Blindsided

Roman Holiday 3: Blindsided
is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

A Loveswept eBook Original

Copyright © 2013 by Ruth Homrighaus.

Excerpt from
Roman Holiday 4: Ravaged
by Ruthie Knox copyright © 2013 by Ruthie Homrighaus

All Rights Reserved.

Published in the United States by Loveswept, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.

LOVESWEPT is a registered trademark and the LOVESWEPT colophon is a trademark of Random House LLC.

This book contains an excerpt from the forthcoming book
Roman Holiday 4: Ravaged
by Ruthie Knox. This excerpt has been set for this edition only and may not reflect the final content of the forthcoming edition.

eBook ISBN: 978-0-345-54699-9

www.ReadLoveSwept.com

v3.1

A Note from the Author

Dear Readers,

Is it just me, or have you caught yourself looking forward to Roman and the drum circle all week long? Because if there ever existed a man who deserved to be tortured with drum circles, it’s Roman. I get bouncy just thinking of it.

But first, let’s recap last week’s chain of events.

Fleeing a hurricane, Roman and Ashley drove from the Florida Keys to a commune on the edge of Georgia’s Okefenokee Swamp. Along the way, Ashley sang Roman a song that made him want to gouge his own eyes out. They stopped for a meal, where she partook of corn, corn, corn, corn, and a biscuit while learning more about Roman’s plans for her grandmother’s rental apartments—plans she hated so much, they got into an argument. The Airstream’s door flapped open on the highway, leading to a very charged
OMG-is-he-gonna-kiss-me
moment in the Airstream but, sadly, no kiss. Then right as they arrived in the swamp, Roman jackknifed the trailer and mired his Caddy in the mud. One of Roman’s less intelligent moments, but then, it’s possible he just couldn’t tear himself away from Ashley.

Either way, now they’re in Ashley-land, and the drum circle is warming up. What’s that you say? You’ll need a drink to get through this?

Just be sure to keep your wits about you. I hear there are gators!

xoxo,

Ruthie

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

A Note from the Author

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Other Books by This Author

About the Author

Excerpt from
Roman Holiday 4: Ravaged

CHAPTER ONE

Ashley leaned in, shimmying her shoulders to the rhythm as she pounded the drum.

Across the circle, Kirk mirrored her movements, his bald head and smug smile as familiar to Ashley as were the pink cat sweatshirt Mitzi wore and the white streaks at the temples of her shiny black hair.

Ashley knew every one of the faces that comprised this gathering of the Okefenokee Land Cooperative’s twice-monthly drum circle. She knew the texture of Mitzi’s sisal rug beneath her thighs, the pattern of the plaid couch, the collection of carved woodland creatures that crowded the shelves of Mitzi’s repurposed china cabinet.

The familiarity of these people, this place, created lightness in her arms, peace and warmth in her chest.

Her problems hadn’t gone anywhere, of course. Sunnyvale still rested on the chopping block, shivering in the shadow of the knife. Her grandmother was still dead, and Ashley was still grieving as best she knew how.

But all that seemed to matter so much less now than it had earlier in the car with Roman. It had moved aside to make room for this movement, this heat, this light.

Sweat gathered beneath her right breast and rolled down her stomach. Ashley paused to push up her sleeves. Kirk winked at her. She winked back.

Leaning against the wall by the kitchen, Roman was silent. Watchful.

He’d stayed out by the mud-mired Escalade for a long while after Ashley followed Mitzi inside. When she’d peeked out the kitchen window, she’d seen him as a silhouette against the taillights, leaning over the trailer hitch and trying to get a handle on his means of escape.

He must not have found any, because eventually he’d come in—much to the delight of the assembled guests. There was nothing quite so exciting to the vegan residents of Okefenokee as fresh meat. Before Ashley joined the drumming, she’d heard him turn down offers of beet hummus, a pot brownie, and a sweat lodge visit. This last invitation had implied a three-way, though she wasn’t entirely sure Roman had caught that.

Each time, his response was a perfectly polite, perfectly calm negative, delivered in a
tone that suggested he’d been asked to lunch but had a previous engagement.

He actually said those words, in response to the sweat-lodge three-way offer:
I’m sorry, but I have a previous engagement
. Eavesdropping from the kitchen, where she’d been helping Mitzi get the food ready, Ashley had laughed so hard she gave herself a stomach cramp.

Each subsequent indignity made him stiffer, less responsive—this place, his stuck truck, the drum circle, the unrestrained conversation and unconventional offers. The way people kept introducing themselves by asking,
So you’re with Ashley?

Worst of all, the exposure to all this unabashed sharing of
feelings
, all this
love
. Roman’s worst nightmare.

And oh, yes, that lifted her up, too. That put lightness in her heart, to be comforted and buoyed, certain that the morning would bring the solution she needed, while Roman was deliciously miserable.

Nicole began a chant. Ashley repeated the words back, adding her voice to the chorus, admiring the gleam of Nicole’s waist-length red hair under the lights.

Mitzi caught her eye and smiled conspiratorially. She’d promised to help, just as Ashley had known she would. Her eyes had lit up with the delight of it. Mitzi loved to scheme, loved even more to exact revenge.

Hee-hee-ti-kago-oah!

