by Chloe Cox
She wished he’d gotten into bed with her. Well, maybe it was better that he hadn’t—maybe that would have only made things worse.
She’d spent those two days wishing for things she mostly knew to be impossible, and it hadn’t helped. Now, sitting in the back of another hired car with Roman, she did her best to lower her expectations.
Roman cleared his throat. The poor man hadn’t gotten much sleep, but he wasn’t letting it show. Lola found herself wishing she could have taken better care of him.
“So where is this place that we are going?” he asked, smiling at her.
She couldn’t help but smile back. Even sleep deprived, the man was gorgeous.
“The Cloisters,” she answered. “It’s way uptown. It’s a satellite of the Metropolitan Museum of Art for some of the medieval stuff. It’s built to look like a castle or an abbey, I think. Dagmar thinks it might be properly dramatic for the press, if they let her have full run of the place, which might not happen.”
Roman raised an eyebrow. “An abbey? For nuns?”
“There are no nuns, Roman,” she said, smiling. “No one for you to defrock.”
He merely looked at her. She shivered.
There was a silent moment that was somehow awkward, and then he took her hand. They spent the rest of the ride in silence, which suited Lola, as she had plenty of freaking out to do in the privacy of her own head.
She had missed him incredibly over the course of the last two days. Granted, it had not just been any two days—it was the two days after what she could only describe as a transformative sexual experience. Well, for her, anyway; she had no way of knowing what it had been for him, because, as always, Roman didn’t say.
“I am sorry that I have not been as helpful with the wedding preparations as I should have been,” he said as their car turned into one of the many small parking lots nestled in the park surrounding the Cloisters.
“Yeah, how’d your business trip go?” She tried to sound casual. She knew Roman still had some non-Volare concerns, but it always came as surprise to be reminded that Volare was not his whole life, especially because, well, it was her whole life. It made her feel insecure, which she hated.
“Fine.” Roman clipped the word as he helped her out of the car; this was clearly not something he wanted to talk about, which was fine with her. She smiled as she felt his hand at her back, and he stepped to the “street” side of her, even though there was no real street to speak of.
“I am sorry, Lola, that I have left this business to you. I should have been more helpful, dealing with the publicity and the arrangements, but I have had other concerns. I promise I will be more available,” he said gravely.
Lola was almost shocked. He seemed genuinely regretful.
“Well, there is this reporter who keeps saying we’re supposed to give an interview,” Lola said. “You kind of need to be here for that.”
“I will schedule it today,” he said.
Lola took a deep breath and fought off the queasy feeling in her stomach. They were right outside the entrance, on a stone platform, temporarily alone. She wanted to get this out of the way before they entered such a reverential building.
“One more thing,” Lola said. “About that.”
Roman turned, and the sun hit him full on. He was breathtaking, his bronzed skin accentuated by his white shirt, a slight smile on his face, bright eyes sparkling.
Shit.
“I got some information about Harold Jeels,” she said. “Some photographs.”
Roman immediately came closer, his expression intense. “Tell me.”
“Harold Jeels was into the fetish scene. Is, probably. But there are photos, is the thing.”
Roman narrowed his eyes. “That is…what you call insurance. But something like that is dangerous, and…” He seemed to struggle for the right English word, something she hardly ever saw him do. “It is wrong,” he finally said. He seemed angry.
“I know,” she said. She almost wished she hadn’t brought it up. “I don’t like having them, either.”
“Who sent these to you?”
Now she really wished she hadn’t brought it up. But what choice did she have?
“Ben,” she said, and forced herself to look up at Roman.
chapter 17
Roman stiffened, drawing himself up to his full height, and his expression darkened, something that seemed unaccountably sad to Lola on this beautiful day. She watched him closely, aware of a growing tangle of nervous tension in her chest, trying to divine what was going on in his head.
“You have been in contact with Benjamin Mara?” he said.
“Yes,” she said, maybe a little defensively.
“Why?” He barked out it out like an order. Lola felt herself getting angry.
“Why is that any of your business?” she countered.
She started to walk off into the Cloisters, but Roman stopped her—his hand around her arm was enough physical contact to completely scramble her emotions and her thoughts. She wished he didn’t have that sort of hold on her; it was incredibly unfair. She was always trying to figure out what Roman thought—meanwhile, Ben had come right out and told her exactly what he thought and felt. And yet Ben had been the one to betray her.
Roman pulled her back to him, right up to his chest, where she could feel his heat. Her body responded, and inwardly she cursed.
“It is my business because you are mine,” he said gruffly.
Lola’s looked up into his eyes, her breath caught on those last words. He didn’t look romantic, or emotional—he looked fiercely jealous.
“We have an agreement,” he went on.
Oh, right. The agreement. Physical exclusivity. Of course.
“The agreement pertained to…physical relations,” she said bitterly, looking away. “So relax. You don’t have to care.”
Roman hissed and threaded his hand through her hair, his thumb gently stroking the side of her face.
“Do not tell me what I care about,” he said. “Why were you speaking to him?”
