Chapter 21
ROMAN
“Go ahead,” Lorne told me.
I didn’t back up from Amber at my assistant’s voice.
“We’ll handle it here.”
I nodded, still not stepping back.
It wasn’t enough. I hadn’t held her enough yet to calm the complete horror that filled me.
For the rest of my life, I would be scarred with the sound of Amber’s scream.
The pure terror in it. The ferocious anger in it.
And the unspeakable urgency that made my heart trip and stutter that I could lose her.
She’d screamed for help, for me, and I had come to her rescue. Just like I promised I would. All those times I told her that she would be safe, that she—alongside my son and daughter I entrusted in her care—would never be harmed so long as I had anything to do or say about it.
The seconds that passed between her ear-splitting screams and the moment I shot at and kicked the door down were the most tense, heart-stopping passage of time in my life.
The fear that she was hurt.
The fury that someone had tried to mess with her.
The dread that my children were—
No. Stop.
Emily and Henry were fine. Scared, but alive and uninjured. They calmed down, cocooned between me and Amber as we stood together and sought the basic comfort of holding on to each other. Like one cohesive unit, we caught our breath and let time tick by.
“Roman?” Lorne asked.
I stepped back then, knowing he wanted to spare them. To get Amber away from the body. To get the children out of this room where they’d been threatened.
Wrapping my arm around Amber and still holding Emily, I twisted a little. I met Lorne’s stern gaze. One tip of his chin was all the acknowledgment I needed for the question I couldn’t ask in front of Amber.
He’ll take care of the body.
They’ll look into him, figure out who the fuck he was.
All of them will team up and address this latest transgression while I helped Amber take the twins home.
I nodded back at him and caught Sergei’s scowl as he stood behind him.
He nodded at me once too, giving me another silent answer that he’d be here to take charge.
“Come on,” I told Amber. “Let’s get out of here.”
She didn’t protest. She didn’t try to look past me and peek at the body of the man who’d attacked and tried to kidnap my son. My daughter. Maybe Amber too.
The further I escorted her out of the room, the calmer I should have felt. But it didn’t change the deep, possessive rage that filled me. It swelled my heart and made my head hammer with my pulse. I’d eliminated the threat, but adrenaline still rushed through me, fueling my anger.
No one spoke to us as I led her out of the church.
Most of the guests had left while Amber was changing the diapers.
I had been waiting in the pew for Sofia and Andre to pay their last respects at Esmeralda’s coffin before getting up.
Andre had handed Esme to me while he stepped up there with his wife.
But the second the screams cut out and I shot to my feet, I thrust the baby at Renee, the maid who doted on Sofia, and ran to help my babies, my woman.
Amber didn’t speak in the backseat of the car.
The whole ride home, we sat there stunned and speechless.
Even though I never compromised on my children’s safety and Amber didn’t either, we didn’t strap them into their carriers like usual.
The driver went slowly, carefully. With their little bodies lax and slumped against our chests, it seemed better to let them have comfort after that trauma.
Before we reached the house, my phone buzzed.
It would no doubt be lighting up and pinging like crazy while the others handled the situation, taking on the cleanup and starting the investigation.
I picked it up and skimmed what Sergei had already sent me. This hazy fury wasn’t sustainable, and I figured getting all the intel I could might prevent me from exploding.
Sergei: He had ID on him.
Sergei: He’s in our database, last associated with the Popovs as one of their asset handlers.
Fuck. I wished he were alive again so I could kill him another time, with less mercy.
Sergei: He operates as an independent contractor.
Sergei: But we’re treating this so far as an act from Niko Popov himself.
I set my phone back into my pocket without disturbing Emily sleeping on my chest. Amber glanced up at me, stark worry and apprehension in her eyes.
I shook my head then cupped her chin to pull her closer. I kissed the top of her head, needing even that slight contact to soothe my soul.
She didn’t ask me anything, perhaps too shaken to speak up.
She didn’t protest or indicate what she’d like to do when we were home, maybe too sluggish from the up and down of the roller coaster of emotions.
Without needing to discuss it, we focused on the twins. Emily and Henry napped some, but when they woke, they were more agitated. As if the nightmares weren’t gone yet.
After we rocked them, held them, and fed them, then walked with them some more, I wondered if they’d sleep at all tonight.
