Moment of Weakness (Embracing Moments Book 1) (17 page)

It’s a start.
He was doing this on purpose?

I twisted toward him. “Why are you trying to make me
hate
you?” I questioned, searching his eyes for any sign of emotion. A moment passed, a moment of complete and utter silence, silence that infuriated me. “You know what . . . forget it. I don’t want to hear some made-up excuse; you can save it for your
next
assignment.”

I faced forward and leaned on my knees, attempting to stand, but then his hands flew to my arms, gripping them so I couldn’t move. So much for not wasting my damn energy. I tried wiggling out of his grasp. “Let me go, Roman. You want me to hate you? Fine! You succeeded—I hate you, okay?”

I tugged myself forward, but his hands were like metal chains holding me in place. He pulled me back into him, his face nestled in my hair, his chest rising and falling against my back. “You don’t understand. I
need
you to hate me, Julia.” His voice was a low, discordant murmur.

“You know what, Roman? You’re absolutely right. I don’t understand. So why don’t you
help me
understand?”

He exhaled a ragged breath and swallowed. “You just
do,
okay?”

What the hell kind of answer was that? It wasn’t an answer at all. That right there—that was avoidance. His grip loosened on my arms and then dropped away completely. He pulled away enough that I could no longer feel him against me. A silent shudder pulsed through me, and I quickly jumped to my feet, spinning around on weak legs. Just as I thought, he was walking away—again. I took a step forward, and like a coiled spring twisted too tight, I snapped.

“I can’t believe I was actually falling for you!” The words rushed from my mouth before I could stop them. My heart pounded in my chest and my throat became uncomfortable at my own admission. The dark shadows of the meadow made it difficult to see clearly, but Roman’s tall, lean figure was easily noticeable in the distance. So when he froze in place, my eyes waited to see what he would do next. My mouth, however, had a mind of its own. “Don’t stop now, Roman,” I scoffed, stepping toward his direction. “Walk away! It’s what you’re good at.”

My notes must have struck a chord because a moment later he pressed onward. My face grew hot in anger. “Is this what you do? Get people to like you and then push them away?” The fact that he allowed my words to flow through one ear and out the other with absolutely no reaction had pushed me to my boiling point. “Did you push your family away too?”

Roman stopped, pivoted on his heels, and powerwalked toward me. Within seconds, he was in front of me, his face level with mine. The coldness in his dark green eyes made my entire body recoil.

“I have no family to push away, Miss Parker. Do you want to know why?” The raised sound of his voice caused me to flinch. I opened my mouth and attempted to say something, but he rushed on, never giving me an opportunity to speak. “They were murdered. I was ten years old, and they were murdered right in front of me. Do you know what that’s like? To be old enough to understand what is happening right before you, but being too young to stop it. Too young to do anything about it.”

Horrified, I felt my stomach drop. What did I do? “Roman—”

“No. Don’t you dare!” He stepped forward, his finger raised in front of my face. He shook his head back and forth. “I don’t need your pity, and I sure as hell don’t want your apology!”

Roman became just a blur as I blinked through the onslaught of sudden tears. The ground felt like it was spinning beneath me, and my knees had a tingly sensation in them, the same feeling I got whenever they gave out.

I was going down.

Roman’s arm circled my waist, breaking the fall. He pulled me against him, and I buried my face into the comfort of his chest, wanting to take back everything I said. Sobs raked through me, one after another, making it impossible to catch my breath.

Today had been nothing but a rollercoaster of emotions. Emotions that had my head spinning and my mouth lashing out at any given chance. I was angry, mad, and when I saw him walking away from me again, I was hurt. I was hurt, because as much as I tried not to, I had fallen for him. Everything I said when he was walking away was just a product of those emotions. I was used to dealing with anger, and sadness, and confusion, but whatever this was that I was feeling for Roman . . . this was foreign. An emotion I never allowed myself to feel for anyone else. And if I was honest with myself—these feelings—they scared me.

With one arm wrapped around my waist, Roman pulled me tighter against him. His right hand curled around my neck, and his fingers tangled themselves in my hair. Roman’s lips fell to my forehead, and I wasn’t sure if he placed a kiss there or if I imagined it. “Look at me.”

