Page 120 of Modern Romance June 2025 1-4

Then again, I correct myself, the night and the gown and the man who held my hand so briefly did that, too. I can still feel it.

As I flex my hand, remembering that touch, I feel a kind of prickly heat move down the length of my spine. I shiver, then repress it.

Then I turn my head to find Luc watching me from across the atrium floor.

And it is something more potent than any wine or pretty house filled with pretty, careless people. It is something more complicated than the rise and soaring fall of the music that plays all around us. Something more dangerous than the way water tumbles out of that endless fountain in the center of the atrium, and something infinitely more treacherous than all these people who move like shadows around us, caught up in their kingmaking, and their scandals, and their bright, glittery party.

I should have spent the night making inroads here, like the businesswoman I am. Yet somehow, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I almost wanted to be someone else for a change.

Maybe, the woman I’ve been made over into tonight. That woman I glimpsed so briefly while walking down the stairs toward Luc earlier.

The woman who has no thought in her head but to be this man’s arm candy.

Because a bright and frothy piece of candy knows exactly where she’s ending up tonight. And exactly how he will enjoy her.

But these are not the smartest things to be thinking as Luc cuts his way through the crowd and comes to stand before me.

I open my mouth to tell him that I think we should go, or that I should, but he holds out his hand.

There is something simmering in those dark, nearly bitter depths. And it feels like gold inside of me.

And the kind ofhelplessI feel right now moves through me a little too much like joy.

I reach out and put my hand in his, again.

When I say nothing at all, when I make no argument and state no case, he draws me out onto the atrium floor to join the other dancers.

We still have our masks on. I tell myself that it’s safe, being held against his body like this. This is perfectly appropriate, I assure myself as he twirls me around and around and his hand at the small of my back sends fire cascading through me.

I tip my head back, so I can look in his eyes.

So it feels as if he is already inside me.

When the music ends, he does not let go. He still holds me, looking down at me with a scowl on his face, as if fighting some kind of desperate battle…

I do nothing to help him.

On the contrary, what I want to do is dare him. To figure this out. Todosomething. To make this one thing or the other—

He mutters a curse in a language I don’t quite catch. Then he takes me by the arm and pulls me with him, leaving the glitter and noise behind. He leads me through the hallways and breezeways of this place, inside and out, until I realize belatedly that this place makes his villa seem snug and intimate.

I’m happier once we step out onto a path that leads away from the sprawling place, the light seeming less like gold and more like something tricked up to be gold instead.

Outside, that clutching sensation in my chest eases a little. The sea air feels deliciously cold all over my overheated skin, and I make no comment as he leads me farther into the dark.

It takes me a few moments to understand that he has found us a path that winds its way along the cliffside. We walk in silence, listening to the waves caress the rocks far below. I feel the breeze like it’s a part of the spell he’s weaving, as he leads me through the dark, the only light from the stars above and across the water.

We keep walking until the villa is out of sight, meandering around until the path delivers us to a cottage.

I want to ask him how he knew this was here. The lights are out but this does not deter him. He opens the door with a certain hesitancy, but not without familiarity, and I remember—almost against my will—that my running theory is that he wanted to come here because he could come masked. Not as himself.

Not as the man who has clearly been here before.

I want to ask him a thousand questions, but when he leads me with him into this secret cottage by the sea that feels worlds away from the mad whirl of the party in the villa, I say nothing.

And when he pulls me into his arms once more, and murmurs something that sounds likehave mercy,I melt.

Thenignitewhen he takes my mouth with his.

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