by Dani Collins
“I damaged you?” she asked with disbelief. “How?”
“You made me question whether I’m a worthy human being.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
MELODIE FLINCHED AT being called out for hurting him, astonished that she could.
And disturbed. It meant they really were bad for each other. So how could she drop her anger and embrace the idea they could sort things out? Anger was safe. Listening and understanding would only make her feel guilty and vulnerable. Trusting Roman would mean abandoning her defensive animosity, and that scared her. It would leave her with nothing to hold him off.
He still scared her, she admitted privately. Still caused a reaction in her that was stronger than logic. Whether it was fury or passion, she’d never dealt with such intense feelings. The closest she’d come had been the fire that had burned inside her while fighting with her father over her mother’s care. Those emotions had made sense, though. They’d been born of deep loyalty and love...
She cut short looking for similarities. Roman was a stranger. They’d only met a handful of times, and even she, with her Pollyanna ideals, suspected love at first sight was a myth. If it did exist it wouldn’t feel like this. As if a man she barely knew was a god with the power to smite her in a blink.
As they entered the penthouse, he went to the bar while she took in the well-appointed suite with its view of the New York skyline, its Old English furniture and its softly glowing vintage lamps draped in shimmering crystal beads.
“Scotch? Or wine?” he asked, holding up a bottle.
“I can’t stay long.” She glanced at the time on her phone, ignored a text from one of the aides asking how things were going and dropped the device back into her clutch, sighing heavily. “What is there to say anyway? I was feeling very low about my mother’s death when we met. I wanted to meet someone, to feel alive. I let myself think there was more potential between us than there was. I shouldn’t have slept with you, but I did. It gave you the wrong impression about how I conduct myself.”
He brought her a glass of white wine, the glass frosted by the chill of the liquid. His expression was cool and unreadable. She sipped, wetting her dry tongue and soothing her burning throat, trying to collect herself while the strange energy that emanated off him took her apart at the seams.
“Did you hear me that day in the car? I didn’t make hatred to you. There was nothing in my mind at that moment except the pleasure we were giving each other.”
“Don’t,” she said, brushing a wisp of hair behind her ear and using the motion to hide her flinch of self-consciousness.
“We have to be frank. I don’t like it any more than you do.” He brought his glass of neat scotch up to his lips but paused and lowered it again. “I don’t chase women for sport, Melodie. It’s important to me that you believe that. I’m lousy in a relationship, but not because I treat women like sex providers. If I hadn’t had a reason to kick you out that day, you would have been in my bed until you tired of me.”
“Does that happen?” she asked with a faint attempt at levity. It was supposed to be a swipe at the man she assumed him to be: a gorgeous playboy with enough money to hold any woman’s interest.
“I’m emotionally inaccessible,” he said with a pained smile, as if it was a tragic but proved fact. “And the sex has never been like it is with us.” He spoke as though it was something happening in the now, and indicated the invisible strands that pulled her toward him and, if he was to be believed, drew him just as inexorably.
She shifted away from the disturbing aura of sexual tension that grew between them so easily, feeling terribly weak. She would understand this gross sense of helplessness if she had given her heart to him. As a child yearning for love and approval from Garner and Anton, she’d walked around as spineless as her mother, taking each slight to heart. Eventually, living in the real world, she’d suffered fewer attacks, and most of them from people she cared little about. Her inner defenses had rallied and strengthened.
Now, after a handful of encounters with Roman, a man who should mean nothing to her, she was more emotionally sensitive than ever, responding to every word he said as if it was her own inner voice. It was disconcerting.
She eyed him, unsettled by his talk of feeling the same irrevocable pull. “I don’t understand how it can be like this if we don’t love each other.”
“I’ve never understood how love enters into sex at all.” He tilted his glass to watch the liquid move in the square bottom of his glass. “I’ve always thought pleasure was the point. Don’t look like that,” he chided gently, glancing up to catch what was probably a wounded expression on her face. “I didn’t say that to mock you. I’m being honest.”
She ducked her head. “It still hurts. You didn’t even think I was attractive, Roman. It wasn’t until the second day that you started to act as though you were interested, and that was after you knew who I was.”
“I told you in Virginia, just because I didn’t let it show doesn’t mean I wasn’t attracted. I’m not interested in serious relationships, Melodie. By that I mean marriage, kids, a lifetime commitment... I’m not cut out for that. You looked like the kind who is. So you’re right, at that first meeting I made sure to keep my interest hidden to avoid going down a dead-end road. Then you smiled for the pictures and...” He frowned, took a sip of scotch and curled his lip in self-deprecation. “The truth is I was captivated. I couldn’t hide how I was reacting when you came back the next day. I stopped trying. You’re very beautiful.”
She shook her head, not comfortable hearing that ever, but especially from him. Especially now. “Roman, I’m trying to believe you. I need to make sense of all this, but we have to be honest if—”
“Your mother was in magazines,” he cut in with a baffled look. “You resemble her. How could you not know how pretty you are?”
Anton. She didn’t say it. She wanted to be completely over him and his ugly criticisms.
