by Sienna Blake
Don’t be stupid, Julianna. You barely know the guy.
It was only one night. That was the deal. I knew this when I agreed to come home with him. I couldn’t stay any longer. I couldn’t let myself get any more addicted. I was leaving. Right after this shower. No exceptions. I nodded slightly to myself with determination. Mind made up, I turned off the water.
I came out of the bathroom, dried and wrapped in a bathrobe. I’d have to collect my clothes where ever they had been thrown around the room last night. I frowned as I looked over the empty bedroom. There were my bag and shoes. I couldn’t see my clothes anywhere.
“Roman, have you seen my—?” I stepped into the living room of the suite and froze. There was a huge buffet of eggs, fruits, granola, yogurts, cheeses and cold meats as well as pastries and croissants on a silver trolley beside a laid-out circular marble-topped table with matching cream Elizabethan chairs. Roman was sitting in one of those chairs wearing only his Georgio Armani briefs, looking like a king sitting on a throne. He just needed a crown. Hell, he didn’t need a crown. One look at him and you could feel the royalty oozing off him. “What’s this?” I asked.
“Breakfast. Although, with the current time, it’s technically lunch. Sit. Eat.” He waved at the other seat at the table.
I frowned. “But you’re leaving Verona in…” I looked at the stylish clock on the wall, the silver hands reading 1:53, “in about eight hours.”
“That’s still eight hours…”
I folded my arms across me. “This can’t go anywhere,” I said, wondering if it was me or him I was trying to convince.
“I know,” he said, his voice going quiet.
“So, what are you doing?”
“I don’t know,” he said gruffly. “Just… eat breakfast with me.”
My heart did a flip in my chest. This was dangerous. Every second I let him keep me here was only going to make the inevitable goodbye ever the more painful.
Apparently, I was a sucker for pain.
“Besides,” he said, “I had your clothes sent out for cleaning. They should be back in four hours.”
“Four hours.” I blinked. “What the hell am I supposed to wear in the meantime.”
He grinned. “That bathrobe is perfect. Or nothing. I don’t mind.”
Asshole. He was giving me no choice. “You did this on purpose.”
He didn’t confirm or deny my statement. He pointed again to the chair opposite him. “Sit. Now. Or did you forget the rules?”
I snorted. “I thought your bossiness only extended to sex.”
“You thought wrong.”
Forcing me into the shower, ordering breakfast, sending my only clothes to be cleaned… He was finding excuses to keep me here. Didn’t men do their best to get rid of you after a one-night stand?
Does this feel like a one-night stand?
No, it didn’t. But he was leaving soon. A one-night stand was all that it could be.
He was still staring at me, waiting for me to follow his instructions. I let out a sigh and sat down in my robe at the breakfast table, crossing one leg over the other. I noticed his gaze drift down to my thigh and realized my robe was flashing him a decent amount of leg. I yanked my bathrobe closed before he decided he was hungry for something other than breakfast. I shook my head as I stared at the spread. “Seriously Roman, there’s enough food here to feed an army.”
“I didn’t know what you liked. So, I ordered one of everything.” I could sense him studying me. “What would you choose to eat for breakfast?”
I grabbed the plate of eggs, bacon, fried mushrooms, grilled tomatoes and hash browns, placing it in front of me. It smelled amazing. My tummy gave out a little rumble in agreement. I cut up a bite-sized piece of each item on the plate, then carefully skewered them onto my fork into one large, perfect bite. I glanced over to him and he raised an eyebrow.
Normally I would be too self-conscious to let any man watch me eating like this.
“I’ve been inside you, Jules. I’ve had my fingers, drenched in your come, shoved down your throat, and my tongue in your asshole.”
I grinned before I placed the entire contents of my fork into my mouth. His mouth dropped open. I groaned with pleasure as I chewed, then swallowed.
He pointed at my plate. “You’re going to eat all of that.”
“Why not?” I began to cut up another perfect bite.
He shook his head. “Looks like I’m eating the rabbit food.” He grabbed the bowl of berries, yogurt, and granola. “I’ll know not to order you a salad for dinner.”
Dinner?
I stopped chewing. “I’m not staying for dinner.”
“It wasn’t a request.”
“Roman, you can’t keep me here.”
“I’m not. Feel free to leave. Without your clothes.”
Damn him. He had me there. I lowered my fork and crossed my arms over my chest. “If we’re going to spend the day with each other, we need some rules.”
He grinned. “It’s a bit late for hard limits, Jules.”
I fought a rising flush. “No personal questions.” If we kept things impersonal, then it would stop me from getting too attached. Right?
“What do you mean by ‘personal’ questions?”
“You know, family, work…personal stuff.”
“If I asked you if you liked maple syrup, is that too personal?” He indicated the small pot of maple syrup sitting beside the stack of pancakes.
I shifted in my chair. “No.”
“That’s good to know.” He dug into his bowl of granola.
I frowned. I was missing something. “Why is that good to know?”
“Because you’re going to suck it off my cock.”
My eyes dropped to his briefs. He was already hard. Again.