“Hee-hee-ti-kago-oah.”

Kirk’s baritone carried the response line, and Ashley added a little flourish with her drum, an extra syncopated beat that gave her more lift.

Free me, Key Largo!

“Free me, Key Largo.”

Ashley just sang whatever words came out. Whether they made sense or not was irrelevant. When you were drumming, you didn’t care about logic. The drum circle was all about freedom from shame. About physical, rhythmical, sexual, primitive rhythm—letting it move through you, releasing you from your burdens. Kirk had a whole spiel about chakra energy and drumming, how it activated the sacral chakra, which was the seat of sexual impulse.

This explained why the drumming always made Ashley happy, hungry, and horny.

Roman had his plastic-man thing going again. That look was starting to do strange things to her. She wanted to stand up and dance over and twine her arms around his neck and whisper
phrases in his ear that would make the color rise up his neck and heat his cheeks. To invite him to do things to her that Carmen would never allow and Roman would never, ever permit himself to want.

She wanted to see if she could make him want them, too.

It wasn’t a
real
impulse, of course. It was just the drums talking.

But the fantasy felt good. It pushed the rhythm down, down to the base of her. She closed her eyes, dreamy and hot and bothered and happy.

When she opened them, he was watching her, and she smiled at him, just because she could.

Then she lowered her head and closed her eyes and
pounded, pounded, pounded
at the drum.

CHAPTER TWO

The headboard beat a relentless tattoo into the wall behind him.

“Oh! Oh, oh, yeah, yeah baby, yeah, like that. Just like that. Just like—oh!”

Roman sat up. Methodically, he began stripping the bedding off the futon.

He’d tried covering his ears with his palms and his head with the pillow, but it didn’t help. Nothing helped. Mitzi and Kirk had been fucking since the dawn of time, and it was never going to end.

Kirk was a god. He was a machine. For the first hour, Roman had been—if not envious, at least mildly impressed. It was an accomplishment of sorts, having such a vigorous sex life at Kirk’s age. Kitty-cat sweatshirt aside, Mitzi was an attractive woman.

But God almighty, she made so much
noise
.

Roman piled the bedding on top of his suitcase and folded the futon into the frame, returning it to a lumpy-couch shape. He folded the sheets, the blanket, and made a neat stack.

Order restored—at least to this small corner of the living room. The rest of the place was still trashed from the party that had followed the drum circle. The party that had gone on for hours and hours, well into the night.

He’d been trying to block out the mess, telling himself it wasn’t his living room, wasn’t his house, wasn’t even his
state
.

No luck. Combined with the endless symphony of Kirk and Mitzi, the mess was more than he could take.

He’d thought about going out to sleep in the truck, but it was too buggy and too humid to try that without turning on the AC, and he didn’t want to risk running down the battery or running out of gas in the middle of Swampland. Getting his tires stuck was bad enough. He could just imagine the rusted-out hulk that used to be his Cadillac. Feral swamp children gleefully stripping the tires and hood ornament.

And even if he could have left, his foster father, Patrick, had trained him to be polite. All those childhood lessons made it next to impossible for Roman to leave without saying goodbye and thanking his hostess for her hospitality. He couldn’t thank his hostess without knocking on
her bedroom door.

Obviously, out of the question.

In the kitchen, he found a garbage can under the sink. He returned to the living room and started picking up plates, stacking them into a pile and tossing all the food into the trash. He tried not to listen, but there was no way not to listen, and apparently no way to distract himself from making unwelcome comparisons.

To Carmen, who had never made that much noise in bed with him. Not once. Not ever.

To Ashley.

Ashley, with her hair loose and her legs crossed on the floor, skin glowing with heat, shirt dark under her arms. Smiling at everyone, swaying back and forth as she beat on that stupid drum.

Ashley, who’d pranced out of the bathroom and brushed her teeth while teasing him about all the invitations he’d received during the party. She’d been barely intelligible, her lips coated in blue foam, and he’d tried not to notice the way her pajama shorts hugged the curve of her ass, but failed.

Rather spectacularly.

She slept in the guest room, her bed separated from the futon in the living room by the width of a paneled wall.

He picked up casserole dishes and coffee mugs with dried maroon blotches at the bottom. Half-empty beer bottles. A glass that held something that looked like water and smelled like apple pie laced with ethanol. Appetizer plates sprinkled with frosted brown crumbs.

“Fuck me! God, yes, fuck me! Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me, yeah yeah yeah
yeah
, baby, just like that, oh, I’m gonna come, I’m coming, I’m—”

Roman turned on both taps at the sink, found the plug, and began filling the basin with warm water. He squirted in soap. He visualized his travel kit—a neat red-and-black nylon bag he’d purchased online because it had exactly the right number of pockets.

One held a plastic vial filled with earplugs the color of flesh, another a set of earbuds in a small disc-shaped case, ready to be plugged into his phone.

Two separate solutions to his problem.

Too bad he’d forgotten the travel kit in the bathroom of the hotel back in Homestead.

Ashley had showered before bed, and he’d been forced to share the guest bathroom with
her shampoo smell. To wash his face with borrowed soap, and to skip brushing his teeth because he couldn’t bear the thought of using anyone else’s toothbrush or—Ashley’s repulsive solution—his finger.