by Alexis Anne
“And you’ll need to go on a few dates,” I added.
He looked adorably confused. “Why the hell would I do that?”
“Because,” I reached back for the handle. “I want you to be sure this is what you want. Right now I’m exciting and untouchable and you haven’t been on a real date in weeks. Maybe you’ve forgotten how much easier it is to date someone who isn’t your mortal enemy.”
“Or maybe I know exactly what I want and I don’t want to waste anymore of my time with other women.”
I shrugged and opened the door. “Those are my terms. Indulge me, Roman St. James.”
“You’re a very confusing woman!” he called after me.
Confusing? Maybe. I’ll give him that. But I was also a little bit turned on.
16
Present Day
I was confused. I was hot, sweaty, and there was this strange pain in my neck. I tried to adjust but my hands didn’t tangle in pillows and soft sheets. Oh no. I was touching something very different. It was hard, yet soft. It was moving.
My eyes shot open. The dark room was strange in every way. It smelled wrong, it sounded wrong, and it most definitely felt wrong.
“Hey,” a soft male voice murmured, running a hand up my naked spine. “You’re with me. Remember?”
Remember?
It all came slamming back at once. The dinner. The ex. The sex.
Oh God, the sex . . .
I leaned up on my elbow. “What time is it?” I had zero sense of anything other than the humming in my skin everywhere he touched.
“Four.”
“In the morning?”
He chuckled. “Yeah, in the morning.” He sounded surprisingly energetic.
“Were you awake?”
His hand paused for a fraction of second before continuing the slow path down my back and up again. “Yes.”
“Have you gone to sleep?” I had this creeping suspicion that Roman had, in fact, been awake the whole night.
“No.”
Damn. “Why?”
With a gentle nudge he pulled me back down onto his chest. I went willingly, wrapping my arms around him and nuzzling into the warmth.
“I’m a night owl,” he started, “but I couldn’t sleep.”
He was thinking. About us. About me. And I couldn’t blame him. As much as I wanted to ignore it all, there was something more powerful than my denial.
My desire.
And I wasn’t talking about the raw physical kind.
“Tell me your plan.”
He switched from my skin to my hair, combing it out with his fingers, and lulling me into a beautifully peaceful compliance. “I don’t want to ruin this.”
“Is that why you’re still awake?”
“No.”
Oh.
“I’m still awake because I’m afraid if I fall asleep you’ll be gone when I wake up and this will all have been a dream.”
“Well,” I sighed, “you proved one point. When we erase everything else there is no denying that we both want to be together.”
“And we’re so good together,” he whispered into the dark.
“So how do we do this?” I didn’t want to leave this room but we had to.
“I’m assuming you’ll want to date? Get to know me again before you agree to anything more permanent?”
Sweet Jesus. Was he talking about forever again? It was as if he’d walk straight into one of those twenty-four hour wedding chapels they had here in Vegas and marry me right now.
And that was crazy. We’d been back together for five seconds. People did not get married on a whim.
“I think it would be wise to do some dating. But how?”
“We don’t tell anyone,” he said simply. “I’m not suggesting we hide our relationship. You can tell anyone you want as far as I’m concerned. Put it up in lights.”
I thought about this for a minute. “So we date quietly? I can tell Zoe and you can talk to Wes, but we don’t broadcast it, or inform our parents.”
“Exactly. We’ll be careful to avoid attention until we’re ready for it.”
It might work. “What does a not-secret date look like to you?” At the moment I was picturing bedroom picnics that devolved into nightly sex.
“I’ll cook you dinner. Or bring you dinner. We can do outdoorsy adventurish stuff.”
I laughed. “You mean like paddle boarding and camping?”
“Yeah, that stuff. It’s usually fairly solitary and there are definitely not any reporters.”
Reporters. I shuddered at the thought of them turning our relationship into a story.
“Okay, so we adventure and eat in. Then what?”
Suddenly I was on my back and Roman loomed above me. There was just enough light to see his eyes and the smile on his lips. “Then you marry me.” He nuzzled into my neck.
“How can you say that so casually?”
“There is nothing casual about the way I feel.”
He moved between my breasts, plumping them up in his hands. “Roman . . . marriage is a huge commitment.”
“Exactly.” He slid back up so that we were nose to nose. “I’m not going anywhere. You can think and plot and plan. You can resist all you want. But I’ll be right here when you’re ready. We’re spending the rest of our lives together. Your parents will forgive you and mine will deal. You and me? We’re happening, babe.”
His confidence was addictive. I wasn’t ready to think about marriage. Not even close. But it was hot to hear him talk about it. “And if they all lose it? Disown us?”
“I’ll knock all their teeth in,” he growled.
He was also hot when he was protective of me. I folded around him and rocked my hips. “We have time to enjoy being alone one more time.”
“When is your flight?” he pressed his erection against my throbbing clit.
“Ten.”
“We might have time for two then.”
“Two?” I was already lost. Time didn’t matter. I could always catch another flight.
