It seemed to take years to talk to the security chief, reassure Roman’s family that she was fine, endure the silent drive with him up the mountain, check in with security at the bottom of his long driveway, then finally, finally, walk into Roman’s home.
Venga, she wanted to urge like the impatient twelve-year-old she’d been when she watched a car accelerate on the test track, anxious to see if her prototype engine could perform the way she believed it could. Let’s go.
Her impatience and her confidence in its urgency had grown exponentially since she was twelve. The instant Roman flipped on the lamps with amber shades in his living room, she stepped in front of him.
“What are you thinking?” she demanded.
She’d changed in the three weeks since she’d stood in his office with her heart in her throat and her palms sweaty, wandering around his office instead of looking dead on at the warrior prince who’d become more blindingly magnificent than even her active imagination could have dreamed.
He kept his hands in his pocket, his beautiful eyes on the ground. With his dark, perfectly styled hair and rough olive tweed suit over his chest-defining sweater, he looked like a bruiser dressed for a press conference.
“Cenobia,” he grumbled.
“Talk to me.”
Roman would discover that Texas recalcitrance was no match for fiery-eyed Guachichil bullheadedness.
“It’s late.” He started to turn away. “We should go to bed.”
“Together?”
He stiffened and finally did look at her, a quick look over his shoulder. Cenobia felt a drip of panic enter her bloodstream. His glance carried the shame and guilt that she hadn’t seen since he’d finally admitted how much, how long, he’d wanted her.
She refused to allow her vibrant warrior prince fade once again into a man she only knew through emails and glamorous pictures. She refused to be his warrior queen he guiltily googled every six months.
“You think you reacted rashly,” she said, on his heels as he tried to move away. “You think seeing you as the aggressor should scare me.” His massive shoulders flinched as she followed him across the rugs and wood of his living room. “You think your job is something people you care about shouldn’t be exposed to.”
Panic strengthened her spine. She didn’t believe he would rather spend his Christmas in a Florida swamp. And she didn’t believe that he would rather live without her. She’d been a fool back in Kansas when she’d told herself that she could make love to him and then let him go, if that’s what he demanded. She’d fought for everything that was important to her. She would fight for him, too.
“You think people you care about will get hurt by what you do.”
He spun on her, his bright eyes blazing ferociously, making her aware of his size and width in the narrow alley of space between his stone wall and a low slim table that she’d corralled them into.
“Won’t they?” he growled into her face, drawl thick with frustration. “You saw what I did to a defenseless hotel worker. You want that near your son?” He splayed the back of his hands. “You want me touching you with these knowing what they can do?”
She grabbed his hands and pressed them against the plentiful skin revealed above her sweater. “Yes, I do.”
He tried to tug his hands away and, damn him, she laced her fingers through his and anchored them against her chest, against her heart and heat. She could feel his burned skin. She could feel the thickness of the advisor ring.
“I saw you spot and neutralize a threat before it could hurt me,” she said, trying to reach him through his eyes. “Were you angrier and more protective than you would have been under normal circumstances? Yes. But I’m not going to castigate you for it. You’ve put rules in place to protect your family, the staff who serve them, and the Monte’s people equally. That man flaunted all of them.”
She let him search her face, let him see the truth in it.
He squeezed her fingers. Then he yanked her close until her body pressed against his with their hands squeezed between their chests. He towered over, looked under his heavy lids down at her.
Suddenly her hold was his leather-scented trap.
“You had to threaten me with a hole punch through my knee to get me to stop,” he growled.
If this was his tactic for scaring her off, he was going about it all wrong.
Especially when he allowed her to slip her hands from his so she could lean against his chest. Especially when he tugged her closer and made her feel safer with his hands on her arms.
“It wasn’t a threat,” she said, snuggling in. He was a hard wall of heat. “A reminder. You would’ve stopped in time.”
His eyes narrowed in frustration. “You don’t know that.”
“Yes, I do.” His fingers twitched on her shoulders as she let her smile grow slowly. “You want me more than you wanted that man’s blood. And you’ve always maintained control with me, no matter how it ached.”
She moaned “ached” with a pout in her lips like he’d taught her to, mimicked the way he teased her when he’d drawn out her pleasure until she begged for release.
His face was sculpted hunger inches from hers. “I was losin’ control tonight, baby girl.”
“You were?” she asked, simmering. “What did you have planned?”
She’d been astonished how fast he’d darted across the hallway to apprehend the man. Now she gasped as he spun her around just as quickly. She smacked her hands down on the waist-high table.
His big body bent to cover hers, becoming a blanket of dense, gorgeous-smelling heat as his hands trapped hers against the wood. “The slit up your skirt was driving me crazy,” he said into her ear, vibrations traveling down her neck and to her peaked nipples.
One muscular arm, still in his tweed jacket, caught her around her waist. He stooped. Thick fingers tickled the back of her knee through her sheer black stockings.
His hot, hard palm began to rub up her thigh through the skirt slit. “All I could think about was the easy access you gave me.” His hand’s slow ride up her leg was hypnotic.
