Page 197 of Modern Romance December 2025 1-4

He knew a whole lot of things about the two of them, then. He could feel it everywhere. He could feel that pain in his chest shift into something else, something more like anticipation. He could feel that melting inside him, but it seemed to melt directly into her as she skimmed her hand over her belly, and found her way between her legs.

And then she tipped her head back, closed her eyes, and began to rock her hips against her own fingers.

As Rux worked, he brushed her hair back and put his mouth on her shoulder, her neck. He reached down and made her shiver with his hands on her breasts, then licked his way across the goose bumps that created.

He pressed his thick, hard cock into the small of her back so she could feel how hungry he was for her.

When she started to get faster, clumsier, and her breath too jagged, he found his way to her mouth and licked his way inside once more.

So that this time, when she began to shudder and move and moan, he swallowed it all down.

All that truth and temptation.

All she had to give.

She was sobbing a little as she rode it out. Even when it was only aftershocks, he wanted to taste that, too, like it would make this odd, bone-deep recognition he felt when it came to her dissipate.

Or that was what he told himself he wanted, anyway.

He turned her over, so she was face down on the bed, all flushed cheeks and her skin faintly damp from all the work she’d done.

“What a good girl you are,” he told her, his voice dark and approving. “So obedient.”

“They said that obedient women will never rule the world,” she told him, but she didn’t open her eyes. She did smile, however. “But I don’t think the people who say that have any idea how good obeying you can feel.”

Something deep inside Jovi hitched, then shuddered at that. As if, somehow, she’d managed to reach a part of him, a piece of him, he wasn’t sure he could identify himself.

He did not want to look at that too closely when he wasn’t sure he could toleratefeelingit, so he made it about sex instead. He made it about understanding her in the only way he could, which was by exploring every square centimeter of that lush body of hers.

He started on her back side, and he took his time. There was the exquisite perfection of her shoulder blades. There was a deeply fascinating freckle in the small of her back. Her ass was beautifully rounded and heart-shaped from behind, and he already knew how he would fit his hands around her nipped-in waist and slam himself deep inside her. He could already feel how good it would be. It already felt like fate.

But not yet.

Jovi explored the tender underside of each of her ass cheeks, grazing both that dark furrow behind and the low pout of the softest, sweetest part of her. But he didn’t pause there, no matter how it made her moan.

He kept going, down one leg all the way to her toes and then up again to do the same thing on her other leg.

Only to turn her over and start the whole thing over again on the front side of her marvelous body.

This time, he found every sweet little bit of magic she possessed. Narrow shoulders but heavy breasts, that slender waist that only made the flare of her hips more dramatic. Her thighs had gripped him tight and sure, and he liked that. She wasn’t frail. She wasn’t breakable.

That was a good thing, given the great many things he intended to do to her.

But first, there was this.

One last exercise of his control, one last lesson for her to learn about surrender.

Before they slept, anyway. He moved all over her, up and down and anywhere else that took his fancy, avoiding that plush, soft place between her legs.

And only when she was pressing her palms into her eyes, half laughing and half sobbing as she begged him and pleaded with him and made him growl in response, did he finally move to settle himself between her legs.

He pushed her thighs apart so he could drape her legs over his shoulders. He settled in, grabbing that round ass of hers in his hands, before he let himself go.

And then Jovi ate her alive.

And even when she came, screaming out his name and making all of that melting heat and terrible beating of his heart seem to burn too bright, Jovi kept his cock to himself. He told himself that he had all of this—her and, more concerning,himself—completely under control.

Completely and totally under his fucking control, even if it killed him.