Summer Heat (The Storm Inside #5)

by Alexis Anne

  “Are you ready for me?”

  I whimpered. It was almost too much and we weren’t even moving. He was so thick. I stretched and stretched around him.

  “Say it, Beautiful. Are you ready for me?”

  But I wasn’t. Not yet. And besides, Roman got off on asking the question. He loved watching the process. He overwhelmed me, then asked hot, demanding questions while I adjusted. Then, just when I was barely capable of handling more, he insisted on hearing it from my lips. Then he watched as he destroyed the little control I had.

  It was a very pleasurable way to get us both off.

  A hiss escaped my lips.

  “That’s not an answer,” he growled. “Are you wet and ready for me to fuck you senseless, Beautiful?”

  “I’m wet.” My voice was a rasp of need. I wrapped my arms around his neck. “I’m wet for you.”

  “But you’re not ready?” he whispered against my ear.

  I was so hot, so full. How was it possible for him to be inside me? Sometimes it blew all sense away. “No.”

  “No? What would help?” He reached down and massaged my hip, pulling me wider, then slid his hand up my side, sending electricity to my core. He grasped my breast and pulled it up to his mouth. “Would this make you wetter for me?” He teased just the very tip of my nipple. My inner muscles clenched around his cock. “Do you want me?”

  “Yes!”

  He kept teasing. Just the tip. Just little flicks of his tongue. I rocked my hips, riding him.

  “You want me?” He lightly bit down on my nipple and looked up, watching the ecstasy as it rippled down from his mouth to my core, turning my desire up another notch.

  “Yes.”

  “Do you want me hard?”

  “God, yes!”

  He released my breast and settled in above me, his hands curling around the edge of the mattress. “Are you ready for me, Beautiful?”

  “Yes.” This time I meant it. It wasn’t a tease. If he didn’t fuck me I was going to fly apart.

  He reared back and slammed into me hard, rocking deeper inside me, then pulled back again. “Hold on.”

  I wrapped my arms around biceps.

  He slammed into me again, savoring that last little bit of stretch, before he settled into a good position and began to ride me.

  Hard.

  Everything was so sensitive and each stroke brought a sudden, amazing change in everything. I went from being nearly empty to completely full, the impact making my pleasure grow with each second. His muscles worked hard, straining and flexing to drive deeper and harder inside me, to mark me.

  I took all of it. Needed all of it. This abandonment of control was exactly the way to end a night like this.

  He slammed into me with a deep, guttural moan. “June.” Reared back and slammed deeper as he came hard, the pulse so strong it triggered my orgasm, too. He hissed as my inner muscles locked him into place and I writhed beneath him, rubbing my clit against him as I rode the wave of pleasure.

  Then I opened my eyes and took him in, just the way he wanted. “That was amazing, Roman.”

  He grinned, his eyes studying everything. “Really? It wasn’t too much? I got a little carried away there . . . ”

  “Not too much.” Not by a long shot. Sometimes I needed it rough, too. It helped put all the things I was feeling back into their boxes. “I liked it.”

  “Excellent.” Then he rolled to the side and flopped onto the bed. “I’m ready for bed, now.”

  “Good workout?”

  “Very good.” He hopped off the bed and disappeared into the bathroom.

  I lay there staring at the ceiling. Every cell in my body firing. I felt amazing but I was also wide-awake. That was, until Roman rolled back into bed and pulled me against him. “Go to sleep, Beautiful.”

  “I’m happy.”

  He squeezed me. “So am I.”

  “Can we stay like this? Forever? Not let things bring us down or get between us? Can we stay just like this?”

  “No,” he said simply. “We’ll be happier. Don’t sell us short. We’re just getting started.”

  I woke up just in time to see Roman sneaking out of my bedroom in his jeans—no shirt—which meant he was just going downstairs and not leaving. So I sank back into my pillow and drifted back into a dark, dreamless sleep.

  A sleep that was interrupted by a lot of very angry swearing.

  I shot up, pulling the sheet over my naked breasts as I looked around, trying to get my bearings.

  “Get it taken down!” Roman practically yelled from downstairs. Since I didn’t hear anyone else I assumed he was on a phone call. Maybe one of his players had done something idiotic overnight?

  “This is not headline news,” he growled. He was angry. Viciously, deeply angry. “This isn’t anyone’s business, Simone.” It was his assistant. “Do whatever you have to do. Pull every string. Talk to Gavin and get Andrew on the phone. I want every legal option.”

  The blood drained from my head as I started to worry. That worry multiplied when he slipped back inside my room. The expression on his face . . . Well, it was terrifying.

  “What’s wrong?”

  He froze but didn’t reply. Instead he burned a hole through me with an intensity I could feel down to my soul. “Do you love me?”

  That threw me. “Of course I do. You know that.”

  He nodded once. “Do you love me enough?”

  Enough for what? I dropped the sheet and moved to the edge of the bed. “What’s wrong, Roman?”

  “Do you love me and trust me enough to say this is it? You and me.” He waved his hand between his bare chest and mine. “No one else. Forever?”

