Marrying the Master (16 page)

She
was marrying the right man for the wrong reasons; only he didn’t even love her.
Couldn’t love her. Not the way she loved him.

It
was the cruelest lie she could imagine.

“Lola,
sweetie, are you ok?” Stella asked.

Lola
wiped at her eyes. “I’m fine, really.”

“No
crying on dress,” Dagmar said, patting her arm affectionately. “Is silk.”

They
thought she was crying from
happiness
.

Well,
what could she do? She couldn’t back out. She didn’t want to back out. And she
didn’t want to stop having sex with Roman. Or, rather, even though she knew it
would be good for her to stop having sex with Roman—probably—there
was no way in hell she could actually stop. She didn’t even have the strength
to try. She didn’t
want
to try.

In
a situation like that, what was she supposed to do?

“I’ve
got to get this out of my system,” she muttered. “The next time I see Roman,
I—”

“Lola.”

All
three women turned to see what man had invaded this very feminine place. But
Lola recognized the voice. Lola would always, always recognize that voice.

Roman.

~ * ~ * ~

Roman
was stunned speechless, except for one thing: he could still say her name.

“Lola,”
he repeated. He didn’t even care that Stella and some other woman were staring
at him like he had just escaped from the asylum.

He
couldn’t tear his eyes off of Lola.

Lola, in that dress.

He
knew people used words like “radiant,” and “glowing,” and “gorgeous” all the
time, but those people had never seen Lola like this. She looked as though she
had been born for this moment. As though she had been made for him, and this
was the proof.

He
shook his head, bewildered. He had come here because he needed to be near her.
Had needed to feel what he felt when he was near her, to have some sense of
familiarity, some sense that things were still in control, even though their
sexual relationship felt anything but. Because the truth was that Lola was the
most important woman in his life, and had been, for a very long time. The idea
that that might change by the choices he had made…

Except
he’d never really felt like he’d made a choice. He felt like he’d been pulled
along, compelled by forces outside of his control. Like his attraction to this
woman he should never have had was a force of nature. For a Dom, this was a
terrible thing.

He’d
wanted to feel in control again. He’d wanted to feel like he knew his own mind,
like he understood what existed between them, and the only way to be certain,
in that moment, was to be near her. So he’d called Bashir, found out what
Stella had planned, and tracked her down.

The
sight of Lola in that white dress, her red hair spilling over her shoulders,
her eyes wide and shining, her lips parted in surprise…

He
wasn’t in control. He wasn’t in control at all.

“Everyone
else leave,” he said.

“No,
no, no,” a tiny blonde woman said, looking back at her tablet. “Is bad luck!
”

“Get
everyone out
now
,” he said, his voice
a crazed, wild version of his Dom voice. “Close the store. Charge me for the
day. Get. Out. Now.”

He
hadn’t taken his eyes off of Lola. In his peripheral vision, he saw Stella
herding the blonde woman out, whispering to the shop girls, followed by some
opinionated arguing, and then it all faded away. He heard a door close.

He heard
Lola catch her breath.

“I
was just thinking about you,” she said.

He
didn’t have words. Didn’t really know what he was feeling, only that it was
strong. Only that he needed—
needed
—to
touch her.

The
closer he got, the more he felt the pull: this woman, his,
now
.

“Roman…”
she said.

He
stopped. With the remaining self-control he had left, the most he could manage
was to pause for just a moment. He knew he’d come here with a more coherent
purpose, with an actual idea, but it all faded away in the light of Lola
standing before him.

Lola’s
words failed her. She looked at him helplessly and shook her head, ever so
slightly. Then she reached out for him.

Roman
broke.

He
pulled her hard and fast against his body and kissed her. She kissed him back,
harder, hungrier, and it drove his own need higher. Neither of them wanted to
speak; Roman didn’t even want to tear himself away long enough to
breathe
. She ran her hands through his hair, he pawed at the
back of her dress,
that dress
, that
thing that made him think…

No, he wouldn’t, couldn’t think
: he had her in front of him. That
had become the only important thing in the world.

It
came off so easily.

She
stepped out of it. He ripped at her underwear. Bent
down,
lifted her up. She clung to him as he carried her to the leather bench in the
center of the room, surrounded by mirrors; he only pulled away to free his
cock.

He
thrust hard inside her, and they both shuddered with relief. He felt calmer now
that he was inside her again, more right with the world: he built up a rhythm,
long, deep strokes that had her rising to match him, her hips coming off the
bench while her hand cradled his face. He looked down to see her muscles
straining with him, sweating with him, and wondered how he’d ever gone without
this.

“Roman,”
she whispered. He couldn’t even speak. Just drove into her more and more,
desperate to feel her come around his cock.

“Look
at me,” he said as she came. She did, and it leveled him.

“Roman,
you’re a mess.”

Roman
glared at Ford. He had not come here for a makeover.
Or an
opinion, for that matter.
He’d come here to talk about the logistics of
the L.A. Volare expansion.

“Not
relevant,” Roman said brusquely.

“Bullshit
it’s not relevant. What the hell is wrong with you?”

Roman
ran his hands through his hair. “I haven’t slept well lately,” he admitted.

