Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
SHE DIDN’T KNOW IF IT was the wine, or the excellent meal, or the conversation with Roman, but Kate slept like a very happy baby that night. No nightmares. No dreams. No crying out in the middle of the night.
No Roman.
She woke alone, and desperately disappointed. She’d already become used to the feeling of his big arm wrapped around her, keeping her safe, promising her things she had no business wanting. Things she’d never let herself even think about hoping for.
Because she’d meant what she’d said the night before. Fairytales weren’t real—not for everyone. Definitely not for her. And she’d given up on hoping for them a long time ago.
So maybe waking up alone was a timely reminder of why she needed to keep her wits about her.
It was just like before, with everyone else in her life.
She’d let herself get comfortable here, with Roman, and then he’d disappointed her.
He’d pulled the rug out from under her, just like she’d had happen so many times before, but it was all her own fault.
For wanting more than they’d agreed, for wanting more than she knew was possible.
In the shower, she scrubbed her skin all over, relishing the slightly painful abrasion of the flannel on her skin, the way she glowed pink afterwards. She washed her hair and let the water cascade over her for a long time before stepping out and wrapping a towel around her body.
When she stepped into her room, Roman was there, one hand pressed to the bed, where she’d slept.
Dressed in a suit, his hair still damp from a shower.
She hadn’t seen him in a suit, and the sight of him like this did something funny to her tummy. She stopped walking immediately, afraid to get too close. Afraid to hold her ground. Frustration gnawed at her.
She knew she should run a mile, but she wanted to throw herself into his arms and beg him to make love to her.
Every lesson her childhood had taught her was long forgotten, or no longer seemed to matter around Roman.
Maybe the searing pain of loss would be worth it, for what she could share with Roman?
Maybe if she let her guard down, just this once, even knowing nothing about this was permanent, she wouldn’t regret it after all?
“I have to go out.”
She frowned.
“A meeting requires my personal attention.”
She wanted to rail against that. They’d built a perfect, impenetrable bubble, completely erasing the existence of the outside world. And now, he was going to burst it.
Or was it that he was ready to leave? Was it that he was bored of her? Regretting his offer for her to stay? Wishing she’d go?
Uncertainty held her still. She dug her toes into the plush carpet as a way of anchoring herself to this moment, and muting her natural reaction. To run, before she was asked to leave.
“I’ll be gone most of the day.”
She closed her eyes, hating what was coming. He wanted her to leave. She could feel it. She’d pushed too hard the night before. She’d asked too much. She’d grown too comfortable, too complacent, and she’d become a burden.
He’d gotten what he wanted: a signed confidentiality agreement. Maybe that was what he’d needed all along?
“I’ve been thinking,” she blurted out, her voice slightly unsteady. “I really don’t need to stay here anymore.”
His eyes probed hers, his features not shifting, so she had no idea what he was thinking.
“My ankle’s better. My head, too. I can…”
He stared at her for so long with those piercing eyes of his; goosebumps covered her flesh. “Do you want to leave, Kate?”
She pressed her toe in harder.
“I asked you a question.”
But she couldn’t answer it. Not without revealing too much about herself. Not without admitting how much she wanted to stay.
“You have a life,” she prevaricated. “A job. Things you have to do.”
He strode towards her, expression intense. “We have a contract.”
“I won’t tell anyone—”
“With an end-date. And unless I’m mistaken, we still have one week to go.”
A week.
It felt like a millisecond. One single, pathetic week would go so quickly. And how would she be strong enough to walk away at the end of it?
“Emails last night, a meeting today,” she continued, forcing herself to face rejection. She was no stranger to its sting. “If you want me to go, I’d really prefer you just say.”
He cursed under his breath, but stayed exactly where he was.
“It’s fine,” she insisted. “I really appreciate everything you’ve done—”
“Stop,” he said, and though he still didn’t move, the inflection in his tone might as well have been a whip, cracking through the room. She felt the air sizzle with his finality. “I do not want you to leave. Believe me, Kate, I am not known for my reluctance in speaking my mind.”
Her heart felt like a bird, trapped in her chest, beating its delicate wings. She glanced away, not wanting him to see how relieved she was. Not wanting to admit it, even to herself.