“Mom was always described as unusual or arresting. She was just really emotive in front of a camera, unable to hide what she was feeling.”
“And you’re the same. Your true self comes through, and that woman is lovely, Melodie. I should have paid attention to that, not the fact that you happen to share the name Gautier,” he added in a mutter aimed at the bottom of his glass.
She took a few swift footsteps away. He made her feel positively defenseless. She did everything in her power not to react, even though she wanted to flinch, while her pulse tripped in alarm and insecurity attacked her. She had worked so hard to get over all the self-doubts instilled by her upbringing. If there was any benefit to her mother’s hospitalization, it had been the secondhand counseling she’d received. She may not have battled the same physiological depression her mother had fought, but her early years had been exactly the same steady erosion of her self-esteem that her mother had faced.
Now Roman was saying he could see past all the small shields she’d managed to assemble for herself. It was terrifying. She stood in silence, trying to pretend he held no such power while she waited to see where and how he’d use his power to advantage.
“I don’t want the ability to hurt you, Melodie,” he said finally. “I’m emotionally detached by conscious decision, but I can’t stay indifferent around you. You,” he said with a significant tone. “No one else gets under my skin this way.”
She almost found a shred of humor in his vexed tone. She could relate. The truth was she didn’t want the power to hurt him, either.
“I don’t understand why we’re like this,” she said. “We don’t know each other.”
“Don’t we?” He set down his drink and pushed his bunched fists into his pockets. His shoulders went back and his profile was a sharp silhouette against the black windows. “Who holds a woman’s ashes hostage so her daughter has to put her grief on display? It’s as bad as stealing
a young man’s only hope for a future by threatening to expose his one mistake in the past.”
Melodie swallowed, acknowledging that he probably did understand her at a very deep level. “Did Anton contribute anything to that software program that built his fortune?”
“His name.” Roman’s expression lost its warmth, hardening. “He was doing me the favor of attaching himself to it. I was desperate enough to give up fifty percent for that. After a sound beating, I agreed to a hundred.”
Melodie gasped, feeling his words like a wrecking ball hitting her chest. But she supposed any man who could shake a woman until she begged for mercy could beat a man to a pulp.
“After Mom’s funeral they were never going to be in my life again. The job with Ingrid was a fresh start, finally a potential career. I couldn’t have traveled for work while Mom was alive. She needed to see me every day. We needed each other,” she corrected, setting down her own glass and purse on a side table to hug herself.
“Dad always had final say in her care, so he was always this dark presence that kept me on edge. Then, finally, even though it was only her ashes, she was in my care. I saw myself drawing a line under my childhood but...” She shrugged, accosted by vulnerability again, but it wasn’t as hard this time. She was beginning to feel safe making her confession to him. “You were supposed to be the redemption, Roman. You were supposed to prove that not all men are the same. You let me down. You proved that they can still hurt me. That all the brutality and ugliness they put into the world is still able to bounce back and hit me.”
“Melodie, I didn’t know.”
“I know,” she acknowledged with a jerky nod. “Anton has a daughter out there from a college girlfriend. I check in on her, send her money sometimes. He doesn’t care. You cared enough to show up and ask if you had a baby on the way. I knew that day in the limo that you weren’t really like them. I just...”
“Still hate me.”
“I’m trying to, Roman. If I don’t, then you’ll—”
“What?” he prompted quickly, demeanor changing.
He knew. She blushed and had to look away.
A muted noise sounded, and they both looked to the clutch where she’d set it next to her glass. Her mobile vibrated inside it.
“Trenton is wondering where I am,” she guessed, then made a face, feeling as though she was with a friend after all, she supposed, because she found herself saying a very uncharitable, “I should text back that I’m being nice to you.”
The banked sexual awareness between them flared like the catch of a match.
“That wasn’t—” she hurried to say.
“I know.” He sounded as though he was laughing at her, making her shoot a scowl his direction. “I’m not going to make another unwelcome pass, Melodie. No matter how much I want to.”
Which was a pass in itself, she noted drily, but managed to say, “Good.” Even though she was suddenly reluctant to accept that. Her mind was expanding with one ballooning thought. What would it be like now, when they’d set aside the misjudgments and animosity?
“I should go,” she said briskly. Before she lost her mind.
“I’ll walk you down.”
“You don’t have to.” She picked up her clutch and headed toward the door.
He pocketed his room key off the bar and followed her. “Better if we both reappear without looking flushed and disheveled.”
“Right.” Flushed. Disheveled. Skin damp and whole body tingling in the aftermath of orgasm. That would be bad. “Yes,” she affirmed. “You’re probably right.”
“Only probably? Don’t give me an opening, Melodie. I will take it,” he said.
They stood at the door, his hand on the latch, his white shirt and black jacket filling her vision.
“An opening for what?” She was playing dumb, not like her at all.
His mouth lifted at one corner, knowing. “I said I wouldn’t make an unwelcome pass,” he said, then touched her chin, gently forcing her to tilt up her face until she couldn’t avoid his eyes. “If this is not welcome, say so now.”
