Page 180 of Modern Romance December 2025 1-4

Nor was the way that he took his time sucking on each and every one of the fingertips he’d hurt.

Until I was…

I didn’t know what I was. I didn’t know what he was doing.

But it was more than just a wave. It was like a storm. It was terrible.

It was something very muchnot terribleat all. It was heat and suction and the wetness of his mouth, and I was remembering what his mouth looked like, that sensual impossibility—

My legs were pressed together, and I was already overstimulated, and my breasts were pressed down into the bed so I could feel my nipples drag against the mattress with every breath I took.

And I could feel a different storm beginning, deep between my legs, rolling and surging and growing andalmost—

Once more with thealmost—

But he pulled me up again then. He stood me beside the bed and when he looked down at my face, I had the impression that he was laughing.

Though of course he made no sound.

I couldn’t bear to look at him with all the sensation careening around inside me, so I looked over at the bed instead. Something in me hitched, because I could see the blood everywhere. Not a lot, but enough to terrify anyone who came inside, I’d think. And the bed was a mess, the covers strewn all about and the pillow ripped and shredded, with feathers everywhere. Almost as if—

“You see it now,” he said, much too close to my ear. “My vision. A present for your father from Il Serpente.”

He didn’t wait for me to react. Or maybe I had finally frozen in fear the way a normal person would have a long time ago—though there was not one part of me that thought this wasfear, only that it should be.

The bed could look however it looked. I was the one who knew what had and hadn’t happened there. I also knew that no one in this house would mourn me or what they would imagine had occurred here when they saw it.

The only thing my father would mourn was his bargaining power.

Somehow, that soothed me. Somehow, it made me more deeply appreciative of Jovi’sartistry, such as it was.

He lifted me up then and tossed me over his shoulder as if, once again, I weighed no more than a single down feather.

And that left me all alone with the thoughts in my head as his shoulder pressed into my soft belly.

I could hold on to nothing as he moved. I had nothing to do but feel the faint ache in my fingertips, far outweighed by the sensation and memory of his mouth on each and every one of them. I had nothing but the memories of my reaction to his touch, the sure knowledge that he knew exactly what he had done to me.

So I did the only thing I could.

I shut my eyes and told myself the thing I always did.

This is my choice. This is what I want. I am getting exactly what I deserve.

And then he opened the door to my bedroom and stepped through it, into whenever waited for us outside.

Directly into the fate I’dchosen, so whatever happened, it was mine.

CHAPTER FOUR

JOVI MOVED QUICKLYand quietly, as always. The weight on his shoulder should have been unremarkable to him, and he told himself that was exactly what it was, because that was what it should have been.

But so far it appeared that nothing about this interaction with the disconcerting Rux Ardelean wasunremarkable.

It took him the whole way down the isolated hallway of her father’s little fortress, where her bedchamber sat apart from the rest of the house—a lot like her role in her family was similar to his role in his, an observation that he could not understand why he was making, as if he wished for some kind ofconnection—to realize why the sensations in him were so unusual.

It was a distraction.Shewas a distraction.

When Jovi had never been distracted, by anything, ever.