“It’s just…if things have changed, if you’ve changed what you want from me…”
“Then we wouldn’t be standing here, having this conversation. You’d be installed in a lovely comfortable hotel room to finish out your recovery.”
She twisted her fingers together, ignoring the sharp jab of pain beneath her ribs.
“I don’t talk about my past; not with anyone but Tia.
” Jealousy was unmistakable, adding another barb to the sore spot in her chest. Images of the strikingly beautiful woman flooded her mind.
She blotted them out, rather than succumb to their power.
“I don’t know what it is about you, but even without the paperwork, you crack something inside of me open. Something…I don’t particularly like.”
She risked a glance at him then, her heart speeding up. “Oh.”
“This can’t be more than we agreed. A week. Whatever happens between us, that won’t change. Do you understand?”
She tilted her chin. “We just discussed this. We have a contract.”
“Yes. But what the hell does that matter? I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Or yourself?”
He grimaced. “I don’t know if I’m capable of hurting.”
Sympathy bloomed in her belly and she took a step, and then another, closing the distance between them and lifting a hand to his chest. “The big, bad billionaire,” she murmured. “You think you don’t have a heart that can break?”
“I know I don’t.”
“Then what are you worried about?”
“Addiction isn’t the same as affection.”
“And you think you’ll get addicted to me?”
His response was just the flicker of a muscle at the base of his jaw. She moved her hand from his chest to his angular jawline and pressed her fingers to the pulse point. “I think I already might be.”
Her eyes flared wide. “This is getting complicated.”
Roman’s jaw clenched tighter. “Is it?”
But she heard it in his voice; the understanding. The agreement. This was more than he’d bargained for as well.
“I don’t generally allow things to become complicated.”
“Are you telling me or yourself?”
“Both.” It was more of an admission than she’d expected. His eyes almost seemed to be pleading with hers when they met a moment later. “In one week, you’ll leave, and that’s it. For both of us. No matter what.”
And before she could agree, before she could say anything, he swooped his head down and mashed his lips to hers in a kiss that was as desperate as it was soul-searing.
Stars seemed to dance behind her eyelids, her blood was running too fast through her veins, threatening some kind of cellular collapse and her hands clung to the lapel of his suit jacket, crumpling the expensive fabric in a way neither of them noticed.
“Roman,” she exhaled his name, and with her lips separated, his tongue pushed deeper into the recesses of her mouth, brushing her teeth, dueling with her tongue and the stars in her eyes went supernova, so she was whimpering and holding his jacket tighter, harder, her hands desperate to tether to some kind of reality.
But reality was nowhere to be had; he lifted her easily, as he’d been doing since that very first night, only now, instead of cradling her against his chest, he wrapped her legs around his waist and in doing so, her towel dropped away, falling to the ground, so she was naked against him and it didn’t even occur to her to feel self-conscious.
But Roman noticed. Roman’s growl from deep in his throat was like a curse, flooding and pulsing in the room, twisting deep in her belly so she echoed it back to him, a groan from low in her belly as he moved to the edge of the bed then turned, sitting down so she was on his lap, straddling him, feeling his hardness through the fabric of his pants, moving her hips in an ancient, time-worn dance of need.
“You’re so fucking perfect, Kate,” he said, but almost as though it were a problem. “You’ve haunted my dreams, and yet they didn’t come close to this.”
Her response was to grind lower against him, and his hands tangled in her hair, holding her head right where he needed her to plunder her mouth deeply, intensely, before dropping away, leaving her bereft.
But before she could guess his intentions, his lips trapped one of her nipples, sucking it in hard, rolling his tongue over the engorged surface, flicking it, then biting his teeth down with just enough pressure to make her cry out and tilt her head back in wild abandon.
“Please,” she heard herself cry out. “Please, Roman, I want you. I need you, now.”
He dragged his mouth to her other breast and tormented it in all the same ways, his fingers lifting to the first and twisting her nipple so her whole body was a cascade of feelings and impulses, of awareness and desperate, hungry yearning.
“I am aching to fuck you,” he said, and the harshness of that was somehow perfect and reassuring. There was no promise of emotion, of intimacy, it was the spoken equivalent of what she always sought: uncomplicated sex.
“Then what’s stopping you?” she asked, grinding her hips lower.
He moved, tilting her easily backwards onto the mattress so she half-laughed, half-squawked in surprise. “Meetings.”