Resisting Romeo (Steamy Weekends Book 3)

by Melanie Shawn

  I stepped back a little, then, just enough to give myself room to maneuver. I placed the flat of my hand on her back and pushed her forward until she was completely bent over the pool table.

  Damn, her ass looked so sweet right then, thrust up in the air as if it was on full display just for me. I gave it a little smack. I couldn’t help myself. She sucked in a sharp inhale. It had an undertone of desperation to it.

  She moaned and then whimpered, “I want to feel you inside of me, like this. Please.”

  That plea broke the rope of restraint that had been holding me back. I stepped forward and grasped her hips, positioning the tip of my cock at her tight opening. Her entrance pulsed against my sensitive, engorged head and the sensation caused my balls to tighten against me.

  I knew that I didn’t have long and I wanted to make this count. Using every ounce of discipline I could manage, I dug my fingers into her soft flesh and pulled her back toward me. At the same time I pushed my hips forward in a slow, yet powerful thrust, driving my erection deep inside her welcoming folds.

  When I was buried deep inside of her, her inner walls clenched around my dick as if they never wanted to let me go. And I was cool with that, actually. I could definitely stay here forever, doing nothing but fucking Juliette until I died. And it would be a hell of a way to go. Who cared about little things like food or sleep? At the moment, they were trivial concerns, to say the least.

  I drew back and thrust into her again, putting even more power behind it this time. My fingers dug deeper into her willing flesh. It occurred to me that maybe I should ease up on my grip. At the current pressure, I might leave a mark on her…but that thought flew from my mind when she gasped, “Yes. Harder.”

  Following her command, I pumped in and out of her with mounting intensity. The pressure built on itself, rising very quickly to the brink of cresting the peak.

  Damn, I couldn’t let that happen, not this soon. I couldn’t believe that this was the second time in just a few minutes that I’d had to back off and change things up to keep from shooting my load. Fuck. Juliette had some nuclear-strength sex appeal, that was for damn sure.

  I pulled out and stepped to the side, and she looked back at me over her shoulder. “What’s going on?”

  I grinned and brushed several strands of hair that had fallen on her forehead back off of her beautiful face. “Nothing. Just that I want you to climb up on that table and get on your back. I want to see you all spread out on the green felt.”

  Her eyes flared but she didn’t hesitate. Instead, she stood up straight and spun gracefully, put her hands on the edge of the table and hopped up.

  The whole thing was so smooth, so effortless, that it seemed like one continuous move. It was sexy as hell.

  She leaned back on her elbows and gave me a seductive half-smile. “Like this?” she purred.

  “Hell, yeah.” I moved between her legs in two seconds flat.

  I tilted her hips up and entered her with one forceful drive. Her arms snaked behind my neck and her ankles crossed at my lower back as my forehead dropped against hers and I thrusted in and out of her. There was something so special about making love to her while our bodies were pressed together, her legs and arms wrapped around me, as we stared in each other’s eyes.

  It felt closer, somehow. More intimate than anything else. I wondered if it had something to do with the fact that, in this position, I could see every color and nuance that flashed across those gorgeous eyes. I could see every single thing she felt. I could see into her soul.

  She gasped every time I drove into her, and after just a few thrusts, she cried out, “Oh, yes! Yes!”

  She pressed her head back into the table and surrendered herself to the orgasm, which took hold and rocked her entire body. I felt it on every inch of her skin that was pressed to mine, and in the way that her inner walls clenched my cock.

  Now was the time, it had finally arrived. I didn’t have to back off this time, I could just surrender to it, completely.

  So I did, releasing everything inside me in one giant spasm of pleasure and electricity. I held her tight to me as we surfed the waves of it together, her arms threaded around me, her face buried in my neck.

  I’d never felt closer to her than I did in that moment. I’d never felt closer to anybody. As much as I wanted to tell her how I felt, to tell her that I loved her, to tell her that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her, I knew it wasn’t the right time.