Lola wanted to scream with frustration. She should walk away from this right now, tell Roman he had no right to criticize her, that if he wasn’t involved with her romantically then it wasn’t any of his damn business, but no matter how many times she told herself that, her stupid, treacherous feet just would not move. Her hands wouldn’t push him away; her eyes wouldn’t look anywhere else. She was his prisoner, and he didn’t even know it.
“Not that it’s any of your business, since we’re not, you know…” She couldn’t look him in the eye and finish that sentence, so she just jumped ahead. “But I met up with him for coffee—because he asked, and because I wanted to hear what he had to say. He apologized.”
Roman grunted. He didn’t seem happy, but it wasn’t like he could fault the guy for apologizing.
“Did he say he had been drinking again?” Roman asked.
“No,” Lola said. “In fact, he said he hadn’t. And you know what? As big a jerk as he was, I’m proud of him for that.”
If a cloud had passed in front of Roman’s face before, now it was a category five hurricane.
“He doesn’t deserve for you to be proud of him,” Roman said. “He doesn’t deserve for you to speak to him. He does not even deserve to look at you.”
“Great, Roman, thanks so much for telling me. I never would have known without your help!” Lola was getting really angry now. At least Ben made an attempt to communicate. At least she knew how he felt, even if he had been a total douchebag. “Did it ever occur to you that maybe I needed to know some things? That maybe it would help me to hear them?”
Roman looked stricken, and let her go. She wished he hadn’t; she felt weaker without his hands on her, suddenly cold.
“This is so fucked up,” she muttered to herself.
“Lola,” he said, and it was his tone that got her attention; he never sounded like this, so unsure of himself. He cleared his throat, and now his voice was low and fier
ce. “Lola, I…I do not like you talking to him. I do not like him. I do not trust him. And if you gave the word, I would end him.”
She felt his hands envelope hers, his fingers meshed with hers, and found herself lost in his eyes again. He’d just said something borderline insane, and yet his eyes were soft. His hands were warm.
What the hell was happening here?
“But I want what is best for you,” he said. “Did it help you to speak to him?”
“Yes,” she said. “I think so.”
He bent down, and his lips brushed her forehead. “Good. I hope you do not have to see him again. I will contact the reporter and make arrangements for an interview. Now let’s go, and think of better things.”
Bewildered and disoriented, Lola followed him into the museum.
The Cloisters were, of course, beautiful. An elaborate extension of the famed Metropolitan Museum of Art, built, at great expense, to look and feel like a true medieval abbey, it housed one of the world’s best collections of medieval artifacts in a way that felt weirdly intimate. You could walk around casually amid stained glass windows, huge, faded tapestries, giant stone rooms with tiny little alcoves. Roman and Lola were some of the first visitors of the day, and had the place largely to themselves. It was easy to get lost in the surroundings and imagine that you were back in the thirteenth century. Lola couldn’t help but wonder what a Volare wedding would be like here. It intrigued her to no end to think about what Dagmar would do with a place like this, even if she couldn’t imagine that anyone in their right mind would let her throw a wedding here, let alone a Volare wedding.
“Can you believe this place?” Lola said.
Her voice echoed softly off of the broad stone walls, and she looked up at the cathedral ceiling soaring above her.
“Do you like it?” Roman said.
“Yeah,” she said. “But I’m trying to picture, like, a wedding. A Volare wedding.”
Roman was standing on the other side of the room, where he’d been reading the plaque accompanying pages from an illuminated manuscript. Now he looked at her, an unreadable expression on his face.
“I can see you, standing right where you are in the light from that window, in your dress,” he said.
The air between them shifted.
Lola laughed, but it sounded forced. She looked down.
“Actually, that’s not the dress anymore,” she said.
She heard his boots scuff on the stone floors. “What do you mean, ‘that’s not the dress?’” he demanded.
She should not be blushing. She ran a sex club; she wasn’t some sort of innocent. She should not be blushing at the memory of what he’d done to that dress.
The shop girls had made a show of disapproving, but Lola could tell they were more envious than anything else. Stella had managed to contain herself. Roman had paid for all of it.
“You saw me in it,” she said, turning her back and pretending to inspect an eleventh century sarcophagus. “Before the wedding.”
Roman’s steps echoed off the stone, building her anticipation step by step. She knew he was close. When he spoke, she closed her eyes.
“I liked you in that dress,” he said.
He was right behind her.
“I know,” she said. Thinking: The one you ripped off of me? She hadn’t allowed herself to think more deeply than that; as crazy as Lola was about this situation, she knew that this whole area of thought was extra dangerous. Thinking that it meant anything at all that Roman had taken one look at her in her fantasy wedding dress and decided he had to have her right then? She looked at a medieval map hanging on the wall: Here be dragons.
Yeah, no shit.
“But…” Her reasoning was abandoning her, even as she struggled to say it. “It’s bad luck. We don’t need any more trouble, right?”
Lola found that she actually meant it. She wasn’t normally superstitious, but then again, nothing about this was normal.
“You do not appease lady luck,” he said, “You seize her.”
