After getting padded up and allowing the women to pound on a príncipe while Cenobia offered hints and tips, Roman gave autographs and posed for selfies, even taking pictures with women who slipped in after news of his presence had filtered through the building. He and Cenobia got a boisterous farewell as they escaped into the now-dark night, but they were both quiet as they made their way back to the caravan.
They walked fast.
Roman was glad to see Cenobia matching his steps. There was a lot he wanted to say, to know, and he needed to get her alone to say it and know it.
When they entered her home, he didn’t hesitate to draw the heavy drapes that covered her sliding glass door.
Cenobia walked to the living room and clicked the button to start the fire roaring in the fireplace. “I’m going to take a quick shower,” she said.
They were her first words since leaving the shelter.
Roman showered, checked in with his team, left his earpiece in his room, and was on the couch drinking a glass of wine in his jeans and black T-shirt when she came down the circular staircase in linen lounge pants and a cream, wide-neck sweater. Her hair was down her back and still damp. Beyond a brief sighting that had almost crippled him in her kitchen, it was the first time he’d seen her with her hair down.
“You’re drinking wine,” she said as she walked toward the couch.
He’d needed to calm the urgency pressing against his skin. “Do you want a glass?”
She shook her head. Her face was washed clean of makeup, her skin in the firelight all coffee-cream and gold. She sat down on the couch, just a cushion away.
He should have drunk his wine faster. “I noticed you nurse a glass to look like you’re drinking,” he said.
“I don’t like feeling tipsy. It’s too much like dissociating.”
He finished his wine in two large gulps and set the glass aside.
“Is Krav Maga the only martial art you’ve mastered?” he asked. He fought the drumbeat demand of now in his head.
This was the most important moment in his life to take his time.
“I’ve also learned judo, jujitsu, and aikido,” she said, curling her legs up on the couch as she faced him. “Some boxing.”
That goddamn sweater fell off her shoulder, showing him the tiny strap of a cream camisole against her gleaming skin.
“And you learned all this...”
“I started in Houston. But I didn’t like the group classes.” She raised her round chin to meet his eyes and he wanted pull her into his lap, slowly kiss her chin and cheeks and nose while she spoke. “So, I hired a master and trained with him in Mexico City. I never imagined training others, but the group gave me so much that I wanted to give back.”
Those magazine articles and Trujillo Industries newsletters and society page pictures and communications in the guise of her father had never hinted at this.
“You own the building.”
Cenobia scraped her teeth against her bottom lip.
She’d taken him there because she’d wanted him to see, but this was still hard for her. She was so incredibly brave.
Finally, she nodded. “We provide the women no-to-low-rent apartments, a food kitchen, classrooms and meeting space, a medical clinic and other services.”
“I could go over the building’s security,” he said, carefully, not wanting to defile the temple she’d built with his white, male, American overstepping. “Just me, not the team. I can recommend updates and get you the latest equipment.”
She nodded again. He’d paint her temple in biometric keypads and AES-256 encryption.
“I could also do it for other buildings the group uses,” he hazarded.
“I’ll get you the addresses.” Because of course there were more than just the one.
She was looking down at her hands. One thumb was rubbing over the other’s back. He now knew how silky and soothing that skin was.
“Cenobia,” he said quietly, drawing her eyes back up to him. When he saw what was in them, he wanted to pull her against him and swear that she’d always be safe. He kept his voice cotton soft. “You provide safe houses for assault survivors?”
She crossed her arms around herself, then lifted one hand to stroke her earlobe.
“One of the women you met today was molested for years by her stepfather and no one would...stop him,” she said. “Help her. With us she has a job and an apartment and...joy.
“Another had a sister who was abducted, raped, and killed in Ciudad Juárez,” she continued. The hundreds of femicides unsolved and ignored by authorities in that border city were infamous and horrifying. “We’ve gotten her additional martial arts training and she teaches when I’m not there.”
“Nine women are killed every day in Mexico,” she said, her eyes dropping back to his chest as she rubbed her ear. “When men become angry and say no más, como Che Guevara y Emiliano Zapata, they’re celebrated for it. When it’s women demanding justice, we’re treated like Sirens who will force society to dash itself against the rocks. But I refuse—refuse—to be okay with the fact that forty-one percent of Mexican women have experienced sexual violence.”
Her thumb desperately working her tender lobe, she again met his eyes. “The group is for sexual assault survivors,” she said, now fierce and defiant. “I was raped when I was kidnapped.”
He couldn’t help the sting in his nose and throat as she confirmed what he’d feared.
“Did I kill him?” He thought of the bodies he’d left behind in the bunker.
She shook her head. “The person who raped me wasn’t there when you came.”