  Now he was really scaring me. It was one thing to voice my love, but this was so much more. This was permanent. What had him so upset that he needed to hear a confession of that magnitude?

  And did it matter? It didn’t change how I felt. I knew Roman was it for me. I’d never love another man the way I loved him, and I would never be loved so completely by anyone else but him.

  It was fast and it was terrifying, but it was the truth.

  So I said exactly what was in my heart. “Yes.”

  He dropped to his knees in front of me. “Marry me. Right now.”

  Now. My jaw dropped and the words, “Hell yes” disappeared as pure shock hit me square in the chest.

  He didn’t wait for me to find my words. “We can pack a bag and hit Vegas. We can be married by the end of the day.”

  He took my hands and searched my eyes, but they gave me no hints as to why he had this sudden urgent need to elope. What I could see as plain as day, however, was hope. This insane proposal might be driven by something, but the underlying need was a good one—Roman wanted to love me.

  And I wanted to love him without any hurdles or reservations. So if he needed to hear that I was all-in before he said anything else, then I was more than happy to oblige.

  I squeezed his hands. “Yes. Roman, the answer is yes.”

  He let out a breath and closed his eyes, lowering his forehead to our clasped hands. “Thank God.”

  I pulled my right hand free and ran it through his hair. “What’s wrong, babe?”

  “Everything. Nothing.” Then he looked up. “All that matters is this, right? You and me? And when we’re husband and wife we’ll be unbreakable.”

  Unbreakable.

  My heart sank.

  “We’re unbreakable right now, aren’t we?”

  “I want to believe that,” he whispered, “but it’s just faith holding us together.”

  “I’m pretty sure marriage doesn’t change that.” But I knew what he meant. There was something much more permanent about a marriage vow. Something made it untouchable to all the people who were going to want to pull us apart.

  And that was a seductive quality.

  “When the shit hits the fan I want to know I’m your husband. That I have a right to stand beside you and I can tell everyone to go to hell if they
try to come between us.”

  He meant my father.

  I touched his face, then brushed his dark hair back from his ear. “I do like the thought of being your wife.” I bounced my eyebrows. “But I warn you, I can be possessive.”

  He kissed me, eyes closed, and breathless. “I want you possessive. I’m yours.”

  I continued to run my fingers through his hair as he rested his forehead against mine. “Tell me what’s going on. I promise I’ll still get on a plane with you.”

  His eyes snapped open, locking with mine. “I got a courtesy heads-up.” He reached into his pocket, pulling back just enough to look at his phone. He held it up so I could see the screen. On it was a picture of Roman kissing me senseless on the street in San Francisco. The moment we’d said we loved each other. “This is running in the afternoon.”

  The headline read, “Sleeping With The Enemy”.

  I closed my eyes, on the verge of going nuclear. That moment was private. It was ours. Roman saying he loved me was mine to have and keep, and someone had stolen that for headlines and money.

  I was so angry I couldn’t see straight.

  Roman cupped my face. “I’m doing everything I can to stop this, but I doubt it will work. Everyone will know by this afternoon. We could take the bull by the horns and go visit your parents. We could tell them ourselves before they see it.”

  And there would be yelling and demands that I stop seeing Roman. They’d be too angry to think straight and they’d throw him out of their house.

  We’ll be unbreakable.

  “Let’s go to Vegas.”

  The right thing to do was probably going straight to my parents but all I could think about was how it wasn’t my feud. It wasn’t my life or my problem to deal with. But Roman was. He was my life.

  And I didn’t want anyone to take him from me.

  “Are you sure?”

  I nodded, kissing him one more time with a smile. “Let’s get married and spend the next twenty-four hours in a hotel room, far, far away from all these headlines. Let the people who started the feud deal with it.”

  22

  Five years earlier, Daytona Beach

  When I asked him to spend his days off between the SEC Tournament and Regionals with me in a hotel room in Daytona Beach, I knew we were going to have sex. Of course we were going to have sex. I’d just spent two weeks teaching him how to turn me on and make me come in every way imaginable.

  Well, except one.

  The plan had been to scratch the itch, prove our feelings were physical, and move on.

  That hadn’t happened. Not even a little bit. If anything our two weeks of naked time proved that we were so much more than attraction. He’d become my friend.

  Maybe even my best friend. It was so easy to be with him, words just slipped out and before I knew it, he was doing the same. The more time we spent together the more I craved him.

  The more I started to imagine what it would be like to date him.

  So when my roommate couldn’t use her hotel room in Daytona I volunteered to take it.

  And now I was in the throes of the most amazing experience of my life. I was laid out on a long bench with a soft blanket beneath me. Roman was buried inside me, shaking with each stroke.

  We were having sex. And it was good. So. Good.

  From the very first time he pressed inside me to now, both of us on the verge of coming undone, it had been an experience beyond anything else. He was trying so hard to wait for me, resisting his urge to pump uncontrollably until he came.

  “What if I do this?” He pressed against my clit with his hand.

  It sent a pulse straight to my core. “Yes. That. Do that.”

  He grinned and rocked into me. “And both together?”

  All my muscles clenched. “More!”

  He pumped a little faster, pushing deeper. My inner muscles pulsed around his invasion. His eyes went wide and his mouth fell open. “Oh . . . is that?”

