by Geneva Lee
“He says he’s going to call the police if the damaged magazines aren’t paid for,” Roman explained.
“I understand that much,” I said. “But he won’t take a credit card and we don’t have enough cash. I considered running for it, but she is a tad sauced.”
Roman’s eyes darted to Cassie who was draped across me for support. “So I see.”
He turned and spoke for another few minutes with the shop owner before he pulled a few bills from his pocket and handed them over.
“It’s dealt with,” he said, returning his attention to me.
“Thank you.” I exhaled in relief. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know what to do. She's suffering from temporary, post-break-up insanity.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “I couldn’t let you wind up in Mexican jail.”
“Fuck jail,” Cassie slurred. She tried to take a step forward on her own, but she misjudged her ability to walk, catching her foot on the pavement and crashing toward the cement. Roman caught her around the waist.
“Where to?” he asked me as he shifted her into his strong arms.
“You don’t have to do that,” I said. “I can get her back.”
“I won’t sleep tonight if I’m worried about you,” he said. His voice was soft and deep, leaving me dizzy. Suddenly, I felt as though I was drunk, too. Part of me wished I was so that I would be the one in his arms.
“We’re not far.” I hesitated, biting my thumbnail. It had been completely inappropriate for me to call him here to help. Asking more of him seemed equally improper.
“Great, in which direction is not far?”
I could tell he wasn’t going to take no for an answer. “We’re one block that way.”
I hadn’t been here long enough to have a strong sense of direction, and I really hoped I wasn’t about to get us all lost. Not while he was lugging her dead weight around.
Gathering up the bags Cassie had dropped when she went on her rager, I led him toward our hotel.
“I’m really sorry,” I said again.
“Stop apologizing or I’m going to have to punish you,” he said.
My breath hitched in my throat. I was sure I wasn’t imagining the suggestive tone of his voice. I pushed it aside and laughed. “Okay, but at least let me get you a drink.”
“Are you asking me to have a drink with you?”
I felt his gaze on me, and I wanted to melt in the heat of his eyes. Was I?
“Yes, I am,” I said, mustering as much confidence as I could. A weight lifted off my shoulders and immediately dropped into my stomach. I’d done it. I’d made a move and I only wanted to throw up a little. This was progress.
“We’d better get her into bed first. Then I’d love to have a drink with you,” he said, hoisting Cassie up a little higher. She’d fallen asleep, her face pressed against his shoulder. I was insanely jealous of her in that moment. I wanted to press my face against that shoulder. “Is this it?”
His question called me back to reality. We were standing in front of the hotel. I waved for him to follow me past the main entrance and toward the beach. “We’re back here.”
The row of villas was relatively quiet and the beach was deserted now that it was dark. I unlocked the front door, and pointed to her room. I let Roman carry Cassie to her bed while I shoved the stuff we bought into the fridge. Circling the living area, I checked to make sure we didn’t have anything incriminating left out. It would be just like Cassie to leave her vibrator out as a practical joke.
When I felt fairly confident that I was in the clear, I headed into her room. “Give me a sec with her.”
“I’ll be on the patio.”
It was a cautious move, and I appreciated the effort. So I’d asked him for a drink, but that didn’t mean I’d handed him an all-access pass. Waiting outside was what a gentleman would do, which only made him hotter.
When he left, I tucked Cassie’s covers around her and turned her on to her side in case she got sick. I’d need to check on her later to make sure she was okay. It was hardly the first time I’d been on alcohol poisoning duty. Everyone always expects the pre-med student to handle that. She hadn't drank enough to be in real danger, but her stomach was empty. Booze and no food was always a bad combination.
Tomorrow Cassie was getting a lecture. She couldn’t let Trevor affect her this deeply. Then again, maybe this was how you were supposed to react to a break up. She was in love with him. Seeing her like this now made me realize that I was taking my own way too well. If I’d loved Brett, shouldn’t I be hurting as much as she was? I sat next to her for a moment, brushing her hair back from her face. I’d give her a lecture but not a harsh one.
