by Melody Eve
“Wasn’t planning on it. But, now that you mention it, I have to say you’re so fucking sexy when you’re mad. I’m so turned on right now. If we weren’t in a car with Jeffery here, and you weren’t sunburned with a head injury, I’d ravish you, worship you from the top of your hot-tempered head to your sexy, angry toes.”
I can’t help it, I laugh. He’s taken me from whiplash mad to giggles in a matter of seconds. He threads his fingers with mine on the seat between us and kisses the back of my hand.
“You’re incorrigible,” I repeat his words back to him from earlier.
“I always knew we would be the perfect couple,” he says squeezing my hand.
“You sound like we’ve been friends forever.”
“Sometimes it feels like we have.”
And he’s right. Sometimes it does.
Chapter 12
At the Royce Hotel, we do not stop and check in at the desk, we do not carry our bags, and we do not collect two hundred dollars when we pass Go.
Roman walks straight through the luxurious lobby dripping in crystal chandeliers and deep red, plush carpet without so much as a glance around. He is holding my hand, and we are followed by a bellman whom he knows by name. None of this is exactly normal for me, a common American bookstore owner, but what strikes me as very odd is that we head for the stairs when he has told me that our room is on the second floor.
“Feeling like a workout?” I ask when he opens the door to the stairs and our bellman heads the opposite direction to the elevators.
“I don’t do elevators.”
“Not even to go one floor up?”
“No, never, not one floor, not one hundred floors.”
“Oh, come on. If you were going to a meeting on the sixtieth floor of a building, you can’t tell me you would take the stairs,” I say crossing my arms over my chest at the bottom of the steps in the dingy stairwell.
“I most certainly can tell you that.”
“You’d walk sixty flights of stairs?”
“Yes. I have before, and I would again.”
I frown and drop my arms. “Why?”
“I don’t like elevators.”
“Well, that’s obvious. What made you not like elevators?”
“We need to get to our room. The bellman is probably already there waiting for us.”
“Yeah, because he took the time-saving elevator.”
“If you’d like me to carry you up to the second floor, I’d be happy to throw you over my shoulder and do so. I don’t recommend it with your head injury, but if you’re going to stand here and argue about stairs and elevators much longer, you may not have a choice.”
“I’m not against stairs or elevators.”
“Then let’s move, shall we?” He pulls me onto the first step, and I follow him the rest of the way to the second floor.
“My apologies, Ben. Aria and I had to stop at 2:30 a.m. to argue about stairs versus elevators.”
Ben smiles. I roll my eyes. Roman opens the door.
I step inside, and I feel as if I’ve stepped into Buckingham Palace. It’s not like any hotel suite I’ve ever seen. The windows are floor-to-ceiling with heavy drapes pooling on the floor. The furniture is antique with damask fabrics and dark wood. Each piece is sophisticated and classically charming. A grandiose chandelier hangs from what must be a nine-foot ceiling lighting the enormous space.
I’m frozen to my spot right inside the door while Roman moves around the room checking for things he must have ordered ahead of time like champagne chilling in a bucket, a roaring fire in the fireplace even though it’s summertime, a platter of finger sandwiches and pillows, and mounds of beautiful tapestry pillows on the floor by the fire.
“Is everything to your satisfaction, sir?” Ben, the bellman, asks when he returns from the bedroom where he has taken our bags.
“Yes, thank you. That will be all.” Roman walks Ben to the door where I am still standing and slips him a tip on his way out.
“Thank you, sir. Have a nice evening,” Ben says closing the door.
“I thought you might be hungry. Come, you can warm up by the fire, and we can eat and have a drink.”
He offers me his hand, and I take it allowing him to lead me across the room. He helps me sit on the floor, and I lean back to rest against the pillows. “You had them get all this ready in the middle of the night?” I ask when he hands me a champagne flute full of bubbly.
“It’s their job, Aria. You make it sound like an imposition.” He holds his glass to his lips, and I watch his Adam’s apple bob only once as he swallows the entire glass. He sits down next to me and unbuttons the top button of his shirt that was buttoned up much too high. He could do with unbuttoning another.