  I nodded. “I’m going to come, Roman. I’m going to come.” What I really meant to say was that I was going to fly apart into a million pieces and he needed to hold me together, but I didn’t know how to say that.

  So instead I threw my head back and let my orgasm explode. I cried out in pleasure, moans and words that made no sense. And then, as I was coming back down and his hips started to jerk erratically, I said his name.

  “Come for me, Roman.”

  “I’ve never felt anything like this,” he whispered, his strokes growing faster. “Nothing.”

  He plunged deep, his cock pulsing inside me as he came. The force of it all felt good and so I moaned again. “Roman.”

  He moaned in reply, kissing my neck, my face, and then my lips. He kissed me hard. It was a thank you but it also felt a lot like a something more. It felt a little like love. Or what I imagined love might feel like. It was tender and careful. And when he pulled back to look into my eyes, rocking his hips against mine, I couldn’t help but feel like we’d just done something monumental, like binding our souls together.

  “So that’s how you make a woman come.”

  He searched my eyes. “That’s how I make you come.”

  “Every woman is different, yes.”

  “I don’t care about other women.”

  And there it was. We had most definitely gone off track. “Roman.”

  “It’s true. The more time we spend together the better this gets. I know you feel it too. I watched you come. You can’t tell me that you didn’t feel it.”

  “Feel what?” He was still inside me and damn it all, I liked it.

  “This. There is so much more to us. I can feel it. I can see it. The fact that we just had the most amazing sex is just further proof that we need to stop pretending there is a good reason to be apart.”

  “There is.”

  “No, there’s not.”

  I didn’t say anything to fill the silence because deep down inside I felt exactly the same way. “I’m not ready to talk about this.”

  He cocked his head to the side. “And I’m not ready for this to end.”

  There was that look again. That thing he did with his eyes where he gave me his full attention with this soft yearning look that managed to undo all my defenses.

  “It has to end some time.”

  “Why?” He sat up, legs on either side of the bench, and pulled me into his lap, straddling him. “Why does it have to end?”

  “You’re a baseball player. You’re going to go on to play in the majors. Who knows where you’ll end up.”

  “I still don’t see a problem.”

  He wanted me to be blunt. Fine. “Women will be throwing themselves at you for years to come.”

  “I only want you.”

  “Why? Roman . . . why?” It made no sense. We were all wrong for each other. It was too hard. Why put us through this?

  “You’re the only person who has ever seen me. Not the ballplayer. Not George’s son. Me.”

  And he saw me. “One day you’ll meet another woman who sees past the baseball.”

  “Maybe,” he admitted, “but she won’t be you. She won’t know baseball like you, or be as beautiful as you, or nearly as smart. I like that I can talk to you about anything whether it’s the game or just something that I think is cool. I think,” he took a deep breath and stared into my eyes, taking my breath away, “June, I think we were meant to be together.”

  Whoa. Roman had just taken a left turn down Relationship Avenue that I didn’t see coming. “I think we are the last two people on Earth meant to be together.”

  “If you take away our names everything else makes sense. We’re going to spend this weekend together and when it’s over I think we’ll know for sure.”

  “Know for sure? I like that. Is that a deal?”

  He blinked in surprise. “Is what a deal?”

  “This is your last lesson. You won’t need me anymore. So you have two days to convince me that there’s something more here.”
r />   I stuck out my hand.

  He shook it. “Deal.”

  23

  Present Day

  While I packed, Roman bought plane tickets. We had exactly enough time to get to the airport and board the next flight to Vegas. Roman spent most of the two hours on the phone rearranging work and attempting to stop the story from running, while I brought Zoe up to speed and called Carrie to let her know I was taking two personal days.

  “Tell me why,” she huffed, never happy with being kept in the dark.

  “You’ll be able to read all about it this afternoon.”

  “Oh,” she said softly. “I’m so sorry. It’ll be okay though, right? I really think he loves you.”

  I smiled. “Yeah. He does.”

  “Good luck. Let the dust settle and I’ll make sure all the guys know to keep their big mouths shut when you get back.”

  “Thank you, Carrie.”

  Roman waited until we were in the air before he grabbed my hand. “I just spent a ridiculous amount of money.”

  “On this flight?”

  He shook his head. He was white as a sheet.

  “That photographer?”

  He nodded.

  “He’s been following us for a while,” he said. “He has tons of photos but he knew the San Francisco pictures would get the biggest rise out of me.”

  “They’re not stopping the story?”

  “Nope. But they’re running it with different photos.” He held up his phone showing us on a pier near his condo at sunset. He had his arms around me and was nuzzling my neck. I had a fantastic smile on my face because I was so ridiculously happy. It was from a week ago. We went out to dinner and then for a sunset walk. It was a good night but it wasn’t life changing.

  “You bought the San Francisco photos?” I guessed.

  With a couple more swipes of his thumb he brought up an email with a bill of sale and a link to a folder. “The moment we first said I love you is now ours forever.”

  It was unplanned and probably insanely expensive, but in a very strange way I was happy we had them. “You’re very romantic.”