Chapter 18 – Roman
ROMAN
Braelyn is quiet as we sit in the back of the taxi, the bag of supplies I purchased without issue on her lap since she made me hold a clean pad of gauze over my cut.
She’s not mad at me. I don’t think it’s that, but she’s…
I don’t know. I don’t know what this is, and I can typically read her pretty well.
“What’s up?” I ask, no longer able to handle the suspense. Our driver is yelling at someone on his phone in Spanish while blasting music, so it’s just us back here.
She turns her head and looks up at me. “You’re a good man, Roman Fritz.”
My insides shift, and not in a fun way. “I’m really not. Ask anyone who works for me.”
“I’m not talking about being nice. I’m talking about being good. There’s a difference.”
I don’t know what to say to that, so I don’t say anything.
I don’t feel like a good man. Or maybe it’s that I don’t feel like a deserving man.
Nash was the good one. Always smiling and happy.
He wanted to be a pediatric neurosurgeon.
He wanted to save lives and make a difference.
I cook food. Expensive food that not many can afford.
I slam my fists into people and revel when I make them bleed or break bones.
That’s not good. There’s a certain amount of evil in a man who does that.
I have more money than I’ll ever be able to spend in ten lifetimes, and I spread it around. It’s my way of evening the karmic scales, but I already know they’ll never be tipped in my favor.
“You’re a nurse and have the kindest, most honest and pure heart I’ve ever experienced in anyone. You see the best in everyone.”
“Roman, you’re a good man,” she tells me firmly. “At some point, you need to start accepting that. What happened that awful day wasn’t your fault. You saved two lives today, and that’s everything.”
She lets it end there, and it does because now we’re back at the resort, then in our suite. She sits me down at the dining room table, a towel beneath my hand, where she has me soaking it in a basin of Betadine as she sets everything else up.
“Dude, there’s no lidocaine.”
“What?”
“Numbing agent.”
“Oh.” I shrug. “I guess they forgot to include it. It’s fine.”
Her lips form a flat line. “It’s going to hurt.”
I try not to smirk, but it happens anyway. “Kid, I’m a boxer and a chef. A little pain doesn’t scare me. Hell, I like it.”
She shakes her head and rolls her eyes. “Yes, you’re a tough guy, but I’m going to be poking around at your wound, and it will sting like a bastard. Plus, the Dermabond can burn when applied.”
“I’ll be fine, Nurse Albright. I promise.”
She huffs, so very annoyed with me as she opens a sterile drape and sets it down on the table. “You do know I’ve never glued or sutured anyone, right? Typically, the interns or second-year residents do that.”
“How many have you seen?”
She throws me a look. “About a million.”
“See a million, do one.”
“You have a lot of faith in me. Sit back.”
“Why?”
Without answering me, she drops herself onto my lap, stealing the breath from my lungs as she settles back and inadvertently nudges my dick.
“Do this with all of your patients?” I tease, trying for a levity I don’t feel.
“Only the hot, married ones,” she quips.
“Funny.”
“It’s the best angle, and if you want me to do this so you have a functioning hand, let me work.”
She holds my hand over the basin and proceeds to squirt it with sterile saline from a syringe.
And yes, that does burn. When she’s satisfied, she pulls my hand away from the basin and sets it on top of the sterile drape and starts to dab it with sterile gauze to dry it.
She opens all of the supplies, dropping them from the packaging onto the drape before she puts sterile gloves on and gets down to business.
“Touch each of your fingertips to your thumb for me.”
I can’t help my smile. Luckily, she can’t see it because her back is to me and she’s hyper-focused. I do as she says and she continues her examination.
“Any numbness or tingling in your fingers or fingertips?”
“No.”
She pokes at me with the tip of the tweezers around my hand. “You feel that?”
“Yes.”
She sighs in relief. “If this were any deeper, you’d have been in big trouble, and I wouldn’t be able to close it. Hold still. This will hurt despite what you think.”
She examines the wound using tweezers and cleans it with more antiseptic, and yeah, that doesn’t feel great either, but it’s nothing terrible. Still, she’s in my lap and I wrap my other hand around her waist, holding her to me. Then I drop my face into her neck, breathing in the scent of her.
I nearly kissed her on the boat. I was inches away. I wouldn’t have stopped.
She clears her throat and shifts ever so slightly on my thighs, and silence descends, thick and heavy and charged with electricity.
