He follows me over the edge a few moments later, his grip tightening, the warmth of him filling me.
We stay still for a moment. Neither of us speaks.
Then he moves, lifting me, gently this time, and laying me on the sofa. He settles beside me. His hand brushes hair from my face in a gesture so brief I almost don’t catch it.
“Never,” he says, “make conversation with my men again.”
I look at the ceiling. “You need better threats,” I say, “if these are the consequences.”
Silence.
I turn my head. He’s looking at me with an expression I can’t read.
“Okay,” I say. “Okay, I know. I heard you.”
He holds my gaze for one more moment before deciding, “You need a bath.”
I start to sit up. His arm comes around me, pulling me back against him as he stands, my body cradled against his chest.
He carries me to a wooden door in the far wall, flush with the paneling, nearly invisible in the low light.
His bedroom is enormous.
I knew it would be.
The bed is dark wood and wide enough that you could lose someone in it. No clutter on any surface. One book on the nightstand. The room smells of him.
He carries me through another door into the bathroom.
It’s all dark marble and low, atmospheric lighting and the kind of fixtures that appear in magazines with captions aboutunderstated luxury.The bathtub is freestanding, deep, and he’s already moving toward it, turning the taps with his free hand while holding me against him with the other.
He sets me on the edge of the vanity and steps back.
“Ready for round two, I see,” I say.
His lips press together. The seismic event. He reaches past me to the shelf behind my head.
I shift to slide off the counter. “I can?—”
“Stay.”
“I’m just going to?—”
“I said, stay.”
I settle back and consider him. His expression is dangerously close to amusement, controlled and private.
I bite my lip. “Or what?”
The look that crosses his face makes my entire nervous system file an urgent internal report.
He takes one slow step toward me.
And I discover, sitting on his bathroom vanity, that I am very interested in the answer to that question.
22
ROLAN
