Page 48 of Modern Romance March 2025 (5-8)

Adrianofedthelast piece of the cake to Nyra. A crumb danced on her lower lip, inviting him. Leaning down, he licked it off.

“It tastes even better on your lips,cara.”

Gripping his jaw to hold him, the minx caught his lips in a kiss that sent dizzying heat through every limb.

It was this very passion, this naked, artless hunger of hers, that had once lured him in and then bound her to him forever. Now it was underscored by something else, the rough tug of her teeth over his lower lip tinged with raw desperation.

The taste of which he had known all evening. And his harsh words to his mother—while there was no resolution and would never be—had purged something from deep inside him. Just like Nyra said she was trying to do. It made him feel lighter, to see this woman and everything she brought to his life with fresh appreciation.

With a harsh groan, he swept his tongue through her mouth, pulling her closer. All evening, he’d watch her flit from man to man like a colorful butterfly, and it had scraped him raw to see her bestow her smiles and wit on them.

And now to know that she was his in this abandon—only his, all her secrets, all her desires—soothed him.

She was soft and warm in his hands, and the rough slide of her curves against his body was both a thrill and a torment.

Lust beat at him in relentless waves, but something else, something softer pulsed beneath it.

A long overdue picture was emerging in his head of Nyra as a girl, as part of a twin bond, as a teenager, a survivor and the woman he knew now. Of how the world had let her down and he had been part of that very world too.

Of how she was finding her way to herself through this marriage, through their own strife and now through impending motherhood.

Of how bravely she had taken on the very same people at the party this evening who had, and would, mock and judge her behind her back for months to come.

All to carve a place in his world for herself.

The tightness in his chest, it seemed, was tenderness. Even affection.

He’d felt something similar for Fabi, Bruno, even Federico, but this was different in a way he couldn’t explain to himself. Neither was it something he’d ever wanted to express. At least until now.

Maybe because he’d spent the first half of his life craving it from his parents, and the other half teaching himself to not need it.

Until he’d met the now-trembling woman in his arms in Vegas, he’d written off passion and marriage, and this…sense of belonging to something bigger than him.

So much for his best-laid plans and his arrogance, believing that life would pan out exactly as he’d planned. Now he had a wife who could turn him upside down with one small act, and he was about to be the father of two innocents.

Every facet of himself that Nyra unlocked was as much a surprise as she continued to be herself.

And he still didn’t trust this…expansiveness he felt in his gut. Didn’t dare let it rule him. Because there were no equations he could calculate, no rules he could follow to minimize the risk, to even the odds.

No way for him to know when he might be left alone in the darkness again. It was all so out of his control and he wasn’t sure if he would ever give himself over to it completely. To her completely.

But he would let nothing touch it, ever again.

“Don’t move,” he whispered into the soft skin at the arch of her neck.

“If you leave me here for too long,” she said, reluctantly releasing him, “I might fall asleep standing.”

He studied her with a growing frown. Dark shadows cradled her overly bright eyes, but he was loath to let the evening end. He wanted to devour her. Leave her as knocked out as she’d made him feel with that cake. “Do you want to go to bed?”

“I know it’syourbirthday but I was hoping to get a present out of it too,” she said cheekily.

Lust beat a tattoo through his body. “And what is it that you want?”

“There are only two things I want anymore. Food and sex. Either I’m hungry or I’m horny. While I have several sources for the first, the second—”

He pressed his finger to her lip, knowing the soft kitten was flexing her claws with him. “Which one do you want now?”

She licked his finger pad before sucking it into her mouth. His erection turned so painful that he cursed.

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