Roman Holiday: The Complete Adventure (2-Book Bundle: The Adventure Begins and The Adventure Continues) (35 page)

“Like what?”

“On the way here, walking through campus? I thought,
We could find the bathroom in that dorm. I could take him in a stall and fuck him. I could lead him over there, where there’s a dark spot under those trees, and suck him off. I could go back to that party with my hair all
messed up from his hands, lipstick smeared, and get into Roman’s truck and drive it somewhere I can unhitch the Airstream and roll it into a lake
. I’m hurt and angry, and I can generate an endless list of things to do that would feel good for ten seconds. But then where am I afterward?” She shrugged. “I’m still a loser.”

“You’re not a loser.”

“You’re only saying that because I was beating you at your own game.”

Roman smiled. He turned around to climb down to her branch. She was so far away, he showed off a little, arms straight out at his sides, treating the limb like a balance beam.

When he drew close, she pulled in her toes, and he sat beside her, feet dangling over the side.

“You aren’t even wearing lipstick,” he said.

“You know what I mean.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean, Ash.”

For a while, they were quiet, and he listened to the sounds of the night settling in. Cicadas chirping. A car going by on the road. Somebody yelling far away, and a dog barking.

“I could give you some ideas.” He repeated the earlier comment because he wanted her to understand he hadn’t meant it sexually—not entirely. “And you could give me some. We could figure this out together. You’re not stupid, Ashley. Impulsive, maybe, but smart as hell.”

She looked at him over her knees. Her eyes seemed huge, windows to a soul that was so completely out of scale to her body, it spilled over.

Excessive
, he’d thought of her, at first. Disturbingly excessive. But he’d only been disturbed because what Ashley had in abundance, he’d drawn down inside himself until he’d nearly lost it.

Honesty. Integrity. Hope. Joy.

Love.

“My dad is going to be pissed,” she said.

“Let him be pissed.”

“Mitzi will think I’m collaborating with the enemy, and Nana will think I’m doing exactly what I always do. Turning myself inside out to win the approval of some guy who doesn’t deserve it.”

“Ash, if this is what you’re like when you’re turning yourself inside out to win my
approval, I’d hate to see you when you’re being an obstructive, infuriating pain in the ass.”

Her eyes met his, and they were smiling. “What are you saying, I’m not winning you over?”

“I’m saying you don’t have to win me over. I’ve declared for your side, and you got me to do that without compromising yourself.”

Her smile made it to her mouth, her teeth bright against the darkness. “Now you’re going to say again that you like me.”

“You wish. Now I’m going to take you back to the truck, drive you to whatever passes for a nice hotel in this town, and get you into bed before it occurs to you to think about the whole whether-I-deserve-you part.”

“Sexually frustrated, are we?”

“Aren’t
you
?”

Ashley laughed and scooted a few inches closer to drop her foot into his lap. “I could take care of that right now.”

“With your toes? Ugh. I don’t even want to know if that’s possible.” She’d worked her foot down along his zipper. It was troubling how quickly his dick came to attention. He didn’t even find feet attractive, but Ashley’s toes were like fingers—strong and dextrous. “Jesus
Christ
.” He flung his hands out, wobbled, and connected with a branch to the side just in time to prevent a fall. When Ashley resumed her massage, he picked up her foot and dropped it into space. “No. Hotel. I have standards.”

He should have known she would take that as a challenge.

Before he could even blink, he had a lap full of Ashley. She braced her arms above them. He had nothing to hang on to but her. Her hips in his hands. Her breasts right beneath his chin, her skin warm, that ocean smell …

“You’re going to break both our necks.” He barely managed to make it sound like a complaint.

“You said you’d do whatever I want.”

“I never—”

“Kiss me.”

He did. Teetering on a tree branch, distracted by visions of dropping to his death, he filled his hands and his head with Ashley.

She felt good.
He
felt good.

It was satisfying, doing the right thing. He wanted more of this feeling, more of this woman.

He smacked her on the ass and said, “Up.” When that didn’t work, he lifted her and sent her on her way with another light slap.

“Get your butt on the ground,” he said. “And don’t fall, or I’ll kill you.”

She laughed, poked him in the stomach when he got close enough, tried to talk him into racing her back when they finally got their feet on solid earth again. Roman was trying to pull on his socks when she ducked out from under the tree and took off.

He dropped them and followed her at a dead sprint across the lawn, shoes hanging from his fingertips.

His dignity, he left behind with his socks and his tie, crumpled in the dirt.

He wasn’t going to need it—not tonight.

Ashley peeled back the covers on the bed and arranged her bare legs beneath them. The hotel room was too cool, excessively air-conditioned. It felt good to pull the comforter up and bury herself under it, a secret warm clean body against a soft mattress, breathing in the faint scent of bleach.

She turned onto her side, her back to the bathroom and the muffled noises of Roman in the shower. He’d let her take her turn first—such a nice Midwestern boy under his slick Miami shell—and she’d come out in her towel to find him on the bed with his feet up, watching the news.

Then she’d rummaged around in his bag, and he’d turned off the TV to watch her drop the towel and pull his own comfy T-shirt over her head.

He’d stood and stripped for the shower right in front of her, his movements as casual as if he were unobserved, and walked away bare-assed and smiling. Ashley had smiled, too, bemused at how seductive it was not to be seduced.

She wouldn’t have thought she would throb like this, just from knowing he was going to come back and they were going to have sex, plain old sex in a plain old hotel bed, but there was something erotic about having it be
assumed
.

They were like an old married couple.

She’d never before wanted to be part of an old married couple, but she was starting to see the appeal.

After the water came on in the shower, she’d turned out the lights. There was too much light from the parking lot outside for the room to be truly dark, but it got dim and filled with shadows. The sheets felt cool beneath her stroking hand, the pillow downy under her cheek.

The water shut off in the bathroom.

She waited.

Before tonight, she wouldn’t have expected her first time with Roman to be this way. They’d begun in the mud—surely it only made sense to think they’d consummate this week of insanity with sex on the prow of a boat, or at the top of a Ferris wheel, or up in the hayloft of
some barn where they trespassed against everything good and smart and sensible.

An hour ago, when he’d chased her and caught her and they’d walked to the end of the gravel path together, they ended up at a water tower, a massive spider with metal legs, and she’d thought about dragging him into the shadows underneath. They could have done it standing up, her leg hitched over his hip and last year’s accumulation of dried leaves crunching under his feet as he lifted her and pinned her, held her and fucked her.

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.