Roman Holiday: The Adventure Continues (6 page)

She’d thought of grabbing his thigh in the car. Rubbing up against him in the elevator. Pulling him into the shower with her and making him slick and soapy and desperate.

But they’d had such a long day out in the sun, arguing, talking to strangers,
feeling
things. She was exhausted, and what she wanted was this. A bed in the dark. Waiting for Roman in the green T-shirt he’d worn with his old-man pajamas that morning at Mitzi’s house, the first soft thing she’d seen on his body.

No script, no stupid games, no nonsense.

Just them.

When he returned, he flipped the switch in the bathroom first so they lost the noise of the fan, and most of the light. The covers twitched away from her shoulder, and cold air rushed down her legs. She smelled mint—toothpaste—and the spicy scent of male deodorant, and then she felt his hand at her hip, the press of his kneecaps against the back of hers, weight on the pillow behind her head.

His hand slid beneath the shirt to her stomach. He settled against her, pulling her into his heat, the ticklish hair of his thighs, the sigh of his breath on her neck.

“Hi there,” he said.

He kissed her shoulder, smoothing her hair out of his way. His hand moved in slow circles over her stomach, brushing the underside of her breasts, following the dip of her waist, trailing heat beneath her navel.

“Hi,” she whispered, and hoped he heard what she wanted to mean.

Here I am, picking my team
.

You’re not my enemy. You’re my choice
.

I’m not afraid
.

“Nice shirt.”

“Mmm.”

“Take it off.”

He was already tugging it up as she turned. She rose slightly, lifting her arms, and it caught and came unstuck, pulling her damp hair straight to lie on the pillow. Roman threw the shirt off the side of the bed and kicked the covers down with his feet until they fell off the end.

Their mouths met as he came over her.

Soft. Soft and warm, testing angles and pressures, opening and fitting, refitting, learning what a kiss felt like when it wasn’t an excuse or an attempt at anything. When it was just two people, kissing because they wanted to be kissing. Two bodies pressed together, all their wanting taking this shape now, finally, taking them over.

Her eyelids got heavy, desire a drug that stole through her and made her movements slow and liquid. When she closed her eyes, Roman shifted above her, taking his weight on his elbows, his fingertips gently cradling her head. She thought, fleetingly, of the dream she’d had of him, back in Florida. His dark body against her pale one, their fumbling attempt to get his clothes off, get a condom on him, get him inside her. The panicked intensity of it so different from this easy, sensual unraveling.

Different in every way from every other time, every other person, every other encounter with Roman.

You have me
, he’d told her earlier, in the tree.

I’m yours
was what he’d meant.

His surrender.

Hers, too.

No games, no roles, no spike of adrenaline. No rush, no fumbling, no pretense.

Just kissing and what came after it. Tasting mint on his tongue, licking over his full lips, their bodies bumping together and moving apart, her hands ranging up and down his back, his smooth skin, the dip at the base of his spine, the bunched muscles of his ass. He rose up onto one hand so he could touch her with the other, stroking down from her neck to her shoulder, shaping her breast, thumbing her nipple, then following the slight slope from her waist to her hip. She raised her knee, dragging her foot up the bed, and he hooked his thumb behind it and pressed it flat, spreading her open and aligning his erection with her swollen lips to slide back and forth, coating himself in her wetness.

He glanced over her clit, and she gasped into his mouth. “Roman.”

That made him smile his blinding smile, the dimple she’d glimpsed once emerging from hiding. Even in the almost-dark, she could see that his smile was genuine and deep, crinkling at his temples. She studied the shadow of his stubble and touched a small indented scar on his forehead she’d never noticed before. All this evidence of his humanity, right there where she’d have seen it if she looked.

“Did you want something, or was that another one of those ‘just Roman’ Romans?” He slid his erection over her again, enticement and tease, and she dug her nails into his back as the movement drenched her clit in pleasure so rich and intense, it took her a second to recover.

Okay, three seconds. Five, tops.

Roman used the delay to move against her again, watching her face, and then again, this time coordinating his thrust with another press of his thumb against her nipple.

