She kissed him when he got the job done, a reward. In silence they gazed at each other’s bodies, punctuated by eye contact, smiles. “Jazz, I tried to find out if Syncope plays out during the sex act.”
She laughed. “Well, you are thorough, aren’t you?”
After a gentle kiss, he said, “It’s my job.”
“Sounds like premeditation to me.”
He smiled. “I’ve wanted to make love to you since the first day we met.” When he traced his fingers around her breast, he said, “Jesus, that halter top.”
A memory of her thrill at his interest in her body that day sent off a shiver of need. She put a hand on his chest and inched it slowly down, down, down, stopping to anchor her fingers in his pubic hair before she looked into his eyes. “I faint when I’m startled or frightened, Rome.” Drawing her finger up his shaft, smiling when she felt the vibration of need there, so much like the tension zinging throughout her body, she said, “There is definitely nothing frightening about this. But I’m seriously beginning to think that deprivation might make me faint.”
Roman laughed out loud as he inched his fingers up her thigh. “We won’t let that happen, Jazz.”
“Oh, good.” She moved closer to him, their noses inches apart. “I probably look like the Mrs. of Mr. and Mrs. Smith.”
“Hmm?”
“You know, the movie about the married agents who are supposed to kill each other. They made up after they brawled.”
Eyebrows furrowed, he said, “I’d never hurt—”
With her eyes averted from his, she kissed the rest of his words away. Now wasn’t the time to talk about who might be hurting who. Capturing his hand between her thighs, she said, “Turmoil is titillating, Rome. I’m just saying we’re going to have great sex.”
Opening her legs to him, and inching her torso closer to his brought his hand to her center and the head of his shaft to her abdomen. She gasped.
They kissed desperately, all lips and teeth and tongues, testing, tasting and taunting each other while the heat from their bodies enveloped them.
Roman pulled his hand from between her legs. “No,” she said, grief stricken.
“I’ll be back,” he said grinning. “But I need two hands for my next move.” Encircling her breasts he thumbed her nipples. “I’ve waited a lifetime to do this. You have the most beautiful body, Jazz.”
She closed her eyes, and while he attended to her breasts, she caressed the smooth skin under his arm all the way to his butt and up his back, amazed at the contrast of muscle and softness, hard and smooth, strong but vulnerable.
Now, with eyes open, she gazed into his, catching a furrowing of his brow. “What, Roman?”
“Um. I…uh…would you mind if we condensed our lovemaking this first time around?”
She smiled and trailed her hand down his chest to his pubic hair. “Ready, are we?”
He drew in a ragged breath at the same time he tested her wetness. “You too, baby?”
“Ah. Almost. Close.” She arched toward his hand, as he performed magic with his fingers. In seconds she came, her world pleasantly shattered, but consumed by a desperation to have him inside her.
“Please,” she begged, opening her legs to him. He rose to his knees, straddled her torso and bent to kiss her on the lips then on each breast.
“You are perfect,” he said as he eased into her. “We are perfect.”
She gasped when he filled her, a sweet pain, a yearning satisfied. “We are. You are.” She smiled. “My Roman holiday.”
He winced and growled. “It might be a short vacation, especially if you keep moving.”
Laughing, she arched toward him and said, “You promised a longer one later.”
“I did.” He kissed her hard, said, “Tighten your seatbelt, Jazz,” and took her to the moon.
****
He watched her sleep, a gift he’d grabbed secretly nights before, but one he could indulge in openly now. Up close and unmoving she was a still life he wanted to memorize and memorialize. The tiny smallpox scar above her right eye, full lips, perfectly oval face, eyebrows darker than her bright blond hair, arched even in repose. Her breasts fascinated him, the darkness of her nipples set against creamy skin…
An eye opened. “I hear loud thoughts.”
“I like to observe you at rest, Jazz. You’re prettier every time I look at you. Seriously.”
She grinned. “Are you angling for a longer vacation already?”
With a laugh, he said, “I’m that obvious, huh?”
