Chapter 11 #2
“No. Kate, I’m not—I just—it’s not your fault. It’s never your fault. But if I’m not going to be there to look after you, I’d feel better knowing that you were at least looking after yourself.”
“Why do you care?” she demanded, sitting up straighter, wondering if it was a stupid thing to ask then deciding she didn’t much care. “Why does it matter?”
“Because,” he responded.
“Why?” she challenged and then despite his over-the-top ministrations, she pushed out of bed and stalked towards him.
His jaw set into a perfect square even as she walked and by the time she reached him, his hands had lifted to brace her, to at least offer support if not to carry her back to bed.
“Why?” she repeated. “You’re the one who told me this wouldn’t be complicated, so why are you acting as though your whole life depends on my safety? ”
A muscle jerked in his jaw. She lifted her fingers up to touch it without thinking and her eyes shifted to his. Wonderment flooded her body; her lips parted in surprise.
“Why can’t both things be true?” he growled. Literally growled. The words were so deep and raspy they seemed to puncture their way right into Kate’s heart.
She blinked quickly to clear the thought.
“I care about your safety.” And now he captured her face in his, holding her steady. “I care. I want to know you’re okay. But nothing will change my mind about us. When this ends; it’s over. That’s about as uncomplicated as it gets.”
Is it? A part of her wanted to scream. But she was muddle-headed and her thoughts were all jumbled, so the argument slipped away from her like soap in the bathtub.
In fact, talking was suddenly seeming really, really overrated.
“You know what’s not complicated?” And if he’d growled, then she purred, a low, soft, throaty invitation in every syllable.
“Take me to bed, Roman.”
His eyes flared, heat moving immediately from him to her and back again.
“Take me to bed,” she repeated.
“Kate.” It was a whip. A snap of control. A sign of his power, even in the midst of this oppressive fog of need.
“Roman,” she repeated in kind, but the husky tones of her voice lessened the effect somewhat.
“That’s not going to happen.”
She stared up at him. “What?”
“Not right now.”
Her fingers trailed lower, to his shirt, the buttons, the belt of his trousers.
“Why not?”Another purr.
“Because,” he said, dropping his head and sucking her lower lip into his mouth. She whimpered at his touch. “You’ve had three glasses of champagne by my count.”
“Not quite,” she pointed out, reasonably confident a few sips remained in her third glass.
“In under an hour.”
She lifted one shoulder. “And?”
“And I’m not interested in taking any woman to bed when she’s potentially too drunk to remember what happened.”
Kate gasped. “You’re calling me drunk?”
“Three glasses,” he said, lips twitching in the faintest hint of a smile. “In under an hour.”
“I don’t care. It’s all relative. I’m fiiiine.”
“Kate, you’re most definitely not fine, and that’s fine. We have time.” He lifted his lips to her forehead and pressed a kiss there. “It’s not happening now.”
“I bet I can change your mind,” she murmured, holding his gaze.
“Hmm, I bet you could, too.”
And before he could say another word, she dropped to her knees in front of him.
“Kate.” His voice was a warning. When she moved her hands to his zipper, he put a single hand on hers to still her.
“No.”
“No?” she arched a brow. “You seriously have a problem with this?”
His Adam’s apple shifted in his stubbled jaw as he swallowed. “It’s not going to happen,” he repeated.
“To be clear, if I were to take your rock-hard cock,” and she moved her finger along his length to show them both what she meant, “into my mouth, all the way, right to the back of my throat and savour how that felt, you’d actually stop me?”
He tilted his head back. “Fuck, woman, get up.”
“I’d prefer to stay down,” she laughed softly.
“Kate.” His hands gripped beneath her arms, pulling her up his body until they were face to face.
“Impossibly perfect,” he muttered. “You need to sleep this off.” But the words were rasped, without judgement.
Layered with care. The kind of care she’d never known.
Her heart tried to reinforce the barricades, screw by screw, refusing to let anyone in.
He carried her to the bed, and with one hand flicked back the covers.
“What’s the big deal?” she asked, as she snuggled into the luxurious bedlinen. “You wouldn’t be the first guy I slept with after a few drinks.”
The silence was instantly loaded, sparking with something, and he hooked a finger beneath her chin, lifting it quickly to face his. “You need to stop doing that.”
“You telling me what to do?”
“Yes.”
Her breath caught in her throat. “Why’s it matter?”
“You’re better than that.”
She rolled her eyes. “Are you seriously telling me you’ve never hooked up with a woman in a bar?”
“Never when she was drunk.”
“I’m not—”
He pressed a finger to her lips. “You’re drunk. Completely.”
“So?”
“We’ll talk about it later.”
“Why not now?”
“You need to sober up.”
She glared at him. “You’re so bossy.”
“One hour,” he said, and it wasn’t a suggestion. “You’ll feel better afterwards.”
“I feel fine,” she lied. She was starting to feel woozy, and embarrassment was beating a path to her door.
“You’ll feel better,” he repeated, tucking her in then standing. “Sleep tight, Kate. I’ll come and get you soon.”
He walked towards the door and when he opened it, she said, “Roman?”
He turned to face her.
“Am I sober enough to at least kiss?”
She couldn’t see his face, but she was aware of the way his body tightened and his shoulders squared, the way he almost seemed to be bracing himself for something.
But he strode back towards her and rather than sitting on the edge of the bed, he brought his body over hers, his whole body, legs on either side, arms braced at her hips, and then he was kissing her long and hard and slow, his tongue just as torturous and skilled as she remembered from that morning.
But it was his body that sent her nerve system into overdrive, his every movement a torment and promise, an exercise in control.
He pushed up and stared down at her in the dim light, breath ragged.
“Do you have any idea what you do to me?” he demanded, each word enunciated with a pained breath.
He moved his hand to her face and held her cheek.
“Sometimes I find myself wishing I’d never met you, and then I imagine that and I feel—”
“What do you feel?”
He shook his head though, standing. “You need to sleep this off.”
“I thought the whole point was to get drunk with Tia,” she said to his departing back. When he didn’t turn to face her, she asked the question that had been humming in the back of her mind all day, since Garrett and she had spoken that morning. “What’s today?”
Roman stopped again, and his lines of tension were different this time. More alert. More preventative. “What?”
She stifled a yawn and wriggled deeper down into the covers, eyes suddenly heavy. “What’s today?”
Silence hung, heavy and sustained. He was quiet for so long that Kate wondered if he was going to ignore her. She propped her heavy head up onto her palm, elbow depressed into the mattress.
“Roman?”
He nodded curtly, once. “It’s the eighth anniversary,” he said, the words floating towards her like they were being carried on a stream.
“Of what?” Another yawn. She smothered it with the back of her hand.
“Of my sister’s death.”
It took Kate a second to catch up. “Grace is dead?” she said, for clarity, though it wasn’t really necessary. Somehow, it all seemed to fit together, but her brain wouldn’t quite work in the way it needed to, to have it make sense.
“Yes. Sleep tight, Kate. I’ll check in on you soon.”