Roman Holiday: The Adventure Continues (7 page)

His frantic haste tripped her switch, focusing her own pleasure down to one intense point of concentration and sending it out to spread through her whole body. Ashley tucked her head against his neck, closed her eyes, and hung on tight, tight,
God
, everything tightened around Roman and he gasped and went still, panting into her hair, coming with her and into her, both of them clinging like survivors, desperate and needy and sated, fulfilled, happy.

Happy, together, in the moment. In this night.

Even if she didn’t have all the answers, she had this one affirmative answer. Yes.

Yes to the two of them, heavy and weary.

Yes to Roman rolling his weight off her and pulling her into his arms, kissing her neck and her shoulder and the back of her head before he got up to take care of the condom and then returned, pulling the covers over them.

Yes to not needing words or making plans for the morning, because they both wanted the same thing tonight. They wanted to fall asleep in this cold room, huddled under the covers of a cozy bed that smelled like soap and deodorant and excellent sex. His chest against her back. Tucked up together, safe and warm, with all their problems set aside.

Yes to Roman
, she thought as she drifted off.
Yes
.

Maybe when the sun came up, all the rest of the answers would be as obvious as this one.

Carmen squirmed.

She writhed.

She lifted and twisted and moaned.

How did this man make her so
loose
? So voluptuously loose, as if he’d oiled her joints or threaded through her veins with winding vitality. She had no choice but to move restlessly beneath his mouth. No choice at all.

It was because, she thought, he had so many tools. He used the bristles of his beard against her. He used his lips, his tongue, his smile, his teeth, his crinkling kind eyes, his giant ridiculous rodeo belt buckle and humongous burly arms. His hands, worst of all. Distracting. Knowledgeable.
Attentive
.

All of these safe-cracking tools, every one devastatingly effective despite being unsuitable. Despite
his
being unsuitable.

She did the most unsuitable things for him, too.

It was unsuitable, for instance, to be wearing her skirt right now, allowing it to become rumpled simply because he’d asked her to keep it on. He had, in fact, told her to keep it on, along with her shoes, right before he’d shoved it up her hips with those huge, expressive,
sexy
hands and buried his face between her legs.

Unsuitable, at seven in the morning of the day she was supposed to be supervising the demolition of Sunnyvale, to be in Noah’s bed, squirming on top of sheets that probably weren’t even all that clean.

Unsuitable to be wet, red-faced, sweating,
again
.

“You like that, baby?” he asked.

He threw out these statements that weren’t really questions. They only sounded like questions so he’d have an excuse to crinkle up into a grin, rub and pat her belly as though she were a puppy, a woman to be called baby.

Because he was having such a grand time, he wanted to
share
it with her.

His questions were a form of wasted speech, like a greeting or a goodbye—verbal
caresses with no purpose unless it was to make her smile. Which she’d started doing. Smiling and saying silly, juvenile things back to him, like “Yeah. Yeah, you know I do. It’s so good. You make it so good.”

He made her murmur porn-movie platitudes and repeat herself.

He called her baby, and every time she tried to sneer at him for it, she ended up smiling.

Or worse. Sometimes she kissed him.

He stroked her stomach, back and forth, his heavy hand slick with her sweat. It was a trick he’d picked up—touching her stomach, her arms, her neck, to distract her from the progress he was making with his mouth.

The window was open, though she’d insisted they lower the blinds, which now blew up and clacked back down in the intermittent morning breeze, bringing the briny smell of the ocean to Carmen, delivering the world outside to this bed where she was making a mistake with a dangerously addictive man.

It was only supposed to have been once. Yesterday, she’d led him to a motel, and after she got what she wanted from him—more than she wanted—she’d dressed and walked out to her car. But then she’d hesitated.

Carmen had stood beside her car in the bright glare of the motel parking lot, feeling as though there were flat nylon bands looped around her hips, around her breasts, around her throat.

Feeling as though he held the other ends of those bands in his fists, and all he had to do was tug, and she would return to him.

She hadn’t been able to figure it out. Why she wanted to return to him.

But she’d stood there for so long that he’d come out, put his arms around her, and told her he was taking her to lunch.

