Page 122 of Modern Romance January 2025 5-8

“Well, you should...”

He found her mouth. Unerringly. Like it was no trouble at all. His lips pressed to hers, and her heart stopped. They were out in the open, but no one else was here. Need was coursing through her body, and she found that she wanted...

She wanted this. She wanted to give him this. There was no one, not for miles. No one would know if they did this out here in the open.

Suddenly, she was gripped by the bitter regret that he wouldn’t be able to see this. Them. Beneath a wide, expansive sky.

“I don’t need to be able to see to know my way around your body.”

She shivered. And at the same time, she felt a pulse of jealousy, because of course she was going to benefit from all the women who had come before her. Of course she was.

“I want you,” she whispered. “I want this. Every time you took a woman into that bedroom I wondered. I wondered what you did with her. I wondered how good it felt.”

“It felt nothing like being with you,” he said. “I have been with more women than I can count. I won’t pretend. I won’t pretend that I have not... Indulged myself in this way. But it wasn’t the same.”

“Why?”

“You see me. And right now, in the darkness of my own mind, it is the most... The most bitter thing to say. But you saw something in me that nobody else ever did. And I felt like... When I touched you, was closer to seeing myself. And now, I can see nothing. But there’s you. You, and you make me feel like perhaps... I’m not floating and nothing. Like I’m not alone.”

“Matias,” she whispered, putting her hands on his lips. And then she leaned in and kissed him, consuming him, pushing her tongue deep inside of his mouth like she was a woman who knew full well what she was doing, rather than a woman who was being led by the desire that was clawing at her chest.

“Matias,” she whispered.

He wrapped his arms around her waist and lifted her up, bringing her to straddle his body. Her dress pushed up to the tops of her thighs, and the hard ridge of his arousal pressed firmly against that aching place there. Oh, how she wanted him. Deep inside of her.

She told him so. Whispered against his mouth in the crudest possible way. Felt him surge with pleasure beneath her.

She didn’t feel any shame. With him, she never had. With him, it was like she was a new version of herself. Like she was the woman she might have been. If she hadn’t always been running. Running and running with no hope of ever stopping. With no reward at the end. No goal but distance. Between herself and the sad girl she’d once been. He was right. But here and now in the bright warmth of the sun, with his hands on her body, she was something else entirely. A new creature, remade beneath the insistence of his touch. It was glorious.

She had felt that urge earlier. To close the distance between them. To really touch him. To not be so alone.

He must feel alone. With everything so dark around him. So she touched him. Everywhere. Moved her hands over his shoulders, down his back. She kissed him, his face, his neck. Until she found herself lying on her back on the blanket with him stripping his clothes off quickly. She moved her hands down that sculpted chest, his ridged stomach. To his proud, glorious masculinity. “You’re so beautiful,” she said.

“You are too.” He moved his hands over her curves. “It doesn’t matter that I cannot see. I know it. I feel it. You taste beautiful. The feel of your skin beneath my hands, is beautiful. And I would... I would trade heaven and earth to be able to see. The glory of your skin. The color of your nipples. That beautiful, slick pinkness between your legs. I would give my very soul. But the trouble is I no longer have my soul. But thankfully, I have you.”

He said it ragged, his voice rough. She believed every word.

At least, she believed that he did. That he felt soulless. Shrouded in darkness.

So she tried to make her kiss the light. As they came together, as he moved inside of her with quick, decisive strokes that carried her right to heaven, she tried to give him all that sunlight. To pour it into her touch, her kiss.

In every fractured word of pleasure.

She tried.

“Matias,” she whispered. “Matias please.”

He put his hand between her legs and slid his thumb over her most sensitive place. And she shattered. Screaming out his name all the way up to the sun, the sky, the clouds.

And when she came back down to earth, he was there with her, his forehead pressed to hers as he spilled himself inside of her.

“Dammit,” he said, his voice rough. “I forgot to use a condom.”

“It’s okay,” she said. “I’m on the pill. Just as a precaution. I know it’s not... Safe, necessarily. But...”

“I would never hurt you,” he said.

“I know.”