When I couldn’t avoid it any longer, I gathered my courage to head outside. Somehow I knew that once I did, nothing would ever be the same again.
Chapter Eight
As soon as I was sure Cassie was one hundred percent passed out and in no danger of more drunken shenanigans, I slipped onto the patio. The night air had dropped, making me feel like I was home again. It was cool enough that I wrapped my arms around myself as the breeze blew shivers into my skin. The moon shimmered on the glassy surface of the ocean, just bright enough to reveal Roman lounging against the wall. He took a hesitant step toward me as I came outside. We both stopped short of each other, maintaining a safe, classroom-appropriate distance.
“Is she okay?” he asked.
“She will be,” I promised him. “Boy troubles.”
“We are trouble,” Roman said. He grinned at me, his teeth whiter against his tan face in the dark. For a moment I imagined flicking my tongue across those teeth. The thought sent heat to my cheeks, but thankfully it was too dark for him to see me blush. Thinking like that was going to get me into trouble.
“The first step is admitting you have a problem,” I told him.
“If only I could get all three billion of us on the same page.” He shrugged a perfect what-can-you-do-about-it shrug. The man could give classes in charming a woman out of her panties.
“I’ll be happy to find a couple of men who share that attitude,” I said. “It would save my friends and I a lot of heartache.”
“Sounds like Cassie isn’t the only one dealing with boy trouble.”
That was the problem with having a conversation with Roman. He was trained in the art of communication. It was his job to teach people how to communicate, which meant he picked up on the littlest signals or the most innocent word choice. Not that I had boy trouble per se. I was pretty sure flaking out on a nice, dependable guy who wanted to marry me didn’t qualify as a problem by most people’s standards.
Part of me wanted to open my mouth and spill the truth about me and Brett to someone. I could tell Roman. He was a fantastic listener, and he’d been so patient when I went to him for help with Jillian a few weeks ago. She’d been flunking out of his class because she was too afraid to face Liam after he found out about her Parkinson’s. Most professors would have written it off as an excuse, but he genuinely cared. He’d gone out of his way to help her pass and to help her come to terms with her illness. We’d spent a little time together then, but this felt different, and that was the problem. The feelings that prevented me from opening up to Roman about Brett were far from academic or professional.
“Solidarity,” I said instead. It was both the truth and a lie at the same time. I felt my best friends’ heartbreaks as acutely as I had ever felt my own during any of my break-ups, and right now I was too consumed with Cassie's sadness to really think about Brett. It was that or I was a heartless monster who had been stringing my ex around for nearly two years.
“You’re a good friend.” Roman paused and his eyes flicked to the path that had brought us back to our villa. “I should go. I wanted to be sure everything was under control.”
“I’ve got this. Don’t worry.” But even as I spoke I didn’t want him to go. A variety of ways to keep him here flashed through my mind. I could set an accidental fire or rip off my clothes or off
er him that drink. Inviting him to stay for a drink seemed like the least dramatic or dangerous way to keep him from leaving.
“Can I get you that drink?” I asked. “Since I ruined your night.”
“I was home reading,” Roman assured me. “The only thing you ruined was my loneliness.”
I took a deep breath, trying to ignore the way my stomach flipped over when he mentioned he was lonely, and went inside to grab a bottle of wine. My hands shook while I rummaged through the drawers for a corkscrew. I finally found it and dropped it on the floor. Thankfully Cassie was passed out or I probably would have woken her. Nothing short of a nuclear strike would get through to her right now. I’d played nurse to her drunk-ass enough times to know that. It took two tries and a ruined cork but I finally got it open.
“So was it a bad book?” I asked, hoping that I looked casual as I brought him out a glass of wine.
“Why would you think that?”