“I didn’t know it was their job to make a love nest with champagne and sandwiches at 3:00 a.m.”
“Well, it is. They would host a wedding or a funeral or a party for the Queen herself any time of the day or night if you ask them to. It’s good customer service.”
And then it comes to me. “You own this place, don’t you?”
“Yes, but the staff treats all of our customers like they are the owner because essentially they are. Without your customers, you have no business. Give them whatever they want, and they will be your customers forever.”
“You’re not just a banker, are you?”
“No. I come from money, a lot of it. But, I invest well and provide people with quality places to visit, vacation, or live for short periods of time. I made my own fortune with the help of family money.”
“How many other places do you own?”
“A lot.”
“That’s not a very forthcoming answer.”
“I’m not a very forthcoming man.”
This answer surprises me. As far as I know, this is the only thing he has kept from me. ‘As far I know’ being the keywords. “That’s not a comforting thought.”
“I will tell you anything you want to know, you only need to ask.”
“Why are you afraid of elevators?” I know it’s taking advantage of the moment to ask, but I can’t help it.
He scoots down further on the pillows and sighs. “I used to work in New York alongside my father. He was a brilliant entrepreneur, and everything he touched turned to gold. We worked on the eightieth floor of the World Trade Center in the South Tower. I never had a problem with elevators until September 11.”
He pauses and scrubs his face with one hand. I know what’s coming next, and I’m feeling guilty for asking him about the elevators now.
“My dad died that day. We were trapped in an elevator trying to get to a meeting on another floor. There was no communication with security or firefighters. We just stopped when the plane hit below us. There were three other people in the elevator with us, and we tried like hell to get the doors open, but they had an automatic lock. When the North Tower was hit, it shook us, and we dropped a few floors. That’s when my dad had a heart attack. He collapsed in pain, and eventually, he became unconscious. We did CPR for what seemed like hours but was only minutes when the firefighters heard us and pried open the doors. It was too late, he was gone. I carried him down forty flights of broken, mangled stairs where we escaped within seconds of our lives. I couldn’t leave his body there, and I’m glad I didn’t. They would never have found him. I haven’t stepped foot into an elevator since.”
He tells the story staring up at the sparkling chandelier. The pain on his face at reliving what was probably the most horrible day of his life is evident. My heart goes out to him, and I set my glass on the floor next to me, rise to my knees, and straddle him in my skirt, wiggling in to hold him as close as I can. Chest to chest with my face buried in the crook of his neck, I try to express my sorrow for his loss. Words aren’t adequate enough, so I use my body.
I squeeze his hips with my legs and thread my fingers through his hair breathing in his earthy cologne and kissing him gently on the side of the neck. “I’m so sorry, so, so, sorry,” I murmur
, and his hands find my face. He pulls me away from his neck and kisses me. I feel his pain, his grief, his need, and I’m willing to do whatever it takes to make him feel better.
I unbutton his shirt and pull it from his khakis. I slip my blouse over my head and press my skin against his. I don’t feel my sunburn or the throb in my head anymore. All I can feel is his pain seeping into my skin.
I trail kisses along his stubble-covered jaw and down his neck to his chest. His hands skim over my back and unhook my bra. I shimmy out of it eager to get rid of any barriers between us. This isn’t tantric sex, this is desperate healing sex, the kind that can bring even the most powerful man to his knees. I push his shirt off of his shoulders and he slides his hands under my ass to cup my cheeks. He moans when he feels my hot skin and moves me onto my back on the floor kneeling over me.
“Are you okay?” he asks looking at the carpet under me. It’s plush and soft but even so, it’s already hurting my back without the friction of what we are about to do.
I shake my head. “I need to be on top,” I say but not only for my comfort. I want to be the one in charge of healing his pain. He’s dealt with it alone long enough.