His touch was bringing her to life in ways she had thought were manifestations of an overactive imagination.
“I keep wondering—”
He covered her mouth and she knew. They were every bit as volatile as before. They stepped into the kiss with synchronicity, her arms going over his shoulders, his hands sliding to her lower back, pulling her hips into his. In heels she was eye level with his mouth, and they both moaned with pleasure at how perfectly they fit together.
The buzz sounded again from inside her purse.
They broke away.
She threw the clutch toward the sofa, missing. It hit the floor and slid while they stepped into tight contact again, lips meeting without hesitation or clumsiness. Her same distant thoughts of how and why penetrated, but she honestly didn’t care. He was the man who did this to her. She couldn’t turn away now that it had started. And there was no evidence of his trying to slow things down as his fingertips dug into her buttocks and he rotated to press her into the door.
Oh, the weight of him felt good!
Pushing into his thighs with her own, she incited where he was already hard.
He ground back, making a growling noise as he drew back just enough to smooth the fine hairs from her neck, then nipped and nibbled his way to her bare shoulder. The action was both tender and feral, as though he was asserting his dominance but with gentle care, demanding her capitulation in the exposure of her throat to him, rewarding her with caresses that trickled delicious fire through her whole body.
Threading fingers into his hair, she moaned his name, helpless to the onslaught of pleasure. Weak against the masculine power that didn’t need muscle to overwhelm her.
“Feel what you’re doing to me,” he said, lifting his head and dragging her hand to his neck. Beneath her palm his artery pulsed in hard, rapid pumps.
“Mine’s going to explode, too,” she said, drawing his hand to her chest, where her heart raced in such a rapid tattoo it alarmed her.
He slid his palm lower, cupping her breast, watching as he plumped the swell and circled the tip with his thumb, nipple tight and straining against silk.
Showers of delight glittered through her. She slid her hand to the back of his head and urged him to kiss her again.
He did, once, hard, then lifted his head. “I want to do it right.” He clasped her hand, drew it from his hair so he could kiss her wrist. “I want to take our time and do it because we make each other feel so damned good. Stay with me.”
It meant trusting him. Trusting that afterward he wouldn’t throw her out and ruin her life.
Her stupid purse hummed, making her look past his shoulder with an anguished noise. When she tried to step away from him, he resisted letting her go. For one long second his muscles locked in refusal. Then he sucked in a breath and stepped back, hands up with frustrated surrender, shoulders hitting the wall next to the door as he accepted her rejection with a stoic face and a knock of his head into the wall behind him.
Paris, she thought. And, Be nice.
Looking back at Roman, at the way he’d lowered his eyelids to hide his thoughts but couldn’t disguise the way his mouth had gone flat with dismay, she shrugged off doubts and skepticism. All she could think was I want him.
She walked over to kick her purse so it skittered under the sofa, then looked over her shoulder at him.
He came off the wall, alert.
Swallowing, she reached behind to begin lowering the zipper on her dress.
As it loosened across her bust, his breath hissed and his chest swelled. He came across to help.
She wanted to smile, but her gown puddled on the floor around her spiked heels. She hesitated, wearing only her bra and thong underpants, the vulnerability of
the moment striking her with a sudden chill.
The way he looked at her bolstered her courage, though. His gaze ate her up while he shed his jacket, then pulled at his bow tie.
“Condom?” she managed to ask, trying to hang on to some shred of sense.
His expression blanked, hinted at panic, then he reached to pick up his jacket and swiftly went through the pockets, coming up with his wallet. Showing her the two foil packets he removed, he pushed them into his pants’ pocket, dropped his jacket and chinned toward the opposite side of the room.
“Bedroom,” he said in a graveled husk. “Or I’ll have you over the back of this sofa. You make me insane, Melodie.”
Yet he looked completely in control. It strained her trust, made her wonder for a bleak second if she was being reckless again. But the idea that she might have some kind of ability to provoke him was incredibly exciting.
She let her hips roll in a wicked sway as she walked ahead of him, providing what she supposed was a lurid view of her buttocks atop her long legs, but the thought made her feel sexy and desirable for the first time. With another twist of her arms behind her, she shed her bra as she went, leaving it on the floor, not turning around, smiling at the idea of teasing him.
“You’re enjoying this,” he accused, not sounding the least bit displeased as he came up behind her next to the bed and caught her back against him, one firm, confident hand capturing her breast as if he owned it.
It was both comforting and deeply provoking, especially when he gave her breast a firm caress and nearly buckled her knees with the catch of her nipple in a light pinch. She leaned into him weakly, legs shaking as he fondled more deliberately, playing with her nipple until she had to cover his hand to slow him down. It was getting too intense too quickly.
“Roman,” she whispered, part protest, part plea.
“I want it to be so good for you that you know without a doubt that it’s only about this, Melodie.” His other hand slid to the front of her lace undies, fingertips slipping under without hesitation, cupping, massaging, working with gentle but insistent pressure to part and find her slick center.