  I’d already poured my heart out to her in the song and knowing Jules, she’d need time to process it. Tonight wasn’t about telling, it was about showing. And that’s exactly what I planned on doing.

  CHAPTER 25

  Juliette

  “Mmm,” I moaned as I sank my teeth into the most delicious waffles I think I’d ever tasted.

  Thanks to our sex marathon, I was ravenous. We’d spent the past twelve hours on a hamster wheel of foreplay, sex, sleeping, foreplay, sex, sleeping, foreplay, sex, sleeping. Romeo had woken me up three times with naughty intent and I’d returned the favor once. In the past twelve hours, we’d had sex a total of five times. I had no idea if that was a record for him, but obviously, it was for me.

  My entire body was humming…and sore. But in the best way possible. Still, I was glad that we’d already done the horseback riding outing. We didn’t actually have anything on the schedule for today. Or I didn’t, at least. Mondays were my day off.

  Romeo, however, was going to be getting on a plane headed to California.

  Birds chirped and two squirrels were playing outside the open kitchen window like we were in a Disney movie. I was doing my best to be in the moment and not think about the fact that my fairytale was soon coming to an end. If our weekend was a carriage, then at noon it was going to be turned back into a pumpkin.

  Tonight, I’d be back at my condo, sleeping in my bed, alone. Tomorrow morning it was back to yoga and avocado toast. No more home-cooked breakfasts with Yaya’s recipes.

  We hadn’t talked about what the future would hold, and although I was more curious than George, I was not about to bring it up. I was determined not to pretend that this weekend was something it wasn’t. I’d done a lot of that before and it had not gone well for me. First, in creating an entire relationship in my head. Then, when that world came crashing down, I’d created an entirely different reality where Romeo had no feelings for me.

  I wholeheartedly believed now that the truth was somewhere in between. Romeo had had feelings for me. He just wasn’t able to act on them at the time. And that’s what this weekend had been about. We’d had unfinished business to take care of and we had.

  I hoped that we’d stay in contact but I didn’t want to be that girl. The one who wanted to talk about things. The one who wanted to know what everything meant. I’d witnessed too many girls try to pin my brother down after a brief affair. Their behavior only made him run farther in the opposite direction.

  But I wasn’t like one of the girls that Jared hooked up with that blew up his phone and social media to the point where he had to block them. Romeo and I were friends, or at least we had been friends once.

  I hoped we would be in the future.

  Or did I?

  Would it be torture being around Romeo and not kissing him, not touching him, not being with him?

  I might be able to handle that on my end, but the thing that I feared I may not be able to handle was him not kissing me, not touching me, and not being with me. It was a pretty addicting experience. Romeo was a very passionate person and having all of that energy directed at me had been more than a little intoxicating.

  Even now, I wished he were kissing me or telling me how beautiful I was, or whispering naughty things he wanted to do to me. Would all that disappear when he went home?

  In the back of my mind, I knew what I had to do. I had to talk to him. It was the only way to get clarity on where he was at. It was the only way to know what he was thinking.

  “Jules.” Romeo’s de
ep morning voice caused goosebumps to raise on my arms and the back of my neck.

  I lifted my chin and met his eyes as I swallowed a full bite of waffles. His expression was serious and I sensed that what he had to say was important.

  “I need to talk to you about something.” His tone was even more serious than his expression.

  Had he actually read my mind?

  Did he know that I wanted to do more than just stay in touch and he needed to break it to me that that wasn’t going to happen?

  Or had he been thinking about the same things that I had and was now about to have the talk?

  Was this the, it’s-not-you-it’s-me talk?

  Or the, my-schedule-is-so-crazy talk?

  Or the, I-think-we’re-better-off-as-friends talk?

  None of those talks sounded good. But there was a chance that the talk could be good. He’d come all the way here for my birthday, we’d had sex, lots of sex, and then there was the song he’d written and named “Perfection.”

