Marrying the Master (21 page)

“Can
you believe this place?” Lola said.

Her
voice echoed softly off of the broad
stone walls
, and
she looked up at the cathedral ceiling soaring above her.

“Do
you like it?” Roman said.

“Yeah,”
she said. “But I’m trying to picture, like, a wedding. A
Volare
wedding.”

Roman
was standing on the other side of the room, where he’d been reading the plaque
accompanying pages from an illuminated manuscript. Now he looked at her, an
unreadable expression on his face.

“I
can see you, standing right where you are in the light from that window, in
your dress,” he said.

The
air between them shifted.

Lola
laughed, but it sounded forced. She looked down.

“Actually,
that’s not the dress anymore,” she said.

She
heard his boots scuff on the stone floors. “What do you mean, ‘that’s not the
dress
?
’” he demanded.

She
should
not
be blushing. She ran a sex
club; she wasn’t some sort of innocent. She should
not
be blushing at the memory of what he’d done to that dress.

The
shop girls had made a show of disapproving, but Lola could tell they were more
envious than anything else. Stella had managed to contain herself. Roman had
paid for all of it.

“You
saw me in it,” she said, turning her back and pretending to inspect an eleventh
century sarcophagus. “Before the wedding.”

Roman’s
steps echoed off the stone, building her anticipation step by step. She knew he
was close. When he spoke, she closed her eyes.

“I
liked
you in that dress,” he said.

He
was right behind her.

“I
know,” she said. Thinking:
The one you
ripped off of me?
She hadn’t allowed herself to think more deeply than
that; as crazy as Lola was about this situation, she knew that this whole area
of thought was extra dangerous. Thinking that it meant anything at all that
Roman had taken one look at her in her fantasy wedding dress and decided he had
to have her right then? She looked at a medieval map hanging on the wall:
Here
be
dragons.

Yeah, no shit.

“But…”
Her reasoning was abandoning her, even as she struggled to say it. “It’s bad
luck. We don’t need any more trouble, right?”

Lola
found that she actually meant it. She wasn’t normally superstitious, but then
again, nothing about this was normal.

“You
do not appease lady luck,” he said, “You seize her.”

She
laughed, more out of nervousness than anything else. That was such a Roman
thing to say, and at the same time, what the hell did it mean?

“You’ve
seized a lot of luck, huh?” she said, trying to ignore that she could now feel
his breath on her neck.

“Yes,”
he said, nuzzling her.

Lola
thought about his past, how it was like one of those giant blank spots on the
maps on the walls. She’d been joking, but if she thought about it for two
seconds, she knew that of course he’d seized every opportunity that came his
way. The man had come from nothing—he’d been a street kid in Barcelona,
his
parents
dead. She didn’t know the details of his
steady ascent through the business world, but she knew it hadn’t always been
pretty.

A
man like that—if he wanted her, wouldn’t he just take her? If he hadn’t
already made it clear that he wanted her, for real—forever—wasn’t
that a pretty good indication that it wasn’t going to happen?

“
Carina
, what is wrong?” he said,
slipping his hands around her waist.

She
felt his broad chest at her back and leaned into it, the warmth she got from
him bittersweet under the circumstances.

“I
was just thinking that you tend to take what you want,” she said, her voice
sounding impossibly small, even in this room of echoes. “And that therefore
what you want, and what you don’t want, isn’t exactly a mystery.”

He
buried his face into her hair, and she heard him inhale as his fingers pressed
into her flesh. He squeezed her hips,
then
quietly
slipped his fingers under the edge of her light sweater.

She
gasped, but only slightly.

“You
think I am so simple,” he said.

She
laughed, and still managed to sound nervous. “Not simple,” she said. “Direct.”

“Ah,”
he said, his hands massaging the muscles that flowed from her hips down to her
core. Abruptly he stopped. “Come. There is something I want to show you.”

He
took her hand and began to lead her forward, around the edge of the
sarcophagus. Lola experienced the same sudden dislocation she felt every time
she lost physical contact with him, and followed, shaking her head. They
reached one of those little velvet ropes, barring their way to a narrow
staircase.

“Roman,
I think that exhibit is closed,” she said.

“Perhaps,”
he said, easily lifting the heavy post anchoring the rope. “But I take what I
want, so it is no problem, no? Come.”

Lola
wanted to smack him, but she let him pull her up the narrow stone steps, until
they reach a small room with stained glass windows, and a giant iron bell in
the center.

“What
is
this?” she said, fully expecting
Roman to give her some sort of lecture on medieval history.

“I
have no idea,” he said, and he stripped off her sweater. Lola did a double
take. He said, as though he hadn’t just removed an item of her clothing, “But
it is secluded.”

Lola
looked down to find Roman had already unbuttoned her shirt. The man had a way
with a woman’s clothing. It was almost a superpower.

“Wait,
what are you doing?” she said, even though it was pretty obvious.

“Taking
what I want.”

“Roman!”
she whispered, trying to re-button buttons as fast as he got to them.
“Seriously, this is a museum. A museum we might need really soon.”

He
stood over her, smiling that devilish smile. He took her in his arms and
brought her close, so close she could feel his impressive erection against her
belly, and she sighed. He brushed away her hair and kissed her neck.

“You
need a history lesson,” he said, and moved lower down her neck, towards the
spot that always made her weak. “Do you know what
droit de signeur
means?”

“Umm,”
she said, leaning into his arms. “No. Does it have to do with museums and
getting arrested?”