He closed his eyes. “Fuck, Cenobia.” He’d sold his soul to excel at this one thing. And still, he’d failed her. “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t.” Suddenly she was standing, standing and glaring down at him. “Don’t pity me. I’m still the same person. You knowing I was raped doesn’t change me.”
“Hey,” he said, putting his hands up. “I don’t think it does.”
“You said you felt sorry for me—”
“No,” he said, scooting to the edge of her couch, but keeping his shoulders relaxed and hands up.
He recognized this now. He’d seen Cenobia stay as cool as a cucumber with everyone else. But she gave him power she gave no one else when she chose to make herself vulnerable with him.
She’d rather be mad than afraid.
“I’m sorry I didn’t kill the person who hurt you. I’m sorry I didn’t lay his body at your feet.” He lowered his hands to his lap, felt hulking and ineffective in front of her taut, worthy anger. “And I’m sorry that you trusted me enough to share this with me and I’m fucking it up. But I don’t pity you. There’s nothing to pity.”
Never had he felt his lack of grace with words more. “You and those women you’re training, y’all survived a battle that you didn’t want and wasn’t your fault,” he said. “What is there to pity? Look at you.” He motioned to her, her house, her world she’d built. If he could just plug her into his brain... “Look at what you’ve done. And you choose to share it all: your car and your hurt and those warrior women...with me?”
She was still and firelit as she stared down at him, a golden goddess, and Roman, who’d worked so hard to keep his guard up with her, let her see everything.
“I can’t pity you when I’m down on my knees, Cen. You put me on my fucking knees.”
He’d slide to them if that’s what it took.
Her stillness was towering. Her gorgeous face was so wary.
She took a step closer and put her hand, slim and cool, against his neck. She slowly slid it up, caught his jaw, and tilted his face to her.
He offered up his throat.
Cenobia Trujillo bent forward, her hair sliding around his face, and kissed him. In the honeysuckle-scented hideout of her hair, the girl he rescued and the woman he wanted pressed soft mauve lips to his as she kept her eyes open and Roman was swallowed in brown velvet.
Cenobia was kissing him. Soft. Slow. Warm presses. Then... Cen tasted him. The tiniest lick of her tongue. She did it again across his bottom lip. Slower. A longer drag. He wanted to scrape his teeth across it to ease the tingles. She sipped at his top lip. Like it was café de olla soaked. Gave this...sound in the back of her throat. She tilted her head, the wavy cloud of her hair stroking against his cheek, and sucked the generous pout of his bottom lip into her mouth. Nursed at it.
He felt like candy. He felt sugar sweet and dipped in chocolate. He could feel the soft suction in a straight line down to his cock.
“Cen,” he mumbled, concussed with the feel of her, the taste, her smell.
“Are you going to kiss me back?” she sighed against his mouth. “You feel so good.”
Good. God. He could make her feel good.
“Yeah, sweet girl,” he breathed out then inhaled her air. He put his bloodless hands up to her beautiful face. “Yeah,” he said, tilting his head.
And then she was climbing into his lap and he was stroking into her mouth and then her tongue. His tongue.
She tasted... God, she tasted. It was hot and soft and wet in her mouth, in Cenobia Trujillo’s goddamn mouth, and even though he was eight years older than her, Cenobia was the engineer of their pleasure. She pressed flush against him from pelvis to chest, squeezed his hips with her knees, anchored her hands in his hair. She was warm lips, tactile tongue, eager, grabbing hands. And he was still trying to figure out which end was up on the blueprints.
She was a fantasy made oh-so-fucking real by lush breasts and warm thighs and silken hair and the greedy grind of her against his cock.
He gripped her waist, the firm, warm, flesh of Cenobia Trujillo in big hands, and tilted her to slide against him.
She moaned into his open mouth.
Yeah. This was never supposed to happen. But no power on Earth could make him push her away now that it was. Her people could break in and tase him, his people could shoot him. Nothing was going to make him let go of her now.
He gathered her hair into his hand and wrapped it around his fist, the tug causing her to shiver as he tongued at the sensitive corner of her lips. She followed the pull of his hand like a good girl, let him gently fuck her mouth while he rolled up between her legs.
He tugged harder, breaking their kiss, the only way he was going to be able to give up her addicting mouth, and slid his lips and nose down her neck, licking at her heartbeat.
“So good,” she panted up into the fire-warmed air. He bit at her clavicle and mouthed over her deep brown shoulder, exposed by the sweater trying to kill him. “I always hoped it would feel this good.”
God, the whirling, grinding friction of her. He tilted up to let her ride faster. Harder. He hadn’t gotten off like this since he was a kid. But he could do it. She could do it to him. He could do it to her.