In front of her, through Roman’s living room window, she had a perfect view of the fairy-tale village and castle.
Her blood pounded in her ears.
Halfway up her thigh, Roman’s hand stopped.
“Cenobia?” The way he said her name caused an answering drip between her legs. “What are you wearin’?”
His hand was on the lacey elastic holding up her thigh-high stockings.
She leaned on her hands and eased her legs apart. “Tonight’s our first night alone,” she sighed.
She heard a thunk as Roman landed on his knees then felt one hard tug. The rip of the fabric was loud and shocking as he tore the skirt all the way up to the zipper. She moaned and arched her back, the pull of her ponytail heavy on her neck.
He groaned. The cool air of the living room caressed the curves of her bottom revealed by the black, lace, high-cut bodysuit.
His hand trembled against her skin as he gently traced the line of the lace.
“I’m gonna kill Roxanne,” he growled.
Cenobia had to lean more of her weight on her hands to support her wobbly legs as he undid the zipper of her ruined skirt and tugged it down her hips. She could imagine what she looked like: high-heeled suede boots sleeking up her calves, sheer black stockings covering her to her thighs, brown curves revealed in black lace, a billowing sweater cuffing her waist and highlighting her shoulders.
The billionaire who’d stocked their closets had provided Cenobia an array of beautiful and sometimes shocking lingerie in slim, chocolate-brown boxes with gold script stacked in one dresser. This bodysuit was constructed with boning and held together with delicate lace that cupped her breasts.
He smoothed a hot, huge hand over her bottom.
“There are snaps between my...”
He squeezed that cheek. Not hard. But it got her lust-soaked attention. “I know how it works, Cenobia.”
His hand gentled again and then he was rubbing both hands, so slowly, up her suede-covered calves, up her thighs and exploring the naked flesh, over her lace-covered bottom until she wiggled with the sensation, under her sweater and up, up her hips and waist as he rose to his feet, stroking the lace and boning, over her breasts where he pinched and rubbed her nipples, until he could pull the sweater over her head.
She was visibly vibrating with sensation when he turned her chin up to him. “All this?” he breathed against her mouth, his eyes crinkling beautifully at the corners as he stared into hers. “For me, sweet Cen? Don’t waste yourself on me.”
Her heart ached for him. Her hand holding his strong neck was the foundation they both needed right now. “It’s not a waste. You act like the soldier in you dooms you to isolation. He doesn’t.” She squeezed the tendons of his neck, tendons that led to his world-bearing shoulders. “Roman, you do the work no one wants to. You’re good at it. But you’re more than a man with a sword. Your focus on doing good and your resistance to the brutality proves that. I love the soldier, he saved me, but he’s only one of a thousand aspects that I love about you.”
His eyes widened. She knew what she’d said.
“I see you, Roman.” She leaned up and kissed him gently. “I’ve always seen you. Just like you’ve always seen me. That’s why I love you. That’s why we’re in love.”
She would be brave enough for the both of them.
His face went absolutely brutal. “Jesus fucking Christ, Cen,” he groaned, his hands singeing skin and lace as he ran them over her, tugged on her ponytail and pulled up her chin to devour her mouth.
The kiss flooded her with desire.
“Hold on,” he growled into her ear; then all the spots he’d touched with his hands, he worshipped with his mouth: kisses down her neck and bites down her shoulder blades, teasing sucks to the lace over her nipples although he refused to let her turn around. He kept her bending over and back to him as his mouth traveled over the lace, his mouth plush and erotic even through fabric, his tongue delicious over her birthmark then across the prickled skin of her bottom.
One hand gently but resolutely pushed her forward until she was leaning over the table and across the back of the couch while the other hand carefully undid the snaps.
Dios mío.
He sounded like he was breathing prayers against her skin as he tucked the fabric out of the way. Cenobia widened her legs. “Good girl,” he sighed, his hot breath touching her. “Good glistening girl...”
She’d thought, after all the ways he’d touched and rubbed and kissed her during their days together in Kansas, that there were few surprises left. She’d thought wrong.
It was deliciously obscene to receive his kiss this way, feeling his nose, the long flat lick of his tongue, the drip of herself and him down her thighs, his willingness to kiss and taste and savor her everywhere. He pulled on her ponytail, made her arch her head up, told her he wanted to hear her, everything, all that he was doing to her.
Her weight was entirely resting on the table and in his hands, tears streaming down her face and her voice hoarse as he held her and feasted, when the pleasure edged back enough to let her think again.
Roman put her legs back on the ground and stood, pulling her up and back against him “I can’t, Cen,” he begged, cradling her lolling body, supporting her. “Not tonight, baby girl. I want to be gentle your first time. I gotta be gentle. And tonight... I want you so much...”
Only then did she realize that she’d been crying out for him to make love to her.
He pressed two fingers into her while he held her against his fully clothed body.
She opened her eyes as he began to move them inside.
“Bueno, querido,” she said, looking into his eyes with the freedom of the love she was finally able to express. He would never hurt her. But she wanted him to trust himself the way she trusted him. “We’ll take as long as you want. Just like you are. That’s all I want. I want you just as you are.”