I didn’t. I couldn’t. How do you look someone in the eyes after pushing them to their breaking point?

He pleaded. “Julia, look at me,
please.
”

My clenched fists relaxed and then fell away from his dress shirt. My heart hammered in my chest, and despite his pleading, I kept my eyes closed. His fingers swirled around the tops of my ears, pushing away a few blonde strands of hair that clung to my wet cheeks. The back of his hand caressed down my cheek, taking up residence under my chin. The rough pad of his thumb brushed against my bottom lip, and he tilted my head back so my eyes would meet his. “You’re still not looking at me.”

I swallowed hard, my throat feeling like it had a baseball lodged in it. “I don’t want to.”

“Why?”

Why? Because I didn’t want to look into his eyes and see nothing there but a sad reflection of myself. I didn’t want to open my eyes to watch him walk away from me again. But there was no way I was telling him any of that, so I gave the same reason he had.

“I just don’t, okay?”

Roman’s fingers moved in slow sweeps across my cheeks. “I’m sorry about what happened yesterday, with Grant. I wanted to find you and talk to you after Lacey left. When I saw you go in the house, I figured it was the perfect opportunity, but then I saw Grant. When I saw the way he was looking at you . . . I snapped. I wanted to hit him, but my first thought was to get you the hell away from him. What I said upstairs, I didn’t mean that.
God, I could never . . . I
would
never even dream about calling you that.” The sincerity in his tone was genuine. He sighed a nervous sigh and continued talking. “Do you have any idea how hard it is to walk away from you? To walk away from you,
knowing
what it feels like having these pressed against mine.” His thumb traced the outer edges of my lips as though he was trying to learn each and every curve of them. “Knowing how soft they are and how sweet they taste.” He paused for a long moment and then dropped his forehead to mine.

“Then why did you regret it, Roman?” I whispered. My heart momentarily stopped as though his answer was the only thing that could jumpstart it.

His forehead shook against mine. “I didn’t regret kissing you, Julia, not for one second.” My eyes flew open at his statement and locked with his. He gulped. “I regretted having to stop.”

I blinked at him, confused. “So why did you?”

“Because I’m no good for you,” he said, sighing.

My eyebrows pulled together in a scowl. “Don’t you think I should be the judge of that?”

“No. I’m here on an assignment. Falling for you is not part of the plan. It
can’t
be a part of the plan.”

The desperate part of my brain took over. I brought my lips dangerously close to his and placed my hands on his chest. The rapid beating of his heart provided me with the courage to do what I was about to do. “I don’t want to just be a part of a plan, Roman.”

He parted his lips to say something, but I quickly pressed my lips to his. No longer wanting to talk, I captured his words with my mouth, wanting to just feel him again. His lips were unmoving at first, hesitant, and then they weren’t. He kissed me back, but in no way was it slow. It was deep and fierce. He kissed me like he was out of breath, like he was gasping for air, and my mouth was the only source of oxygen he so desperately needed. We both dropped to our knees, his hands gripped my waist, and my fingers tangled in the softness of his dark brown hair. Our lips never broke contact the entire way down.

He pulled away, his breath heavy and uneven. “Do you have any idea what you do to me?”

I had an idea, given the way his erection pressed against his fitted navy blue pants, but I wasn’t about to point that out. The small ball of heat that started in the pit of my stomach when I first kissed him had grown into a fiery blast of need. A need that only Roman could satisfy. I ran my hands down the back of his neck, over the broad expanse of his shoulders, and stopped at the top button on his shirt. Looking him in the eyes, I bit my lip and flicked it open. “Show me.”

His eyes darkened with lust, and his hands descended over the front of my stomach, tracing the exposed portion of skin right above my shorts. They lingered there for a minute, and I sucked in a shallow breath at the sweet torture his fingers induced. A few moments later, he hooked them under the hem of my pink camisole, and in one swift motion, he pulled it up over my head. The top half of my body was completely exposed except for the thin material of white lace that hugged my breasts. The coolness in the air should have had me shivering but the way Roman stared at me, heat and desire in those beautiful emerald spheres, I felt like I was about to burst into flames.