Dear God, this man was going to be the death of me.
* * *
Hours later, we lay naked and sticky from maple syrup on the plush rug on the carpet of the living area, a few cushions strewn about, a soft jazz playing from the radio. I had long since given up fighting him. I had given up trying to leave because deep down I didn’t want to. I was here, staying with him for as long as he’d let me.
“Why did you move to London eight years ago?” I asked Roman as I traced his bare chest with my finger.
He had one hand behind his head and the other brushing my side. “I thought you said no personal questions.”
I pouted. “I may have been a bit harsh.”
He studied me before saying, “Let’s make a deal. I’ll answer a personal question for every one of mine that you answer.”
I swallowed down a knot of apprehension. “Deal. So…why did you move?”
He inhaled deeply. “My father is a difficult man. My family is…complicated. We have a family business and the politics… The politics are killer. I didn’t want to be a part of it. I wanted to be my own person.”
“That’s very brave of you.”
He let out a humorless laugh. “Or desperate.”
I shook my head. “Brave,” I confirmed. “I don’t know if I could ever get the courage to leave Verona, even though…even though part of me wants to. To get out from my father’s shadow.”
He shifted closer and brushed a lock of hair from my cheek. “Why don’t you?”
I shook my head. “I’m the only one that he has left.”
“You can’t live your life for your father.”
“You can’t live your life to avoid yours,” I snapped back.
We both stared at each other, the silence growing thick. I thought for a second that I may have crossed the line. Then his face softened and he nodded. “Touché.”
I suddenly felt like a jerk. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. I don’t know the first thing about your relationship with your father.”
“You’re still right. I am living my life to avoid him.” Roman inhaled deeply and let out a long sigh. “He was never the same since my mother died,” he said quietly. His eye
s flashed with sadness that he wasn’t even trying to hide.
My heart clenched. “Was that her funeral you went to yesterday?”
“No. My mother died fourteen years ago.” His voice trailed off.
Fourteen years. His mother died the same year that mine did. “So did mine.”
“That was the gravesite you were visiting yesterday.” It wasn’t a question.
I nodded.
“Tell me about her.”
I shouldn’t. My mother lived in a deep, safe space in the depths of my heart that no one, no one ever got to see. She was mine and my memories of her were mine.
“I’ll tell you about my mother,” he said softly.
That, apparently, was enough for me.
11
____________
Roman
“I’ll tell you about my mother,” I said before I could stop myself.
I was treading on dangerous territory. If I said too much about my family, then she might guess that I was Roman Tyrell, not Roman Lettiere as I had told her yesterday. I don’t know why I had lied about my surname. No, I do. I hadn’t wanted to see her eyes fill with judgment at the cursed name Tyrell. Besides, it wasn’t that much of a lie. Lettiere had been my mother’s maiden name. I had always felt like a Lettiere instead of a Tyrell.
“My mother was fierce,” Julianna said softly, “she stood up for what she believed in. She loved me and my father with a steady ferocity. She’d do anything for us.”
Julianna could have been speaking about herself. “It sounds like your mother was an incredible woman.”
She nodded, her eyes still facing forward. “I struggle to follow in her shadow.”
“I doubt that.”
She let out a long breath. “Your turn,” she said quietly.
My turn. I had agreed to give her a piece of my soul for one of hers. I felt my heart turn to steel the way it did when things hurt too much. “My mother was a good woman who was cursed to fall in love and marry the wrong man.” Even I could hear the bitterness in my own voice.
She had been cursed to love my father, a man whose ambition endangered her life and eventually killed her. “I’ve never stopped missing her,” I admitted.
“Me too,” she said.
“I don’t think you ever really get used to it.”
She nodded. “Every event for the rest of my life will be overshadowed by the hole she left behind.”
“Every birthday.”
“Each Christmas,” she agreed. Something flashed in her eyes. “Whose funeral did you go to yesterday?”
“My eldest brother.”
Her face fell. “I’m so sorry.”
I shrugged, even though the loss of him fisted in my belly. Jacob and I had not seen eye to eye for a long time, but I loved him like only a brother could. Once upon a time I had worshiped him like only a younger brother could.
“Were you close?”
“Once. When we were younger. Then he changed. I didn’t like what he became.” The man they buried yesterday wasn’t the Jacob I knew and loved. The truth was, I had missed him for over a decade. For me, the real Jacob died that summer he turned sixteen—the summer my mother died—and my father began to groom him to take over our family business. I had been twelve.
Through my youthful eyes, Jacob became something I didn’t recognize. I watched him morph into one of the monsters that crawled out of one of the stories that he used to read to me before bed. He became a ball of learned rage and hatred. Of eye-for-an-eye justice. Of self-righteous fury.
Our relationship changed. I was no longer the little brother he would protect with his life. He no longer trusted me, taught by our father never to trust anyone, not even his own blood. I became a threat to his future throne.
It was only a matter of time for me to follow him down that dark path…
Julianna’s hand fell upon my arm. Her touch sent waves of heat through my body. She was like a ray of sunshine cutting through the fog I’d been drifting around in for the last fourteen years. If she knew what she was doing to me, she didn’t show it.
