Page 189 of Modern Romance December 2025 1-4

It seemed to pour out of his skin, as if his bones were making their own kind of music in the only way they knew how. It was everywhere, a wilder sound than the ringing in my ears or that slamming heartbeat that I was surprised hadn’t catapulted me off the chair.

I heard it, I felt it, but more than that, I recognized it.I knew it.It was there, deep inside me, as if it had always been there. As if I had been made long ago to echo this thing in him.

That it only took meeting him. And now we could sing it out together.

That this was our song.

And we were made to sing it, just like this.

I knew this with every last cell in my body.

I thought he did, too. I was sure of it.

There was that look all over his beautiful face, that startled, astonishedrecognitionthat I could feel all over me. And deep inside me, too.

Jovi surged forward and took my face in his hands, lifting me up out of the chair and straight on up to my toes as his mouth covered mine.

I had never gone anywhere so willingly.

And the last rational thought I had was that I had truly never felt anything at all before this moment. Not one stray emotion. Not the faintest sensation.

Becausethiswas everything.

It was every light, every color, every shade imaginable.

It was better than any song I’d ever heard or ever would.

And it was texture and need, swirling through me with a force that might have scared me a little if I wasn’t as wild for him as he was for me.

I couldfeelhow much he wanted me.

It was the way he held me. It was the way he moved closer, pressing himself against me so I could return the favor. It was the urgency I could feel in every part of his body, mirroring mine.

Besides all this, his mouth was hard and demanding, stunning andperfect, and there was nothing the slightest bit tentative about the way he kissed me.

He kissed me the way he moved, lyrical and dangerous, deadly in every regard.

I wanted to put my arms around his neck, but I couldn’t. The chains prevented it and there was something about that restriction that made me surge against him even more, with a wildfire intensifying within me. Deep between my legs, I wasalight.

Because this time, I could feel all those things I’d felt while face down on my bed, but it wasn’t the coverlet beneath me now. This time I was pressing my breasts against the wall of his chest. This time I was finally getting drunk on the taste of him, finally understanding how the world could spin away and disappear, leaving only the way he licked into me and taught me how to do the same to him.

And it seemed to me that I was made for nothing at all save this.

If he pulled back and told me so, I would have believed him.

As if he was the flint and I was the match, and I was rubbing myself against him, desperate for that spark.

Yet I couldn’t think critically about that, or how to achieve it, or anything at all but the way he kissed me.

It was dirty. It wasfantastic. He ate at my mouth, his hands moving my head where he wanted it, finding new angles, new fires, new ways to wreck us both. Everything was that dark, delirious heat, And nothing was neat or precise.

Nothing wascold.

We were scalding hot and burning brighter the longer it went on.

I wanted to kiss him forever.

I wanted to break free of the chains holding me and the ones I’d been locked in all my life and wrap myself around him. I wantedhimwith so much ferocity and certainty that I understood, at last, that I’d nevertrulywanted anything else in all my life.