by Cox, Chloe
Oh, who was she kidding? Once she put it on, they’d probably have to knock her out to get it off. She’d try to wear it everywhere if they let her. She’d wear it to freaking Starbucks.
“Oh boy,” she said under her breath.
“We help,” Dagmar commanded. The assistants left them at Dagmar’s insistence, albeit somewhat reluctantly, and Dagmar and Stella went to work. Which was good, because Lola had gone into a weird trance state as soon as she’d looked at that dress.
Which was crazy. It was just a dress. It wasn’t magic.
Lola hadn’t ever been one to plan her fantasy wedding without having a groom in mind, since it just seemed like a way of tempting fate, but now, in this place, looking at an actual, real life, beautiful wedding dress…
“Lola, you all right?”
“Yup. Fine. Great.”
“Let’s get this thing on and see how it looks.”
She was zipped, cinched, and pinned. Lola took a deep breath—it felt perfect. She’d never worn an item of clothing that had felt this perfect before.
She was totally afraid to look.
“Oh, Lola,” Stella whispered, her hands covering her mouth.
“What? Is it wrong? What? Did I rip—”
“Look,” Dagmar said gently, and turned Lola toward the bank of mirrors. “It’s perfect.”
Lola looked.
She never thought she could look like that. Had never really dared to dream of herself, looking like that. The dress was sculptured; form-fitting layers off of one shoulder, an asymmetry that somehow brought out her coloring, her eyes, her hair. Each layer accentuated her curves, turning even her insecurities into assets. The silk almost seemed to glow. She felt like she was looking at a fairytale. Like an actual magical being had created this dress just for her. Like she had been born to wear this dress and have a happy ending.
And it was all a lie.
It hadn’t really hit her until that moment. Until she was confronted with the image of what should be the happiest moment of her life, with something she hadn’t even been able to admit to herself that she wanted—but the way she felt in this dress, this stupid, beautiful, perfect dress, didn’t lie. And it meant that she couldn’t lie to herself anymore, either.
She was marrying the right man for the wrong reasons; only he didn’t even love her. Couldn’t love her. Not the way she loved him.
It was the cruelest lie she could imagine.
“Lola, sweetie, are you ok?” Stella asked.
Lola wiped at her eyes. “I’m fine, really.”
“No crying on dress,” Dagmar said, patting her arm affectionately. “Is silk.”
They thought she was crying from happiness.
Well, what could she do? She couldn’t back out. She didn’t want to back out. And she didn’t want to stop having sex with Roman. Or, rather, even though she knew it would be good for her to stop having sex with Roman—probably—there was no way in hell she could actually stop. She didn’t even have the strength to try. She didn’t want to try.
In a situation like that, what was she supposed to do?
“I’ve got to get this out of my system,” she muttered. “The next time I see Roman, I—”
“Lola.”
All three women turned to see what man had invaded this very feminine place. But Lola recognized the voice. Lola would always, always recognize that voice.
Roman.
~ * ~ * ~
Roman was stunned speechless, except for one thing: he could still say her name.
“Lola,” he repeated. He didn’t even care that Stella and some other woman were staring at him like he had just escaped from the asylum.
He couldn’t tear his eyes off of Lola.
Lola, in that dress.
He knew people used words like “radiant,” and “glowing,” and “gorgeous” all the time, but those people had never seen Lola like this. She looked as though she had been born for this moment. As though she had been made for him, and this was the proof.
He shook his head, bewildered. He had come here because he needed to be near her. Had needed to feel what he felt when he was near her, to have some sense of familiarity, some sense that things were still in control, even though their sexual relationship felt anything but. Because the truth was that Lola was the most important woman in his life, and had been, for a very long time. The idea that that might change by the choices he had made…
Except he’d never really felt like he’d made a choice. He felt like he’d been pulled along, compelled by forces outside of his control. Like his attraction to this woman he should never have had was a force of nature. For a Dom, this was a terrible thing.
He’d wanted to feel in control again. He’d wanted to feel like he knew his own mind, like he understood what existed between them, and the only way to be certain, in that moment, was to be near her. So he’d called Bashir, found out what Stella had planned, and tracked her down.
The sight of Lola in that white dress, her red hair spilling over her shoulders, her eyes wide and shining, her lips parted in surprise…
He wasn’t in control. He wasn’t in control at all.
“Everyone else leave,” he said.
“No, no, no,” a tiny blonde woman said, looking back at her tablet. “Is bad luck!”
“Get everyone out now,” he said, his voice a crazed, wild version of his Dom voice. “Close the store. Charge me for the day. Get. Out. Now.”
He hadn’t taken his eyes off of Lola. In his peripheral vision, he saw Stella herding the blonde woman out, whispering to the shop girls, followed by some opinionated arguing, and then it all faded away. He heard a door close.
He heard Lola catch her breath.
“I was just thinking about you,” she said.
He didn’t have words. Didn’t really know what he was feeling, only that it was strong. Only that he needed—needed—to touch her.
The closer he got, the more he felt the pull: this woman, his, now.
“Roman…” she said.
