Page 64 of Modern Romance September 2025 5-8

CHAPTER THREE

E XCITEMENT FEATHERED OVER Aurora’s skin. His mouth was on hers.

And she wanted more. Wanted him to possess her, wanted him to claim her as his. Because she was his. In this stolen moment of time when they’d met, against all odds, both at an impasse in their lives.

The heavens opened.

Without a word, he tore his mouth from hers.

‘Come.’ He took her hand in his. Fire erupted in her palm, the blaze spreading up through her wrist, her forearm.

Using her other hand to stem the fat dollops of water as they fell onto her from the sky, she moved with him.

‘Your feet,’ he said as they ran, the rain so heavy it dripped from the flick of his nose.

She glanced down at her unpainted toes, covered in strands of wet grass. ‘They’re fine,’ she said dismissively, but his hand was already releasing hers.

His arms circled her waist, and he lifted. She didn’t think, didn’t question. She clung to him with her thighs. Wrapped her arms around his long, thick neck. Dipped her head into his throat.

He was warm. Safe.

He strode up the stone path. Pink blooms and white flowers overcrowded by taller green reeds led their way forward.

He entered the terrace between two tall decorated stone columns, a balcony sheltering them from above.

She lifted her face. Met his eyes. His pupils were black disks pushing out the amber and green. She could feel his hammering heart. It mirrored hers.

She didn’t need to remove his mask, know his face, or kiss his eyelids, the nose hidden to her, or his cheekbones. She recognised it by the feeling inside her.

It was want . The flare of desire burst inside her. In her chest. Her breasts, her nipples, hardened against the solid wall of his chest.

‘Are you okay?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’ She nodded.

She reached up to his face, and the air stilled. As did her heart. She tilted her neck, and he lowered his head. Lips met, mouths opened, and tongues mingled. Breathlessly.

How could he have wanted to deny himself, her, this? This connection between them.

It was more than skin-deep. It was fate. This awakening. Their awakening to the flesh. To feelings. To more…

Aurora didn’t know exactly who she was, who she was becoming in this moment, but she knew who she didn’t want to be anymore. A pinnacle of goodness. A golden girl.

Tomorrow, she knew, she would be changed.

Brand new.

Brave.

‘Wait,’ he said into her mouth, pulling away from her.

She followed him with her lips. ‘Don’t stop!’

‘I’m not,’ he assured her, and his words, laced with tension, shook. ‘I want to touch you,’ he admitted.

She trembled. ‘I want that, too.’

His nostrils flared. He stepped backwards until his legs met a stone bench. He lowered himself down, with her astride him.

She gasped as the intimate core of her came into contact with the hard length of him.

‘I want you ,’ she said, and it felt powerful to say that. To speak the truth of her desire with words.

He swallowed, and she saw him struggle with the words stuck in his throat.

‘I want…you,’ he said, his voice a raw admission of desire. Of need. And she claimed it. The power he gave her in return.

He lifted his hand from her waist and stroked the seam of the asymmetrical sequins slashing across her chest. ‘I want to taste you.’

And words were lost to her as she nodded. She watched his fingers, caught the slight tremble in them, as he pulled her dress down and revealed her naked breast.

‘So beautiful.’ His finger traced down her cheek, down the column of her throat, into the dip of her arched collarbone. ‘Such smooth skin.’

He wrapped his palm over her breast, massaged.

And she felt beautiful.

‘ Yes !’ she exclaimed. She couldn’t help it. She tilted her head back. Offered him more of herself. And he didn’t deny her. He pressed a kiss to her skin and tasted her.

He licked. He sucked. And the desire inside her built until she began to pant. She pushed her breast harder into his hand. Because it was what she needed.

She rocked instinctively against him. ‘Oh…’ she panted, and pressed her thighs together. Brought her core harder against him.

‘More,’ she demanded.

‘ More ?’ he asked.

‘I want you,’ she said, and swallowed, slickened her vocal cords. ‘In me.’

The pulse in his bristled cheek thundered. His mouth opened, but she continued before he spoke. ‘I don’t want to go slowly. I don’t want to wait. I want to feel you. All of you, inside me.’

His eyes turned black. His hands went to her hips. ‘Brace yourself on your knees,’ he told her, and she did.

Her knees pressed into stone, and she held herself above him. He reached for himself. Undid the silver buckle of his black belt, the button. And then slid down the zip and freed himself.

She gasped.

‘If it hurts—if you want me to stop,’ he husked, ‘I will stop.’

‘No,’ she breathed. The word powerful on her lips, in the air pulsing between their faces. Their bodies. ‘Don’t stop.’

She chose this.

She chose him .

His hands went to the core of her. Stroked the seam between her thighs and pulled the scrap of material aside. He surged his hips upward, and he met her where she ached. Only the tip of him. The promise of him.

She made herself look at him, into his eyes, knowing it would be the same for him.

That tonight they were both shedding their old selves to have this moment together. Two virgins surrendering their selves to each other. To the desperate need to have this moment that couldn’t be replicated. It could not be put on pause. Could not be denied.