I sit up and unbutton his pants, pull down the zipper and watch him stand over me to remove them. Good God. When he’s standing there naked, I’m awestruck by his beauty.
I know beautiful is a word commonly reserved for women, but it’s the only one that comes to mind when I’m presented with his hard, rippled and naked form.
He. Is. Beautiful.
He gets to the floor, and I slip out of my skirt and panties before slinging a knee over his trim hips and hovering on all fours over him. I could lean back and let him impale me so easily, but I want to taste him first, and since I’m in charge, I’m going to.
I kiss his mouth, letting my breasts tease his chest with the faintest touch of my nipples. His hands are hesitant because of my tender skin. He wants to be rough and take what he wants and needs, but he can’t. Ironically, it’s an incredible turn-on. Wanting something you can’t have is difficult, especially when it’s quite literally being dangled in front of your face.
He moves his hands to my ass and nudges me up his body. “I want to kiss you. Come up here.”
I’ve never straddled a man’s face before, and I’m apprehensive, but his hands are insistent. Giving in to the moment, I scoot up and allow him to guide me over his mouth. He licks me flat-tongued from ass to clit, and I cry out not expecting him to be so feral. With nothing to hold onto, I feel unanchored and powerless. I was supposed to be running things, but as usual, Roman has taken back the reins.
I lean forward and grip the stone surrounding the hearth of the fireplace. I need leverage, and it’s all I’ve got. His mouth works me into a writhing molten ball of want. Shamelessly, I work my hips in a circle opposite his tongue until I explode like an atomic bomb over him coming with so much force I almost lose my grip on the stone and split my head open again. He has ahold of my waist keeping me from injury and moving me down his body over his heavy, waiting cock. “You’re mine, my savage, for my eyes only, for my hands only, for my…” He aligns my core with his cock, and I sink down around him. “Cock only. God, Aria, the things you do to me. I can’t let you go, say this will last longer than a week, tell me you need this as bad as I do.”
His eyes are almost completely dark with only a rim of his usual smoky gray as he all but begs me for something I’m not sure I can give him. My heart is screaming yes, tell him you’ll give him as long as he wants, as much of you as he needs, forever if necessary.
But my mind keeps seeing eight by ten glossy photographs slipping from my hands onto the floor of my apartment, naked limbs, faces aglow, basking in the glory of their passion. My fiancé. My best friend. I was betrayed by the two people closest to me who I should have been able to trust.
Somewhere inside me, my heart takes control of my mouth, and I hear myself telling Roman what he wants to hear, what I want to say but shouldn’t. “Yes, I need you, too, for as long as you want.”
He closes his eyes and frowns as if he is in pain, but it’s not pain, it’s pure and utter relief. When he opens them, he’s smiling, but his eyes are rimmed with tears. Do I affect him that much? Does he feel the same incredible connection that I feel, but won’t admit, not even to myself?
Whatever this is between us, it’s nothing like what I had with David, or any other man in my past, for that matter. What Roman and I share is big and electric and prevailing. It’s how I dreamed love would be when I was a little girl traipsing around the house in my white angel Halloween costume and princess crown. Roman makes me feel special, beautiful, wanted, worshiped, and dare I say, loved.
I place my palms on his chest and love him with every ounce of myself. I love him with my hands, smoothing them over his taught lean muscles, stroking and caressing until he moans in pleasure. I love him with my mouth, kissing every inch of his salty, smooth skin, teasing him until he is on the edge of sanity. I love him with my sex, taking every penetration of his thick cock over and over and over until we scream each other’s name and climax on and on forever soaring in a plain somewhere between reality and fantasy.
That’s exactly what this must be, fantasy because reality is never this damn good.
Chapter 13
I open my eyes and freeze until the past twenty-four hours comes rushing back to me. Jet plane, London, Roman, awesome sex, the promise to stay as long as he wants me.
Shit. I can’t believe I got so caught up in the moment like that. Well, actually, yes, I can. He was inside of me, telling me things any woman would kill to hear a man like him say. It’s not that hard to believe.