“I usually don’t feel lonely when I’m reading a good book.” In fact, when I cheated on my textbooks and let myself read a romance novel or the latest bestseller, I was barely aware of my own existence.
“It was work stuff. Apparently, I don’t know how to take time off from school.”
I raised my glass in a toast. “I hear that. I plan to spend most of my time here hiding my textbooks from Cassie so she doesn’t take them away.”
Roman laughed at this and shook his head. “But you're on vacation. I come here all the time. It isn't vacation when it's home.”
“It’s still your semester break. There’s no reason you need to be reading either!” My words rushed out in a jumble. I’d begun to tremble and it had nothing to do with the cool breeze wafting up from the ocean and everything to do with the insanely sexy man standing next to me.
“I’m not judging.” He held a hand up in surrender. “I just hope you have a good time. I know you’ve been really stressed out the last few weeks. I know you were worried about Jillian.”
Of course, he wasn’t being judgmental. That wasn’t Roman’s style.
“Sorry. I get a lot of shit for being so focused on med school and graduation.” It was hard enough to explain why I wanted to spend another five years in school let alone that I needed to be prepping for those years right now. Class for Cassie and Jillian existed on a period by period and semester by semester schedule. Neither of them planned to go further than getting their B.A. I couldn’t blame them for that, but I also couldn’t explain to them why I had to be looking so far ahead all the time.
But Roman only snorted at this. “With this job market, most of your friends will wind up in graduate school.”
“Speaking from experience?” I asked.
“I wouldn’t call Interpersonal Communication my calling.” He shrugged and took a sip of his wine, his lips lingering on the rim, long enough to make me jealous of the glass.
“What is?”
He clenched his eyes shut and shook his head.
“Come on,” I pleaded.
“Poetry,” he said finally.
“Really?” I couldn’t quite imagine buttoned-up Roman Markson as a poet. I felt a twinge between my legs that suggested that other parts of my body could.
“You don’t have to sound so surprised.”
“Watch your I-statements,” I reminded him, tapping his solid chest with my index finger. My body responded to the slight touch, aching for me to step closer to him, but I ignored the urge. “What kind of poetry?”
“The sappy kind,” he said. “Hence why I’m in grad school.”
“Write a line.”
His eyebrow cocked up. “Right now?”
I nodded eagerly, and he set his wine down next to mine on the table. His gaze drifted out toward the ocean and back to me.
“Ojos de estrellas y hilos de oro,” he said in an accent that was as deep as it was intoxicating.
“What does that mean?”
He paused before he spoke as though he was considering what to tell me. “Eyes of stars and strands of gold.”
There was something electric in the air, charged by his words and it took all my willpower to look unaffected by him. The problem was that he had always affected me, and here I didn’t feel the same self-restraint I did on campus. Here with the ocean lapping against the shore and the moon shining over us, I believed in romance and magic. It was as if with a few words, he cast a spell over us.
“So Professor Markson is secretly a rockstar?” I asked, doing my best to ignore the thick ache in my throat.
“Rockstar? No,” he said with a chuckle. “I don’t have my PhD, so I’m barely even a professor.”
“And what should students call you?” I asked, my voice dropping suggestively.
“Mr. Markson. Professor Markson. I don’t really care.” Even as he tried to stay on topic, his eyes flickered to my mouth. I felt them linger there and I licked my lips, imagining his finding mine.
“So what should I call you?” I said.
“I’ve told you that before. You can call me Roman.”
“Is that appropriate?” I drew out the words until they sounded anything but appropriate.
“Jess.” My name was a warning on his lips. His perfect, kissable lips.
Maybe it was that I’d spent most of my life doing what I was supposed to do and staying out of trouble, or maybe the Jess that usually heeded such warnings was on vacation, but nothing short of an act of god was going to keep me away from those lips. When I wrapped my hand around the back of Roman’s neck, he didn’t resist.
