questioned if he was. If this was a nightmare. If his mind had conjured her for him. To punish him.

‘And neither am I,’ she said, teasing him with the reality of her. Teasing him with all that was within reach. Connection. Understanding.

His heart stopped. ‘I am not your awakening either.’

‘But you are, don’t you see?’

‘No,’ he said. He didn’t want to see. ‘You have mistaken a small kindest for more than it is. You misunderstand… me .’

‘Make love to me,’ she said, and her words were too loud. They boomed in his ears and echoed there until all he could hear was her on repeat.

‘Let me make love to you,’ she said, her voice so strong, so tempting.

‘You,’ he accused, ‘have heard nothing I have said.’

‘I’ve heard everything.’ She placed her small hand on her chest. ‘I know you’ve denied yourself everything.’

She moved closer, on silent feet, to stand in front of him. And his body recognised the shape of her. The heat of her. And it responded without his permission. It hardened again.

‘You don’t have to deny yourself me,’ she said.

His body hummed. Temptation parted his lips, readying themselves for a kiss. For her.

He’d never touched a woman. He’d been attracted to others, but not so breathlessly. Never had a woman made him ache with a need to touch. To be touched.

What would it feel like to claim this night? To let his guard down and forget all that came before it?

She began to raise her hands, and he braced himself for her touch. A touch he wanted more than air, he realised. More than any need to keep his vow…

Her palm cupped his cheek, and he couldn’t help it. He leaned into it. Into her. And she was so soft. So warm.

Her hand moved. Her fingers stroked over the hair above his ears. And now her touch was too gentle. Too light.

He needed… more .

‘Let me take it off.’ Her fingers played with the string tying his mask in place.

He caught her wrist. ‘No,’ he rasped. ‘I don’t want to know your face, and I don’t want you to know mine.’ Here in the garden, masked, they were equal.

They were both inexperienced. Both alone and full of grief. But if he removed her mask, if she removed his, she’d know who he was. Despite his achievements, he was still the boy who had grown up on the streets.

‘Okay. We’ll leave them on,’ she promised.

He released her wrist, and it fell weightlessly to her side. ‘If we do this…’ he started, and stopped.

He hadn’t been a we for so long, it felt strange to let it roll off his tongue.

‘If we do this?’ she repeated, each word licking at his skin.

‘It will only be this once,’ he told her, because she needed to understand the rules.

‘No names, no attachments,’ he continued. ‘I don’t want a long-term lover. I don’t want to care for anything or anyone. I will forever live my life alone. I won’t care for you. Ever.’

Her big brown eyes locked onto his, and he knew he was lost to the night, to her, when she said, ‘Only tonight. Only once.’

He was seduced. Lulled to his demise by a siren.

You are a fanciful idiot.

She had seduced him. This woman. With her plum lips. Her words. The song she sang, and he understood.

She’d made him a liar, and there was nothing he could do about it.

She made him need. Ache with it.

He lowered his head, and he accepted that this time, their kiss…

It was for him.