Page 107 of Modern Romance September 2025 5-8
‘Where’s fifty million and one?’ The rhythmic auctioneer’s chant trickled into her consciousness, but her eyes lowered to the subtle movement of his mouth.
Slowly, the pink tip of his tongue revealed itself to sweep across his full, blushed-pink bottom lip. And she felt it. The gentle stroke of his tongue on her.
A gasp leapt out from her parted lips in a hush of expelled air.
‘Anyone?’ the auctioneer continued from the front of the room.
She waited for the stranger’s mouth to move. For him to bid against her.
She wanted to hear his voice, she realised. She wanted to know if it matched the intensity of his gaze. But he didn’t speak. The set line of his bearded jaw was a sculpted thing. Abeautifulthing defined by a thousand chestnut hairs interlaced with strings of red fire, kissed by shards of ice.
‘Fifty million, and holding…’
Aurora raised her gaze from his jaw to his eyes to find him still staring at her.
‘Are we all done?’
The silence pulsed.
‘And selling at fifty million US dollars…’ The gavel fell.‘Sold.’
The stranger looked away, and Aurora released the breath she hadn’t known she was holding. Only then did the tightness—the burn—in her chest ease. She had won.
He turned his back on her, revealing his chestnut hair speckled with grey, pulled back at his nape in a low bun, sat on the crisp white collar of his shirt.
As he stood, her gaze swept over his magnificent stature. He was a giant. At least six-foot-five. A Viking ripped from an era long ago. His broad shoulders tense with a barely contained energy inside the sculpted fabric of his black tuxedo.
Without another glance in her direction, he walked out of an oak-panelled side door.
And he took the air with him. Stole it.
The room was suddenly too stifling, too thin yet too heavy at the same time. As if he’d ripped something from the very core of her existence—her ability to breathe, to inhale.
Aurora nipped at the inside of her cheek.
She was being ridiculous.
He was no one. Certainly no one she knew. A stranger.
‘Thank you for your bids. And congratulations…?’
Aurora turned back to the auctioneer as she spoke and held up her paddle, showing him the number on the front.
‘Congratulations, 265.’
The auctioneer, with her unmasked face and her long strands of black silken hair swishing on her shoulders, moved to the easel. She raised her slender brown fingers, her nails painted in a glittering gold, matching her own billowing gown. She gripped the black cloth, and everyone in the room held their breath in anticipation.
‘I give youDivinity,’ she said, and pulled the cloth free.
Applause boomed from everybody in the room.
Aurora settled her gaze on the single piece of artwork she’d won. It was lighted to perfection beside the auctioneer’s lectern. The smallest details of the little boy’s face, painted in heavy, bold lines in a medium she didn’t recognise, were visible, right down to the smallest cluster of freckles on his right cheek. And she realised she knew the artist. Sebastian Shard. She understood his uncouth methods and the use of an assortment of uncommon media had made him a household name, along with his inspirational flight to fame from the streets.
It was a beautiful piece. A haunting piece. Green-and-amber eyes looked out at their audience, asking for something she had seen in her brother’s eyes the night he’d begged her parents not to disown him, pleaded for their help, not their disinheritance.
You should have helped him.
A tightness gripped her throat.