“On the first day I met you, I saw lust in your eyes. I was pretty sure it was bloodlust…for the story, but now I’m thinking a portion of it is mine. About me.”
“Day one. Can’t explain it logically. You had me at the halter.” He caressed the swell of her breasts.
“Um.”
“I should finish writing the speech, Jazz. It’s two a.m. But I don’t want to go. To leave you.”
She traced her fingers along his hairline and over his eyebrows.
“Wouldn’t mind a little help with the speech.”
She cocked an eyebrow, surprised. “Really? I thought you preferred to work alone at this stage of your writing.”
With a wag of his head, he said, “Look how well that strategy’s worked for me.” Roman pulled the covers over them. “Want to hear my dilemma?”
She propped her head up, elbow on her pillow. “Lay it on me.”
“Actually, I have a little bit of history for you followed by my dilemmas. History first.”
She nodded.
“I’ve thought a lot about what I said to you last night in my room, after I threw the tantrum in front of you and my family. The thing about going it alone, like I’ve always done.”
“Yes.”
“When I was a kid in school, I was a very poor speller.”
Jan leaned forward.
“For some reason, maybe because so many of my teachers liked spelling bees and spelling tests and whatnot, I stood out as the worst speller in class. All the way through ninth grade, my friends kidded me and my enemies bullied me about my spelling. And because those tests make up a big part of a kid’s grades, I didn’t do that well in school.” At the memory of the humiliation and whittled-away self-esteem, Roman felt his face heat with embarrassment. He cleared his throat. “I thought I was the dumbest kid on the West Coast.”
When Jan began to say something, Roman held up his hand. He wasn’t looking for pity. “A good ending is coming. An English teacher I liked in ninth grade took me aside one day and asked me what kind of career I wanted for myself. When I told her of my dream to be a writer, thank God she didn’t laugh. Instead, she said, “Roman, your spelling mistakes are not a sign of lack of intelligence. You happen to be a phonetic speller. You apply logic to spelling when so many English words defy rules.”
Jan nodded. “I like this teacher.”
“She saved my life, Jazz. My self-esteem, my hopes and dreams for the future, all of it.”
“She taught you how to use spell-check?”
Roman laughed. “This was way before spell-check. No, she was tough on me. She said if I wanted to be a writer, I’d have to look up every other word and memorize how words were spelled. So I did. And yes, spell-check is my friend these days, too.”
“And this relates to…?”
“I learned back then that I’m on my own. If I have a problem, I have to solve it myself, ignoring all the critics who relish taking me down by calling me incompetent.”
“So that’s why you refused help from Sidney and others?”
“Partly. Add a dash of independence, arrogance, and self-righteousness.”
Jan put her hand on his chest. “And why your grandfather didn’t tell you about paying your way to college. Which brings us to this second look at Sidney’s e-mails.”
“Last night I read over every single e-mail Sid sent me in the last ten years.”
“Okay,” she said, seeming to dismiss the importance
of his action.
“No, this is big. I never read his e-mails carefully before tonight.”
“Really? You skimmed them?”
“Exactly.” He waved his hand. “Anyway, after wading through each e-mail, I still can’t figure out how my grandfather influenced my work, if he did at all. He’d lambaste me about my documentaries after he’d seen them on TV. I never rewrote a script once he’d criticized it.”
Eyebrows knit, Jan said. “Sounds like you did read the e-mails as they came in.”
Roman lowered his eyes. “I skimmed them, only to get the gist, make sure Bella was fine, their house hadn’t burned down. You know.”
“Hard not to read parts of them, at least. But you saved and re-read all of them last night?”
“Right.”
“Yet you’d still say Sidney didn’t influence your work. In fact, you’re convinced he liked nothing about your documentaries.”
“Correct.”
She squinted at him. “He continued to critique your scripts?”
Roman considered the timing of his grandfather’s letters and e-mails. “If anything, his diatribes increased in number and length over the years.”
“Proving he cared more.”
“Or presumed my work was tanking.”
Jan nodded, then leaned over to kiss him on the nose. “Let’s stay positive, okay?”