He stopped. With the remaining self-control he had left, the most he could manage was to pause for just a moment. He knew he’d come here with a more coherent purpose, with an actual idea, but it all faded away in the light of Lola standing before him.
Lola’s words failed her. She looked at him helplessly and shook her head, ever so slightly. Then she reached out for him.
Roman broke.
He pulled her hard and fast against his body and kissed her. She kissed him back, harder, hungrier, and it drove his own need higher. Neither of them wanted to speak; Roman didn’t even want to tear himself away long enough to breathe. She ran her hands through his hair, he pawed at the back of her dress, that dress, that thing that made him think…
No, he wouldn’t, couldn’t think: he had her in front of him. That had become the only important thing in the world.
It came off so easily.
She stepped out of it. He ripped at her underwear. Bent down, lifted her up. She clung to him as he carried her to the leather bench in the center of the room, surrounded by mirrors; he only pulled away to free his cock.
He thrust hard inside her, and they both shuddered with relief. He felt calmer now that he was inside her again, more right with the world: he built up a rhythm, long, deep strokes that had her rising to match him, her hips coming off the bench while her hand cradled his face. He looked down to see her muscles straining with him, sweating with him, and wondered how he’d ever gone without this.
“Roman,” she whispered. He couldn’t even speak. Just drove into her more and more, desperate to feel her come around his cock.
“Look at me,” he said as she came. She did, and it leveled him.
chapter 13
“Roman, you’re a mess.”
Roman glared at Ford. He had not come here for a makeover. Or an opinion, for that matter. He’d come here to talk about the logistics of the L.A. Volare expansion.
“Not relevant,” Roman said brusqu
ely.
“Bullshit it’s not relevant. What the hell is wrong with you?”
Roman ran his hands through his hair. “I haven’t slept well lately,” he admitted.
His physical need for Lola had become all-consuming—she was never far from his thoughts, and if he thought about her for too long, he would inevitably have to have her. He had tracked her down while she was trying on wedding dresses. That was not normal behavior.
His reaction to her, in that dress, had not been normal behavior.
It had been like flashing red in front of a crazed bull. He had not wanted to think about why.
It was not a sustainable state of affairs for a professional man. It was even worse for a man who couldn’t allow himself to fall asleep in the presence of a woman, any woman, because of what would inevitably happen when he woke up. He only wanted good things with Lola. He didn’t want to associate that terrible grief with her, not even once, and yet he couldn’t bear to be far away from her, so he slept on that stupid couch.
The result was that he couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a good night’s sleep.
It was unlikely he would have been able to sleep much, anyway. A few hours away from her and he became hungry for her again. It was insane. He had taken the overindulgence approach, thinking that if he had Lola as much as humanly possible, it would sate him. They would work it out of their systems, and their lives could return to some semblance of normality.
In his case, that had been a grave miscalculation: it had only made things worse.
“Are you sure you’re all right?” Ford asked.
“No, but it does not matter,” Roman said. “You were reviewing the requirements for the expansion site with me.”
He felt Ford’s eye on him and rolled his neck, feeling the pull of each individual muscle on his back and shoulders, already wanting to get out of here and get back to Lola. Jesus Christ, this could not be healthy. Roman didn’t even know if Lola was as perturbed as he was; by tacit agreement, they didn’t speak of it. They both pretended this level of physical chemistry, of need, was normal. Roman knew it was not.
“Ford, ignore whatever you are thinking, and get on with it.”
“Sure, you’re the boss. Everything’s set to go, whenever you can pull the trigger. The major issue right now is whether this political situation with Senator Jeels is stable enough for you to leave Volare NY in Lola’s hands while you go to L.A.”
Roman winced.
“You still haven’t talked to Lola about this, have you?” Ford said. “Damn, Roman, this is not like you. What the hell is going on? Ever since the two of you—”
“Don’t, Ford,” Roman said, collapsing into the chair opposite Ford’s desk. “It doesn’t matter so long as Senator Jeels continues to make our situation unstable, yes?”
“Yeah. How is that going, by the way?”
Roman shrugged. “Stella and a wedding planner are making the ceremony a publicity event. I gave that reporter an exclusive, so she is happy to be the only one with access. Exclusive photographs, all of that.”
“Good idea. You doing an interview?”
“Eventually,” Roman said. He had made that promise. And he’d promised that Lola would do it, too.
“That doesn’t quite settle everything, though. We need more.”
“You have private investigators, yes?” Roman said. “Hire them. Send them after Jeels. I do not want this man posing a threat.”
He finished the sentence in his head: to Lola.
“Understood,” Ford said. “But if you want my advice, as a friend? You need to talk to Lola about moving to L.A., and you need to do it soon. You can’t just spring that on her, Roman.”
Roman nodded. The trouble wasn’t that he didn’t know how to tell Lola that he would be moving to L.A., leaving her in New York to run the original Volare club; the trouble was that he no longer wanted to go to L.A., or anywhere in the world, without her.
And he didn’t know what that meant.
