Page 226 of Modern Romance May 2026 Books 5-8
“I will hurt you. And you will hurt me in turn. Such is the nature of close relationships.”
“But we’re not—”
“We are lovers, Mirabella.” He lifted her hand and pressed a kiss into her palm. “I am not prepared to end things yet. Should we not find out where this goes?” His eyes grew heavy-lidded with invitation.
She melted. It wasn’t a conscious decision. A distant part of her was urging caution, but she wanted too many things. She wanted the freedom to slide her hand around to the back of his head and urge him to kiss her. She wanted the power of eliciting a groan and the pleasure in his arm sliding behind her back. She wanted the closeness and safety of being pulled up against his strength.
His mouth angled across hers, hot and careful and hungry. As though it had been three years since they’d kissed. A lifetime, even.
She wantedthis. The relief from waiting and yearning and feeling unwanted.
In a powerful move, he swung her into his arms.
“Yes?” he asked.
She caught her breath at how handsome he was. The angles in his face were tight with lust, but there was something close to tenderness in his eyes. That warm light went straight into her chest.
He will break my heart, she realized. He already had the power to hurt her and, the closer she allowed him to get, the more damage he could do. She didn’t even know how it felt to fall in love with someone. She wasn’t even falling. She wasleapinginto whatever this was, filled with a hope, but also fear.
Even so, she said, “Yes,” because she couldn’t make herself say anything else.
He carried her into the nearest bedroom and set her onto the mattress, then crawled over her and tucked her firmly beneath him. She met his mouth with her own, then speared her fingers into his hair and moaned with joy at being back where she belonged.
He groaned as though some unnamed need had been met within him, too. His knee crooked and he guided her leg to his waist. They rolled into each other, so she was sealed against him as they kissed. Long, unhurried kisses that made her wriggle to be closer and closer still.
“Cara, you’ll kill me,” he said against her cheek. “I’ve just remembered I don’t have a condom.”
“Oh.” She didn’t want to lose the moment. “Is there a health concern? I could take a pill later?”
“What are you trying to do to me?” he asked with a small shudder and a gleam of excitement in his eyes. “I’ll pull out,” he promised and set a suctioning kiss on her throat that made her nipples sting.
They kissed more passionately and he fell onto his back, pulling her atop him so he could run his hands over her, soothing the aches of misunderstanding and uncertainty, exploring as though discovering something precious that required care while igniting fires of passion and desire.
She sat up, straddling his thighs, gasping, “I’m too hot.” She peeled off her top, exposing her demi-cup bra.
“Pretty,” he growled and sat up to drag his own shirt over his head. He pulled her hips tighter into his lap while his busy mouth began tasting all the skin he could reach. He danced nuzzling caresses across her upper chest and down to the swells of her breasts, sending a sting into her nipples.
She reached back to release the bra’s clasp and he brushed it aside, hands tightening on her backside to bring her nipple closer to his mouth.
A small cry escaped her as he captured that tender part of her. She filtered her fingers through his hair, moaning with pleasure as he anointed both breasts, pulling forth exquisite, electric sensations that speared straight into her dampening loins.
“Rocco.” She tilted his head up so she could kiss him while she pressed deeper, seeking the hardness against the molten softness that ached with emptiness. With a need to remove any barrier between them: clothes, anger, other people who didn’t matter…
He tumbled her onto her back and the rest of their clothes were kicked away between more urgent kisses, more intimate caresses. He worked his way down her center and scorched her with lavish pleasure, driving her over the edge so easily, she nearly wept with her defeat.
“I wanted to feel you inside me when I did that,” she said breathlessly when he had kissed his way back to her mouth.
“I don’t know how long I’ll last. I’ve never been naked with anyone.” A lascivious noise left Rocco as he rubbed his tip against her slick folds, seeking her entrance, pressing.
She tilted her hips, inviting. Arching with a sense of exaltation as he slid deep, filling her with that new, glorious sensation of being so close to him, they were, in fact, one.
Rocco had never had sex without a condom. It was transcendental.
Maybe it was Mira herself, transfixing him with her hazed, half-lidded stare and shiny lips swollen from his kisses. Her soft curves beneath him provoked a desire to take great care while thrilling him in an atavistic way as he gathered her beneath him.Mine. All mine.
When he began to move, she responded with a moan and a sweet tension that ratcheted up the coil of arousal already tight within him.
For long minutes, he kept it slow, enjoying every millimeter of sensation as he withdrew and returned, utterly lost to the rhythm. To the way he felt each stroke with his whole body. With the way her breath caught and she dug her nails into his skin and lifted her hips to meet his.