“I’ll try,” he said, his mind drifting to the feel of the skin inside her thigh.
She tapped his chest. “Given his ginned up criticism, did you write more or less?”
“More.”
“Proving he pushed you instead of discouraged you. Were your subjects more or less challenging?”
He thought for a moment. Roman had picked Rumsfeld and Cheney, even though his producer had warned him there was nothing new to report on the men. Roman had dug deeper into the two men’s lives than any other writer, surprising himself, the producer, and the viewers. So much so that he’d won an Emmy for one of them.
“More challenging,” he admitted.
“I’m sure Sidney saw that.”
Giving her the eyebrow, Roman said, “He must have sent ten pages of criticism on the Rumsfeld and Cheney documentaries. Maddest he’s ever been about my work.”
Jan traced her fingernail around his nipple. “Roman?”
“Huh,” he said, forgetting for a moment what they were talking about. “Oh, yeah. Spitting mad, Sid was.” He pushed the sheet back, thinking he had to examine her belly button. Screw Sidney’s harangues.
She held his chin in her hand. “Think hard, Roman. What didn’t he comment on? What part of your work did Sidney leave unscrutinized?”
He blinked at Jan’s insight. “Good one. Off the top of my head, I’d say Sid critiqued me in every area of my writing, but let me think about it.”
He listed Sidney’s favorite targets. “He questioned my choice of subjects, organization, balance, and perspective. Always zinged me on research.”
Jan gave him a look, showing she was impatient he was avoiding the real answer.
He reached over to ease the arch out of her eyebrow.
“Roman,” she warned. “Answer the question.”
With his hands behind his head, he stretched, easing the tension out of his body, and letting her see that he was ready to make love to her again.
Her eyes widened at the sight of his arousal, but she stayed on point. “Sidney.”
Roman closed his eyes and visualized the e-mail, struggling to read something positive between Sidney’s lines. “He never once took me to task about my pacing, visuals, sound effects, or music.”
When Roman looked to Jan for approval, he was disappointed. Where was her smile and “good job”?
“Go on. What else?”
Roman covered his eyes and willed his brain to work harder on Jan’s question. He thought about his strengths as a writer. Was there any area Sidney hadn’t trammeled? “Well, what do you know? Sid never criticized my wording, per se, my syntax, choice of words, paragraph structure, and so on. Never once pointed out a spelling problem.” Roman rubbed his eyebrows, thinking. “I’ve improved a ton over the years, mind you. I look at my prose in the early documentaries and wince. But he never said a thing about it, even back then. Amazing.”
The crowning touches on Sidney’s eulogy appeared to Roman so clearly and fully, he had to smile. “Thanks. I needed that.”
Jan waved her hand, dismissing his praise. “You were there already. Just needed a push off the fence.”
“A push is everything,” he said, turning toward her and reaching for her thigh. “Now, about that long vacation I was telling you about?”
Sly smile. “I thought we needed to save up for the next holiday. And what about rewriting the eulogy?”
He tapped his head. “It’s up here fully formed.” A sheepish grin. “Same with down there.”
She wiggled close to him so she could feel him. “So it is.”
He bent to kiss her breast. “I missed so much on our first vacation, Jazz.” He wagged his head and exaggerated a worried expression. “I overlooked your belly button, for one thing. So many nooks and crannies still to explore.”
“Um,” she noted as he trailed kisses down her stomach. She arched toward him when he tongued her belly button, and opened her legs to suggest another side trip.
“Jazz.” He altered his course, kissing her hard on the lips before he threw the covers to the floor and accepted her invitation. He’d touched her thighs and her core; now he was determined to explore them with his tongue and kisses. Would she let him? Would she like it?
“Yes,” she said, guessing his intention. A fervent yes. “Please,” she added followed by her plunging her fingers in his hair and opening her legs wider.
“Vista point,” he said. “I’m staying here for awhile, honey. Get ready.”