How quickly she’d said yes. She still didn’t quite believe it.

He’d bought her
pan con lechón
from a street vendor—a messy, undignified sandwich that dripped on her fingers and stained her blouse while he watched her with eyes full of so much concentrated lust you’d think she’d been blowing him. Then he’d driven her to this little house on the beach in Marathon. Mile after mile without a touch, without a lick or a kiss, until she’d thought she might ignite like a match and burn out before they reached his carport.

In his bed, he’d tortured her, loved her, made her
weep
, and still she’d promised herself that she would leave before morning.

Don’t stay
, she told herself.
It will hurt
.

But his arm banded around her as the light faded and the stars came out. The fuzz of his forearm tickled the underside of her breasts. The volume on her inner voice dropped to a whisper, and then she couldn’t hear it at all.

She whispered to the darkness. To the interior of her mind.
It’s because of the orgasms
.

Carmen had never been a woman to whom orgasms came easily. They didn’t come any easier with Noah, but it was as though he’d budgeted lavishly in his mental calendar for oral sex—hours of groaning, happy, languid licking and sucking and stroking. His fingers went pruney from twisting and rubbing and pressing inside her, and when she pointed it out to him as an absurdity he only laughed and told her there wasn’t anything he’d rather be doing with them.

Noah. Big, smiling, unsuitable Noah, who seemed to believe twenty-five minutes spent making her come was twenty-five minutes well spent.

He lifted his face from her crotch, brows drawn together. “I lost you, baby. What are you thinking about?”

“You.”

“Good things, I hope?”

“Good things.”

He smiled.

He snugged his big warm hands beneath her bare ass, raising her up like an offering, making her feel indulged and indulgent. His thumbs dug into the crease at the top of her thighs. His fingertips dimpled her flesh, his tongue lapped and stroked as he made cheerful humming, devouring noises, as he ate her resistance, consumed her reticence, rumpled the cold poise she’d wrapped around herself long ago when she was a girl who’d been cut so deeply that she didn’t know how to fix it except to freeze herself.

But maybe she hadn’t been frozen all the way, only cold and seeping as her torn edges bound back together.

Maybe beneath a layer of permafrost, deep below the surface, she’d still known how to do this—how to yearn and want and need. How to risk.

She must have had this potential inside her, all that time when she’d thought she was ice. Because otherwise, how to explain what had happened when she first saw him?

How to explain that she’d recognized him and claimed him, her first risk in eleven years
of blank, suitable safety?

Noah stroked her breast. Pressed her nipple. Too sensitive, she shied from his touch. He moved his hand away and she grabbed it back, hypocritical, mistaken, silently asking for another chance. He gave it to her, firm pressure, a tweak, a twist that made her grip the headboard tighter, and
oh!

Another chance. He’d done it again, distracted her from the building rush of pleasure between her thighs just long enough for it to crest and break, hot wet intense tightening affirmation in her abs and her thighs and her breasts, heat climbing her neck and that spot beneath his tongue clenching pulsing
yes, yes, yes
.

Noah made her come.

Coming made her cry.

He rolled her over and pulled her on top of him so her hair curtained down, falling around their faces, ruffling in the breeze, and she rested her wet cheek against his wiry beard. He kissed her and wiped her face dry, saying, “Baby, it’s all right.”

It was, with him. For a little while.

She tried to leave, but he pulled her back. He made her cry, and then he made it all right.

Ashley rang the doorbell.

Yesterday, she’d been in and out of Nana’s house half a dozen times, but this morning she didn’t want to presume.

Roman stood behind her. When they heard the hollow thumps of approaching footfalls, he grazed his hand down her back and left it resting just above the rise of her butt.

The door opened on Nana, blinking in the direct light, smiling broadly. “I was starting to wonder when you two would turn up,” she said. “Come on in to the kitchen. We’re just having breakfast.”

Ashley toed off her shoes, because Nana wasn’t wearing hers. Roman did the same. They followed the older woman through the living room and into a spacious kitchen that must have been all the rage in the 1970s. It had harvest orange countertops, dark woodwork, and the trippiest wallpaper—yellow, brown, and avocado, with peace doves, mushrooms, giant feminine eyes, and the word
love
rendered in cartoonish letters.

