Page 42 of Modern Romance December 2025 5-8

So that he could refuse her invitation without offending her? Or because, for once in her life, Renzo needed someone else, and he couldn’t bear it? Did he need her as much as she needed him?

Finally, her elbows bumped into the glass table behind her. Holding his gaze, she let her head fall back all the way too.

Her front felt like it was on fire while the cool glass kissed her back. Renzo’s hand moved to her upper thighs, and she spread them like he told her to. “I never back down from a challenge.”

Everything in her protested at how she was spread out before him. And yet for Renzo, she wanted to do this.

The light from the chandelier was bright against her eyes, hiding his shadowed expression from her. Instead, she looked down over her own body. Her nipples stood out hard and throbbing, while her silk top pulled up, baring a silky swath of her midriff.

“Plant your feet on the armrests of the chair.”

Mimi bit back the automatic protest that rose to her lips. She would be completely open to his gaze like that. Something about his stance told her he was waiting for her to back down, to walk away from him in his dark mood. To play it safe and by the rules. Stay between the lines that Pia and her mother had drawn for her, like she’d always done all her life.

He wanted her to prove to him, and herself, that she could be what he wanted, or needed, at a time like this.

That little wildness she’d always caged inside her, afraid of failing measured against her mother and her stepsister, fluttered its wings against the bars. She planted her feet firmly and made sure to dig her toes into his hard thighs.

Renzo’s hands lingered on the seam of her shorts. Then in one swoop, he pulled them off.

Mimi didn’t want to think too much about how smooth his actions were. After the clunky, unsatisfactory attempts at sex, she wanted a partner who actually knew what to do.

She wanted Renzo’s confidence and his skill to undo her as his eyes had been promising from day one. But she was also afraid of the aftermath. Of how he would change her, because nothing in her life had prepared her for a man like him.

She barely processed the cool sensation of the glass against her buttocks when his fingers delved into her core. Sensation skewered her. His fingers were cold, the tips rough against her intimate folds. His movements, though…were gentle and slow, not lingering long enough at any one spot.

That small ache she had been feeling all evening, for days even, flared into an impossible flame, begging to be put out. Panting, already writhing, she bit her lower lip to keep any sound from escaping.

And those eyes of his…they held her in a challenge, in a thrall. Even as his wicked fingers learned every inch of her.

A soft mewl escaped her anyway when he dipped the tip of one finger into her slit. The mindless way he dipped and drew back tightened her belly muscles like they were taut springs. “Dio mio, all this for me,bella?”

“Yes,” she said in a near shout, every inch of her protesting when his fingers retreated. “It’s for you, Renzo. If you’re forgetting how we got here—” her voice was a ragged whisper “—it’s because I’ve thrown myself at you, okay? I’m horny for you. I sniff at your shirts like an addict. I rub your body wash over my body because I like the smell of you on my skin. I…sneak glances at you when you return from the gym downstairs, dripping in sweat, because your body turns me on. Everything about you, the way you look at me, the way you look after me, the way you…” Her breath hitched. “Everything turns me on, and I’ve never felt this way.”

He chuckled, but the sound was hollow. Even self-deprecating, while the hunger in his eyes dialed up to devouring. “You don’t have to sneak glances at me,bella. I’m all yours.”

“You say that and yet you…” Whatever else she had been about to say floated away as he bent his head and his tongue unnervingly found her clit, as if she’d given him a hand-drawn map.

Mimi jerked, her spine arching into his touch as if she were a puppet and he held her strings. Not that she cared one bit. He could turn her inside out if he touched her like this.

She barely processed the first lazy, languorous stroke when he changed it up to little circles. On and on, over and over, he tapped, licked and stroked at her clit while his fingers brushed in and out of her, going deeper every time.

The pleasure coiled, intense, breath-stealing, spiraling, and Mimi buried her hands in his hair, both terrified and excited.

When he stopped licking and instead sucked at her with those sinuous lips that she couldn’t get over kissing, with a scandalous, erotic sound, she went off.

Her orgasm crashed through her, shaking her from within, thrashing her around, making her shiver from head to toe. A moan slipped from her as she caught the sight of her husband’s arrogant head squeezed between her trembling thighs.

With a smacking kiss on her outer lips, Renzo looked up. Lips damp with her arousal, hair mussed by her hands, and a wicked smile bringing out all those little imperfections that she adored so much…her heart gave a jarring thud against her chest, and her channel fluttered.

The orgasm should have wiped her out, and yet she felt achingly empty. Voraciously hungry for more. He hadn’t fully penetrated her, and suddenly she was obsessed with knowing how he would feel inside her.

She tried to push up, but her body was mostly made of pudding right then.

Pulling back from the cradle of her thighs, Renzo adjusted her shorts and then gave her a hand. A sudden shyness engulfed her as she took it, her eyes level with his. “That was…” she started, then stopped. “Do you want that review now?”

“Not really,” he said, patting her cheek. She could smell her arousal on his fingers, and that did strange, wicked things to her insides. “The sounds you make when you come apart are mine and only mine,sì? That’s reward enough.”

She grasped his palm and brought those very fingers to her lips. She wanted to shock him like he had done her. But even more than that, she wanted to let her deepest, darkest desires out to play. What better man than Renzo DiCarlo, her husband by law, to indulge herself with?