Oh, for the love of— Not again.
She didn’t think she could live through a repeat of what happened the last time they’d shared a bed, when he’d worried she might misconstrue his intentions toward her and had felt obliged to tell her in no uncertain terms that he had absolutelyzerointerest in herthat way.
Deciding a little humor was her best bet at dodging another of his humiliating Come-to-Jesus talks, she winked saucily. “Was that good for you?”
As she’d hoped, the tension drained from his big shoulders. “Mmm.” He nodded, playing along. “Spectacular. You?”
“Best I’ve had since the last time we did it.”
He chuckled and propped his head in his hand. When his eyes traveled over her face, she resisted the urge to check if she had creases on her cheek left by the material of his T-shirt. Instead, she forced herself to hold his gaze.
Easier said than done.
It was a heady thing to be this close to him. Headier still to be the sole focus of his dark, penetrating stare as the morning light streamed in through a break in the hotel curtains and highlighted the broad, tanned expanse of his brow, the wicked arch of his jet-black eyebrows, and the shadows his dimples created in his cheeks.
Those diabolical dimples that make him look sort of boyish when I know for a fact there isn’t a single boyish thing about him.
Spiro “Romeo” Delgado wasallman.
Her thigh still burned where a particularly manly part of him had touched her.
“I blame it on your voice.” His tone was low and raspy from sleep.
“Blame what?” She felt her brow wrinkle.
“Me falling asleep when you read to me. Your voice is just so soothing. It’s sort of throaty and raspy.”
The unexpected compliment had her tensing. Not because it flustered her or flattered her. But because it reminded her of the mistake she’d made at seven years old, the mistake that’d ended with her committing the ultimate sin.
Some of what she was thinking must’ve projected itself into her expression. He pressed up on one elbow. “What? Did I say something wrong?”
She fiddled with a ball of lint stuck near the seam of the comforter. “My voice sounds like this because my vocal cords were damaged when I was a little girl.”
“What happened to you?” His frown was so fierce, even his dimples couldn’t make him look boyish now. Now, he was one-hundred percent, high-octane, former fighting man, and she knew how terrified his enemies must’ve been to face him across a battlefield.
She opened her mouth, but nothing came out. Her childhood—and all the sorrow and shame that’d sprung from it—had always made her feel separate from the world. Set apart.Other.
But amazingly, from the beginning, she hadn’t felt separate from Romeo.
Quite the opposite; she felt a strange connection to him. As if, for the first time she’d found someone who could understand how her dark past continued to cast a long shadow into her present.
“Hey.” He rubbed a finger between her eyebrows, smoothing the line she knew had formed there. “Breathe.”
“I thought I was.” She exhaled a windy sigh, her forehead tingling from the warmth left behind by his fingertip.
“It’s okay if you don’t want to tell me,” he assured her.
“It’s not that I don’twantto tell you. It’s just that...”
She let the sentence dangle, only finishing it in her head.I can’t.
A soft knock sounded on the door. “Mia?” Doc’s deep, raspy voice drifted in from the hallway. “You awake?”
Romeo’s expression grew...she wasn’t sure how to describe it. Purposefully blank, maybe? “You expecting company?” His voice sounded oddly neutral.
“No.” She shook her head and glanced at the digital clock on the nightstand. The glowing red numbers had her bolting upright. “Oh my god! We’re late!”
His gaze landed on the clock. He blinked as if the time displayed didn’t compute.