She laughed, more out of nervousness than anything else. That was such a Roman thing to say, and at the same time, what the hell did it mean?
“You’ve seized a lot of luck, huh?” she said, trying to ignore that she could now feel his breath on her neck.
“Yes,” he said, nuzzling her.
Lola thought about his past, how it was like one of those giant blank spots on the maps on the walls. She’d been joking, but if she thought about it for two seconds, she knew that of course he’d seized every opportunity that came his way. The man had come from nothing—he’d been a street kid in Barcelona, his parents dead. She didn’t know the details of his steady ascent through the business world, but she knew it hadn’t always been pretty.
A man like that—if he wanted her, wouldn’t he just take her? If he hadn’t already made it clear that he wanted her, for real—forever—wasn’t that a pretty good indication that it wasn’t going to happen?
“Carina, what is wrong?” he said, slipping his hands around her waist.
She felt his broad chest at her back and leaned into it, the warmth she got from him bittersweet under the circumstances.
“I was just thinking that you tend to take what you want,” she said, her voice sounding impossibly small, even in this room of echoes. “And that therefore what you want, and what you don’t want, isn’t exactly a mystery.”
He buried his face into her hair, and she heard him inhale as his fingers pressed into her flesh. He squeezed her hips, then quietly slipped his fingers under the edge of her light sweater.
She gasped, but only slightly.
“You think I am so simple,” he said.
She laughed, and still managed to sound nervous. “Not simple,” she said. “Direct.”
“Ah,” he said, his hands massaging the muscles that flowed from her hips down to her core. Abruptly he stopped. “Come. There is something I want to show you.”
He took her hand and began to lead her forward, around the edge of the sarcophagus. Lola experienced the same sudden dislocation she felt every time she lost physical contact with him, and followed, shaking her head. They reached one of those little velvet ropes, barring their way to a narrow staircase.
“Roman, I think that exhibit is closed,” she said.
“Perhaps,” he said, easily lifting the heavy post anchoring the rope. “But I take what I want, so it is no problem, no? Come.”
Lola wanted to smack him, but she let him pull her up the narrow stone steps, until they reach a small room with stained glass windows, and a giant iron bell in the center.
“What is this?” she said, fully expecting Roman to give her some sort of lecture on medieval history.
“I have no idea,” he said, and he stripped off her sweater. Lola did a double take. He said, as though he hadn’t just removed an item of her clothing, “But it is secluded.”
Lola looked down to find Roman had already unbuttoned her shirt. The man had a way with a woman’s clothing. It was almost a superpower.
“Wait, what are you doing?” she said, even though it was pretty obvious.
“Taking what I want.”
“Roman!” she whispered, trying to re-button buttons as fast as he got to them. “Seriously, this is a museum. A museum we might need really soon.”
He stood over her, smiling that devilish smile. He took her in his arms and brought her close, so close she could feel his impressive erection against her belly, and she sighed. He brushed away her hair and kissed her neck.
“You need a history lesson,” he said, and moved lower down her neck, towards the spot that always made her weak. “Do you know what droit de signeur means?”
“Umm,” she said, leaning into his arms. “No. Does it have to do with museums and getting arrested?”
He laughed low and slow, almost musically. She looked down and was only halfway surprised to see that her shirt was open. Roman unhooked her bra, freeing her breasts. The chilled air made her gasp, a
nd he playfully pinched her nipples. She halfheartedly tried to cover up, but he batted away her hands, shaking his finger.
He said, “It describes an old medieval custom. It translates as ‘right of the lord.’”
“Roman, seriously,” she panted, which she was pretty sure didn’t help her case.
“Lola, very seriously,” he said, forcing his hand down the front of her skirt. Her eyes flew wide open, and he looked directly into them and grinned. “I am your lord.”
“Oh God. Roman…”
“Yes,” he said, his hand thrusting between her legs. “This is mine. Right of the lord. Droit de signeur.”
He smiled to find she wasn’t wearing underwear, as he’d strongly suggested. Then he slipped one finger inside her, then another, pushing them deep enough to stroke her g-spot. She nearly collapsed, but he pinned her against the rough stone wall and kept stroking.
“I want what is mine,” he said into her ear.
Lola tried to speak, but only a strangled moan came out.
“I’m going to take what is mine right now,” he said again. “Because I can. What do you say to that?”
“Oh God,” she breathed, and then against all good judgment, she caved: “Yes. Yes.”
“Yes what?”
She almost giggled, and then stopped when she saw the look on his face. That look said she was going to get fucked, hard. Her breath hitched. “Yes, my lord?” she said.
Roman smiled briefly, as though stifling a laugh, and them made his face go stern. “Very good,” he said.
He bunched her skirt up around her hips, exposing her sex. He took a moment simply to look at her, long enough that she felt exposed and raw in a way she hadn’t felt in years. Something about Roman made her feel new and vulnerable, as though all of her hard-won life experience was rendered null and void by a single touch from this man, and it was totally, completely, stupidly intoxicating. Also infuriating. But all of it—all of it—was drowned out by the sudden, heavy feeling that swelled in her core.
