More Than A Vow: Vows of Revenge / After Their Vows / Vows Made in Secret. Michelle ReidЧитать онлайн книгу.
want to do that.”
She didn’t know much about computers, but she knew what circular logic was, and that was a big bunch of it right there. At the same time, her hands moved restlessly on him, smoothing his tight skin to his shoulders, pressing with involuntary invitation for him to lower onto her and kiss her.
They stole one brief kiss. Another. She could feel him hardening and opened her legs so he could settle properly between her thighs.
“I’m not going to deny you,” he warned, smoothing her loose hair back from her face. “I’m going to give you everything you ask for. I’ll stay just this side of barbaric as I ravish the hell out of you. If you can bring yourself to leave after that, I’ll let you go.”
Her heart trembled in her chest. Words stayed locked in her throat. All she could do was reach between them to guide him, telling him what she wanted. He teased her for a few moments, letting her feel his naked length against the growing ache in her loins, kissing her deeply until she was writhing with need beneath him. Then he covered himself and thrust, both of them catching ragged breaths as the agony of anticipation ceased and the perfection of joining commenced.
He was a man of his word; however, he dragged a pillow under her bottom so he could service her as thoroughly as possible, leaving her near weeping from the power of her release. Then he drew away, still hard, and proceeded to coax her down the road of sexual play all over again. He found all her erogenous zones and took his time stimulating her until she was ready for a firmer touch. A more insistent pull on her breast with his lips, a more erotic caress that he watched, soothing her when she tried to close her legs, claiming it was too immodest.
He gently dominated her then, rolling her so her stomach was on the pillow and covering her, but not taking her. He just stroked her with his body in a mimic of what they both wanted.
“Hurt?” he asked in a rasp. “I want everything in you, Melodie. Every last scream, but I won’t take them. You have to give them to me.”
She was sobbing, so aroused she was trembling. Shifting, coming up on her knees, she drew him to where she wanted him and clenched her fists in the sheets as he caressed her while he thrust. It was elemental and primitive, both of them stripped down to the very core. All her romantic notions of how men and women should come together dissolved in a flood of carnal hunger, decorum gone, both of them filling the room with erotic noises.
When they hit the peak, his fingers bit into her hips, locking them together as she cried, “Deeper, harder, yes, yes.” He bucked and she gave up a long cry of gratified fulfillment.
ROMAN SWORE, SNAPPING Melodie from a doze.
“What’s wrong?” she asked sleepily.
“Can’t you hear it? Does he think he owns you?”
She lifted her head off his chest, where the steady thump of his heartbeat had lulled her. She heard the distant hum of her phone vibrating in the other room. Glancing at the clock, she said, “He’s probably worried I’ll miss the flight.”
Roman’s arm tightened on her.
She rolled onto him, growing addicted to the feel of his body against her own, loving the freedom to be like this: more than familiar or intimate. Close.
Nuzzling her nose into the fine hairs at his breastbone, she hid the dampness that rose behind her eyes as she drank in his scent, murmuring, “I have to leave soon. Not should,” she clarified. “Have to.”
“I heard you,” he grumbled, massaging her scalp through the thick fall of her hair. “I still want you to stay.”
“I’m glad,” she said with a crooked smile, thinking of the way he’d thrown her out the first time. The remembrance didn’t hurt as badly now. She had this incredible memory to replace it. “But I think in the long run we’d wind up in conflict. I do want love and marriage and kids, Roman. You were right about that.”
His caress gentled to a light comb of his fingers through her hair. He didn’t say anything. Didn’t try to convince her he was a changed man, that they had a future. The silence caught at her tender heart, telling her she was making the right decision.
“But I could shower here,” she suggested, lifting her head to offer a sultry look through tangled lashes, a smile pouted with invitation. “Rather than in my own room, alone.”
“Deal.”
* * *
Roman was jealous. He wasn’t just annoyed on Melodie’s behalf that her boss thought he had first call on her time. He was illogically threatened and nursing an uncomfortable state of rebuff as he walked away from her closed hotel room door and forced himself back to the elevator and his own room.
Emotions.
He eschewed them at every opportunity. Hope, happiness, pride. Those were all harbingers of a fall to come. That was what he’d learned through a very hard childhood. Better to focus on sensory pleasures and external goals that had a hope of being accomplished than seek some sort of inner fulfillment.
Melodie was right in saying they would run into conflict in the long run. She might act tough, but she was very sensitive, and he would wind up hurting her with his active attempts to feel nothing.
Which was exactly what he tried to do after walking her downstairs and returning to his empty suite. He was exhausted from lack of sleep, muscles aching from their night of marathon lovemaking, but he wasn’t interested in crawling back into their wrecked bed. It looked too cold and empty. Unwelcoming.
Finding his scotch from the night before, he sipped it. It wasn’t yet six and he hadn’t slept, so that meant it was still last night, right?
One night. Since when did he feel depressed about any woman leaving, whether it was within hours of their coming together or months?
Forget her, he insisted, thumbing across the screen on his phone to check his emails. Just as quickly he swept that screen aside and flicked to Melodie’s contact card. Her number was still there. It hadn’t accidentally been erased. Checking was completely juvenile, but asking her for it had been even more adolescent. He didn’t chase women. He wouldn’t call her. He had just wanted to know if she was willing to give it to him.
He wished he’d taken another shot of her this morning, clean faced and wearing a hotel robe, ball gown slung over her arm as she’d slowly closed the hotel room door on him. Her expression had been soft with sensual memory, her smile sweet and wistful.
How the hell did he even know what wistful looked like?
It looked like wanting what you couldn’t have, he supposed, which was something he understood all too well. His childhood had been nonstop wishing. As an adult, he’d learned to get what he wanted or stop wanting it, very seldom coming up against a situation such as this.
I do want love and marriage and kids, she’d said. He turned that over in his mind, thinking how determined he’d been to find her in Virginia and take care of any child they might have conceived. There hadn’t been any hesitation in him on that score, but what would things look like now if she had been pregnant? Would they be married?
He supposed there were conditions under which he would seek a lifetime commitment, but those conditions weren’t love. His chest started to feel tight just thinking about opening himself up to that depth of emotion.
Damn it! Why the hell couldn’t she have simply forgotten her pearls again and given him an excuse to call? She’d taken them off at one point, but had asked for his help after her shower to put them back on.
He wandered the suite, scanning for forgotten items, finding only the hotel toothbrush she’d left in a glass next to the sink. Leaning in the bathroom doorway, staring at himself wearing his tuxedo pants and the shirt he’d been too lazy to close all