  There was a chance that he wanted to do more than just stay in touch, too. And the only way I was going to find that out is if I heard what he had to say.

  “Okay.” My stomach was doing more flips than an Olympic gymnast performing a floor routine.

  “I think you should go see your dad.”

  I blinked, sure that I must’ve heard him wrong.

  “What?”

  “I know it’s none of my business, but I really think you should go and see your dad.”

  Nope. There was nothing wrong with my hearing. He’d actually brought up my dad. Which reminded me. “Is this about your mom?”

  I’d been so sidetracked by the song and the sex last night that I’d totally forgotten to ask Romeo about finding his mom.

  “Sort of, yes.”

  I turned my attention back to my plate. “Look, I’m glad that you were able to work things out with your mom, but—”

  “My mom’s dead,” Romeo cut me off.

  I froze. “What?”

  “She’s dead. She died three years before I looked for her. She died alone and broke. The landlord of her apartment found her four days after she passed. I didn’t get to work anything out with my mom because she was already gone.”

  I wasn’t sure what to say to him. I felt horrible that she’d died, and the way that she’d died, but that didn’t have anything to do with me or my father. “I’m sorry.”

  “I don’t want what happened to me to happen to you.”

  I set my fork down, suddenly losing my appetite. “Romeo, my situation is totally different than yours.”

  The dimple in his left cheek appeared as his boyish, lop-sided grin that had always made my insides mush, lifted on his face. “How so?”

  “Your mom left you, true, but she left you with your dad. She knew that you’d be taken care of. My dad left us with a neighbor who called CPS. They had to contact my grandparents. He didn’t know that they’d take us in. Our mom died and before she was even buried he was gone. Did you know that?” I never talked about that time in my life. Not with Romeo, my grandparents, or even Jared. I doubted that my brother had ever brought it up.

  “No. I didn’t.” Romeo shook his head, his jaw tightened the way it did when he was worried or protective of me.

  “Yeah. I’ll never forget, I was at the kitchen table, the phone rang, and my dad answered it. When he hung up, he told us it was the hospital and they said my mom was dead. Then he told us to go pack a bag. No, ‘I’m sorry.’ Or ‘are you guys okay?’ Just ‘go pack a bag.’” I sniffed back tears that were filling my eyes. “Then without another word, he walked us next door to Patty Perkins, who had the worst B.O. and smelled like stale cigarettes and beer, and asked her if she could watch us for the night. And that was it. He left. No goodbye. No ‘I love you.’ Nothing. He just left.”

  I shook my head. Hearing myself say it out loud after all these years was almost more unbelievable than experiencing it. “I mean, what kind of a person does that? Who could just leave their kids after their mom dies and not even say goodbye?”

  Romeo stared straight in my eyes. “I think that’s something you should ask him.”

  CHAPTER 26

  Romeo

  Jules sat silently beside me in the passenger seat of the car that she had no idea was hers. My chest constricted with anxiety as I pulled into the parking lot of The Grind House coffee shop located in downtown Santa Fe. The steering wheel easily slid across my damp palms.

  There was so much left to be said, but since this entire weekend had been hijacked I’d felt that this situation needed to be addressed.

  That had been my initial reaction, but I was having second, third, and fourth thoughts about suggesting, or more like insisting, on taking this road trip. A few hours ago I’d been so sure that this was the right thing to do. I knew that Jules would never pull the trigger and go and see her father on her own. And after hearing her tell me about the way that Reggie Pierce walked out on his children, I’d grown even more certain it was exactly what she needed to do.

  Jules must’ve felt the same, because she’d finally agreed to take this road trip with me to go see him. Her going along with the plan shocked me but at the same time reinforced that this reunion was the right thing to do. Within an hour of finishing our breakfast, we’d set up the meeting with Jules’ dad through Jared who was more than happy to facilitate the reunion. Once a time was set we jumped in the car.