“Now. Then I’ll order breakfast. We’ll take a shower . . . ”
“Oh,” I sighed. “I see. Shower sex.”
“Clean and dirty all at the same time.” He nudged against my sex. “I need a condom. Don’t move a muscle.”
As if I could. He managed to turn me into a blissed out mound of clay with a few kisses and some sexy words. “Roman?”
He stood in the doorway of the bathroom, the light shining behind him. “Yeah?”
“I’m really glad you invited me to dinner last night.” I thought he might need to hear that even though I was hesitant and worried about the future, I was also glad we were finally trying to figure this out.
He was so beautiful standing there with the yellow light shadowing his body as he rolled on another condom. “I tried to be patient, June. But a man can only go so long without seeing his woman.”
“How primitive.”
He prowled toward me. “Love is primitive. It’s the most basic instinct. We’re wired in our DNA to seek out our mate. To brand her. To protect her.” He was above me now, his knees nudging mine apart, his cock pressing against me. “I won’t let anyone hurt you. Being with me will not be a burden.”
My body totally responded to the caveman lines, enough that I was able to completely skip over the part where he called himself a burden. “You’re branding me?” He’d already made it pretty clear that I was his one and only focus.
“Something like that.” He dropped a kiss on my lips. “I plan on leaving an impression that no other man will be able to match.”
“No one ever has.”
His eyes darkened. “You’ll only be able to think of me. And then when you’re ready, we’ll tell everyone. I don’t want there to be a soul on this planet that doesn’t know you’re mine.”
He surged forward, filling me. Stretching me.
“You’re sounding very possessive, Roman.” I was breathless.
Where last night had bee
n slow and teasing, this was frantic. Uncontrolled. His hard, steady thrusts quickly turned into a pounding that heated my body and jumpstarted my orgasm.
And then suddenly he stopped. The change so dramatic it was almost as pleasurable as the pounding. “I let you go once. I learned that you lose the things you don’t take care of—don’t protect. I will not make that mistake twice.” He thrust deep. “I will not lose you again, not to anyone, and most certainly not because of my own stupidity.”
My heart couldn’t take anymore. “Roll over.”
He blinked. “What?”
“Roll over, Roman. You’ve made your point. You want me and you’ll do everything you can to make this work. I hear you. Now I want you to hear me.”
With a single push on his shoulder he rolled until he was beneath me with my knees nestled on either side of his hips. It took a little adjusting to get his cock in the right place and my hip comfortable, but we managed it just fine.
Plus, from this angle I got to see a lot more of him. A change in perspective was nice with so much emotion flying around the room.
“Are you comfortable?” He ran his hand up my thigh, massaging my hip.
“I’m fantastic.” His cock was so much deeper and now I got to play with it in my own way. I tested a few different angles, changing my strokes before I settled on leaning forward with my left hand planted beside his head and my right hand on his chest.
His firm, strong chest. “Good God you’re a sexy man.”
“I’m glad you think so.”
“And you’re sweet.”
His voice dropped into a purr. “I can be even sweeter.”
I paused somewhere near the head of his cock and pressed on his chin until he was looking me in the eye. “I’m scared, Roman. Right now I feel like I’m being asked to choose between the two things that matter most.” I ran my thumb along his jaw, letting his stubble scrape along my skin. “I don’t want to lose either. I’m worried that if I take the wrong step my whole world will come crashing down around me.”
I shivered as his hands ran up the length of my body to cup my face. “Babe. It won’t happen.”
“Because you won’t let it?”
“No. Because if they love you half as much as I do, they won’t let this come between you.”
Love. His hand on my cheek was comforting and I turned into it. “It’s going to be a mess.”
“And we’ll clean it up.”
He made it seem so simple. So achievable. As if love—which he was so freely able to admit—was enough.
He rocked up, sliding into my heat while I held still above him. “And when the dust settles we’ll all be different. But it will be a good kind of different.”
“Promise?” There were stupidly large tears in my eyes.
“I promise,” he whispered, rocking back out.
“Then I guess we should give this all we’ve got.” If we were going to try then I was going to try with all I had to offer. When gambling with your heart there was no halfway. “I don’t want to regret another five years.”
Then I showed Roman St. James just how excited I was to be together for the rest of the morning.
“When will I see you?” he asked as he kissed my forehead at the curb of the airport.
The wind whipped my hair around us but he didn’t move. He held my cheek in his steady hand and gazed hopefully into my eyes.
“Dinner Wednesday?” It was a question. We’d already discussed our schedules and it didn’t look good. He was flying from Vegas to New York and spending all of Monday and half of Tuesday in the Bancroft Sports offices there.
Thursday I was leaving with the team for a series of games in Chicago. I wouldn’t be back until the following Tuesday.
“I’ll try to make it,” he said. “Can we do a late dinner?”
“Not too late, but yes.”
“What time do you leave Thursday morning?”
“I’ll be out of the house by five.”
He grunted and pulled me into his chest. “This isn’t a good week to start a relationship, is it?”
“No.” But then again, it would give me a chance to come to terms with it. “We’ll figure it out. We just need time to synchronize.”