The woman literally has a sharp implement in an open wound on my hand, but all I can think about is the feel of her.
Her ass on my dick, her hair tickling my face, her soft skin against my cheek and lips.
Right now, she could stab me with those tweezers, and I wouldn’t notice.
“This…” She clears her throat again. “This will burn.”
I nod against her, my grip on her waist tightening as she opens the Dermabond and starts to glue up my hand.
She gets to work, tweezing and pulling and gluing as more dense silence holds us hostage, only broken up by the sound of our breathing.
But she feels me. I know she does. Her breathing has changed, and her body is still, almost afraid to move an inch.
“You’re, um, distracting me with your…”
“I know. I’m sorry. I can’t help it. You’re in my lap and I…” Fuck. My eyes close and my heart thunders. “I want you.”
“You do?”
I would laugh at that question if there were anything humorous about it.
She doesn’t know because I haven’t told her, and I haven’t told her because she wasn’t ready to know.
Maybe I wasn’t ready to push it, afraid of where it would take us, and the fact that I felt wrong about it because she was Nash’s for so long and I didn’t feel as though I deserved any piece of her because of that.
But now, I can’t think about anything else but her and what we could be.
What this incredible friendship could grow into.
I don’t know what to do about Europe, but if I’m lucky enough to get to a place where I have to figure something out, I will then. I don’t know what that could possibly be, but hopefully something.
“Braelyn, you don’t know how much.” My lips glide gently along the slope of her neck, and her breath hitches.
“But…” Her voice wavers with fear and uncertainty.
“I know.” She doesn’t have to say anything. I can read her thoughts clearly. “You’re the most important person in the world to me, so if you tell me no, I get it and it’s okay because you’re worth more to me than that.”
“But you…”
“Yes. More than anything.” I want to tell her. I want to say the words and bare my soul, but I can’t. They won’t come out. Not yet. It’s too soon. She’s not ready for that. Not yet.
She doesn’t say anything. Just continues to glue up my hand, and when she’s done, her tone is clinical.
“You don’t need a bandage. The Dermabond is a waterproof seal.
Just keep it clean and dry, and pat it gently with a towel after the shower or washing your hands.
No creams or anything on it. It should peel off in five to ten days, but no sooner.
Keep a watch for signs of infection, including increased redness, pain, warmth to touch, or drainage from the wound. ”
“Okay.”
She removes her gloves with a snap and wraps everything up in the sterile drape before she climbs off my lap to throw it all away. I stare down at my fixed hand, unable to move, my heart in my feet.
A hand on my shoulder pushing me back startles me, and I lock eyes with Braelyn as she climbs onto my lap again, this time facing me. Her arms sling around my shoulders, and she shifts until we’re practically nose to nose. Instinctively, my hands find her hips, and I hold her steady.
“Don’t let this become the worst decision we’ve ever made.”
With that, her hands meet the back of my head, and she brings my mouth to hers so she can kiss me. The effect is instant. There is no hesitation.
I tilt my head and kiss her back, fueled by years of pent-up hunger and need. I groan into her, already losing my mind. I don’t know how to hold back. I can’t go slow.
My good hand is in her hair, and my bad one slides to her lower back. I urge her forward until we’re flush, her legs spread on either side of mine, tucked against the arms of the chair. There isn’t enough room on here, and I can’t get her as close as I need her.
Things ping-pong through my mind. Things like hard limits and safe words.
Things like NDAs. Things that are typically brokered and discussed like the business transactions they’ve been.
This isn’t that. She’ll never be that. I married her, and that makes her my wife even if she doesn’t think of herself that way.
But I’m not focusing on any of that. Instead, I’m leaping into this blind and with abandon, not caring about anything other than the feel of her lips on mine. The way she tastes and the sounds she makes.
I breathe hard against her mouth, dizzy in my frenzy while trying to mentally talk myself into chilling the fuck out. It feels impossible. I’m eager and excited and nervous in a way I’ve never been with anyone before.
Braelyn whimpers against me as I bite her lip and suck it between my lips, only to switch up the angle and devour her mouth in an entirely new way, taking her in a new direction. Something I plan to do tirelessly.
But this chair sucks.
My good hand scoops her ass, and I stand, taking her with me, only to immediately drop her onto the table she was just using to glue my hand. She makes a small, surprised sound that dies and turns into a moan as she wraps her legs around my waist and feels my straining erection.