He
laughed low and slow, almost musically. She looked down and was only halfway
surprised to see that her shirt was open. Roman unhooked her bra, freeing her
breasts. The chilled air made her gasp, and he playfully pinched her nipples.
She halfheartedly tried to cover up, but he batted away her hands, shaking his
finger.

He
said, “It describes an old medieval custom. It translates as ‘right of the
lord.’”

“Roman,
seriously,” she panted, which she was pretty sure didn’t help her case.

“Lola,
very seriously,” he said, forcing his hand down the front of her skirt. Her
eyes flew wide open, and he looked directly into them and grinned. “I am your
lord.”

“Oh
God. Roman…”

“Yes,”
he said, his hand thrusting between her legs. “This is mine.
Right
of the lord.
Droit de signeur
.”

He
smiled to find she wasn’t wearing underwear, as he’d strongly suggested. Then
he slipped one finger inside her, then another, pushing them deep enough to
stroke her g-spot. She nearly collapsed, but he pinned her against the rough
stone wall
and kept stroking.

“I
want what is mine,” he said into her ear.

Lola
tried to speak, but only a strangled moan came out.

“I’m
going to take what is mine right now,” he said again. “Because I can. What do
you say to that?”

“Oh
God,” she breathed, and then against all good judgment, she caved: “Yes.
Yes
.”

“Yes
what
?”

She
almost giggled, and then stopped when she saw the look on his face. That look
said she was going to get fucked, hard. Her breath hitched. “Yes, my lord?” she
said.

Roman
smiled briefly, as though stifling a laugh, and them made his face go stern.
“Very good,” he said.

He
bunched her skirt up around her hips, exposing her sex. He took a moment simply
to look at her, long enough that she felt exposed and raw in a way she hadn’t
felt in years. Something about Roman made her feel new and vulnerable, as
though all of her hard-won life experience was rendered null and void by a
single touch from this man, and it was totally, completely, stupidly
intoxicating. Also infuriating. But
all of it—
all of it
—was drowned out by the
sudden, heavy feeling that swelled in her core
.

“Roman,”
she groaned, “Please, just do it.”

She
hadn’t even been aware that she was going to say it. Roman paused, one hand
holding her left leg around his waist, the other holding her shirt wide open so
he had free reign of her breasts, and he fixed her with that
look
.

“You
think that is begging?” he said, the only other sound the sound of his zipper
unfurling. “I will make you
beg
.”

He
locked eyes with her, and she lost sight of all else. Then his hips rose as if
they were a tide all unto their own, and he pierced her straight through, his
erection buried deep inside her. Lola shrieked as he drove her up against the
wall, her blouse and sweater bundling together, dragging against the stone; she
folded her arms around his neck and pressed her forehead to his.

 
He thrust upwards again and again, her
whole body jolting with each and every stroke, her shoulders rubbing red
against the rough stone and her lips hurting as she pressed them close
together, unwilling to scream and hear it echo throughout the sleepy museum.

His
fingers dug into the undersides of her thighs as he held her up against the
wall, and with each thrust the head of his cock dragged across her g-spot,
driving her ever higher. She thrashed against him, the sudden flare in feeling,
already so fucking close to the edge, leaving her wild and a little crazy.
Roman just held her tighter, pinned her harder, and drove himself in and out
with a restraint that drove her insane.

And
then he stopped.

“Oh,
what the fuck,” she cried, and tried to move against him. His grip on her only
tightened.

“No,”
he said, breathing hard. “Beg.”

She
squirmed in his grip, feeling full to the brim, her mind focused on only one
thing: release.

“You’re
such a—”

“
Beg.
”

He
hoisted her up higher, and she hit him around his shoulders, grabbing handfuls
of hair.

“Please,
Roman,” she said, “You jerk, I’m begging you.
Please
.”

He
actually laughed. “Hmm?”

“Please
fuck me,” she said. “I need you to fuck me, Roman.”

He
pulled his head away from hers and met her gaze. “Don’t forget it,” he said,
and buried himself inside her.

“Put
this on,” Lola said, shoving a dry-cleaning bag in Roman’s general direction.
He assumed it held a suit.

He
barely registered it. Lola was running around in nothing but a towel, a towel
that did not quite fit securely across the top, and which kept threatening to
fall away entirely. He was rooting for gravity.

Then
he remembered he didn’t need to root for anything.

Lola
scooted by, mumbling something about a dress, and Roman grabbed the errant
corner of her towel.

Naked
Lola.

“Roman!”
Lola said, turning around and not even attempting to cover up. “We have the
rehearsal dinner in less than an hour.”

“Rehearsal
dinner,” he mused, walking toward her slowly. “Is that not supposed to follow a
wedding rehearsal? And yet we had none. Your customs confuse me,” he said.

“It’s
traditional,” she said, her voice losing volume as he approached her naked
body. “A rehearsal dinner is traditional.”

“Nothing
has been traditional so far, has it?” he said.

“It’s
for Volare,” she whispered. He was quite close to her now. “It’s for them…to
have…fun…”

“And
us?” he said, his hands encircling her waist. “Are we to have any fun?”

She
lowered her eyes, a submissive gesture he loved to see from her.

“We
still have Harold Jeels and the press on our ass,” she said. “It’s supposed to
look real, Roman. It’s supposed to look like…”

Roman
tightened his grip on her waist but said nothing, knowing what she had left
unsaid. “Look real.” The phrase bothered him. With members of the public, of
the press, who were already starting to lose interest?
Easy
enough.
With Volare?
Doable.