“No,” she said, breathless.

“No what?”

He urged her other knee wide, and her hips lifted because she wanted him inside her but she could come like this if he kept working her nipple and easing over her clit, each firm slippery stroke winding her a little tighter.

If he kept looking at her, his eyes intent, avidly gathering every scrap of evidence of what he did to her.

“No idea,” she admitted. Not the first clue, not about anything, but for the first time it didn’t seem to matter. This thing with Roman—maybe this was the point. Maybe it meant something, or would lead her somewhere, or—

“God.”

Roman smirked. He’d twisted her nipple between his fingers and thrust
much
harder that time.

“You looked like you were wandering,” he said.

“Can’t have that.” She pulled him closer and kissed him, because it was that or smile, and clearly he shouldn’t be able to tease her this way. She’d have to do something about it. Soon. Soon, God, if he’d just keep gliding over her that way … Ashley closed her eyes, pulling her mouth from his. She lifted into each slide, arching her body to meet him.

“Oh,” she said on the next one.

“You’re going to come.”

“Shh. You’ll scare it away.”

He grinned. “Are you always this easy?”

“Shh, shh, shh.” She dug her nails into his butt and pulled him in, closer, harder—oh,
wow
.

“What do you like when you come?” His voice was low and hungry, full of a smug enjoyment that shouldn’t have made her hotter. “You want me to suck your nipple? Bite your neck? Or, if you want, I could put my mouth—”

“Kiss me,” she demanded, too far gone to think about all his options or the sweetness of being offered this multiple-choice set of earnest possibilities, too close to think because she was winding up, tipping over,
God
. She kissed him hard until she couldn’t because she was clenching tight, contracting around nothing but the hot, sweet pain of his cock moving over her clit and the feel of him, the smell of him, everything.

He grunted in the middle of it, or groaned, she didn’t know what to call the noise he made except
helpless
, and it launched her orgasm onto this whole different plane from great to fucking insane, this evidence of his enjoyment, his stupefied pleasure in giving her pleasure. She came long and hard and really really good, and Roman eased her through it, attentive but not pushy, as though someone had earlier given him a list of the fifteen things he could do to spoil her orgasm and he’d diligently memorized it so he could avoid them without apparent effort.

She spun down, her whole body loose, her hands lightly stroking his back, and he kissed her again and said, “That was nice.”

“Nicer for me than for you, I bet.”

“Probably. But it was pretty great on my end, too. Fucking hot.”

She laughed. It came out a snort. Ashley covered her mouth with her hand, and Roman kind of collapsed onto her. “Very attractive.”

She started giggling helplessly.

“Do it some more,” he urged. “Are you ticklish after you come?” He grazed his fingers over her ribs, and she tried to squirm away but there was nowhere to go. He was much bigger than her, plus she really didn’t want to go anywhere when he was pinning her in place so nicely.

“Oh, you
are
ticklish. Sweet. What about this?” He bit her ear, breathed hot into it, and she shrieked.

“Stop!”

Roman kissed her neck. He kissed his way to her breasts. Ashley quit laughing when he licked over her nipple, and by the time he’d finished licking and started sucking she was moaning again, and he was everywhere. His tongue flattened her stiff nipple against the roof of his mouth, working it. His fingers found her clit, dipping lower, pressing inside her. He released her breast only to claim the other one, muttering right before his mouth closed over it, “There’s so many things I want to do to you, I hardly know where to start.”

“Roman.”

He lifted his head, his lids at half-mast. She watched as he flicked his tongue back and forth over the flesh he’d just softened, bringing it to an aching peak all over again. “What?”

“Do you have a condom?”

“Sure. I left one by the light, didn’t you see it?”

Ashley twisted onto her stomach and reached across the bed to the table lamp, regretting the loss of his fingers and his mouth but too impatient to wait for him to get around to retrieving the package himself. She fumbled, frustrated because she wanted to fuck now, wanted Roman inside her, but she couldn’t find the stupid condom until he lay over her and reached past her hand, saying, “Right here.”

