Page 155 of Modern Romance September 2025 5-8
‘I think you are,’ she countered, and her voice shook. ‘I know you’re a man of duty. A man who pretends not to care, but you care, deeply. You cared enough in the garden the night we met to help me through my grief. You are the man who cared about his unborn child enough to kidnap me. A man who donates the vast proceeds from his art to charity. You care whether or not you like it.’
‘You are wrong.’
‘I’m not,’ she said. ‘I’ve never been more right. So why not embrace it, Sebastian? Embrace this change? Embrace us?’
‘Please go, Aurora,’ he begged, but his hand remained on her stomach. All five tense digits curved around their baby.
He needed more time to accept this change that was happening between them.
‘Okay.’ She stood tall on the balls of her feet and leaned past the bump between them. ‘One kiss and I’ll go. If you still want me to.’
And she knew her words were an echo of that night. They both remembered how one kiss had not been enough.
He said nothing, but he didn’t stop her as she leaned in. As she braced herself on his shoulders. And this time, she didn’t aim for his cheek. She aimed for his mouth. For the kiss she needed to take. To give. To him.
She closed her eyes, and she kissed him with everything she had. She let him know she was here. With him.
She broke the seal of their mouths. Opened her eyes and met his.
‘Listen to them,’ she husked. ‘Your hands, your body. Trust them and touch me the way you want to touch me. Kiss me the way you want to kiss me.’
He closed his eyes. His face contorted into a thousand lines of resistance. And she wanted to reach for each one, smooth them with her fingers. Her kisses.
‘I do not know how,’ he rasped, and pressed his forehead against hers. ‘I do not trust myself to take only enough. I do not trust myself not to hurt you.’
‘I trust you. All of you,’ she told him. And she did. In ways she’d trusted no one.
Not only with her body, or her desires, but with her vulnerabilities, with the truth. However scared it made her feel, he’d allowed her to speak her truth from the moment they’d met. He’d allowed her to be honest with him about her wants, her needs.
She needed him now
And he needed her.
‘Trust yourself, Sebastian,’ she breathed. ‘And—’
When she paused, he raised his head and stared into her eyes.
‘Kiss me,’ she demanded. ‘Kiss me now.’
‘It will be more than one kiss,’ he admitted, voice raw.
‘I know.’
‘It will be…more.’
‘Iwantmore.’
He released a roar of both victory and defeat, and pressed his lips to hers.
And Aurora opened for him, took his pain and swallowed it whole. And she recognised the taste. It was an echo of her scream given back to her. The scream that had come from her when she’d thought she was all alone in the gardens the night they’d met. But she hadn’t been alone. Just as he was not alone now. And she heard him, not only with her ears, not only with her body.
But with her heart.
CHAPTER NINE
AURORA’S HEART RAGED.
‘Sebastian,’ she breathed into his mouth, against the lips that were kissing her how she’d wanted to be kissed for weeks, months. Without hesitation. Without resistance.
