Page 31 of Modern Romance May 2026 Books 1-4
Dio, she was so damned ravishing. The ache to breach the distance between them…
He snapped his stare away from her. ‘I’m going to have a nightcap downstairs,’ he said shortly, unable to temper the roughness in his voice. ‘I’m sure you’ll be asleep when I come back up, so I’ll wish you a good night now. Sleep well,cuoricina.’
He’d barely uttered the last of his endearment before he’d closed the door behind him.
Marnie stared at the bedroom door in a form of shell shock at Domenico’s abrupt departure. He hadn’t even given her the usual cursory goodnight kiss.
The heart that had been beating with anticipation the whole drive home had now squeezed into a tight ball that was almost impossible to breathe through. His rejection…
Their whole marriage had been one long, barely subtle rejection. It had never wounded as deeply as this.
Feeling like she could be sick, she unzipped her dress and untied the gold halter neck. Her beautiful dress fell to her feet. She stepped out of it without looking down. She couldn’t bear to see it, not when she’d felt sick with the anticipation of Domenico stripping it from her. The desirable beauty she’d imagined herself to be in his eyes had been nothing but a fantasy.
When would she learn? He didn’t want her; he wanted their baby. All his affection and attention were just performance.
But it hadn’t felt like a performance. Not the look in his eyes or the way he’d held her on the dance floor. Nor the arousal she’d felt as a ridge against her belly. It had all felt so real. Felt like her long-ago dream was blossoming into life.
A flare of anger, not at Domenico but at herself, cut through her misery. Wasn’t this what she’d done before? Let herself be caught up in a fantasy that had no basis in reality?
But the way he’d caressed her naked back on the dance floor had felt real…
Stop it, she furiously admonished herself. Near tears with all the emotions fighting inside of her, she practically threw herself into the shower. If she could wash away his touch from her skin, she’d feel better, she was certain of it.
Her certainty wasn’t worth the paper it was written on.
Naked, her body clean, her face stripped of the makeup she’d adorned it with for the party, she gazed at her ordinary, plain reflection and blinked back more tears. Any beauty she’d possessed that evening had been illusory.
She’d been chosen by Domenico for her plainness and docility. He’d experienced hot lust and passion with the vibrant, beautiful Carmela and been burned for it. Marnie, the wallflower forgotten by her father and barely acknowledged by her mother, was the antithesis of the sexy Italian woman. He’d married her because she posed zero threat to his equilibrium.
Oh,whyhad he held her the way he had on the dance floor? Why had he looked at her the way he had the whole evening? She hadn’t imagined it, shehadn’t, so why would he put on an act like that when he didn’t need to?
Fearing her brain could explode from all her despairing thoughts, Marnie shrugged her arms into her robe and tied the sash, and then, barely conscious of what she was doing, walked out of the bathroom and through the bedroom and out of the door.
With Domenico’s admonition of her always bottling her unhappiness ringing in her ears, she padded down the stairs in search of him. By the time she found him, her heart was as ready to explode as her brain was.
He was in the main living room, his feet up, half-reclined on the reclining armchair, his shirt unbuttoned at the throat. An empty crystal glass in his hand, he was watching a game of football with the sound off. At least, she thought he was watching it. There was something distant in his expression that made her feel that whatever was happening on the screen wasn’t penetrating any deeper than the membrane of his eyes, and there was something about the distance of his expression that made her heart catch in her throat. When her presence in the far corner of the room finally caught his attention, his head jerked, and he blinked as if disbelieving of what his eyes were telling him. And then his face slipped into the same mask it had worn when he’d wished her a good night.
‘Is something wrong, Marnie?’ he asked steadily.
It took all her courage to force her feet across the floor.
By the time she reached him, her legs were shaking so hard that she perched herself on the sofa facing him.
Her heart thrashing, she managed only a shallow breath before finding the courage to say, ‘Why don’t you want to make love to me?’
Something spasmed over his gorgeous face, but then he moved his stare away from her. His voice, when he finally answered, remained steady. ‘Of course I want to make love to you.’
‘Do you?’
His jaw tightening, the knuckles of the fingers holding his glass whitening, he inclined his head.
Her heart wrenched, blood rushing to her head at the sudden certainty that he was lying. ‘Then why do you keep rejecting me?’
He hung his head and grabbed his skull with his free hand. ‘Marnie…’
She’d shot to her feet before her brain knew what she was doing, and fumbled with the sash of her robe. ‘Look at me, Dom. Look at me and tell me what’s so wrong with me that you can’t bring yourself to make love to me. Look at me and tell me why you want me to commit the rest of my life to you when you don’t wantme.’
Only because he could no longer deny Marnie anything did Domenico lift his stare to her.