Ashley collapsed, euphoric and exhausted and a little bit dizzy, only to find herself in a new and interesting alignment. Roman was still reaching out, turning on the lamp with a quiet
click
, his chest pressed against her shoulder, knees straddling her. She pulled up to kneeling and lifted her ass in the air. “Put it on.”

She turned her face to watch as he rolled the condom down his … yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, she’d been neglecting this part. She should have been looking at Roman, naked in the yellow-orange light. That hard body, the intensity on his face, his way-better-than-adequate cock rising out of its nest of black hair. Yum.

His hands slapped down onto her hips. “You want me like this?”

“I want you every conceivable way.”

“Me, too, Ash. You have no idea.” Hands to the bed, he lowered himself over her. “But do you like it from behind, or are you offering because you think I do? Because I want to get you off again, if I can. If you don’t want—”

“Roman,” she interrupted. “This is not the time for overthinking.”

“Right. Turn over, then.” His mouth caressed her cheek, the rasp of his skin sweet and
intimate. “I want to see your face.”

She turned, surprised because her eyes were misty, tears close. She felt as though she’d spent every day for years and years in layers of padding, gauze-wrapped, and Roman had just yanked hard on the loose end and sent her spinning around, a dizzying whirl that left her bare, her skin tender, her heart open.

I want to see your face
.

Who had ever said that to her before?

No one
, her mind whispered.
No one but him
.

Earlier, perched on a tree branch, he’d looked at her in the dappled moonlight and told her,
You have me
, as though that was a thing people said. As though they were ordinary words, and he could simply offer them up.
Whatever you want
.

It went both ways. Whatever he wanted, she would give him, and somehow it wasn’t scary with Roman. There were no sharp edges, no cliffs to drop off if she failed to take care. She’d been warned about this man, but she couldn’t be afraid with his soft hair under her palms, the warm hard muscles of his back rippling when he moved, his mouth so patient and caring when he kissed her that every stroke of his tongue sent little eddies of joy right through her.

You have me
, she thought, looking into his dark eyes and finding him there, that boy who’d never been loved, this man she’d found to be so different, so much more, so much better than she’d expected.
Whatever you want
.

He pushed inside her, slow and steady. Withdrew partway, shifting the angle, and then back again, deep and sure this time, all the way in, slicking up moisture as he pulled out and came back, so right, so good.

“Holy shit.” She squeezed around him and relaxed, adjusting to his size and her crazy, crazy need to keep him right here for the rest of her natural-born life.

More tears. She blinked them away, unimportant.

“Ash,” he gasped.

“Just Ash?” Another squeeze.

He groaned. “No, more like I’m-not-gonna-last-long Ash.”

She lifted one knee, shifted beneath him to interlock their legs, and then inhaled, openmouthed, because it worked a little too well, that change. The pressure and friction on her clit the next time he thrust were good enough to blow out a few brain neurons.

“S’okay,” she slurred. “Thirty seconds. All I need.”

She wasn’t even making sentences anymore. Just fragments that she hoped were English.

“You’re kidding. Thirty seconds?” Roman rose to his hands, straight-armed. “I thought you’d need—”

He stopped talking, possibly because she’d started stroking his chest and his stomach, mesmerized by the sight of their joined bodies, and then she surrendered to the whim telling her she needed to rake her nails down his sides and over his ass, then lower, between his legs to cup his balls.

Roman dropped to his elbows, so sudden it became clear he had no choice in the matter. He began to fuck her
much
harder.

Knowing she could break him that way raised her core crotch temperature about seven thousand degrees. Watching his face, his eyes a little glazed, jaw loose. Every time he thrust into her, she lifted her hips to meet him and the rhythm of her arousal beat
more, more, again, more
. “Not kidding,” she said. “Jesus, keep doing that. Keep—”

When she squeezed him again, Roman released that grunting, groaning noise.

“I love making you sound like an animal.”

His smile was pained. “I’m not going to last.”

One more squeeze, and his eyes closed, eyebrows drawn into an expression that would have looked like agony if it weren’t for that sound he made. That expression of pure, unadulterated pleasure, foolishly beautiful. His face. This connection. This man inside her.