She grabbed clumps of his hair as he licked and kissed her inner thighs, traveling slowly to her center. He smiled when he felt the vibration in her legs, telegraphing her need. I did that. I’m making her happy.
“Roman?” she asked pushing his head down ever so slightly.
And he obliged, his arms propping her legs as he settled into exploring her center with his lips and his tongue, her musk enveloping him on his journey. She trembled even as she moved her body closer to his lips. “Roman,” she gasped when he found her nub and brought her to climax. “God, Roman!”
He rested his head on her belly, hearing the rapid beat of her heart and feeling the up and down motion of her heavy breathing. Her gentle, but insistent tug on his hair made him smile. He wanted to be inside of her in the worst way, but this roadside stop was one to savor, to take a moment to relish. Funny how he felt like he’d climbed Mt. Everest for her. Presented her with the Hope diamond. Built the Taj Mahal in her honor.
He kissed his way up her torso and finished with a torrid kiss on her lips. Without any effort at all, in the most natural and easy way imaginable, he slipped inside her and brought them both to climax within seconds. When they fell into each other’s arms, tightly entwined, Roman had the sense he’d never felt so at ease making love to a woman. Before he fell asleep, he whispered in her ear, “Best vacation ever, Jazz.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
“Roman?”
“Hm?” He asked, struggling to get his bearings. Where was he?
“I’m late. We’re late. We overslept,” she said as she fiddled with an earring.
He stretched and rubbed his eyes. “You’re dressed. You look pretty, Jazz.”
She leaned over and kissed him on the forehead. “Got to go and run a couple of errands while you get dressed. Coffee’s on. I’ll meet you at the Mission.”
Roman grabbed her in a fierce hug. “You got prettier overnight, I swear.” He pulled in a lung full of her perfume and nuzzled her neck. “Look what a great night of sex can do.”
She met his eyes. “Wonders,” she agreed. “Wonderful.” With one knee on the bed, she bent over a
nd traced her fingers around his mouth.
He wanted to talk about what last night had meant to her. To him. But she was in full bustling mode, signaling she had more important things to do. Was this an avoidance tactic? Christ, was her so-called errand a secret visit with Tess? Maybe she was off to meet with Frank the turncoat.
Why not tell her about Frank’s secret seamy, slimy side…a shit heel who professed love to Jan at the same time he put her life in danger.
Expose people for who they are, Roman Keller. Never hold back the truth.
She shifted on her bare foot, waiting. Her movement sent a waft of her perfume his way and gave him a glimpse down her black dress. As she leaned closer to him, peering into his eyes, her face changed. She tensed and her hand flew to her head as if to hold it steady when bad news came her way.
“What’s wrong, Roman?”
Her worried expression upset him so much he reached for her, thinking she needed steadying. Why would I hurt her deliberately? What jerk would bring pain to a woman he’d just made love to?
“Roman?” she asked, sitting next to him on the bed, black high heels dangling from one hand.
What kind of woman could share the most intimate of nights with him and still keep secrets from him?
“Yeah, about Frank,” he said, buying time. He touched her cheek and discovered the gesture grounded him, calmed him. She didn’t move, even when he smoothed her cheek with the pad of his thumb.
Roman cleared his throat. “I ran into Frank in town. He asked me to tell you he’ll stay out of your way until Sunday. Knew you had enough on your plate without him underfoot.”
The muscle in her cheek relaxed, but she kept her eyebrows raised.
“That’s all?”
Marveling at how good he felt about not telling the truth, Roman smiled. “That’s all. And thanks for the help on the eulogy last night. You go and do what you need to, Jazz. I’ll meet you at the Mission.”
She rose from the bed, and with her back to him, stepped into her shoes. His chest tightened at the sight of her in the form-fitting sleeveless black sheath. When she smoothed the fabric over her hips, calling attention to her arms and long legs, made creamy and luscious in contrast to the black dress, he sucked in a breath. Small bows at the back of her heels drew his attention, reminding him of his sensuous journey by hand and by lips up her gorgeous legs. Jesus, Jazz was the sexiest woman he’d ever known.
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