“I’m not a fan of our schedules right now.”
I rose up on my toes and gave him one last quick kiss. A kiss that suddenly turned into much more when he quite literally swept me off my feet—one hand at my neck to brace me while the other wrapped around my waist.
“I’m not a fan of our schedules anymore, too,” I gasped between kisses. “Why can’t you be in my bed tonight?”
He kissed me harder, then set me back on the ground, his forehead leaning into mine. “I wish I could. I would change my trip but we’re signing contracts. I need to be there.”
“Text me.” I pulled away and grabbed the handle of my bag.
“Fuck texting. I’ll be calling.”
“I look forward to it.”
Only his eyes followed me as I strolled away. “I miss you already.”
I turned around for one last look. “I miss you too. I’ll see you in a few days.”
“I’ve lost my mind,” I groaned into my hands the next morning. My coffee was steaming and untouched on the counter beside me.
“Well, I’m not sure what you’re talking about but I do know you look like shit,” Zoe chuckled as she shoveled her breakfast oatmeal.
“You’re not helpful.”
“You’re not forthcoming. How am I supposed to be helpful when all I know is that you went to Vegas for work and came home looking like you’d been run over by the one-night-stand truck?”
I whimpered. Roman was not a one-night stand. Except that, until we saw each other again, he kind of, technically, was.
“Oh my God, you did, didn’t you?” Her spoon clattered to the counter and I heard her move around the kitchen counter to sit beside me. “Give me details now.”
“You’ll just put it in a book.”
“I will not,” she paused, “okay that is actually a valid concern but as your best friend I promise this will stay between us and I will not turn your whatever-this-is into a fictional story that would sell tens of thousands of copies.”
I peeked between my fingers and found her grinning at me. “If you breathe a word of this to anyone I will tell the world about your secret pen names.”
Her eyes widened. “I promise, sheesh, dial the drama down. You must have slept with someone famous or important . . . or you fell in love . . . for this level of crazy.”
Love. “It was Roman.”
Her jaw dropped and her mouth formed a silent O. “Roman, Roman? As in your Roman?”
I nodded.
“As in the man you can’t be in love with because you can never be together?”
“I’m so screwed,” I groaned.
“So wait a minute,” she waved her hands through the air. “Stop. Back up. Start over. You slept with Roman?”
I whimpered, nodding.
“And I take it that you enjoyed yourself based on the unfocused way you’re gazing at everything.”
Was I? Yeah, I probably was. “It was amazing.”
Her lips twitched. “Let me guess . . . he convinced you to give him a shot and you said yes, but now you’re freaking out.”
I stared at her. “How do you know all this?” Did I forget waking up in the middle of the night and confessing all of this in my sleep? Or was she a sorceress? Probably a sorceress.
“I know you and I know what your situation is. I put two and two together.”
“But—”
She put her hand up. “I have never, ever seen you like this, June. From the moment you saw him you’ve been flustered and a little freaked out. You like him . . . a lot. And if you two were in Vegas together and you threw caution to the wind for a night . . . well that can only mean one thing. You’re falling for him.”
I groaned into my hands again. “I don’t know what to do. He was so sweet a
nd the sex was amazing. I could see it all . . . ” my voice fell away as my visions of life with Roman filled my mind.
“How you’d be together?”
I nodded. “I was so swept up in it all. I was confident that this could work, but now I’m home and I’m not so sure.”
“Get over it.”
Well that was blunt. “Easy for you to say.”
“Is Roman any guy or is he the guy? Because June, people like this don’t come into your life everyday. You keep talking about the risks with your family but what about the risk to you? It’s not like another perfectly sweet and sexy man is going to saunter into your life tomorrow. Or next year. Look at me. I’m totally single with zero prospects in sight.”
And that was the thing. With Roman I felt like my soul was at stake. Every word out of his mouth affected my mood, every kiss lit me on fire . . . every thrust of his hips. It was so much more than anything I’d ever risked before.
“Are you scared?” she asked, interrupting my thoughts.
I shook my head. “Of Roman? Never.”
Her eyebrows lifted. “Of George.”
Well, I had never considered that before. It was easy to pinpoint my relationship with my family as a reason to be careful, just as easy as it was to identify my feelings for Roman as something I didn’t want to lose. I’d never pondered the idea that it might be my fear of George that was driving my doubts.
“I’m not sure. It’s possible.” My mind raced through my memories, my feelings, searching for an answer. “I don’t think I’ve ever been physically afraid he would hurt me but you might be on to something. When he hurt my dad he did it on purpose. It was intentional. How do you deal with someone who could potentially lash out at you because he doesn’t like you?”
“Just something to consider as you navigate all this. It might not matter, or it might be a big deal. But don’t let it stop you.”
“How did you get to be so wise, Zoe?” My appetite made an appearance and for the first time all morning it growled.
She shrugged. “And I’ve only had one cup of coffee. True greatness is achieved after three.”
17
A bead of sweat formed just above my eyebrow but I didn’t dare move to wipe it away.