Page 211 of Modern Romance December 2025 1-4

As the water beat down all around us, he lathered me with soap, seeming to check every part of my body as he did it. Particularly the back of me and the bottoms of my feet, and it occurred to me after a moment that he was making certain that our run to the garden hadn’t hurt me.

I didn’t know how to tell him that I would have preferred it if I was as scarred as he was. If everything we did together left a mark so that I could display it to the world.

He squeezed shampoo into his cupped hand, then massaged it into my hair.

I leaned back against him as he worked. “You watched me while I was sleeping, too.”

“I did.”

“Since the beginning, you’ve taken care with me. Do you know why?”

I didn’t think he was going to answer. He rinsed out my hair, focusing on his task with a certain determination, and yet when he was done, he turned me back to face him. He slicked the water back from my face.

“You make me want to protect you,” he told me, as if it was a dark confession. “I don’t know why. That is not something I know how to do.”

“You do know how,” I argued, with too much emotion all over me. “And you’re good at it.”

“Such an irony,” he murmured.

It was my turn to advance on him, and I did. I pushed him back against the tile wall and tilted my head up as I leaned in.

“Listen to me,” I demanded, fiercely. “A weapon is nothing more than a tool. You can decide how to use it. You can decide whether you draw blood or build something better. You don’t owe your soul to anyone, Jovi.”

I reached over and put my hand on this tattoo. I traced it with my fingers, then I leaned close and kissed it, too. “I can feel your heart beating. As long as I can, that means you’re alive. And you belong toyou, no matter what your uncle told you. No matter what he made you. You can choose to be anything you want.”

He stared at me, then he made a noise I couldn’t interpret. He reached over and slapped off the water, then he led me from the shower. He seemed almost brusque and impatient as he toweled me off, but then he led me back into the bedroom and sat on his bed, taking me down with him.

He hooked his palm on the back of my neck and pulled me close to kiss him as I straddled him.

After a while, deep and wild, he pulled his mouth away. His hands on my hips, he repositioned me over his cock and let me find the right fit. I looked down at his impossible male beauty as I lifted myself up, then found my seat again. Finding myself impaled anew each time.

Just like before, he let me do as I would until something shifted inside him, his grip on my hips changed, and he took over.

The truth was, as much as I liked playing, I liked it when he took charge of me even more.

Jovi taught me how to ride him, and I did. I arched into him and I surrendered myself into his grip, once again, until we touched the sky and shattered into pieces.

Together.

But when I woke up, he was gone.

CHAPTER TEN

LEAVINGRUX INhis bed, alone, was the hardest thing Jovi had ever done.

She had drifted off to sleep but he hadn’t dozed off with her. He’d stayed awake, sprawled out beside her, the soft weight of her curled up at his side.

The kind of thing that had always horrified him to imagine, which was why he had never allowed it. But it was Rux.

Everything was different.

She had called him a protector. She had claimed he was good at it. He had wanted to tell her she could not possibly have been more wrong, but that would have involved talking about the very deepest memories inside him that he did his best to keep at bay.

Though it was harder now. Something about Rux made him wonder if he’d ever truly banished his memories. Because now it seemed patently obvious that he hadn’t. That they’d been waiting here for him all along.

He remembered trying to block the closet where his sisters had hidden, imagining that he could save them. He remembered the screaming from somewhere else in the villa, and had spent most of his life choosing not to know who had been doing it. Yet he could still hear it so clearly. He could stillfeel itinside him, if he allowed it.

It had been his own uncle who had clubbed him across the head. There had been two shots, then Antonio had stared down at him, pitiless.