Page 101 of Modern Romance September 2026 Books 5-8

I roll my hips against him, feeling that hard cock pulsing against me. I want him. I want him more than I can remember ever wanting anything. More than cashmere, silk and an escape from Alaska. More than independence and survival.

I want to drown in him.

In the need exploding between us.

There’s nothing carefully considered about this. Nothing planned or reasonable or beneficial.

This is just hedonism. Something I’m altogether unfamiliar with. But something that I now want to immerse myself in.

I’m wearing nothing other than that robe, and he pulls it away from the top of my body quickly, exposing my breasts, the rounded bump of my belly.

He growls, leaning in and sucking one of my nipples deep in his mouth.

I gasp. It’s an extreme step forward in intimacy, but I’m ready for it. I want it.

He teases me, torments me, pinching my nipples and then licking them, saying things I don’t understand in Italian, but that make me ache even more, make me wetter between my thighs.

When he closes one large hand over my breast, I’m held captive by the way that it looks. All that ink. Rough and masculine, dangerous. Those hands that have snuffed out life, holding on to me like this. Giving me pleasure. Maybe that’s insanity, but I’ve accepted that that’s what I’ve been gripped with. Or maybe it’s something even more sinister. Maybe it’s my own tainted blood.

Oh well. Here I am, bathing in the toxicity.

He undoes the belt on the robe, pushes the rest of it away, then moves his hands down to my thighs, spreading them even wider, giving himself a good view of all of me.

He takes the same tattooed hands, presses both thumbs on either side of my clit, squeezing tight before stroking me.

I cry out, my head falling back as he flicks his wrist and pushes two fingers inside of me, still rubbing where I’m most sensitive with the pad of his thumb.

I’m whimpering, incoherent, almost sobbing as he pumps his fingers inside of me, as he pushes me closer and closer to the edge.

I might know how to give myself an orgasm, but getting one from another person is an experience all on its own, and one that I never realized would be quite so different. I don’t have control. He’s not following my orders. Not listening to my urging. I’m begging for him to give it to me now, but he won’t. He’s teasing me. Tormenting me. Drawing out the pleasure, and the desperate need for release.

I’m suspended between two very definitive desires. The first to come. I need it. Want it so badly that I’m shaking with it. But the second is to have this go on forever.

It’s like he can read my mind, and he effortlessly chooses to torment me rather than give me what I want.

Because that’s just who he is.

I look at his face, press my fingertips to his cheeks, then trace a line down his inked neck, along the sinewy body of a serpent that winds its way down his throat.

“Beautiful,” he growls, and I realize that he’s watching as he pumps his fingers in and out of my body. I grab hold of his shoulders, digging my fingernails into his skin.

Then I reach for his belt. I undo it, and reach my hands inside his pants, drawing his thick member out. My breath hisses through my teeth.

He’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

He grips my hips, drawing me upward, and I realize that there is going to be no more foreplay.

I almost tell him. I almost tell him that I haven’t done this before, but then the blunt head of him is pressing against the slick entrance to my body, and what’s the point?

It’s happening. Whether he’s the first or the hundredth. And I want it.

He brings me down onto him, impaling me, and I cry out, the mix of pain and pleasure radiating through me.

I’ve never done this before, and the invasion is shocking. All-consuming. Everything I’ve ever wanted.

That’s the thing that actually frightens me. Not the pain. But the way that I feel immensely gratified by this. By him being so deep inside of me that I can feel him pulsing there.

His movements are rough and certain and he thrusts up into me as he brings me down onto him, stroke after stroke, driving the need between us higher and higher.