I blink away the blur of sleep and feel Roman’s arms around me, possessive and protective. I think about the way his father died in front of him in one of our nation’s most horrific terrorist attacks. He must have been devastated beyond belief and then to carry his lifeless body with him to safety, risking his life to be able to bury him with dignity. It makes my heart ache for him.
“Roman,” I whisper wishing I didn’t have to wake him but needing to use the bathroom more. He grunts and nuzzles his face into my neck. “I need to get up.”
“You need to stay down.” His gravely morning voice sounds like sex in the making.
“No, I mean I need to use the bathroom.” We finished the bottle of wine last night before we went to sleep, and I never made it to the bathroom before we passed out.
His arms loosen, and I peel my backside from his front and roll out of bed. It’s chilly in the beautiful room. Sunlight streams through the one window with open curtains bouncing off of the crystals in the massive chandelier casting tiny rainbows in every direction.
I’m not used to walking around in the nude, but my bag is still packed, so I scurry into the ensuite bathroom and close the door. The bathroom is decorated like the rest of the suite in a castle—royal style. Gold gilded mirrors, marble vanity, massive claw-foot tub—everywhere you look reminds you you’re in London.
I take care of business and stand in front of the mirror washing my hands. My burn looks much better today, and it no longer stings to touch it. I’m peeling, but that’s no surprise, and the constant throb in my head is gone as well. I haven’t had a pain pill since we were on the plane. I must be healing.
The claw-foot bathtub beckons me from the reflection in the mirror. I’m sore from last night’s sexcapades, and I could use a soak. I look around for soap and a washcloth, place them on a delicate table next to the tub and start the water. When it’s filled a couple of inches, I shake some lavender bath salts I found on a shelf into the water and step in while it finishes filling.
Tubs at home aren’t like this one. It’s deep, so deep I’m covered up to my neck. The scent of lavender hangs in the air. I close my eyes. I can see the purple flowers all around me stretching for as far as the eye can see.
“Bathing without me?” Roman says from above me. I glance up and find him looki
ng down at me in the tub.
“I’m pampering my muscles after the workout you put them through last night. And, I didn’t think you would want to smell like a field of lavender.”
He bends placing his arms on the sides of the tub to kiss me upside down. “I’ll let you soak your muscles, but for future reference, I don’t mind smelling like lavender if it means bathing with you. This morning, though, I have to go see my mother. I know we just got here, so I’ll make the visit short, and we can go shopping when I get back. Unless, of course, you want to come with me to meet her.” The hope in his eyes is too much for me to bear.
I smile and cup his cheek. “I’d be honored to meet your mother.”
My reward is his grin and the way tiny specks of blue light up his gray eyes.
“I’ll shower, and when you’re ready, we can have a quick breakfast before we go.” He kisses the tip of my nose and slips his hands under the water to cup my tender breasts. “Mmm, unless…”
I move his hands from my skin regretfully. “If you want me to meet your mother, you need to stop right there.”
“In that case, I don’t think I care about you meeting my mother anymore,” he says with a mischievous smirk.
“That’s your cock talking. I think you should take a moment and make sure your mind concurs.”
He frowns. “You may be right. I’ll be in the shower trying not to listen to my cock.” He always wins eventually, though, “Raincheck, maybe?” His eyebrows go up with his question.
“Absolutely.” I can’t resist Roman and his advances. I only said no this morning because I think it’s important to him that I meet his mother. Before last night, I would have been irritated at being manipulated into meeting his family. But, now that I’ve promised to give our relationship more time, and I know about his father, my heart is more open to the idea.
I watch his muscles stretch and contract as he walks toward the shower wishing I had time to go and kneel in front of him in the shower. I’ve never been much for oral sex, but this urge is overwhelming. Chemistry must be a real thing. I always thought it was just an expression like, they have great chemistry, or, wow would you look at the chemistry between those two? But it’s more than that. I’m drawn to him in a way I’ve never experienced. I want him every time I see him, anywhere, anytime—like an obsession.