They were two damaged souls, cowed by life but unable to hide from this. This honest connection. And it felt good. Almost too good.

Aurora understood that afterwards, after they’d taken what they wanted for themselves, she’d have to make her choice, to choose this path on her own. To feel everything the first twenty-one years of her life had denied her.

And she would.

She’d never go back to who she was before him.

‘ Now ,’ she pleaded. ‘Do it now.’

His fingers went to her hips and pressed into her flesh. Into bone. Deeper.

She pushed against his fingers with her hips. Pushed them down. But he held her steady. Held her straddled above the heat, pressing at her core.

The tip of his swollen heat entered her. Slowly.

She would not let herself tense. She wouldn’t hold back. But she felt the strain in his body. The pulse of his resistance.

‘Is it hurting you?’ she asked. She knew there was nothing to hurt him physically. But she felt it. His body expanding beneath her fingers, the bulge of his chest, and she understood his battle was internal.

‘No,’ he breathed through firmed lips, but she heard the lie.

Her voice as strained as his, she asked, ‘Do you want to stop?’

‘No.’

‘Then don’t.’

He thrust up inside her.

‘Ah!’ She threw her head back. It hurt. But it was a heated pain. She was so full. She shut her eyes against the intensity.

But he was…

Everywhere.

Sebastian knew he was going to come.

He held in the moan in his throat and gritted his teeth.

She was so warm. So soft. So tightly wrapped around him. As if she belonged there, and he belonged inside her. Their fit so perfect…

It was pain. It was pleasure. It was everything .

He bit the inside of his cheek. Locked his hips and fought the urge to push decades of denial into her body, without care.

Her eyes opened and found him. And only then did he move her. Lift her hips, ease the pressure sheathing him, promising oblivion, promising ecstasy.

She would find hers first.

He sank back inside her.

‘Oh!’ She ground her hips into him—clenched harder around him.

He reached between their bodies and pressed his thumb to the swollen nub of her.

Her mouth kissed the air. Sang a song neither of them had heard before. Neither had felt.

He was so hard inside her, it hurt. It wouldn’t take long for his body to surrender to her, even if his mind didn’t want to. Not yet.

He wanted to see her take her pleasure. Own it all. This night she’d demanded, and he’d given to her. Given her his hands, his mouth, his body. His surrender to fate. To her.

And he’d give her this.

He thrust up again.

Her head fell back. Her throat elongated, and he wanted to bury his face in her neck. Feast on her skin.

‘Look at me,’ he demanded, because he needed her eyes on him. He would to remember them as she came apart with him inside her.

Her eyes locked onto his. And there was no pain inside them anymore. No confusion. Only want. Only him.

He guided her hips, moved her, until he slid to her entrance and back in. And he concentrated on her eyes, and not on the need to spill himself that was so close to consuming him.

‘I’m going to come!’ she said, and so was he. But he fought against it. Enraptured, he watched her pleasure mount.

Her mask slipped.

His heart hammered. He should reach for it. Fix it into place. But he couldn’t move. If he did, if he changed the angle of his body, he would come too soon.

The mask fell. His breath halted as she came into view. Her face of ebony lines hued in yellow gold. Her small rounded nose, her plum lips, her big brown eyes, wide, shadowed by long black lashes.

Her face was everything he knew it would be.

Hauntingly beautiful.

She clenched so hard around him. He couldn’t deny it anymore. His own release.

He growled. A roar so ferocious, his ears ached. He couldn’t spill himself inside her. The risk was too great for both of them. However, much his body demanded he stay where he was.

He lifted her. But the heat of her body, the tightness of it, ripped his release from him. He lifted her higher. Spilt himself away from her on the ground.

Their eyes met, and hers were full of wonder and pleasure.

‘I—’

‘Shush.’ He gathered her close, and she collapsed into his neck. Panting hard. As hard as he was.

He shrugged off his tux jacket and draped it over her shoulders. But his hands went inside to feel her.

He stroked her arched spine, and Sebastian let her softness wash over him. Let his body mould to hers. And oh, how delicate she was. How tenderly his arms held her, stroked her. Soothed her.

He closed his eyes. Pushed his nose into the escaped tendrils of hair resting at her nape.

And he drank her in.

She moved. Braced her hands on his shoulders and lifted her head.

‘Again,’ she husked, her breathing still erratic. She closed in on his mouth.

He gripped her face. Halted her. Smoothed the pads of his thumbs across her high sculpted cheekbones. Took in the warmth in her cheeks. Her swollen lips. Need overwhelmed him. To taste her again. To be with her again.

He pulled his mouth away. ‘No more,’ he said, but his body pulsed, seeking her out. He was still hard. Still wanting. It would be so easy to bury himself inside her again. His body was demanding it.

His lips twisted. Had he forgotten everything? He did not need. He should be sated. He should be anything but this.

He watched her eyes shutter. The wonder slip away.

‘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.