Chapter 6 #2
“No. That’s enough for now.” He grimaced. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“I just wasn’t expecting…to feel like this. Their faces…they’re in my nightmares.”
“You’re having nightmares?”
She lifted her shoulders. “I’m pretty sure that’s normal after something like that.”
“Yes,” he said, but the word was heavy with anger. With displeasure. As though the very idea was offensive to him. “They can’t hurt you, Kate. They’re going to go away for a very long time.”
“I know.” She closed her eyes. “I’ll be back in Australia soon enough anyway. I doubt they’d bother trying.”
“Yes,” he agreed, but his brow furrowed as though only just remembering that she had another country she called home. “Where in Australia?”
She made a tsking noise. “Don’t we need a signed contract before we can talk about ourselves in that kind of detail?”
A flicker of amusement crossed his lips, and she reached up slowly, eyes challenging him to stop her, as she dragged her fingers over his mouth, gasping at the feeling of his lips, his breath, his warmth, his stubble. It was so elemental and real, so fiercely perfect and right.
The night before, he’d put his finger in her mouth. Now, she did the same thing, pushing one finger between his lips, staring at him as she held it there then slowly removed it, shifting it to her own lips and sucking on it, closing her eyes slowly at the intimacy of that made her insides clench.
“Fuck,” he groaned out, so she opened her eyes and removed her finger, placing it on his knee, then slowly, slowly dragging it higher, towards his hip.
“Kate,” he said, a warning in the word. “Stop.”
“Are you sure?”
A plea flooded his face. “No.”
The admission made her feel exultant. He was lost, just like she was. Lost like he’d been the night before, but he’d walked away. She didn’t think he’d do that again, though. Not with the way he was staring at her now, like she was his last breath.
“Kiss me, Roman,” she challenged, moving closer. His gaze fell to her lips and hovered there. Kate leaned even closer. “Kiss me now.”
He reached behind her, cupping her head, drawing her towards him, so close that she felt his breath against her temple. “Sign the contract,” he said, eyes probing hers. “For God’s sake, sign it now.”
She sat at the table, glass of wine to one side of her, Roman to the other.
She’d read it through once. It was pretty standard.
Not that NDAs were a part of her wheelhouse, but she’d had enough jobs, seen enough contracts in the course of her life to recognise basic legalese.
There was nothing in there to trick her, nothing to take advantage of her.
She placed the pen down, sipped her wine, then glanced across at him and asked the question she’d been thinking about since he’d first mentioned the paperwork. “Has Tia signed one of these?”
It was obvious that he hadn’t expected the question.
“I can’t be the first woman who’s asked you that.”
“You’re the first woman in my life that Tia has met.”
She fought the urge to let that mean anything. It was simply happenstance. She happened to be staying in his apartment; that was the only reason she’d met Tia. Not because he’d wanted to bring these two parts of his life together.
“Has she signed one of these?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Our relationship isn’t physical. Not anymore.”
She tilted her head to the side. “But you’re close to her. She knows things about you.”
“Yes.”
“So you trust her not to tell anyone, simply because you trust her.”
“I’ve known her a very long time.”
Kate pursed her lips. “I told you, you can trust me.”
“I trust you to look after yourself.”
She rolled her eyes. “You really think I’d sell you out?”
“I think you’d be stupid not to.”
“You really don’t know me.”
“We only just met.”
The delineation sat between them like a stark line, painful to cross. Kate didn’t want to think about why his very accurate statement had hurt so much.
Wasn’t this the exact reason for the contract?
“I want to change it,” she said, throat thickening as she considered what she was about to do. Only the necessity of this had her continuing, “I want to add something in.”
“It’s generally non-negotiable.”
She placed the pen down, sipped her wine. “If you want me to sign it, you’ll agree to my terms, too.”
“Which are?”
She did some quick date math in her mind, then wrote a date in twelve days’ time on the bottom of the contract. “This is when it ends.”
His eyes dropped to the page.
“It’s better if we both know that.”
“We agreed to two weeks.”
“Exactly. So there’s no harm in formalising it.”
“Does it scare you to let this just play out?”
“I think it scares us both,” she responded quietly. “I can’t think of any other reason for you to need this contract.”
“It’s a commonsense precaution for a man in my situation.”
“Perhaps,” she said. “But maybe it’s also that you can’t bear the thought of a relationship you don’t control. You need to have levers in place to know that you’re in a commercial arrangement, not part of a couple. There’s no risk, then.”
“I can’t see a problem with that.”
“Nor can I. I’m just making an observation.”
“You like boundaries too,” he said, simply. “You like knowing that we have a time limit in place.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I can’t answer yet,” she teased, nodding towards the contract. Roman took the pen and scrawled his name on the bottom of the page, without looking away from her.
“Your turn.”
She lifted the pen, hovered it over the page, then dropped it again. “On second thoughts, I’m going to sleep on it.”
It was obvious she’d surprised him. “Kate.” Her name was a sharp warning. A plea and a need.
“Take me to bed, Roman. I’m tired.”
Another ice-cold shower, scotch on the ice-cold deck, and it did nothing to ease his pained awareness of her.
Nothing to blot Kate from his mind. He couldn’t sleep, but that wasn’t unusual.
Roman had been dealing with insomnia for a long time.
But knowing Kate was under his roof made everything that much harder—literally and figuratively.
He just happened to be walking close to her room when he heard her.
The soft, panicked cry of someone in the throes of a nightmare, just as she’d said. The cries of a woman being tormented in her sleep.
He didn’t hesitate before throwing open the door and storming to her bedside, staring down at her as she thrashed in the covers, beautiful face scrunched up, tears falling down her cheeks.
“Kate,” he said, sitting at her side, putting his hands on her shoulders.
“Kate, it’s okay. You’re safe. Everything’s okay. ”
“No, no, no,” she cried, still deep in a dream state, so rather than keep trying to wake her up, he came around to the other side of the bed and climbed in, wrapping both his arms around her and pulling her close, holding her so tightly she could no longer thrash and writhe, holding her tightly so she would know, even in her sleep, that she was far from harm.
Her cries subsided and a few moments later, she was asleep once more.
Roman held her close all night, and while he didn’t sleep, a strange peacefulness settled over him that meant he felt rested anyway, when morning came. Rested in a way he wasn’t sure he’d ever known.