  The drive was close to three hours and Jules hadn’t said more than five words to me the entire trip. With each mile that passed, my trepidation grew. I started the trip 100 percent confident that this was exactly what Jules needed and now, over two hundred miles later, my confidence level was hovering around 10 percent.

  Worry and concern were mild terms to describe what I was feeling.

  “Are you absolutely sure you want to do this?”

  “It’s a little late to be asking that question.” Her monotone response revealed no emotion as she stared straight ahead.

  “I’m sorry, Jules. If this doesn’t go well, it’s my fault.”

  “No, it’s not.” She shot back, dismissing me. “I’m a grown woman. I made the decision to come here.”

  There was no reading between the lines necessary to detect the defensiveness in her tone. She was clearly communicating to me that my attempt to take any responsibility for her actions was offensive.

  “I’m sorry,” I apologized again.

  “For what?” she asked pointedly, finally turning to meet my stare.

  There was so much I needed to apologize to Jules for, this impromptu reunion was just the tip of the apology iceberg. “For everything.”

  I never apologized for something that I wasn’t actually sorry for, and she knew that. I could see in her eyes that she took my words to heart. A glimmer of connection flashed in her caramel pools. It was the first time since I’d brought up the subject of her dad that I’d seen it. But as fast as it appeared, it disappeared. The wall was back up, she was back in her turtle shell.

  “I just want to get this over with.” And with that, she grabbed her bag, opened the door, and got out.

  As I stepped out a strange expression crossed her beautiful face. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m going with you.”

  “No, you’re not. You can wait in the car.”

  The hell I would. I wasn’t about to let Jules out of my sight. Jared might’ve had a pleasant interaction with their father, but I didn’t know this guy from Adam. There was no way I was going to send Jules off to cross an emotional minefield alone. Even if she didn’t appreciate me taking responsibility for her or this meeting, I did.

  But I wasn’t about to bring that up again. I switched my strategy. “It’s a hundred and ten degrees outside. I won’t sit with you or even meet him, but I’m going inside.”

  There was a moment’s hesitation before she begrudgingly agreed. “Fine.”

  Relief washed over me as I stepped onto the sidewalk i
n front of the coffee shop and opened the door. We stepped inside and it only took one cursory sweep of the quaint café to spot the man we were there to see. “Is that him?”

  I’d never even seen a picture of Reggie Pierce, but the man seated at the far side of the shop reading a book was the spitting image of Jared.

  When Juliette didn’t answer, I turned my head and saw that all the color had drained from her face. As a redhead, her skin was fair, but right now she was white as a sheet. She looked like she’d seen a ghost, and I guess in a way, she had.

  Alarm raced through my veins. Every barbaric cell in my body was screaming at me to take her out of there, caveman-style.

  “Jules?”

  All I needed was a sign and I’d get her out of there.

  Her only response was to smooth her hands down her skirt and take a deep breath in through her nose before putting one foot in front of the other, walking straight toward her father. She held her head high, with her shoulders straight in perfect posture. She looked like the poster child for calm, cool, and collected. But I knew the truth. I knew that inside she was scared, anxious, and falling apart.

  Her heels clicked on the Spanish tile floor and I had to stop myself from following behind her. It took every ounce of self-control I had to respect her wishes and give her space. I wanted to be beside her. Or better yet, in front of her, like a bodyguard.

  I suddenly had the urge to look the man that had shattered Jules heart at six in the eye and tell him that he didn’t deserve to know his daughter, or speak to his daughter, or even see his daughter.

  When Reggie Pierce looked up and saw Jules approaching, he stood and seeing his face was like a punch to my gut. My heart slammed into my ribcage. He had Jules’ eyes, or rather, she had his.

  Everything else about him was all Jared. Both men had the same athletic build and tall stature. They had the same thick, brown hair, the same square jaw. They both had a slightly crooked nose and a strong forehead. The only difference was the eyes. Jared had hooded, dark blue eyes, where Reggie had large, almond-shaped brown eyes. Just like Jules.