Roman groaned. “You are so fucking beautiful.”

My cheeks flushed at his comment. I moved in closer, my fingers flicking open the little white round buttons of his tear-soaked dress shirt. Once the final button popped, my hands climbed back up his chest, the thin material of his undershirt doing nothing to hide the rigidness of his abs. My hands moved up, pushing his shirt from his shoulders, and then slid back down over the curves of his biceps. Keeping my eyes focused on him, I watched as he grabbed the back of the white, ribbed cotton tank and pulled it over his head, flinging it somewhere behind me. My breath hitched at the sight of his bare chest. The planes of it were smooth and unscathed, each muscle easily defined from the next.

Roman’s right hand fell to the small of my back, pulling me forward so the front of my chest was flush with his. His left hand caressed my cheek and then moved to the back of my head. As he placed another kiss on my lips, his fingers curled in my hair, lightly tugging it down to expose my neck. His lips danced up my jaw, kissing and sucking, nipping at my earlobe, and then falling to the soft sensitive spot right beneath it. The tip of his warm tongue flicked over my skin, sending a flood of heat straight to my core.

Fondling, foreplay, oral sex, all of this was stuff I was familiar with. Stuff I experienced with Robby, but I couldn’t recall it ever feeling this good. Whenever we fooled around, it was always rushed. Robby would get off and then it would be over. He’d return the favor every now and then, but most of the time, it just felt awkward.

Here. Now. With Roman.

There was nothing awkward about it.

My mind briefly wondered how many other woman were on the receiving end of whatever this gorgeous man had to offer. The thought quickly dissipated as I felt Roman’s hand fall from my hair and down to the strap of my bra. His fingers made quick work of the clasp, my breasts falling free from their cups as he tossed the thin scrap of lace. I wasn’t sure where my bra landed, probably somewhere with our other articles of clothing, but I didn’t care. All that mattered was the way he kissed me, touched me, and the thousand different sensations he created within me. His mouth moved down my neck, over my collarbone, and landed at the soft swell of my breasts. All this time, my hands stayed fixed on his arms, but when he pulled the hardened tips of my breasts into his mouth, my hands moved to do some exploring of their own.

My fingers curled along the inner edge of his pants and ran along the front of his waist until they found the button of his pants. With trembling fingers, I popped it open. Roman released a pleased groan against my mouth, and before I could drop his zipper, he placed me on my back. He hovered above me, a small portion of his weight pressing against me, the rest being held up by the arms that caged me in. Something told me what we were doing was wrong. But how could something that felt so good be anything other than right? Whatever the consequences were of
this,
I’d deal with it. I’d have to. But for now, I pushed whatever reservations I still had aside.

Roman placed trails of kisses down my stomach, and his tongue glided across the waistband of my shorts. The soft spot between my legs throbbed, slow at first, then faster. My mind was too wrapped around the pleasure his tongue was causing to realize he had unbuttoned my shorts and was attempting to remove them. Lifting my hips, he curled his fingers around the sides of my shorts and the thin strings of my panties. He slid them down, his fingers caressing my thighs and legs as he pulled them off.

Why I was the only one here—lying completely naked—was a mystery. A mystery I was about to question until I felt the warmth of his mouth press against the small bundle of nerves between my legs. He continued to kiss and lick, his tongue circling in motions I didn’t even know were possible. I bit my lip trying to stifle the moans and gasps building in the back of my throat. The harder I bit my lip, the quicker he moved. When I couldn’t take it anymore, when he finally slid a finger inside me, he pulled the moans right from me.

“Roman . . .” It came out as a strangled gasp, barely audible. The way he moved his fingers in and out and the circling motion of his tongue had my back arching off the ground. God, it felt good. A sensation in the pit of my stomach took flight, wrapping itself around every muscle, and after a few more seconds, it was as though a pipe had burst. All the heat that had gathered in my stomach shot through me like a wave of electricity, my whole body trembling from the sweet aftershocks. My chest rose and fell in heavy waves. My breath was ragged.

Roman brought his face back up to mine, and his lips tugged into a sexy satisfied grin. “You’re even more beautiful when you come,” he whispered in my ear before placing a feather-light kiss on my forehead.