~ * ~ * ~
Lola stacked packets of sugar into little piles, little forts, little castles. Then she knocked them over and did it all over again.
She was early. She was early because she was nervous. She was nervous because she had started to think, more and more, that she was making an incredible mistake.
“It’s just coffee,” she said to herself.
The smarter part of her brain screamed, No, dummy, it’s coffee with the man who said he loved you, and showed it by screwing his ex.
But she had to figure this out. As she’d explained to Stella, she had to confront this, get some kind of closure. Maybe then she’d get over this thing with Roman.
“How does that make any sense?” Stella had said. “What does Roman have to do with Ben?”
“It’s complicated,” Lola had answered.
Now, sitting in this coffee shop, waiting for Ben to walk in and fuck with her head, Lola wondered if she was lying to herself—again. The thing was, she had no ready explanation for what was happening with Roman. It was as though they were both incurably addicted to each other, to the point where Lola seriously wondered if she were just filling some vacancy, tending some wound, with sex. Not just any sex, though—sex with Roman.
There was nothing else in the world like it.
She was willing to bet there had never been anything else in the world like it.
She had never felt closer to the man, or farther away. They had stopped trying to articulate things with real, actual words, had just reverted to madly tearing at each other’s clothing when alone. They at least understood each other physically. But Lola was almost grateful that neither of them could ever seem to find the words to express what was happening, because she didn’t want to think about what it meant that Roman would never sleep next to her. And she didn’t want to have to think too hard about her own feelings, especially after what happened in the dress shop.
“This can’t last,” she said to herself.
“I have to agree. It doesn’t look too architecturally sound.”
Lola looked up and the latest iteration of her sugar packet fortress crumbled. Ben stood over her, his hands in his pockets, sandy colored stubble on his chin.
“Hi,” he said.
Lola took a deep breath. “Hi.”
“Thank you for meeting me,” he said, and sat down across from her.
It was such an uncharacteristically Ben thing to say, and in such an uncharacteristic tone for him, that it threw Lola off. Ben wasn’t such a natural Dom all the time the way Roman was, and so it wasn’t ever something he took casually. He was usually so deliberate in his intentions, so careful—which was maybe why she’d been able to trust him in that role.
And that turned out to be a huge mistake, she reminded herself.
Sitting across from him, looking into his sandy blond hair and his disarming blue eyes, Lola remembered why she had wanted to trust him in the first place.
“You look uncomfortable,” he said.
“I’m wondering if this was a mistake,” Lola admitted. She was feeling queasy. The last time she had seen this man, apart from his stunt at Volare, he had been balls-deep in his ex-wife, on a night when she had planned to take him to dinner. He had left the front door open at his apartment, almost like he wanted to get caught. Now Lola watched him take a sip of his coffee and remembered looking around his apartment for bottles after that night, even half-full glasses, anything that might say he was only cheating because he’d started drinking again. She’d felt terrible about it later, but at the time she’d just wanted there to be a reason besides “he doesn’t give a shit about you.”
“Lola, please,” Ben said, leaning forward. “Please let me try to explain—”
The word “explain” made her see shades of red. She said, “You know what? There’s really no way to excuse—”
“Shit, that’s not what I meant.” Ben pinched the bridge of his nose the way he did whenever he needed to concentrate. “I don’t wan
t to make excuses. I just…I meant that I wanted to try to explain why I fucked up so badly, just to make sure that you knew it had nothing to do with you. That it was me. All me. And that I’m more sorry for this than I ever have been about anything in my entire life.”
He looked at her, his eyes pleading. And he was saying things that, truthfully, she was desperate to hear, because no matter how many times she told herself that it wasn’t her fault, there was always some part of her that wondered. She knew it was stupid. But hearts were stupid. And hers was still seriously damaged.
“Ok,” she breathed. “Shoot.”
Ben sighed, and gave her a tired smile. “This is harder than I thought.”
“I’m not all that sympathetic to that, Ben. I really—”
“You are the most amazing woman I have ever met, Lola,” he said, his blue eyes clear and steady, refusing to let her go. “Every day you blew me away, and every fucking day I couldn’t believe I was so goddamned lucky as to even know you. That you would look at me, and smile. That you said you loved me, too. Christ, Lola, it felt like I was dreaming. I felt like it was a miracle that you could love a fuck-up like me. And the longer it went on… No, Lola, please don’t cry. Look at me.”
He reached out to touch her face, and she jerked back.
“No, Ben.”
He didn’t get to comfort her anymore. He didn’t get to be the one to tell her things that made her feel good about herself, or at least less badly, even if she so desperately wanted to believe them. It wasn’t fair.
“I’m sorry. Lola, I am so, so sorry. I did this—I know I did this. Apologizing and taking responsibility is part of my recovery; I’ve been talking about it in group—”
“Did you start drinking again?” She felt terrible asking. Would that make it better, if he’d broken her heart as part of a relapse? Or worse?
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “But I think that’s why I…did what I did. I was so sure that I was going to fuck up eventually, Lola, I was so sure I didn’t deserve you, that I sabotaged everything. I just…I couldn’t take it.”