Page 237 of Modern Romance January 2025 5-8

He pulled down her lacy knickers and she lost a shoe as he pushed them past her ankles...

‘Oh, Susie...’ he said, in that low, seductive voice, and he lowered his lips to the soft flesh of her stomach.

And when he spoke her name like that she had no choice but to close her eyes...to feel adored and wanted, even if it could not last.

‘What else did you learn to say?’ he asked with desire in his eyes, as if goading her to tell him how she really felt.

‘I can’t remember,’ Susie said, terrified that she might say something she’d later regret.

‘What else?’ he persisted, and his hot mouth moved down her stomach.

He stroked her, his eyes moving down, and as he found her tenderest spot she felt tight inside, tight with desire as his fingers slipped inside her. She bit down on her bottom lip as he explored her—and then he looked up and met her eyes.

‘Settemila baci per te,’Dante said. ‘Did you learn that?’

‘No...’ Although she sort of understood what he’d said. But she didn’t really have the capacity to play the game right now, so she shook her head.

‘It means,’ Dante told her, ‘seven thousand kisses to you.’

He lowered his head and delivered several of them.

How did he make this so easy?

He simply did. Because she parted so easily, and as his soft mouth caressed her, as he explored her so exquisitely, her homework continued. But it was in breathless attempts at words rather than practice phrases.

‘Mi piace...it’s nice,’ she told him.‘Mi piace...’she said again. Only her voice was more urgent now, and it told him it was specifically there that he pleased her. Then she told him what he had once said to her, and it came from a very natural place.‘Non ti fermare!’

Don’t stop!

He was so intense, so specific with his mouth, and he did not stop. Even as her hips lifted his mouth chased them. And then she gave up on their game, because she did not trust the words that might slip out as he took her to bliss.

How many kisses it took, she lost count. She felt as if she were floating, almost aching for him to take her, to make love to her, to fill her. And yet she never wanted it to end. Her hands were knotted in his thick black hair, and his delivery so honed she fought not to push him away, because she wanted it so.

It didn’t take seven thousand kisses.

She climaxed under his skilful mouth and sobbed out words in a language she didn’t know as she simply gave in...

She was trying to breathe, hoping she hadn’t told him she loved him, but Dante wasn’t listening anyway.

Unbelted and unzipped, he took her.

‘There,’ he told her, and she was on fire, clinging to the sheets.

He was holding her hips. And she was spent, yes, but still being ravished, watching him through her half-closed eyes and adoring him.

Because she did adore him.

He climaxed with a hollow shout, and it felt as if the air he breathed out stroked her inside, and she found there was a little left to give as she orgasmed again to the last thrusts of him.

‘I can’t breathe...’ she told him.

‘You are,’ he said.

And he turned her around on the bed and undid her gown. And she lay there, watching him undress. Then he dealt with the rest of her clothes, and with a few deft movements from Dante...

She was back in his bed.

CHAPTER ELEVEN