There was a moment of hesitation. One split second where the whole world faded into the background and there was nothing but the heat of his breath and the tingle of anticipation shivering through my body—and then our mouths crushed together. Roman’s hand cupped my chin as he deepened the kiss, slipping his tongue past my lips. It massaged mine with deep, languid strokes, releasing a spasm of desire in my core. My body reacted instinctively moving closer to him, my left leg wrapping slightly around his to ease some of the ache I felt.
Roman drew back, breaking the kiss but keeping our bodies entwined. We were both breathless, and his eyes blazed greedily even as he tried to be rational. “We can’t do this.”
Suddenly, I found myself channeling Cassie. “We’re in Mexico.”
“That doesn’t change the fact that I’m an instructor at your university.” But his fingers trailed along my jaw and down my neck, stopping to rest on my collarbone.
“You’re only four years older than me,” I reminded him before repeating, “and we’re in Mexico.”
“I grew up in Mexico,” he said with a soft laugh. “I’m afraid it’s less exotic to me.”
“Mexico is the new Vegas.” My mouth curved into a smile, but I didn’t relax my grip on his neck.
“And that means?” His eyes were searching mine, clearly hoping I could rationalize us into what was a big mistake by both our standards. He wasn’t going to find a way out there. It wasn’t in me. I wanted this too much.
“What happens in Mexico, stays in Mexico,” I promised him.
His chest heaved as though something dangerous was trapped inside of him and it was fighting to get out. “How long are you in Mexico?”
“One week,” I whispered.
“I..” He hesitated and I knew he was thinking of all the reasons we shouldn’t do this.
“One week—no rules,” I said, “and then we’ll go back to Washington and no one will ever know.”
“Except us,” he said, his words thick with meaning.
We would know, but we were adults. Adults had flings. Adults moved on. “Except us.”
“One week.” His words were an agreement, sealed by his lips as they closed over mine.
Chapter Nine
Roman carried me through the patio doors, not breaking our kiss, and ran into very little furniture considering it was pitch black but for the moonlight. Meanwhile I explored the undiscovered territory under his shirt. My fingers traveled
along his abs, pushing the fabric up until my hands landed on a set of cut pectorals, dusted with hair that I wanted to twist my fingers through. Before I realized what I was doing, I’d pulled away from his lips and nipped into the rock hard flesh. Roman let out a surprised yelp, but when I dared to look him in the eyes, his were blazing.
“You like that, Jessica?” he growled, and my hips bucked closer to him involuntarily.
“I guess I do,” I said, but it came out more like a purr. Not only did I like it, I wanted to do it again. Almost as much as I wanted him to throw me down on the bed or slam me into a wall.
Jess was a good girl in bed. She had two tried and true positions. She never bothered with lingerie or props. She came half of the time and faked the other half so she didn’t hurt Brett’s feelings. Jess thought sex was okay.
But Jessica, it seemed, had an entirely different outlook on sex. She didn’t have a list of approved positions or acceptable sexual acts. Jessica wanted to sink her teeth into Roman and go all night. I didn’t know this Jessica, but I liked her.
I felt like someone else with Roman’s arms wrapped around my body and when he kissed me senseless, I responded with the frenzy of a pent-up animal. Digging my nails into his skin, I smashed my lips against his, running my tongue along the back of his teeth like I’d imagined. My hands tangled into his hair, and Roman moaned against my mouth, his hands tightening on my ass. His lips fell to my throat as he trailed kisses up my neck, stopping at my ear. His breath was heavy and hot as he asked, “Are you sure about this?”
Catching his chin in my hand, I brought his gaze to meet mine and then kissed him hard on the mouth. “Positive. Now take me to bed.”
He didn’t need further prodding. A second later, he released me onto the bed and I fell back against the pillow just as he swooped over me. He hovered close enough that his body skimmed mine, and I dropped my legs open, allowing him to settle against me. We were still fully clothed, but every inch of me burned for him, and the fire smoldered through my limbs, pooling in my core.