“I read that babies don’t actually form long-term memories until their brains are more developed,” Amber said out of the blue as we teamed up to give them their baths hours later. “So hopefully…” She furrowed her brow, looking destroyed that they’d suffered such a scare.
I nodded. “I read that too.”
It was all we shared as a reaction to the incident at the funeral.
Once we placed the twins in their portable cribs that were in my room, I stepped back and stared at them for a long moment. Treasuring them. Feeling profoundly grateful that they were mine.
Amber approached me from behind, putting her hand on my back.
Feeling her presence, I let myself sink into needing her now. Caring for the babies and making them calm and comfortable for the night was the first priority. But all through the evening, I struggled with this growing anger that I could’ve lost her, too.
“Roman?”
I spun, gathering her close with my arm around her slim waist. Soft notes of the baby soap came from her, the smell of cleanliness and freshness from bathing the twins. But as I dipped down and gripped her chin, I relished the smell of her. Her faint perfume. Her shampoo.
It was her taste I sought, though, and I crushed my mouth to hers immediately.
Her muffled gasp was too quiet to wake the babies, but I walked her back through the room anyway. She didn’t fight. She didn’t protest. Moving with me, she clutched the front of my shirt for balance.
“I—”
I kissed her again, hungrier. If she wanted to talk, it would need to wait. It had to come second.
Because with this pent-up anger that was only tempered with this overwhelming relief that she was here and alive and with me after protecting my children, I could only feel her.
I only had the energy and stability of mind to consume all the goodness she could feed into my soul.
When I broke the kiss, both of us panting for air, she searched my face without saying anything.
“I need…” I shook my head, trying not to sound like a savage idiot. “I need you.”
She kissed me tenderly, and it nearly broke me.
“I need to feel you. To hold you.”
She fell into step, kissing me back impatiently as we groped for each other’s clothes.
“I need to feel you, Amber. All of you. To know you are really here. And safe. That you’re here and with me—”
She pressed her fingertips to my lips as I tugged her dress off. Stepping out of it, she used her free hand to work on getting my pants off.
Sliding her fingers from my mouth, she replaced the touch with her lips. Clinging to me with her arms linked around me, she gave me the access to push her panties down and unclasp her bra.
We were on the same page, this race to get naked and seek that soulful connection that sparked and smoked when we came together.
After the hell of that attempted kidnapping, I needed the heaven of having her wrapped around me and sucking me in so deep.
By the time we removed all our clothes, we’d surpassed the demand for foreplay.
Her nipples poked at my chest, hard buds that had to be aching.
My dick was a steel rod, pointing at her stomach with pre-cum dripping out of the tip of my cockhead.
And as I lay her down on the bed, bracing my weight over her, she spread her legs wide to welcome me in.
I smelled her. The sweet, tangy scent of her arousal as she moved my dick toward her entrance.
I heard her. Those soft moans of need that she tried to silence as I began to fill her, withdrawing with short pulls back until I was all the way in.
I tasted her. That hot bliss of her tongue tangling with mine as I waited, balls-deep in her tight pussy.
Then as I slid out and rammed all the way into her slick cunt, I felt her.
The submission. The need. The embrace and trust that we could seek a relief like this with each other.
She hooked her legs around my waist and took the pounding tempo I set up. I curled my arms around her to secure her flush to me as she arched up into me.
This was about knowing we were alive. Safe. And together. A purely physical reconnection to shoo away all the ugliness of what happened earlier—what could have happened earlier.
Next time, we could go slow.
Right now, as I fucked her hard and fast until the first waves of her orgasm hit her, I needed to lose myself in the perfection of this union we’d found.
Her thighs quivered as she gasped, breaking our kiss as she came. Only to draw in air and stare at me like she’d never let go.
Don’t.
Don’t, Amber.
Stay like this.
With me.
I gritted my teeth as I lost control, shooting my cum deep inside up. Feeling her still coming, I lowered my head to rest against hers and kissed her tenderly as she milked me dry, clenching on my cock and wringing every last drop from me.
Only like this could I finally relax. Deep inside her. Slick with her arousal coating my skin from where we were joined. Her soft breasts cushioning my chest as I pinned her to the mattress. And the steady comfort of her heart beating beneath mine.
Almost as if mocking how mine synced with hers, through the good and the bad, like what we’d experienced today.