All the things he could do to her.
Her hips began to move in faster, tighter circles. “I never thought it could feel this good with someone,” she gasped, nails digging into his shoulders.
I always hoped it would feel this good. Her words were jabbing his lust-crazed brain. I never thought it could feel this good with someone.
She was trying to tell him this, too.
He let go of his clench on her hair, smoothed it down against her back.
His body whined. He relaxed his hips.
If she kept moving, he was going to blow.
Holding her against him, he slid backwards until his back was against the couch. “Cen,” he said, rubbing her waist as he tried to catch his breath. Her hips slowed. “Cen, sweetheart...what’re you saying?”
She pressed her face into his hair and breathed. Just breathed. Then they breathed together.
“I haven’t had intercourse since then,” she said.
God.
“Why?” he asked. Why no one else? And, most astoundingly, why him?
“I get...very uncomfortable,” she said against his scalp. “I tried to push through it in college and had a couple of panic attacks. We’ve been working on it in therapy and I’ve dated, used toys...”
At the thought of Cenobia using toys, of being used like a toy by her, his stupid, infantile cock jolted. She was tight enough against him to feel it.
She leaned back and searched his eyes with both hesitancy and shy amusement on her face.
“I don’t feel any discomfort with you,” she said. “The thought of sex, with you, has always been very...inspiring.”
His cock jolted again and he closed his eyes. He could feel sweat in the small of his back.
She leaned close and kissed him. “I want to be with you, Roman. Not because you can fix me or protect me or pleasure me. I want to be with you because I desire you.” More kisses. “I admire you.” Kissed again. “I have for years.”
Years.
Her desire was like swallowing a helium balloon and a cannonball at the same time.
Cenobia Trujillo wanted him. She had for years. He wanted her, too. For years.
He wanted to be her lover, one in a collection of boyfriends and loves and hot one-night stands, a collection owed to a woman of her age and sophistication. But he couldn’t be the lover. He couldn’t be her one.
He curled his hand around her nape and selfishly took her mouth while he still could.
“Cen, beautiful,” he breathed against her lips. “I want...” She gave a slow roll against him as she kissed her way to his ear, sucked his lobe into her mouth. “Fuck...” He grabbed her hip. “You can feel how bad I want you. But this is really fucking complicated.”
She pulled off his ear and leaned back. He hated the sudden wariness he’d put into her eyes.
“Because I was raped?”
“No,” he dismissed instantly, squeezing her hips in his hands and jostling her once to emphasize it. He slid his hands up under her camisole, held her waist to stroke his thumbs soothingly and greedily over her soft stomach.
He made sure not to look away from her dark, measuring eyes. “Because I don’t take the fact that I’d be your first lightly. Because you’re the eighteen-year-old girl I saved. Because we’re both so fucking busy and overwhelmed I don’t know when I’d find the time to make love to like you deserve. Because you’re a client...” He said the word heavily and his shoulders slumped. “And being with a woman I’m supposed to be protecting breaks every code I’ve established and every rule I’ve hammered into those employees outside.”
She looked down toward their laps.
He had to convince her. She had to know how much he admired and desired her.
He ran his hands up so his palms covered her skin, bracketed her torso, held her completely. She had to take her hard-earned confidence with her when she gave this firm, warm, beautiful body to another man.
“Cenobia?”
When she raised her eyes back to him, he was stunned by the naked craving in them. “Everything you said just makes me trust you more. Want you more.” She pressed her hand low against her belly, looked at him with awe. “I’m trembling with it.”
She was. Trembling in his hands. “Baby girl,” he breathed.
“You make me wet when you say that.”
He gripped her tight and closed his eyes.
He felt her lean close. “I crave you,” she whispered, dream words against his lips. “I believe and trust you desire me back. The ball’s in your court, Príncipe.”
Her lips touched his in the sweetest, hottest press and he gathered her face to hold her there. But she broke the kiss, nuzzled into his palm, and climbed off. She gave him a tremulous smile—she was so fucking brave—then turned to head toward the stairs.
He never took his eyes off of her. When their eyes met on her final rotation of the stairs, he let her see every drop of his desire.
After she disappeared, he put his elbows on his knees and buried his face in his hands.
Yeah, he desired her. He might want her more than anything he’d ever wanted. More than kingdom or family or retribution or the addicting adrenaline rush of being the perfect battle weapon.
But years ago, he’d made a choice. That choice led him to saving the lives of his squad and turning his back on the President so the man could hook the blue Medal of Honor ribbon around his neck.
That choice meant he could never be the one and only in Cenobia Trujillo’s bed.
How was he going explain that to her for the remainder of his days in Mexico?