Page 238 of Modern Romance November 2024 5-8

The sharp pain made her gasp. Her right leg reflexively kicked and she came within a breath of telling him to stop.

But he’d already stilled. Breathing heavily, he whispered, ‘Are you okay?’

Slowly expelling her own breath, she realised shewasokay. More than okay. The pain had already faded and as her body stretched to accommodate him and adjusted to the delicious newness of Marcello fully inside her, the magnitude of what was happening hit her.

Marcello was inside her.

Marcello was making love to her.

Cupping the back of his head, she lifted her face for his kiss. The heat of his mouth sent sensation dancing through her and, relaxing, she slid her hand to his shoulder, closed her eyes and trusted him to take her to paradise.

When he started to move, paradise itself moved closer.

This was beyond anything Marcello had ever felt before, ever experienced. Every nerve ending was alive with sensation, every vein threaded with electricity, every sense attuned to Victoria’s every touch and every breathless moan. The need to drive deeper and deeper into her tight, slick heat, to fuse himself in his entirety to her...

Her moans deepened.

‘Dio mio, Victoria, you’re incredible,’ he groaned before gritting his teeth in an effort to keep control of himself, and increased the tempo of his thrusts; the need to feel and experience her climax with her as strong as the increasing desperation for his own release.

Just as he felt he couldn’t hold on any more, the legs wrapped around his waist and the arms around his neck tightened and she spasmed into him and around him, crying out his name as she pulled him over the edge and into an abyss of the most intense pleasure of his life.

Victoria held Marcello tightly and tried to snatch air into her lungs. She could feel the beats of his heart thumping strongly. Hear his own struggles to find air.

He was still inside her. She wanted to keep him there and never let him go...

An impossible dream but with the bliss of her climax still tingling through her veins and skin, and his mouth hot in her hair, a dream it was impossible to deny herself from longing for.

The virus that had debilitated her had weakened her defences and given the space for feelings hidden even from herself to bloom.

They were feelings as impossible as her dream. Feelings that must never be spoken of. This blissful closeness they were sharing was a temporary, fleeting thing. In a minute or an hour or a day or a week or a month, Marcello would call time as he always did.

She’d made love to him knowing he would break her heart. He would have broken her heart even if she’d walked away as he’d urged her to do.

The darkness of the bedroom meant she didn’t have to hide her dejection when he finally lifted his head and pulled himself out of her.

‘I need to get rid of the condom.’

She sighed and ran her fingers lightly through his hair.

He kissed her gently and then climbed off the bed.

She missed his warmth before his feet even hit the floor.

Snuggling deep under the duvet, she tried to stop herself thinking about the day in her future when an entitled female voice called and demanded to be put straight through to him. Or, worse, the day he casually instructed her to keep an evening in his schedule free. That he’d been celibate since Jenna was little short of a miracle and a feat unlikely to be repeated. She had to be realistic about these things.

An orange light appeared from the bathroom. Phone guiding him, he strode to the bedroom door without looking at her and distantly said, ‘I’m going to find matches to light a candle.’

Irrationally stung, she snuggled deeper, hugged herself tightly and willed the tears not to fall.

Looked like she wouldn’t even have an hour to savour what they’d just shared.

He must be regretting it already, and it pained her to remember how many times he’d urged her to walk away before they took things too far.

She had no idea how long she lay there, torturing herself over a future she had no control of, when he padded back into the bedroom, still using his phone as a torch. In silence, he headed to the sideboard in the corner. The angle he placed his phone while unwrapping the candle illuminated him, and she took a crumb of comfort that he hadn’t bothered to cover his nakedness. Surely if he was planning to start a big ‘We really shouldn’t have done that and it must never happen again’ conversation, he would put some clothes on?

But then, who knew how Marcello extracted himself from a woman’s bed when he had no intention of sharing it with her again? Not Victoria. She’d never asked. Never wanted to know.

There was a click, and then a whoosh of blue and orange flame from what looked like a miniature flamethrower shot out from his hand and the wick of a candle caught light. Another click as he turned the miniature flamethrower off and then he turned, now illuminated by the flickering candle light, and walked towards her.

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