Page 28 of Modern Romance Collection February 2025, 1-4

That it could burn her into ash if she wasn’t careful.

“You are the undoing of man,” he rasped out.

But before she could respond to that, or simply revel in it, his mouth crashed down upon hers.

And it was even better than before.

It was a wild, impossible glory and everything in her spun out, greedily.

He kissed her and he kissed her, his hands rising to frame her face. He detangled her hair as he raked his fingers through it, kissing her more. His hands moved down her back, finding the span of her bottom and then drifting to her hips, as if noting the way they’d widened.

He shifted her around so that her back was to him and took himself on a tour down her neck, holding the great, round weight of their baby with one big hand.

Over and over again, he kissed her.

Alceu set her away from him and she looked at him quickly, expecting that he would stop this—but he didn’t. He shrugged out of his shirt. He kicked off his trousers. Then he came to her, the look on his face so intense that she backed up of her own accord, until she brushed up against the bed. He kept coming. She sat down.

And this time, he did not offer her a ring. This time, he urged her to lie back.

When she did he spread her legs apart, draped them over his shoulders, then bent to lick his way into her heat.

Dioni shattered immediately.

It was an immediate implosion that had her throwing out her arms, arching her back, and then—worse still, orbetter—she could feel the way he laughed against her flesh.

And he was still laughing as he shifted to grip her bottom as he held her before him like a feast.

Then he took his time, slow and deliberate, and tore her apart.

One extraordinary lick at a time.

And after she had shattered into so many pieces that she wasn’t certain how she was meant to carry on, he began to move his way up the length of her body, lavishing attention on every centimeter he found.

Any stray thought she might have had about the comparisons he could make between her body six months ago and now were swept away in the obvious enjoyment he took in her as he went. She had no doubt at all that he found her enchanting. Engrossing.

And in case she thought to wonder, he kept murmuring it as he went.

“I have never seen a woman more beautiful,” he muttered at one breast, tasting it and holding it. “Chi si duci.You are too sweet,” he told her when he found his way to the other, and made her moan.

He shifted his weight to one side so he could hold her there, laid out on the bed with him. Then he kissed her, his naked skin against hers.

Dioni had never felt anything so divine.

She wanted to revel in every part of it. The hair on his chest that made his skin rougher than hers, so that all she wanted to do was bury her face in it. And maybe rub herself all over him, everywhere. The blazing heat of him. The way his skin looked next to hers, the muscles in his forearm next to the smoothness of hers.

But he was kissing her, turning her face to his and plunging his tongue deep enough that she could taste herself in his mouth.

It made her shiver all over again.

And then he rolled them over, pulling her on top of him so she could settle there astride him the way she had once before in the pouring rain.

But everything was different now.

She straddled his hips and for a moment, all thoughts of fertility goddesses fled. Because she felt so exposed, as he was staring up at all the parts of her that had gotten so rounded, so heavy—

But he sighed.“Zuccareddu,”he murmured.“Bellissima.”

Then he reached between them and at last—at last—she felt the thick, wide head of the hardest part of him deep in her sensitive folds.

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