Page 48 of Modern Romance December 2025 5-8

“The way you’re dripping, I’m not sure this can be termed as punishment, Mimi.” One swipe of a long finger followed, from her clit to slit, and Mimi sobbed at the sharp avalanche of sensations pooling there. This time, his teeth dug into her shoulder. “Maybe I should stop.”

“Please don’t,” she said, grasping his wrist, making his palm fall flat against her mound.

“Then we’re agreed that there will be no discussion about that woman?”

Mimi knew, in the back recesses of her mind where a figment of rationale persisted, that he wasn’t answering her question. That he was seducing her into forgetting the small niggling doubt she had raised.

But, God, she was helpless against his voice, against him, against the skillful strokes of his fingers. Against loving him so completely that all she wanted was the moment to go on forever.

His fingers pulled away with a tap against her clit that had her angling her hips into his hand. “I didn’t hear your answer, Mimi.”

“No talking about her ever again,” Mimi whispered, falling back against him. Every cell in her, every inch of her being seemed to dwell at the point where he stroked her again. In clever, mindful circles that drove her out of her skin. So skilled already at what would push her to the edge.

Her climax shimmered out of reach, teasing her, taunting her. “I don’t know if I can, Renzo.”

“Yes,bella, you can. Your body sings for me, Mimi. Do you know what a turn-on that is? Do you know what it does to me when you don’t hide your desire for me? When you respond to my every touch like you were the most sensitive instrument ever crafted?”

With each searing word, he played her like a maestro. And Mimi followed him up the spiraling steps, her mind, her body, her soul all his to control.

His to protect.

His to…love. If only he wanted to.

Raking her fingers through his hair, she sobbed at the intrusive thought. Reality ruining her jagged climb toward completion. “More, Renzo. Please.”

He gave her everything she begged for and more. A heady cocktail of sweat and sex filled her nostrils. “Come for me,bella. Because then, I’m going to take you up on your offer and use your hands. Right on this bed. You’ll be too sore for the rest of the night,sì? So maybe I’ll paint your breasts with my—”

Mimi clutched his wrist, arched up and off him like a bowstring pulled taut, and shattered into a thousand fragments of nothingness. And the man she utterly adored held her through it, praising her, soothing her comedown, kissing her.

As if she were precious to him too. As if she were the woman he had chosen for himself and not by a cruel twist of fate.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Luca came homethe next day while Renzo was out of town.

He had been gone the next morning when she’d woken up in their bed. A scribbled note lay fluttering on the nightstand in his quite illegible scrawl.

Urgent, unavoidable issues at ski resort at the Alps. —R.

Nothing about when he would return or that he would miss her and their son.

Okay,yes, they weren’t teenagers trading secret love notes in the classroom, but still…her foolish heart ached for something more personal.

Especially after the night they had shared, after he had so thoroughly debauched her. He had been insatiable even at dawn, waking her up to ask her if her mouth was still on offer. Of course she had whispered yes. What followed had been both revelatory of her own sexual boundaries and how easily she could cross them for him, and how savage her love for him could be. That session had ended with his powerful body shaking, praising her for her “competence” yet again.

It had nearly crushed her to wake up alone in the large bed. To find her body sore and exhausted in the best way, but to be unable to reach over and kiss him. To be unable to see the man she had fallen in love with, in the bright, fresh light of the morning with this new, keen awareness.

Tears smarting the back of her eyes, she had gotten ready for her day. When she arrived at the clinic, the neonatal specialist had informed her that she could take Luca home immediately.

A cheerful Massimo and their mother had arrived within minutes of her calling.

Mimi knew she could have waited for Renzo to return. But coward that she was, she was trying to escape all the feelings her husband evoked in her by drowning herself in her son.

Or maybe it wasn’t cowardice but stubborn self-preservation. She needed to prove to herself that one passionate night with her husband hadn’t rendered her foolish or incapable of doing what needed to be done. That her mind, her very nature, hadn’t been rewritten by Renzo’s passion for her.

Passion, not love, she reminded herself.

They had been waiting for so long for Luca to come home. Her precious baby boy was the reason she and Renzo were even together.