“Sometimes that’s harder,” she said. “Trying to mourn someone still alive who doesn’t look like the person you loved.”
I looked up at her and studied her face. Underneath the flawless features was a sadness, an empathy beyond sensing another person’s sadness. She knew. She understood.
“My brother and I,” I began, “…it’s complicated.”
“It always is with family.”
“Do you have brothers? Sisters?” I asked.
“No. It’s just me and my father now.”
“And as the only child, the weight of family expectations falls right on your pretty little shoulders.”
“Indeed,” she said quietly.
12
____________
Julianna
I wanted to change the subject off my father. I wasn’t uncomfortable talking about him. I was uncomfortable that Roman seemed to understand too much. This strange intimacy was unnerving. It went against every logical thought of how close I could feel to a man who was practically a stranger, how connected I should feel to a man I’d only just met.
I found that small puckered scar on his shoulder and ran my finger over it. “What’s this?”
For a second it seemed a flash of something dark went across his eyes. Then it was gone. “It’s a scar.”
I almost rolled my eyes. “Obviously. How did you get it?”
He said nothing.
“It looks like…” I frowned as I leaned in closer. The shape, round with a slight crater, the size of a penny. I’d seen it before. I’d seen it before at work. “Is that…a bullet wound?”
Roman grabbed my hand and pulled it off his scar. He didn’t seem to like me touching it. “It’s nothing.”
Nothing?
I stared at him. His face was totally closed off, his gaze avoiding mine. Except now I could see a glimpse of the darkness that simmered under the surface. It didn’t really come as a shock to me. I’d sensed it even from the moment we met.
I opened my mouth to ask him more. A ringing cut me off. Roman grabbed his phone from above his head and pressed a button, cutting it off.
“My alarm,” he explained, his voice sounding strained. “It’s seven. I have to be at the airport by eight. My ride will be here in ten minutes.”
I nodded and forced myself to pull away from him. I felt so cold and empty at the thought of never seeing him again. I stood and turned, walking back to the bedroom where my clothes were waiting. They had arrived freshly laundered hours ago. By then neither of us mentioned my leaving early.
Roman called my name. I didn’t stop or turn to acknowledge him. I was struggling with a sudden flood of emotion, unexpected in its intensity. This was unfair. Why did I have to meet him, to glimpse the kind of intimacy and closeness I could have, only to have him disappear out of my life forever?
Roman and I dressed side by side, the silence growing thicker. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched him as he pulled on jeans over his hard body. I tried to memorize the lines of his beautiful torso before he shrugged on a button up shirt over it. Even putting on clothes he was mesmerizing. I leaned against the drawers as he pulled out a duffel bag, still half packed, and threw a few more things in.
“You pack light.”
“I wasn’t planning on staying.”
That stung. I turned away to slip on my other heel. “Of course, you weren’t.” How stupid are you, Julianna? Did you expect him to stay in Verona for you after one night?
I felt his hand on my arm. He turned me to face him. When I glanced up his features were drawn and dark. “I don’t want to leave you.”
“But you have to. Right?”
“Right.” He paused, then licked his lips, lips that I would miss like crazy. Lips that gave me soul-consuming, brain-dizzying kisses that I would, from this day forward, compare all other kisses to. His eyes shone with a sudden light. “Come with me.”
This took me by such surprise that I laughed out loud. “Sure,” I joked. “I’ll call in sick to work and skip town.”
“I’m serious.” His features grew hard and set.
I blinked. “What?”
“Come with me right now. We could go to Paris. You told me you’ve always wanted to see it.” I had, earlier when we’d been talking about the things we’d always wanted to do but never done. “There are always spare seats in first class.”
Paris? First class? Right now? I’d never even left the country, let alone traveled in an airplane first class.
“I don’t have anything with me,” I said weakly.
“I’ll buy you whatever you need. We can stop by your place, pick up your passport.”
“What about your studies? What about London?”
“They’re not going anywhere.” He shrugged. “I take time off all the time.”
I shook my head, unable to believe what he was suggesting. “You’re crazy.”
He grabbed me by the upper arms, searching my face. “But it’s the best kind of crazy.”
“I…” Me, go to Paris with him?
He let out a growl. “Why are you fighting me again? I don’t want this to end yet. Neither do you. Leave Verona with me. I promise, the second that you want to come home I’ll have you on the next flight back, no questions asked. Let’s not say goodbye yet.”
I could. I could leave with him. Take off like I’ve always wanted to.
We’d go to Paris for a long weekend, maybe a week, then what? I’d come back to Verona and he’d go back to London? It would kill me. Letting him leave now was already painful. If I spent another day with him, another two, three…
Better to cut this off at the pass. I shook my head. “I’m sorry. I can’t.”
His mouth pinched. “Who said I was giving you a choice?”
I rolled my eyes. “What are you going to do? Carry me over your shoulder onto the plane.”
His eyes flashed with possibility.
