do. We’re flying to, um, gosh, I’m losing track.” She looked to the headboard as though it had the answer. “Hartford, maybe. Leaving really early.”
“You don’t sound as if you enjoy this job. Quit.”
“I can’t. If I finish my contract and Trenton gets his nomination, I get a bonus.” As she brought her chin back down, she adjusted the pearls so they weren’t strangling her. “Before you think I’m all about the money, it’s for Mom. She always wanted to go back to Paris. I promised her I’d sprinkle her ashes in the Seine.”
“I’ll take you,” he offered smoothly.
“Please don’t ruin this by suggesting I become your mistress,” she admonished, both tempted and slighted. She’d thought they’d acted as equals here.
“I have companions, not mistresses,” he corrected, pulling back and letting his hand fall on her stomach, but at a subliminal level, he’d pulled way back. “I don’t buy women.”
“Really. You don’t support your lovers? Buy them clothes or jewelry? Take them on trips?” she asked skeptically.
“I meet their needs while they’re with me, yes, and sometimes that extends to after we’ve stopped seeing each other. But it’s not an exchange for sex.”
“You’re just that generous?”
“I try to be.”
He sounded truthful, if stiffly reserved. Insulted?
“Well, I only have to get through the fall with this job and then I can look for something else. So I will,” she said.
His lips twitched with dismay. “I don’t like that answer,” he informed her. “Quit now and look for something when it suits you.”
Yes, she was a fool to think they were equals. Here was the rich tycoon who got what he wanted without regard for other people’s wishes.
Proceeding delicately because she didn’t want to ruin this fragile accord they’d managed to find, she said, “Roman, my mother put her fate in the hands of a powerful man, then birthed me into the same situation. It didn’t work out well for either of us. I need my independence so I don’t feel trapped or obligated.”
“I’m not trying to trap you,” he said with a scowl. “You could leave anytime.”
“Then, I’ll leave in the morning,” she said gently.
He swore. “Walked into that one, didn’t I?” He set his teeth. A muscle pulsed in his jaw. “I suppose I’ll have to use other methods of persuasion.” His gaze tracked back to hers and the heat in his eyes made her heart leap with panic.
“Don’t!” She pressed her hands to his chest, holding him off as he started to tuck her beneath him.
He went motionless, only his head coming up slightly as he dragged his gaze from her nudity beneath him to the conflict that must be evident in her eyes.
“I’m not going to hurt you, Melodie,” he said, brows coming together with concern.
“I think you might,” she said, feeling her lips start to tremble. “You scare me, Roman. The way you make me feel. Please. If tonight is about making peace, please don’t use my weakness against me.”
He absorbed that in silence, only a small tick in his cheek letting her know he’d heard and was processing. Finally his mouth flattened in annoyance. “You’re telling me I have to help you resist what we both want? That will hurt you, Melodie. I don’t want to do that.”
She didn’t know much about computers, but she knew what circular logic was, and that was a big bunch of it right there. At the same time, her hands moved restlessly on him, smoothing his tight skin to his shoulders, pressing with involuntary invitation for him to lower onto her and kiss her.
They stole one brief kiss. Another. She could feel him hardening and opened her legs so he could settle properly between her thighs.
“I’m not going to deny you,” he warned, smoothing her loose hair back from her face. “I’m going to give you everything you ask for. I’ll stay just this side of barbaric as I ravish the hell out of you. If you can bring yourself to leave after that, I’ll let you go.”
Her heart trembled in her chest. Words stayed locked in her throat. All she could do was reach between them to guide him, telling him what she wanted. He teased her for a few moments, letting her feel his naked length against the growing ache in her loins, kissing her deeply until she was writhing with need beneath him. Then he covered himself and thrust, both of them catching ragged breaths as the agony of anticipation ceased and the perfection of joining commenced.
He was a man of his word; however, he dragged a pillow under her bottom so he could service her as thoroughly as possible, leaving her near weeping from the power of her release. Then he drew away, still hard, and proceeded to coax her down the road of sexual play all over again. He found all her erogenous zones and took his time stimulating her until she was ready for a firmer touch. A more insistent pull on her breast with his lips, a more erotic caress that he watched, soothing her when she tried to close her legs, claiming it was too immodest.
He gently dominated her then, rolling her so her stomach was on the pillow and covering her, but not taking her. He just stroked her with his body in a mimic of what they both wanted.
“Hurt?” he asked in a rasp. “I want everything in you, Melodie. Every last scream, but I won’t take them. You have to give them to me.”
She was sobbing, so aroused she was trembling. Shifting, coming up on her knees, she drew him to where she wanted him and clenched her fists in the sheets as he caressed her while he thrust. It was elemental and primitive, both of them stripped down to the very core. All her romantic notions of how men and women should come together dissolved in a flood of carnal hunger, decorum gone, both of them filling the room with erotic noises.
When they hit the peak, his fingers bit into her hips, locking them together as she cried, “Deeper, harder, yes, yes.” He bucked and she gave up a long cry of gratified fulfillment.
ROMAN SWORE, SNAPPING Melodie from a doze.
“What’s wrong?” she asked sleepily.
“Can’t you hear it? Does he think he owns you?”
She lifted her head off his chest, where the steady thump of his heartbeat had lulled her. She heard the distant hum of her phone vibrating in the other room. Glancing at the clock, she said, “He’s probably worried I’ll miss the flight.”
Roman’s arm tightened on her.
She rolled onto him, growing addicted to the feel of his body against her own, loving the freedom to be like this: more than familiar or intimate. Close.
Nuzzling her nose into the fine hairs at his breastbone, she hid the dampness that rose behind her eyes as she drank in his scent, murmuring, “I have to leave soon. Not should,” she clarified. “Have to.”