Ashley adored Nana’s wallpaper.

Stanley sat at the round breakfast table in a fresh plaid shirt, coffee in hand. The plate in front of him showed evidence of recent occupation. He took a swallow from his oversize ceramic mug and said, “G’morning.”

“Would you like breakfast?” Nana asked. “I’ve got eggs and toast, and I could do hash browns from the freezer. Or if you don’t want anything hot, I have some muffins and cereal.” She opened and closed a cupboard door for no apparent reason. “Coffee? Tea? I think I might have some orange juice. Let me check.”

“We ate already, thanks.”

Room service. Toast and jam and strawberry waffles, and afterward, sex sitting up on Roman’s lap, his hands sliding over my back, down and down some more until he got to the cleavage of my ass, where he figured out a new place to put his fingers and learned how very little pressure it takes to make me lose my mind
.

“But I’d love some coffee,” she added, even though coffee would do nothing to cool off
the lust-avalanche she’d just triggered.

“Roman?” Nana asked.

“I’ll take coffee, too, thanks.”

“Cream?”

“Just black.”

“Cream and sugar for me,” Ashley said.

While Nana fixed the coffee, Ashley pulled out a chair. Roman sat down next to her.

Ashley caught Stanley’s eye and said, “About last night.” She wanted to apologize, because she should have called, probably. She ought to have explained where she and Roman were going instead of sneaking up the driveway to take the Escalade, leaving Stanley and Nana to wonder where she’d gone off to.

Stanley looked down at his coffee.

Maybe there was no need to explain. It was obvious, wasn’t it? Man kisses woman. Man and woman go for a walk. Man and woman don’t come back until breakfast. A fill-in-the-blank exercise where the answer is S-E-X.

Nana carried both coffees and her own mug of hot tea to the table. “Before you start,” she said, “I want to say something. And you should probably brace yourself, because it’s not going to be pretty.”

Ashley managed a strained smile. After her talk with Nana, Carly, and Ellen last night, she wasn’t sure how much ugly conversation she could take.

“I spoke to Carly this morning, and she thinks—” Nana stopped. She plucked at the tea tag hanging from her mug. “No.” She sucked in a quick breath and started again. “I spoke to Carly, and I owe you an apology.” Nana lifted her blue eyes to Ashley’s. “My mother used to tell me to look before I leapt, but I’m afraid I never got the knack of it. I say things without thinking. I’m worse with a few drinks in me.” She lifted the tag again, bobbed her tea bag up and down, and lifted it from the mug to rest on the saucer. “You came here for help. I insulted you. I feel … small. I’m sorry.”

A heavy silence settled over the kitchen. “Um, thank you?”

“You don’t need to thank me.” Nana fixed Stanley with a hard look. “He wanted to say something, too.”

“Mind your own business.”

“You said you would tell them,” Nana hissed.

“In my own time.”

“Now.”

A flush of red crawled up Stanley’s neck. He crossed his arms. The silence thickened.

When Ashley inhaled, preparing to smooth over the awkwardness, he cleared his throat. “In the car,” Stanley said to Roman. “That was out of order.”

“Which part?” Roman asked stiffly.

“I shouldn’t have riled you up. I was trying to help the girl, but I messed it up. There’s a reason Michael talks to the customers and I keep to myself most of the time.”

More silence. Ashley itched to stand up. Pace off the kitchen. Take a walk.

“Apology accepted,” Roman said.

Stanley fixed his attention on her, as though it were up to her to put a final stamp of approval on this exchange. “What?” she asked.

He shrugged.

“It’s all right,” she said.

“Is it?” Nana asked.

Ashley looked over Stanley’s shoulder, through the patio door to the back deck and the dense, overgrown patch of woods beyond. Was it all right?

This morning, she’d awakened to feel Roman’s sleep-warmed skin beneath her arm and the calm rushing of the tide inside her. Not a new sensation for her, but a rare one—the way she felt when she stayed up all night by a bonfire, talking and dancing, singing, making love on a blanket spread over the sand.