Page 113 of Modern Romance September 2026 Books 5-8

I let my head fall back against him.

Then he pushes one hand down the front of my underwear, finding me slick and ready for him. He teases me like that, with the city below, and I feel him getting hard against my rear.

I arch against him, a wordless plea for him to take me. Claim me.

He takes his hand away from my breast, and I hear him undoing his belt, the zipper on his pants.

Then he lifts me, impales me on his hard length as he bends me at the waist, my hands braced on the window.

He growls, thrusting inside me slow and deep.

He fucks me like I’m precious, and I never thought such a thing was possible.

He claims me, over and over again, and I cry out his name. A prayer, a song in my heart that feels as if I’ve known it all along.

We both come in a rush, and he pulls my limp body back against his, taking us down onto the couch. He brushes my hair back off my face, still inside of me as I sit there on his lap. “That was quite the welcome home,” he whispers against my ear.

I smile.

“Yes,” I say. “It was.”

Maybe someday we’ll make it to a bed more times than we don’t. I wonder if we’ll share one here. Or if we could only ever have that in our bubble.

Will I still have my own room? The idea of sharing a room with him makes me feel… I’m not quite ready for that.

Maybe sometimes we’ll share a bed.

“Do I have my own room?”

“Yes,” he says, like the question is quite silly.

“Good. I just… I don’t really know how to share.”

“Neither do I,” he says.

Neither of us really knows how to do anything. But I don’t want to say that. We don’t know how to be with another person. We don’t know how to parent. We don’t know what a functional family looks like. But I have the tiniest glimmer of a dream. This hope that it can happen.

“Did you ever think you’d be a father?” I ask.

He shifts, pulls me away from him, and tucks me against his body there on the couch. I curve into him, wearing just my underwear, completely comfortable with him mostly clothed.

I don’t know how to explain the way it makes me feel. Like I’m special. Like he’s Ciro. In that black, tailored-suit look that I’m so fond of on him.

“No,” he says. “I’ve been too focused on destroying my father’s empire.”

“And you didn’t think about what your life would look like when you were finished with that?”

“No. Because the mission had to be the most important thing, not anything that might happen after. I knew that I had to be willing to die to see it come to fruition. And I was. So I haven’t spent that much time thinking about what my life would look like in the years after.”

I can relate to that, oddly enough. I’ve always had this image of myself working hard, fighting to the next thing, leveling up, getting to the next position in life, but I’ve never paused to think about what I wanted to do when all of that was done. Or what the pinnacle of success would actually be for me.

It’s more of a feeling than a list of actual goals. Something to keep me moving, always moving, and never allowing myself to be content.

“We have to actually think about it now,” I say. “What it looks like for us to have a child. What that child’s life will look like.”

“We need to make you a doctor’s appointment.”

“Oh. Yes. I was going to a doctor regularly in Rome. I guess it was your father who arranged all of that.”