Page 183 of Modern Romance May 2026 Books 1-4
The light in his eyes, like a fire, tells me that I’m right. He wants this. In a way that renders him powerless.
With a shaking breath, I roll my shoulders back, thrusting my breasts up, letting the robe fall down just slightly. Then I part my thighs before I can talk myself out of it. His gaze lowers, the expression on his face one of hunger.
He unbuckles his belt, undoes his pants and frees himself, standing stiff and tall against his stomach. He curves his hand around his manhood, and begins to stroke himself. I lick my lips, and I reach out, wrapping my own hand around him. His breath hisses through his teeth, and he claps his hand over mine.
“Careful,” he growls.
I stroke him, from base to tip, reveling in the feel of him. And how it makes me feel to touch him like this. Powerful and like the sort of goddess I have never fancied myself to be.
I’ve never thought about the foods that I liked. I’ve never thought about feeling beautiful. I’ve never thought about desire.
And now I feel like I’m satiating myself on it. Like I’m a glutton for these things that feel so good. These things that I’ve ignored entirely out of fear that I could never really have them.
It’s a frightening, out-of-control feeling, but at least, holding him in my hand like this, I know that he is out of control too.
He reaches around me, lifts me up out of my chair and draws me onto his lap, kissing me, lowering his head and taking one of my breasts into his mouth. He sucks my nipple in deep, until the pleasure is so great that I have to cry out.
I feel my power slipping away, but it’s such a glorious surrender. He turns me into this creature of overwhelming need, and I welcome it. All the resistance from a moment before is gone. He lifts his hand, pinches my nipple hard, the pleasure-pain combination brutal and glorious.
In the candlelight, he is fearsome. I put my hand on his bare chest, run my fingers down the dips and hollows on his body. His muscles. His scars. It is a privilege to be so close to a man like him. One who is so terrifying to everyone else. But when he came apart before, he trembled. Inside of me.
I cup his face, and I kiss him. On the smooth side of his face, and then I move to kiss his scars. He groans beneath my mouth. I kiss down his neck, learning the texture of those scars. He moves his hands down my back, down to my hips, lifts me up and positions me over his cock, lowering me slowly, so that I can take him inch by inch, into my tender body. I’m sore, but it’s more than worth it. He grips the back of my head, fingers pushed through my hair, and he closes his fist as he seats me on him completely, tugging hard as he thrusts up inside me.
And then I’m lost. In the primal nature of it. The rhythm of it.
The glow of the candles, the feel of him, the sounds that he makes. The sounds that I make. Whatever I was before, whoever I was before, maybe I’m simply not her now. I told him that a man didn’t have the power to change a woman with sex. But my head is swimming, and I think that I might’ve been wrong about everything.
Because how has he done this to me? How has he taken me—sensible, cerebral—and turned me into a creature made entirely of my own desire?
I would beg him for anything. There’s not a single thing he could ask of me, demand of my body, that I would find distasteful, not in this moment. Everything feels more than reasonable. It feels desirable. It feels wonderful. When he leans in and kisses me, then bites my neck, and soothes the sting away with his tongue, licking me, I only want more. He cups my face, his forehead pressed against mine as he thrusts up within me, growling each and every time. His fingers digging into me as he roars his completion, sending me over the edge into my own pleasure spiral. We hold each other. Breathing hard. I forgot that we were in the dining room. I forgot that anyone could walk in.
I forgot everything. Even my own name.
But I didn’t forget his.
“Come,” he says. “Let us go to bed, my queen.”
He takes me naked from the room, and if there were any staff lingering, they dissipate. As though they sense that the king needs privacy. I find myself deeply unconcerned with the logistics of it. Especially when he takes me back to his room, lays me down in the center of the bed and tucks us both beneath the covers. When he strokes my face and kisses me lightly on the forehead as I begin to lose consciousness.
King Lucian, the Sea Serpent of the Mediterranean, the dragon in the cave, is my husband now.
I’m his prisoner.
I’m his wife.
Both of those things are true. Both of them are heavy.
But even holding them there at the center of my chest, I fall asleep in his arms.
Chapter Ten
I spend dayswithout a single thought in my head. It’s strange, uncomfortable, and at the same time, it’s like having a vacation from myself and the burdens that I’ve carried my entire life.
I’m not thinking about the future. I’m not thinking about what’s right or wrong or good for me. What might be bad for me. I’m just in a state of surrender.
To his pleasure. To him.
I’ve spent my life learning. But I’ve never learned another human being. I’m learning Lucian. His moods, his expressions. The shift of every muscle, the particular way he sounds when he feels pleasure. At the same time, I’m learning something about myself.