His
physical need for Lola had become
all-consuming
—she
was never far from his thoughts, and if he thought about her for too long, he
would inevitably have to have her. He had tracked her down while she was trying
on wedding dresses. That was not normal behavior.

His
reaction to her, in that dress, had not been normal behavior.

It
had been like flashing red in front of a crazed bull. He had not wanted to
think about why.

It
was not a sustainable state of affairs for a professional man. It was even
worse for a man who couldn’t allow
himself
to fall
asleep in the presence of a woman, any woman, because of what would inevitably
happen when he woke up. He only wanted good things with Lola. He didn’t want to
associate that terrible grief with her, not even once, and yet he couldn’t bear
to be far away from her, so he slept on that stupid couch.

The
result was that he couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a good night’s
sleep.

It
was unlikely he would have been able to sleep much, anyway. A few hours away
from her and he became hungry for her again. It was insane. He had taken the
overindulgence approach, thinking that if he had Lola as much as humanly
possible, it would sate him. They would work it out of their systems, and their
lives could return to some semblance of normality.

In
his case, that had been a grave miscalculation: it had only made things worse.

“Are
you sure you’re all right?” Ford asked.

“No,
but it does not matter,” Roman said. “You were reviewing the requirements for
the expansion site with me.”

He
felt Ford’s eye on him and rolled his neck, feeling the pull of each individual
muscle on his back and shoulders, already wanting to get out of here and get
back to Lola. Jesus Christ, this could not be healthy. Roman didn’t even know
if Lola was as perturbed as he was; by tacit agreement, they didn’t speak of
it. They both pretended this level of physical chemistry, of
need
, was normal. Roman knew it was not.

“Ford,
ignore whatever you are thinking, and get on with it.”

“Sure,
you’re the boss. Everything’s set to go, whenever you can pull the trigger. The
major issue right now is whether this political situation with Senator Jeels is
stable enough for you to leave Volare NY in Lola’s hands while you go to L.A.”

Roman
winced.

“You
still haven’t talked to Lola about this, have you?” Ford said. “Damn, Roman,
this is not like you. What the hell is going on? Ever since the two of
you—”

“Don’t,
Ford,”
Roman
said, collapsing into the chair opposite
Ford’s desk. “It doesn’t matter so long as Senator Jeels continues to make our
situation unstable, yes?”

“Yeah.
How is that going, by the way?”

Roman
shrugged. “Stella and a wedding planner are making the ceremony a publicity
event. I gave that reporter an exclusive, so she is happy to be the only one
with access. Exclusive photographs, all of that.”

“Good
idea. You doing an interview?”

“Eventually,”
Roman said. He had made that promise. And he’d promised that Lola would do it,
too.

“That
doesn’t quite settle everything, though. We need more.”

“You
have private investigators, yes?” Roman said. “Hire them. Send them after
Jeels. I do not want this man posing a threat.”

He
finished the sentence in his head:
to
Lola
.

“Understood,”
Ford said. “But if you want my advice, as a friend? You need to talk to Lola
about moving to L.A., and you need to do it soon. You can’t just spring that on
her, Roman.”

Roman
nodded. The trouble wasn’t that he didn’t know how to tell Lola that he would
be moving to L.A., leaving her in New York to run the original Volare club; the
trouble was that he no longer wanted to go to L.A., or anywhere in the world,
without her.

And
he didn’t know what that meant.

~ * ~ * ~

 
Lola stacked packets of sugar into little
piles, little forts,
little
castles. Then she knocked
them over and did it all over again.

She
was early. She was early because she was nervous. She was nervous because she
had started to think, more and more, that she was making an incredible mistake.

“It’s
just coffee,” she said to herself.

The
smarter part of her brain screamed,
No,
dummy, it’s coffee with the man who said he loved you, and showed it by
screwing his ex.

But
she had to figure this out. As she’d explained to Stella, she had to confront
this, get some kind of closure. Maybe then she’d get over this thing with
Roman.

“How
does that make any sense?” Stella had said. “What does Roman have to do with
Ben?”

“It’s
complicated,” Lola had answered.

Now,
sitting in this coffee shop, waiting for Ben to walk in and fuck with her head,
Lola wondered if she was lying to herself—again. The thing was, she had
no ready explanation for what was happening with Roman. It was as though they
were both incurably addicted to each other, to the point where Lola seriously
wondered if she were just filling some vacancy, tending some wound, with sex.
Not just any sex, though—sex with Roman.

There
was nothing else in the world like it.

She
was willing to bet there had
never
been
anything else in the world like it.

She
had never felt closer to the man, or farther away. They had stopped trying to
articulate things with real, actual words, had just reverted to madly tearing
at each other’s clothing when alone. They at least understood each other
physically. But Lola was almost grateful that neither of them could ever seem
to find the words to express what was happening, because she didn’t want to
think about what it meant that Roman would never sleep next to her. And she
didn’t want to have to think too hard about her own feelings, especially after
what happened in the dress shop.

“This
can’t last,” she said to herself.

“I
have to agree. It doesn’t look too architecturally sound.”

Lola
looked up and the latest iteration of her sugar packet fortress crumbled. Ben
stood over her, his hands in his pockets, sandy colored stubble on his chin.

“Hi,”
he said.

Lola
took a deep breath. “Hi.”

“Thank
you for meeting me,” he said, and sat down across from her.